Introduction and Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host for today, John Dehlin. It is Friday, August 4th, and we are super excited to have with us all the way from Wellington, New Zealand, Ganesh Cherian. Hey, Ganesh.

Ganesh Cherian [00:00:16] Hi. Nice to be with you.

John Dehlin [00:00:19] This is going to be a New Zealand Mormon story and I am here joined by my partner in truth and. And righteousness, Margi. Hey, Margi. Hey. So glad you could be here.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:31] I'm really glad I'm here too.

John Dehlin [00:00:33] Yeah. And I've known Ganesh for a while and he's just a lovely, thoughtful human. He is a former Mormon bishop and he's lived in, I guess the same ward in Wellington, New Zealand. For how long?

Ganesh Cherian [00:00:53] Pretty much all my life.

John Dehlin [00:00:54] Yeah. So like at least 20 years, right? That's right.

Ganesh Cherian [00:01:00] I have lived in a few other places, but I've always come back to Wellington and I've effectively been in the same ward for all of that time.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] Yeah. So I guess part one of this interview is going to be Ganesh's Mormon story. Ganesh is also coming out soon with a book. And the book is probably going to

Ganesh Cherian [00:01:20] be called what 19th century evidences and Development of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It's a topical biography of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:01:31] So we don't know exactly when we're going to record part two, but I want to make sure and mention that at the outset because it's a good one. Ganesh is no dummy, so to speak. So if he puts a book together, he's put a lot of thought into it and it's going to be about influences to the Book of Mormon.

Ganesh Cherian [00:01:47] Yep. And just really just tracking Joseph's life and looking at various themes. So it's almost like a choose your own adventure. You know how you used to do those as kids. I mean, we know what happens, of course, cause Joseph dies at the end. But how he gets there on lots of different aspects of his life is I think, fascinating and incredibly interesting and engaging. And it shows Joseph in a lot of different ways. Lights that make him very relatable and human.

John Dehlin [00:02:18] Love it. Now we've had a few New Zealanders on Mormon Stories podcast. Gina Colvin, back in the day, you'll probably remember more than I. Other New Zealanders we've had on.

Ganesh Cherian [00:02:28] Yes. So, yeah, I'm good friends with Gina and her husband Nathan. And New Zealand's a small place, so it's, you know, if you take the church, it makes it a village, really when it comes to the church in New Zealand.

John Dehlin [00:02:44] But this is probably the first New Zealander we've ever had in studio. So thanks for coming, Ganesh. Let's begin. You know, you are a lifelong Mormon. You're still attending, is that right? Attending member of the Mormon Church and again, former bishop. Sometimes people might misunderstand one's intentions for telling their story openly on Mormon stories. Why don't we begin by having you state what your intentions are for doing the interview?

Ganesh Cherian [00:03:15] Well, I guess, first off, I love Mormonism. It's my life and it's my culture, it's my tribe. I want it to be vibrant and amazing and caring and beautiful. And so I work to make that the case in my own ward, in my own life. But also I think that it's got some maturity issues and some things that it needs to grow into. And I feel uniquely able to kind of look at some of those things, hopefully objectively, but also with a great deal of compassion and love and a way to be able to look at some of the things that we are and celebrate them and look at some of the things that we're not and work towards those endeavours. I. So I want it to be a great thing, basically.

John Dehlin [00:04:16] So you want to help the church become even better than it is?

Ganesh Cherian [00:04:20] I hope so. I realize that I am just a tiny ant in the middle of nowhere that has these thoughts, but, you know, one of the beauties of Mormon stories, I guess, is ants like me sharing their situations and their experience, and that being the mechanism by which people can really grow and be empathetic and make great things happen.

John Dehlin [00:04:48] I love it. All right, well, Ganesh, where does your Mormon story begin? Ganesh isn't necessarily a common Mormon name.

Family Origins and Coming to New Zealand

Ganesh Cherian [00:04:56] No, no. And I probably should start that. So my mother is from New Zealand and she went on a trip. She decided to leave New Zealand and go on a big Oe, an overseas experience. That's a very common New Zealand thing because we live at the bottom of the world, and in order to go anywhere, you have to fly. And so if you're gonna go somewhere, you might as well explore the world. And so my mother did her oe, went to Australia and then up through Southeast Asia and ended up in India.

Ganesh Cherian [00:05:33] And at that time, in the early 70s, it was, you know, hippies following gurus and being involved in being able to improve themselves and enlightenment. And my mother found her way to a place called Varanasi, which is a holy city in India on the banks of the Ganges, and there met my Father.

Ganesh Cherian [00:05:59] My father was from southern India, so he came from a very staunch Christian background. My great grandfather's on his side were both preachers, both Christian preachers. And South India is a very Christian part of India.

John Dehlin [00:06:20] Really?

Ganesh Cherian [00:06:21] Yeah, it's super. There's more Christians in India, in South India than there are people in New Zealand and Australia. It's millions and millions.

John Dehlin [00:06:30] Wow.

Ganesh Cherian [00:06:30] Heavily Catholic, heavily Orthodox.

John Dehlin [00:06:32] I had no idea.

Ganesh Cherian [00:06:33] Yeah, it's massive. And my family are mostly orthodox, although I've got a number of Catholics, cousins.

John Dehlin [00:06:40] It makes me wonder why the church, the Mormon Church, doesn't send more missionaries to India if there's such a Christian base. But maybe that's. I mean, I don't want to sidetrack us, but.

Ganesh Cherian [00:06:52] Yeah, well, I think that it's working and trying to implement that, but there's a very strong Christian base, particularly in South India. And of course, the temple is in Bangalore, so that's, you know, it's got a foothold there.

John Dehlin [00:07:06] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:07:07] The. My family. Well, India in general has a very long kind of Christian heritage. If you go to South India, you can go to the place where St. Thomas was killed and where his bones are. I've seen his bones.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] What?

Ganesh Cherian [00:07:25] Yeah. So you can go to those relics. And while the history's a little dubious, that's where Christians in India take their tradition, their tribe that, you know, Christianity in India comes from Thomas, St. Thomas, who went to India to preach. So it's a really long history.

John Dehlin [00:07:45] Is it factual that Thomas went to India to preach?

Ganesh Cherian [00:07:48] It does seem so, yes.

John Dehlin [00:07:50] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:07:50] But whether the sites that are now identified as his martyrdom and, you know, his bones, whether they really him, it's a little bit tricky to. To tell.

John Dehlin [00:08:01] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:08:02] And also, if you go to Goa, you can go to the. The. The church there that holds the bones of Francis of Assisi. So I've seen his mummified remains.

John Dehlin [00:08:14] Those are real?

Ganesh Cherian [00:08:15] Those are real.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] Okay. He's in India. He's in southern India.

Ganesh Cherian [00:08:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:18] Did you say Goa?

Ganesh Cherian [00:08:19] Goa.

John Dehlin [00:08:20] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:08:21] And so Christianity in India has a really long heritage, and a lot of orthodox came down. So. So my name, Cherian, my last name, Cherian, is actually an Armenian name. And so, you know, orthodox Christians came and settled in South India and converted the local high caste, Brahmins.

John Dehlin [00:08:43] And so I was gonna ask you what caste, if you even know your grandparents were.

Ganesh Cherian [00:08:48] So originally they would be. Had been Brahmins, I would say, which

John Dehlin [00:08:51] is the highest caste, meaning they had the lightest skin. Is that fair to say?

Ganesh Cherian [00:08:54] Yes, that's also true. And A lot of. There was a lot of inter marriage between, you know, like, if you go to South India, particularly to Cochin, there's a lot of Portuguese influence there. There's also a lot of. There's a little Jewish community there. It's. It's steeped in Christian heritage and it's very. Yeah, it's a beautiful place to go. There are. I've got, you know, extended family who have very light skin, very green eyes. You know, there's this kind of, you know, Western element in South India.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:09:36] When the British came to India and kind of took it over. So the northern part of India was influenced by British Christianity, which ended up being a lot of the low caste people. So there's kind of a slight privilege in the south and prejudice in the north about Christianity. And so the Christians in the south are very privileged and the Christians in the north are a little bit prejudiced against.

Margi Dehlin [00:10:07] That's interesting.

Ganesh Cherian [00:10:09] But that's where Mother Teresa obviously did her mission in Calcutta. And one time I was in India, I even saw Mother Teresa in person speak at a Catholic church just down the road from my auntie's house.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] You didn't get a selfie?

Ganesh Cherian [00:10:26] I didn't get a selfie. But she was very eloquent, really. And there were just throngs of people there to see her. So I. Yeah, so she was always very special to me. When I, as a teenager, I got to see her in person.

John Dehlin [00:10:41] So did your mom stay in India?

Ganesh Cherian [00:10:42] So. Oh, yes. My parents got together in Varanasi and I was conceived there. And my dad, who had been from this great Christian background, he was actually at a Hindu university in Varanasi. So he was also kind of following that kind of guru path. And my mother, heavily pregnant in the heat of India, they went to the north, up into the foothills of the Himalayas, and that's where I was born. So just near the Nepalese border in a place called Nainital.

Ganesh Cherian [00:11:19] And of course they were following Guru, so they sent a telegram to the guru to ask him for a name for their son. So this was a guy called Babaji. And he sent back a telegram. I still got it.

Ganesh Cherian [00:11:34] This is probably unheard of for most people what even a telegram is. But basically the guru told my parents to name me Ganesh or Ganesh G. So Ganesh G is. G is a honorarium. It's like a sir. So it's like Sir Ganesh. And Ganesh is the Hindu God of prosperity and wisdom. He's denounced by elephant head. He's a very popular Indian deity and very much loved.

Ganesh Cherian [00:12:07] And I've got this very Christian surname, Cherian, Very South Indian Christian surname. So I'm the. As far as I'm aware, I'm the only Ganesh Charian in the world. And it's, you know, and I've been a God since I was born, so

John Dehlin [00:12:25] that, you know, that's very Mormon.

Ganesh Cherian [00:12:27] That's so Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:12:28] God's an embryo.

Ganesh Cherian [00:12:29] Yeah. So my wife still thinks I've got a God complex, that it plays out. And of course, because Ganesh is so well known in India, I've got this really odd kind of name when I talk to people because it's very distinctively Indian. And if you know Indian mythology and their gods, you know, Ganesh is loved. So I get the oddity where people. Some people have no idea who Ganesh is. And some people, when they hear my name, they're very, you know, they just warmed to me immediately because of the connotation.

John Dehlin [00:13:05] Have you seen the Simpsons? Did you ever watch the Simpsons?

Margi Dehlin [00:13:07] Yes, yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] Did you see the episode where Homer goes to the convenience store with Abu? With Abu. And do you remember what Abu says?

Ganesh Cherian [00:13:15] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:13:16] Homer's feeding peanuts. He sees a little elephant on the. Starts giving the elephant peanuts and Ganesh. And Apu says, what?

Ganesh Cherian [00:13:23] I can't remember.

John Dehlin [00:13:24] Please do not feed peanuts to my God.

Ganesh Cherian [00:13:29] It's always slightly. It's slightly humbling when Ganesh comes up as a theme in movies and things like, oh, that's me. Occasionally I meet people, I say, oh, your name's Ganesh. And I said, yes, yes. I'm sorry I haven't answered your prayers.

Margi Dehlin [00:13:43] But, you know, I'm working on it, doing my best,

Ganesh Cherian [00:13:51] but it's a lovely name to have, but also. Well, I should finish the story, of course. So I got. I was born in India, in Nainital, and my parents. My mother's brother was getting married, and so my grandparents helped my parents come back to New Zealand. And I was six months old. There is my mum, very European, you know, farming background. And here she is, she's brought back these two souvenirs from India. This baby who was the oldest.

John Dehlin [00:14:26] Was there a marriage? No, because it's very 70s.

Ganesh Cherian [00:14:30] Yes, it was very 70s, so no marriage.

John Dehlin [00:14:34] And was your dad even, like. Was it in his world that he would leave India and move to New Zealand?

Ganesh Cherian [00:14:40] I don't think so.

John Dehlin [00:14:40] I think it was. You know, that's fascinating.

Ganesh Cherian [00:14:43] And of course, too, you know, I don't think he was planning to be an immigrant, but then he became an immigrant of Course. And with all of the connotations that comes along with that. You know, being from India, he was quite well educated, but not, you know, he did a philosophy degree so, you know, nothing that could quite point to, but he had like a equivalent of about a master's. So he's a very intelligent guy physically, appearance wise.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] Did he blend in or did he stick out in New Zealand?

Ganesh Cherian [00:15:14] He did, he stuck out. You know, he's quite dark even though

John Dehlin [00:15:20] he was light for India. Yeah, yeah, he was dark for New Zealand.

Ganesh Cherian [00:15:24] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:15:24] Fortunately, I guess in New Zealand we've got a very big Mori and Pacific island population. So there's a mix. And there's lots of Indian people in New Zealand too. But he was from the south of India and lots of the immigrants from India and New Zealand were from the north of India. So actually finding community was quite difficult for him.

John Dehlin [00:15:47] Right. Because there's prejudice.

Ganesh Cherian [00:15:49] Well, just so much, just so different. It's like each state in India is a different language and every. Yeah, it's like a whole nother culture. Yeah, you might as well be Canadian

John Dehlin [00:16:03] culture versus like Mississippi culture.

Ganesh Cherian [00:16:05] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:16:06] Right, yeah, yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [00:16:07] It's just you might as well be in different countries. It's just so different and so. And of course, because he was well educated, but he wasn't professional and he didn't have those things. So he ended up, he ended up doing lots of kind of not menial jobs, but not high paying, high professional jobs. My mother was a teacher, so they both worked and that kind of played out in some, you know, we were a working class family. You know, my father was a bus driver but.

Ganesh Cherian [00:16:42] And my mother was a teacher. So very normal middle class family, but slightly maybe on the low end because of, you know, some of those dynamics with immigration and of course, you know, coming back to New Zealand with a European mum and an Indian dad, you know, there was some interplays there with racial discrimination and challenge. But to my, particularly to my New Zealand family's credit, they just seem to really warm to my dad and it never seemed to be an issue. I was, you know, growing up, I was loved incredibly by my grandparents and had a wonderful time on the farm where my grandparents were.

Ganesh Cherian [00:17:32] So I grew up in Wellington mostly. That's where my parents ended up settling. But I would spend my summer vacations, all of my school holidays at my grandparents farm and I had cousins down the road, uncles and aunties nearby, and was very much a part of that community and love. It was fabulous.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] So how did the. So were either of your Parents, I'm assuming your dad for sure, not. I'm assuming your mom wasn't raised Mormon either.

Ganesh Cherian [00:18:01] No. So they were both kind of fairly outside any kind of Christian paradigm. My mother had grown up maybe Church of England going. My grandparents weren't particularly active, but, you know, everybody was Christian so you kind of had something that you belonged to. My father was from a kind of an orthodox background in South India, so they both came from these Christian leanings. But of course in India they had followed, you know, the Hindu guru type situation. So when they came back to New Zealand they kind of gravitated back to the norm, the status quo, which was Christianity. And in Wellington, my dad worked for an insurance company and there was a member there and he learned about the church and so then eventually he thought that this was great and he joined it.

Ganesh Cherian [00:19:00] And of course that was back in the time, you know, the mid-70s where the church was segmented. It wasn't all in one group, wasn't a three hour block. So he would be at church pretty much the whole of Sunday. And my mother was kind of like, what are you doing? You're going away from the family. And so she decided to go as well. And so they both ended up being baptised. I was about five at this point.

John Dehlin [00:19:29] Any other siblings when that happened?

Ganesh Cherian [00:19:31] So I've got one younger sibling who is four years younger than me, my sister Maria, and she's fabulous.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] So around the same time you were baptized, your sister was born?

Ganesh Cherian [00:19:41] Yeah, I think she had just been born.

John Dehlin [00:19:44] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:19:44] So it was early in the piece. I remember actually going to the church across the road from the. It was an All Saints Anglican church and the Latter Day Saints were across the road. So I ended up just switching from going from one side of the road to the other.

Ganesh Cherian [00:20:04] My parents fairly active, although my father found it really difficult to keep towards the word of wisdom. And so it was pretty evident quite quickly that he, you know, didn't really warm to things. But my mother got quite involved so my dad soon went leasective and my mother ended up being really active in the church. And because my parents had numerous marital problems, the church was kind of became a bit of a mainstay. And when my parents eventually separated for the last time, the church provided a lot of grounding in terms of support structure for my mother and also really a lot of support for me as a young man, you know, dealing with needing support and mentor and also maybe some financial help.

Childhood, Family Struggles, and Early Church Life

John Dehlin [00:21:11] What was your age when your parents split up for the last time?

Ganesh Cherian [00:21:14] So they were. So I was 11.

John Dehlin [00:21:16] Oh, okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:21:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:21:17] Did your dad stay in New Zealand or go home?

Ganesh Cherian [00:21:21] Yeah, so he stayed in Wellington and my sister and I stayed with my mother and he. And so that we would go see him, spend time with him. Back in those days, of course, you know, generally you. When families broke up, you stayed with your mother. So my father didn't have any custody, but we would go visit him on the weekends and spend time with him.

John Dehlin [00:21:45] Do you feel like you were close, stayed close to your dad?

Ganesh Cherian [00:21:49] Yeah, yeah. He's a. He was a lovely guy. And although there were some. Lots of tension between my parents and so that wasn't always great. There was some domestic violence. So those are kind of underpinning some of the things that were going on.

Ganesh Cherian [00:22:06] My. Yeah, some not easy stories. The police sometimes were at our house. That was a really big thing. My dad had some problems with alcohol. I remember growing up, we used to go. My parents went to. My dad went to AA and my mum to Al Anon. And there was even a kind of a. Kids like children of alcoholic parents. So I used to go to some of those meetings. I remember one time talking about my parents and some of our situations, you know, and I said something and everybody looked, like, shocked. And it was just normal to me. And it was the first time I kind of realized that maybe some people's experiences were quite different from my own.

Ganesh Cherian [00:22:57] Yeah, that was a bit of a revelation. My. Yeah. My dad and my mother had some conflicts, particularly over assets which they didn't have very many of, but this led to some problems between them and eventually I got the opportunity to go to church college, which is a church high school in Hamilton.

John Dehlin [00:23:28] And before we jump to that, what are your memories from growing up in a. It was a ward or a branch.

Ganesh Cherian [00:23:34] A ward.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] It was a ward. Yeah. Do you have fun childhood memories of being Mormon teenagers memories before college? Yes.

Ganesh Cherian [00:23:42] Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I should say church college is a high school.

John Dehlin [00:23:47] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [00:23:48] So the. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:23:50] Do you do, like, primary and learn the primary songs and, like, have all the. The friends and middle school mutual. I don't know, they probably didn't have Boy Scouts, but, like, I'm wondering how much of a Mormon experience you remember before high school.

Ganesh Cherian [00:24:05] Well, I. I remember going to primary when it was on a Wednesday.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [00:24:09] But then they consolidated the meetings and so they were all on Sunday and. But yeah, primary was great. We had a lovely ward. In fact, our ward was really special. It's. I think it had a lot of immigrants in it. We had people from England From Holland. You know, like, it seemed to gravitate towards a number of big families who had immigrant backgrounds, often just like my family, where one spouse was from somewhere else, from Poland or, you know, from Holland, and where the other spouse was maybe a second generation New Zealander. And so there were a number of people in our ward who were like me, you know, they.

Ganesh Cherian [00:25:04] They had, you know, immigrant and an immigrant parent plus a New Zealand parent. There were some really big families that were kind of central to the ward and they kind of gravitated together on the basis that they were members of the church and they'd come from really distinct places around the world. And it's still even a little bit like that in New Zealand. There's a lot of diversity in Wellington ward.

John Dehlin [00:25:30] Okay. Did you have a favourite primary song growing up?

Ganesh Cherian [00:25:34] Oh, my favorite song was Give Seth a Little Stream.

John Dehlin [00:25:37] Nice.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:37] Oh, yeah, love that. I remember that too.

John Dehlin [00:25:40] It's a classic.

Ganesh Cherian [00:25:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:25:42] I'm curious about, in with your childhood if you were gonna kind of talk about what you remember. Being a boy in your home, you know, just what comes up for you, what you loved. Were you introverted? Did you like your feelings kind of as a boy? Were you, you know, did you love school?

Ganesh Cherian [00:26:05] I did love school. I was always very curious. Like, I'm a curious guy. And because my parents were having problems and because there weren't a lot of means in our family, I always had to kind of find things or do things. And so I was.

Ganesh Cherian [00:26:25] I've always been outgoing, really loved people would find opportunities, go volunteer somewhere or just find a place that somebody had some resources and we'd share them. So I got to be quite innovative. And there were people in the ward too, who, you know, this particular guy who gave me a job. So I got a little bit of money and so became. I was able to be a bit more independent with myself.

Ganesh Cherian [00:26:59] I really liked that my mother was a teacher at the school that I was going to as a, you know, elementary school primary, we call it. And so my mother had an influence in the community and because of her, I was well liked and got opportunities.

Ganesh Cherian [00:27:22] I wasn't a particularly sporty kid because my parents weren't sporty at all. And there weren't a lot of options for me. But I did do a few things. Running and a little bit of soccer. I would have liked to have done that more, but it just wasn't an option.

Ganesh Cherian [00:27:40] And I grew up not having very much, but feeling like I had lots of opportunities and that I was welcomed. Most places My name still was a bit of an issue though because you know, Ganesh made me very foreign. And people would ask me and I wouldn't necessarily look like I was a local. So people would ask me where you're from? You know, they were really asking what my background was.

Ganesh Cherian [00:28:09] Sometimes people would pronounce my name wrong. They wouldn't be able to say Ganesh. And so that made me feel a little bit vulnerable. And one time my parents actually went on a trip to India and I ended up at my grandparents place at my local, at the local school where all of my cousins were. So I was so excited to go to school with my cousins in this farming community outside of Dannenburg. And the principal of the school who was also kind of the major teacher. Cause it was like a two room school thing. He would not say my name correctly. He would not say Ganesh properly.

Ganesh Cherian [00:28:51] Even when I corrected him. And he just got flummoxed. And he basically said look, if you want to stay here, you're going to have to let me call you this. I don't know what it was that he was calling me.

Ganesh Cherian [00:29:03] And I wanted to be there with my cousins having this wonderful school experience. And so I let them call me something terrible because I would rather do that than miss out on being with my cousins.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:20] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [00:29:21] And so I, yeah, I had this lovely feeling of being included and belonging and also these places where I, where I was ostracized or targeted or was on the outer.

Margi Dehlin [00:29:38] Othered.

Ganesh Cherian [00:29:38] Othered. So I became really conscious of those dynamics, really conscious of how to portray myself so that I would be in the. In group and maybe even versatile to go when I changed spaces that I kind of looked at the part or you know, I got quite adaptable in that kind of a way.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:01] Yeah. Kind of code switching.

Ganesh Cherian [00:30:03] Code switching, absolutely. Yeah. I didn't know that what it was called, but that's exactly what I did.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:09] Yeah. And this is as a young boy.

Ganesh Cherian [00:30:10] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:11] You're being very like you're aware of this.

Ganesh Cherian [00:30:13] Oh absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [00:30:14] Places where you're feeling.

Ganesh Cherian [00:30:15] Absolutely. And so then, you know, my name was one of those tricky things because it always outed me. You know, it's not till being an adult where people recognize my name and give me some validation for it. This was often a time where it was, you know, made me different, made me other. And so navigating that was quite tricky. But I think it made me also dynamic. Right. So it had some benefits, had some absolute benefits, but underneath them there were some worries about, you know, being valid Being recognised, having enough, all of those kinds of things that are very human things. Of course,

Margi Dehlin [00:31:00] yeah.

Attending Church College of New Zealand

John Dehlin [00:31:01] So you're gonna talk about college, which is high school, is that right?

Ganesh Cherian [00:31:05] So I went to high school in Wellington for a couple of years and then I.

John Dehlin [00:31:12] Do you remember getting the priesthood as a 12 year old and it wouldn't have been your dad who ordained you, is that right?

Ganesh Cherian [00:31:17] No, he was well out of the picture in terms of the church by that point. In fact, when I was baptized when I was eight, I actually got baptized on my best friend's birthday. It's a little bit after me and I really wanted the missionaries to baptize me because a, they were a big feature of our home growing up and I liked them, wanted to be like them, of course.

Ganesh Cherian [00:31:44] And so actually the missionaries baptized me at 8, not my father. Later on, the priesthood leaders got my dad active enough to be able to baptize my younger sister. But I actually wasn't baptized by him and so I wasn't ordained by him either. I can't remember who did it, but certainly getting the priesthood gave me some validity, gave me a job, made me important and I was always quite an outgoing kid. So I used to bear my testimony all the time.

Ganesh Cherian [00:32:19] And so I was a bit of a golden child in my ward because I was quite articulate. I, you know, loved being a member. I promoted it a lot when I went to, I went to early morning seminary and I was, I was good at studying, I took on board the scriptures. I guess that's something that's really a key part of my life is my first year of seminary, which was when I was 14 years old. It was early morning seminary and I had a fantastic teacher who just really loved us.

Ganesh Cherian [00:32:54] And that was when I first read the Book of Mormon. And it mirrored my life in many ways. You know, that kind of feeling of concern about having enough, those messages about sharing were things that I really resounded with me.

Ganesh Cherian [00:33:15] The idea of, you know, a little bit of persecution that, you know, kind of, you know, hit home. You know, the Book of Mormon really felt amazing and I was really good at reading and figuring out stuff. And of course, scripture mastery was a big part of seminary back then. And we used to have Fridays, we used to have games and learning scriptures and getting, you know, treats and I just aced that.

Ganesh Cherian [00:33:48] I was a superstar when it came to scripture mastery. We used to have these conventions in Wellington. They probably done them all around the church but you know, we wards would come and compete against wards for scripture chase and you Know, opening up the scriptures and getting to the right place or, you know, quoting them verbatim, that was a big thing. There was a prominent family in Wellington called the Butters, and he was head of ces, and his wife, Cheryl, she did all these scripture mastery tapes where she would sing the verses and create these beautiful songs that we. That's how we memorize these scriptures.

Ganesh Cherian [00:34:31] And I knew them all by heart, really. I could probably. I could sing you one now. It would be, you know, I could remember them like they're yesterday.

John Dehlin [00:34:42] So you were super into the Scriptures.

Ganesh Cherian [00:34:44] Super into the scriptures and particularly the Book of Mormon. Because this was my first year of seminary. I was 14. I was a superstar. You know, the Book of Mormon was it. I mean, in many ways, the Book of Mormon gave me an understanding of Christianity that led me to read the Bible. Like, if you. If I thought about being a wider understanding of being a Christian, my identity came through the Book of Mormon. I understood Christ via the Book of Mormon, not the other way around.

John Dehlin [00:35:14] Wow. And so do you remember loving your experience with the Book of Mormon?

Ganesh Cherian [00:35:21] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] And connecting with it.

Ganesh Cherian [00:35:23] I don't, you know, Moroni's promise. I can't think of a time that I sat down and knelt and asked for a witness. But I just. I felt absolutely that was true. You know, like, it was. Yeah, it just made me feel like I was heard, validated, because some of the things in it were things that were very. Were going on in my life. You know, conflict, poverty, you know, persecution, all of those kinds of themes were readily in there, but also some privilege. Right. I was being validated for the fact that I could read, read well, you know, took on board the stuff, and people loved that.

John Dehlin [00:36:09] Were there any characters in the Book of Mormon you identified with?

Ganesh Cherian [00:36:13] I think Nephi, absolutely. You know, he just, you know, that kind of sense of adventure, that idea that he kind of took over from his father as being somebody important, even, I suppose, that kind of inner conflict with the parents in the Book of Mormon, those kinds of things really resounded. You know, Nephi's feeling of inadequacy, but his, you know, he was obviously really an outgoing kind of a character. All of those things were a part of that.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] Did you find yourself in your youth group, in your high school and your ward Stake sort of being viewed as one of the stalwart youths of your kind of generation sort of thing?

Ganesh Cherian [00:36:57] Yes, yes, absolutely. You know, I was articulate. I was good at getting out there and doing stuff. So I had lots of leadership callings. Really early on, you know, and the church made those things possible in the youth space.

Ganesh Cherian [00:37:13] I was often, you know, the president of the quorum. I was often, you know, the representative for my ward for various youth activities in the stake. Yeah, I was. Yeah, I got lots of kudos, lots of validity in my ward. And also that kind of made me want to go to church college too, because it's a church high school. You know, if my experience in Wellington was fabulous, my experience in Hamilton with a whole lot of members would be ecstatic. Like, I was so excited about that. Funnily enough, the first time when I applied to go to church college, I got rejected.

Ganesh Cherian [00:37:54] They said my grades weren't so good at school and I needed to, not my grades. But my, the reports that my school had given about me being.

John Dehlin [00:38:03] I was

Ganesh Cherian [00:38:06] being a muck around was not so good. And so I really hunkered down and focused on things so that my reports were better. And so church college accepted me. So I went there when I was 15. So I'd already done two years of high school. And then I did in New Zealand, we do five years of high school. So I did two years of high school in Wellington, and then I went to church college in Hamilton, which is a boarding school, and I did three years there.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:35] So you moved out of your family home? Yep, to do that.

Ganesh Cherian [00:38:38] And I was ready to have an adventure. I was 15 and I was ready to conquer the world. And church college provided that opportunity for me.

Margi Dehlin [00:38:46] So interesting.

John Dehlin [00:38:47] This idea of a Mormon high school is. I mean, I guess in Utah, every high school is a Mormon high school to some extent. But, you know, whether it's the one that's in colonial Juarez, Mexico, it's kind of a special thing, these high schools, Mormon high schools that have been set up in non US countries.

Ganesh Cherian [00:39:05] Oh, it's a massive thing. It was set up at the same time that the temple was built. So it was kind of entrenched in, in the Mormon psyche. Right. Those, the labor missionaries who built the temple and the school, you know, sent all their kids there. Like it became a massive Mormon marker in New Zealand. Like, yeah, it's hard to describe because I suspect it just doesn't happen here. But it's quintessential New Zealand. Mormon experience was church college and everything revolved around it.

John Dehlin [00:39:45] And you like, I know that you like Jacinda Ardern, the former but recent prime minister of New Zealand. I know that at some point you rubbed shoulders or elbows with her and probably other people who have become influential in New Zealand. Political or public life, like it seems like. Were they all somehow associated with this college?

Ganesh Cherian [00:40:13] Yes, in lots of ways. Not every Mormon kid went to Church college, right? Lots of my friends didn't go. I left home. Some of them didn't. There were maybe a couple of people from my ward who were going to Church College at the same time.

Ganesh Cherian [00:40:31] And there were kids that came from all over New Zealand, particularly rural places where they would have to go to some kind of boarding school. Anyway, they came to Church College. We had some members from Australia who sent their children to New Zealand to go to this church high school. So I. But it is a real hub. The missionary training centre was on campus, so.

Ganesh Cherian [00:40:58] And the temple's right there. So it's. So what happened too was that the kids who were going to school ended up coming back the next year to go to the MTC before they went off on their missions. And so there was, yeah, a real hub.

Ganesh Cherian [00:41:16] The school provided a lot of employment for the local area and for the local members. So most of the staff at Church College were members of the church, prominent members and they worked at the school and they lived next door in the community.

Ganesh Cherian [00:41:34] There was a. So about when I was there, There was about 600 students, so it was quite a small school and about 300 of those were boarders. So people, you know, and this is a co ed school, so it was girls and boys and the.

Ganesh Cherian [00:41:52] And then half of those students were day students. So they lived in the, in the local community which was Temple View or in the wider Hamilton area and they used to come for the day for school. So there was a bit of a mix between borders and those who were day students, but they were often from prominent families, they come from all over. I got to meet people from all over New Zealand and then as you'll hear later, I went on a Mormon mission and I went to New Zealand. So I went to places where these people, where these kids were and met their families. And so it's.

John Dehlin [00:42:30] When you're later serving your mission in New Zealand, you're meeting the families of kids you went to college or in our words, high school with.

Ganesh Cherian [00:42:38] Great, great.

John Dehlin [00:42:38] That'd be fun.

Ganesh Cherian [00:42:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:39] And I've always been struck, you know, whether it's, you know, Mexico or Guatemala or, you know, England, how tight knit and small the Mormon community is. Countrywide, in other words, doesn't kind of matter where you are in the country. Families know each other and are connected.

Ganesh Cherian [00:43:02] It's incredibly well connected in New Zealand and predominantly because there's one temple right so everybody has to come to this central hub, which means you're visiting, you're staying with people. Cause you're out of town. Yeah, it's all interconnected and it provided opportunities for people to mix and to marry. And so prominent families, people who had, you know, generational members of the church, you know, getting together with other generational families. It's, it's. And it just spreads through New Zealand. It's very. It's like a. It's like a village almost.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:38] One question I have is that was there an element of prestige in going to, you know, in being able to go to the school? Or was it something that was like, more neutral? Did people aspire to go there? Did they want to go there? Or was it kind of like, oh, it's an option that is kind of looked at similarly to remaining, let's say, in your typical high school. Does that make sense?

Ganesh Cherian [00:44:11] So from where I lived in Wellington, it felt like an option, just an option. But for a lot of the kids in other parts of New Zealand, it certainly was a privilege. It felt like a privilege to me because Church college was a great school, particularly for Mori kids. So the church in New Zealand is very brown.

Ganesh Cherian [00:44:34] You know, it's predominantly Mori and Pacific Islander. And that is the case in Wellington. It's very diverse. And the further south you get, the more pkeh, the more European it gets. But in the north of New Zealand, it's very brown. You go to a ward and, you know, you might not see very many pale faces. Right. It's mostly, you know, Mori and Pacific Islanders.

Ganesh Cherian [00:45:06] So in Wellington, where I was, there were a number of great schools, but in some of these rural communities, out in the back box where people had joined the church, there weren't great schools. And so going to Church College was a real privilege because you get to go to a heavily subsidised school, you know, and get lots of means, you know.

Ganesh Cherian [00:45:35] Church College was based on a kind of an American school program. So we had basketball games and basketball teams. In fact, Church College kind of promulgated basketball throughout New Zealand. It became a real stepping stone for New Zealand to have any kind of a basketball kind of league.

Ganesh Cherian [00:45:56] And so then it provided great sports teams. It had some of the best rugby teams in New Zealand. For high school, it had a massive gym. We even have live, you know, televised live events from our. From our basketball court, you know, national games. Yeah, those kinds of things. Cause it was prominent and.

Ganesh Cherian [00:46:24] Yeah, and of course, because it was a church school, it was heavily subsidised it was cheaper for my mum to send me to there than feed me at home.

Margi Dehlin [00:46:33] Wow, that's really big.

Ganesh Cherian [00:46:35] A real draw card for her personally and for me, you know, it was a quality education for a low price.

Family Dynamics, Separation, and Mormon Identity

Margi Dehlin [00:46:44] All right, I have just a couple questions if we were going to go back for a minute to your parents. I think you mentioned that they separated when you were 11. Do you remember how you felt about that in the time? At the time, with regard to just say how the church would view that or how you viewed yourself when they separated?

John Dehlin [00:47:12] Eternal families, all that stuff.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:14] And if you kind of internalized anything at that time or felt like, well, now my eternal family may or may not be, so I have to work really hard to be all these things. Or do you remember at the time how you processed all that with regard to kind of church messaging?

Ganesh Cherian [00:47:33] That's a good question. I don't think that I really understood the concept of eternal families back then. My parents hadn't gone to the temple, as far as I'm aware. And so they didn't. They weren't sealed in the temple. So that wasn't something that was a part of our growing up. And my home life was always a bit rocky. So the fact that my parents separated felt a bit of a relief.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:55] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [00:47:56] However, one of the things that really stood out to me was that the church offered me another way to look at families and be successful. So I. I saw lots of, you know, like I said, that there were a number of really big prominent families in our ward and I used to spend a lot of my time at their houses and I saw that they were really functional, even though it was chaotic. Cause there were so many kids.

Ganesh Cherian [00:48:25] My family was small, their family was massive. And I spent lots of time in their home and it was. It was lovely. I really enjoyed it. And so I saw the church as a mechanism to have a much more. Like, if I was thinking about having a family in the future, that this was a place that I could get a lot of support for that to be successful.

Ganesh Cherian [00:48:47] So the eternal family thing, I don't think I really thought about that at the time. It probably was in the background, but it wasn't my reality, so it didn't affect me. But certainly that idea of a functional family and maybe perhaps with lots of children, you know, that, you know, I could see that the church could lend that. And so I leaned into that with regard to the church plus two, there were a number of people at church who mentored me, who went out of their way to Pick me up for activities to include me and the young men's to take me on camp. I did do a little bit of.

Ganesh Cherian [00:49:19] We did have a little scouting program. Wasn't massive. So there was. Yeah, I felt incredibly lucky. And while my own father wasn't providing those kind of opportunities, that gave me some of those. And I was very excited about that.

Margi Dehlin [00:49:38] Yeah, I so can see that. My other question was just as you described, kind of really going all in scripture Chase. Now you're going to literally like a college built for kind of Mormonism feeding into where you do have the MTC right there. You have the temple right there. Was there ever. I'm curious how your dad, how that affected your relationship with your dad. If it did because he was less active, if there was any sort of family dynamic around, let's just say children following more what your mom wanted to do as opposed to. And viewing. I'm not saying you did view, but him being aware of maybe that he was viewed in a different way because he was less active.

Margi Dehlin [00:50:31] These family dynamics, I think, can be really, really tricky with regard to a church that's all about family, that it can sometimes inadvertently really separate and divide family. So I just had a question about that.

Ganesh Cherian [00:50:47] Yes. Well, that is a big thing. I don't think as a young person I understood my father's angst with that, but it certainly did play out, and particularly because my younger sister was four years younger and she wasn't all that confident in going to visit him without me. So when I chose to go to church college, this meant effectively that he wouldn't have his son, who was now hundreds of miles away, and his daughter, who didn't really want to visit him without me. So my dad made the conscious effort to go back to India. So he left the country. So my wanting to go to church college actually ended up meaning that my father left the country and I didn't see him again for another six or seven years.

Margi Dehlin [00:51:42] Oh.

Ganesh Cherian [00:51:44] Which, you know, at the time I was busy having an adventure and I was all gung ho about this. I had no understanding of how that would affect anybody else. You know, and that's one of the things, in hindsight, you look back and go, gosh, that must have been a horrific experience for my father. He realized he wasn't going to have his children visit him. I was. I mean, he was very supportive. Right. He wanted me to do all these incredible things in my life, but it meant that he would be. There was no reason for him to stay in New Zealand. So he Went back to India. He wanted to find the India that he had been robbed of because he'd come to New Zealand and all that kudos and validation that he'd missed out on being an immigrant.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:29] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [00:52:30] But when he went back to India, he. That India didn't exist anymore. It was completely different. And so he ended up with my uncle in Dubai, and then he actually went to Australia. So my father ended up in Australia, I think partly because as a New Zealand citizen, you could live in Australia without a problem, but also because that then meant that he would be slightly close to us. So my dad ended up living in Sydney, and not till after my mission did I end up reconnecting with him. So this was a number of. And we can talk about that. That has some real implications.

John Dehlin [00:53:19] So I just want to, like, do a snapshot and just ask you a few questions about your worldview by the time you graduate high school. Is that okay?

Margi Dehlin [00:53:29] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [00:53:29] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] So what was your perception of, like, premortal existence and the purpose of life by the time you're graduating high school?

Ganesh Cherian [00:53:40] Okay. So a couple of things I should say about church College. You know, like, it's a church high school, People coming from all over the place.

Margi Dehlin [00:53:46] And

Ganesh Cherian [00:53:49] when I first went there, I really struggled. The. The culture seemed really different. The people were different than the people in Wellington. I really had a hard time kind of integrating. Fortunately for me, I was Brown, which gave me a huge amount of privilege at church College because most of the kids were. But I wasn't Mori or Pacific Islander, so I was kind of on the outer with that. But I could kind of code switch and fill in those gaps, which. And I. At the beginning, I didn't have any friends. I remember one really distinctive time. The student body president had given me a quote to say an assembly. And I thought that was great. I'm an outgoing kid.

John Dehlin [00:54:43] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [00:54:44] I'll say the opening quote. So I got up there and I said the opening quote in front of all of the student body. And the quote was, to have a friend, you've got to be a friend. And when I said that, everybody laughed because I didn't realize it, but I didn't have any friends.

Ganesh Cherian [00:55:05] And I don't think the guy was being mean to me. I think he was actually trying to teach me something, which was that, you know, actually if I wanted to have friends, I needed to kind of make friends. But it was the first time in my life that I was. Felt kind of lonely and out of sorts because I just didn't understand, you know, Lots of the kids came from different parts of New Zealand. They seemed to have this intrinsic connection to each other through various family.

Ganesh Cherian [00:55:32] And I felt kind of on the outer. But in saying that and being very homesick, I decided to stick it out. And I, and I just found people and I just loved people. And so eventually I became incredibly popular, I guess, to the point where my last year, which was I was, you know, 17, 18, I was made the student body president.

John Dehlin [00:56:00] Of your high school.

Ganesh Cherian [00:56:01] Of my high school, yeah. And, you know, like I embodied all of those things. A good Mormon boy. Like, I was, you know, I was involved in everything. I was excited about everything. I, you know, by this point, of course, seminary was in class, so I was really good at it.

Ganesh Cherian [00:56:22] The gospel seemed really wonderful. The, like I said, the missionary training center was on campus, so we'd see kids who were previous years come back as missionaries and I really wanted to do that. I really wanted to be a missionary. I was very close friends with the MTC president.

Ganesh Cherian [00:56:41] We. I was in the student body presidency, which meant I had huge connections. People liked me. During the, during that year, the principal of the school moved on to BYU Hawaii. And so the acting principal was actually Ian Arden. So he's now 70.

Ganesh Cherian [00:57:04] And I was very close with him. We spent lots of time together. Yeah, I had a fabulous experience. I was, yeah, I loved it. I loved the church, I loved the gospel. Seminary was my jam. I, yeah, everything made sense to me. I felt like it was the best thing ever.

Ganesh Cherian [00:57:30] I got the Melchizedek priesthood organised. I went on my mission when I was 18 in New Zealand. At that time it was possible. Most people went when they were 19, but it was possible because the way that New Zealand high school finished, you finished and you were still quite young. So I was still exactly 18 and a half when I went on my mission. And I went because I got called to Auckland, I went to that ntc, the president of the mcc, who was a great friend of mine, you know, it was, yeah, I had a fabulous experience, believed everything.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:13] So was the culture at church college Mormon? Like if we were to just sort of go show up, is it like a BYU esque. I know, but like, did it feel Mormon? Was it kind of like this place you go and you get intense conditioning? Like you're feeling like you're living kind of Mormon conditioning through your days?

Ganesh Cherian [00:58:41] It did feel incredibly Mormon. Everything was Mormon, right? We were in this little community. The teachers of the school were from the community, but we'd also have these wards that we were In. So we were in a student ward with people from the community.

Margi Dehlin [00:58:58] Wow.

Ganesh Cherian [00:58:59] So we would see them, you know, they might be our teacher during the week and then they are our bishop on the weekend. The temple was right there. So we'd spend our days either going to the temple for baptisms or we would wander around the temple because it was a beautiful thing to do on a Sunday. The school and the community were enmeshed. Yeah. I was only aware of like one teacher that wasn't a member of the church.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:30] Wow, that's really something.

Ganesh Cherian [00:59:32] Yeah. Seminary school, church, community, all enmeshed. In fact, it's probably the. The closest interconnections. Probably even more so than that. Maybe more like byu, Hawaii, where it's kind of set off to the. Yeah, to the side. But I think it would be quite different from Provo.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:55] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [00:59:57] Or perhaps even Idaho.

Margi Dehlin [00:59:58] Yes. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:00:01] Okay, cool. So I just want. Because your worldview is going to be quite. It's going to change quite considerably. I just want to take that snapshot of worldview. So, so. So hearing what I heard you just say, you eventually figured out some of the secrets to social interactions and ultimately were elected student body president of your very Mormon high school in New Zealand, which is kind of like a top star. You're kind of like a shining star of your generation, you know?

Ganesh Cherian [01:00:32] Yeah, like. Yeah, it was. And in fact, it was even more so because being student body president wasn't like being elected. There wasn't a vote you got. It was a calling in the church almost. You got. You got called to be the student body president. And I got to select my councillors. Like it was. That was. It's.

Margi Dehlin [01:00:55] That's so interesting.

Ganesh Cherian [01:00:57] The funny story was that I wasn't their first choice, but the person who was their first choice, his. His father wouldn't let him do it because it was just so involved and he was worried that he would lose, you know, wouldn't be able to keep his academic status. And then the next person they chose, one of the teachers, objected to this. Right. It's like a calling. And then I was the third choice, but I ticked all the boxes. And they let this kid from Wellington who didn't have really many connections, be this.

Ganesh Cherian [01:01:32] So there was a student body, a woman student body president and a man. And we had counsellors, so there was a bit of a presidency. And we ran all of the activities at school. And I was fortunate to be enough, I was academic enough that I was. Still managed to keep my grades while also doing all of these other things. It was. It was fun. It was so much fun.

John Dehlin [01:01:56] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [01:01:56] And loved it.

Worldview and Beliefs Before the Mission

John Dehlin [01:01:58] So by the time you go on a mission, these can be kind of rifle, bullet, question answer kind of things. What was your worldview of sort of pre existent life and why you were on the earth and why people were on the earth?

Ganesh Cherian [01:02:12] So I fully believed everything, you know, like, oh, I was in the production of Sunday's Warriors. So that's exactly my worldview of what

John Dehlin [01:02:24] role did you play?

Ganesh Cherian [01:02:25] So, funny story. The lead of the woman lead of the Sad Day's warriors was a really close friend of mine and we were like best friends just so. She was so gorgeous, lots of fun, beautiful musician. Anyway, she needed.

Ganesh Cherian [01:02:50] They decided this church college decided to put on this production of Saturday's warriors and they had her as lead and they were gonna go on tour. So it was fabulous. And she needed somebody to help her with her costume changes because she was on stage a lot and she needed to come off. So she needed a dedicated person to help her to change her clothes. She had, like a swimsuit on, and I'd have her clothes ready and I'd put them on her. My role, my only walk on role in this production was being the boyfriend that came on stage, hugged her, and then took her off stage.

Ganesh Cherian [01:03:30] That was my role in Saturday's Warriors. And then otherwise I was backstage helping her prep for her next scene. And so I had a very, very, very, very minor part in Saturday's Warriors. But I loved that and the philosophy of Saturday's warriors, the idea that you would. You were in heaven waiting to come to earth and that you had this grand purpose and all these people you were supposed to meet, I totally, you know, accepted that as absolute gospel truth.

John Dehlin [01:03:58] Okay, so you were lived as spirits, just stated in a couple sentences.

Ganesh Cherian [01:04:05] Yep, lived as spirits with your heavenly father. That you were. That you were before born, before you were born. That you. That you were born to a mortal family so that you could effectively go to school. This mortal life was your school life. You're leaving your heavenly parents, coming here, and then after school, you would get to return back to your heavenly parents when you died. When you died.

John Dehlin [01:04:28] And so the role of the church, you know, would have been what in your worldview?

Ganesh Cherian [01:04:34] So the role of the church was a manuscript for how to, you know, go to school. Well, they were the. They were the teachers, I guess, and you were in learning from the church the things that would make you the most successful at school so that you could return back to your heavenly father.

John Dehlin [01:04:53] And so Joseph Smith was The ultimate teacher.

Ganesh Cherian [01:04:56] He was the prophet, the person that you revered, who would, who knew the way so you would follow him.

John Dehlin [01:05:04] And the Book of Mormon was scripture.

Ganesh Cherian [01:05:06] It was the blueprint for how you would make this happen.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] Written by God

Ganesh Cherian [01:05:14] through ancient prophets who determined that these were the things that

John Dehlin [01:05:19] were important, that were living where.

Ganesh Cherian [01:05:21] In the Americas?

John Dehlin [01:05:22] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [01:05:23] Because America is the promised land.

John Dehlin [01:05:26] And who were the Lamanites and were you included in that?

Ganesh Cherian [01:05:30] Yeah, so that's a really interesting question. So the Book of Mormon obviously talks about Nephites and Lamanites, the Lamanites, the brown skinned savages who end up becoming the people who are left over after this great war. So in New Zealand, Lamanites were understood to be the Polynesian people, so Mori and Pacific Islanders. And so there was a bit of kudos, there was a bit of pride in being a Lamanite.

Ganesh Cherian [01:06:09] And in New Zealand, where it was predominantly a brown church, actually being a Lamanite was, was valued. One of the things I found really fascinating and it's sideline story, but when I came and lived in the States for a little while, I recognized that I read the Book of Mormon differently in New Zealand than in the United States because the heroes were different. In New Zealand, the heroes are the Lamanites. While, you know, they're the bad guys of the Book of Mormon, they end up being there at the very end and they're the ones that are blessed and they're the ones that, you know, do things like lay down their weapons of war. They're the, you know, they've got. There's some great Lamanite hero stories.

John Dehlin [01:06:49] The stripling warriors were the Lamanites.

Ganesh Cherian [01:06:51] Stripling warriors. Stripling warriors were Lamanites as well. So. And those were the kind of stories that in New Zealand when you look reading the Book of Mormon, you identify this is my people. And while I wasn't a Lamanite because I'm from India, because I was brown, I kind of managed to code switch into that too. Right. I was able to go, you know, there's some privilege in being brown in New Zealand and I certainly embodied that.

John Dehlin [01:07:21] Got it.

Ganesh Cherian [01:07:22] But it wasn't without its problems too because there's a significant European population in New Zealand and. There are some tricky interracial kind of messages that the church had. And so some of the girls I was quite interested in and were good friends of mine. When it came time to kind of date them, their families weren't so excited about the fact that I was brown. So that had some other implications.

John Dehlin [01:07:54] Got it okay, okay. And so we've talked about this before, but Maoris who were some of the indigenous people of New Zealand would have self identified as Lamanites because somehow they were included along with the Native Americans as descendants of Laman and Lemuel, dark skinned blood of Israel. According to the Book of Mormon, you would have had dark skin, but your mom would have been white. And so would you have wanted to identify with the Lamanites? But it's like, yeah, I'm dark, but I'm not a Lamanite. Like, I'm just curious about that or I'm a Lamanite, I don't care. You know, the technicalities of it.

Ganesh Cherian [01:08:43] Well, at church college, being Brown was being cool too. So I wanted to be cool. So I kind of fitted into that quite well. But I could code switch, right, Because I had, you know, I felt European. You know, my experience in Wellington was European. So I could, I could be both. And that made me very valuable. I think there's something really special to know about Mori and Pacific Islanders too, because I guess part of their tradition and that idea that they're Lamanites is also steeped in some benefit. For instance, the whole idea of Lamanites in the Pacific comes from the idea of Hagoth going north and being, you know, put out into the Pacific and never being heard from before.

John Dehlin [01:09:29] And Hagoth is a Book of Mormon character.

Ganesh Cherian [01:09:31] Book of Mormon character, yes. An explorer, somebody who takes the people from the south into the north country. And that idea of the Polynesians, the Maori and Pacific Islanders being from Hagoth is also an idea in the Book of Mormon of being led to a promised land.

Ganesh Cherian [01:09:48] So if you thought of Lamanites as being privileged, the Polynesians are the most privileged Lamanites. They're the ones that perhaps were the most righteous who were taken from America to the isles of the sea. And so, you know, being a Lamanite in New Zealand is seen as a valued thing. And certainly you can read the Book of Mormon with the lens that, you know, gosh, I'm a Lamanite and I've been privileged, I've been, you know, been singled out and taken to these beautiful, you know, Pacific islands like Samoa and Tonga and New Zealand. And these are gorgeous places to live. And gosh, I feel that privilege all the time whenever I travel and particularly when I come to Utah.

Ganesh Cherian [01:10:37] You know, people want, people talk to me. And here I'm from New Zealand and they are just. They tell me about how they've always wanted to Go there or that's where they served their mission, or that's where they went on a cruise or where they went on their honeymoon. Like it's. New Zealand is a privileged place. And so, you know, I feel lucky to be there.

John Dehlin [01:11:00] But here's the catch. You know, to Joseph Smith, in the Book of Mormon, blood ancestry matters. Literal blood ancestry matters. You didn't have Maori blood ancestry, you had Indian ancestry, Right?

Ganesh Cherian [01:11:15] Correct, correct.

John Dehlin [01:11:16] So did you still identify as a Lamanite?

Ganesh Cherian [01:11:19] Personally, I didn't identify as a Lamanite, but I saw the value and felt like I kind of get to sit on the sidelines and adopted maybe. Adopted?

Margi Dehlin [01:11:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:11:32] You were like an adopted Lamanite.

Ganesh Cherian [01:11:34] It's kinda like getting your patriarchal blessing. Right. Finding out that you were from the. Well, I'm from the House of Joseph, so I didn't even specify. But, you know, the idea that you're adopted into this. And I always felt very adopted into the Mormon communities in New Zealand and was very valued and something that became

John Dehlin [01:11:52] really important to Gina Colvin later. How did you think about the United States of America relative to other countries in the world as a Mormon, you know, graduating high school student?

Ganesh Cherian [01:12:04] Well, certainly in New Zealand it is, you know, well, from. In the Mormon world. America is it. Right. So America is the promised land. America is. Is our Mecca. And we had a lot of people, you know, even at church college, we had American teachers, We had an American style school.

John Dehlin [01:12:27] The Osmonds were a big deal.

Ganesh Cherian [01:12:29] Osmonds were a big deal. The American culture, you know, in New Zealand, I grew up with two TV channels. One was basically an American TV channel and the other was an English TV channel.

John Dehlin [01:12:42] Oh.

Ganesh Cherian [01:12:43] So. So I learned to speak American early on in the piece. But, you know, I grew up. Oh, the funny story was when I. When I heard that Ezra Taft Benson was the president of the church, I thought that he was black because I'd grown up watching Benson.

John Dehlin [01:13:01] Remember the American sitcom? Yeah, The Butler or whatever.

Ganesh Cherian [01:13:05] The Butler. So I didn't know that Ezra Taft Benson was white. I first thought I was a young kid.

John Dehlin [01:13:11] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [01:13:11] Of course, didn't know much, but I thought he was black because Benson from.

John Dehlin [01:13:16] Yeah, that's funny.

Ganesh Cherian [01:13:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:13:18] Okay. So that was kind of your worldview. You were part of God's one true church. As an adopted Lamanite in New Zealand, you're on top of the world.

Ganesh Cherian [01:13:28] Yeah. Oh, and it felt great. And I wanted to go on my mission because I. Because that change that had happened in our family and this coming to the true Church was something that I wanted to do for other families. Felt that is a real responsibility, you know, that I really tapped into that, you know, because I've been given much, I too must give, you know, that was a real, really salient message and that I had this great value, this great experience, this knowledge of the true church that I then needed to share with others.

Serving a Mission in the South Pacific

John Dehlin [01:14:02] So how would you summarize your mission experience? Or were there important stories from that fabulous?

Ganesh Cherian [01:14:09] You know, like I had a great experience at first when I got my call to Auckland. Cause I was from New Zealand. That was a bit disappointing. Cause I was hoping to go somewhere a bit more exciting. But after I got my call, lots of the missionaries from the north of New Zealand were being called to the south and vice versa. And so many of my friends who were kind of on the edge of wanting to go on a mission, they recognised that the chance of them going to Auckland was really high. So they got excited about going on a mission. So that disappointment of not going somewhere exotic or somewhere different actually lent its way to being, oh, I'm going somewhere close by, my friends will inevitably come here too.

Ganesh Cherian [01:14:57] That was a really good thing. And then of course, because I'd been at church college, every ward I went to, there was somebody that I knew. I knew these. The kids that I went to school with. Sometimes they were from part member families and I would go and teach their families and help convert them. So, you know, people knew me as Ganesh, but then I, you know, they appreciated me as a missionary. I had a fabulous time.

Ganesh Cherian [01:15:26] One of the things that. One of the most important realizations I had, one of my. One of the kids I went to church college with ended up being one of my companions, which was lovely. But at first it was a bit out of the box because he and I didn't really get on at school.

Ganesh Cherian [01:15:48] We were quite in two different camps. I was really. He didn't seem like he was. I was really academic. He didn't seem like he was. He was very good looking. I wasn't that good looking. He was this gorgeous Mori boy who was very charismatic and I was a bit gangly, you know, so we did not associate in the same circles. And then I got to be his trainer, so I got to be his first companion and. And he was this beautiful, amazing, kind, compassionate guy. His name's Matt Marsh.

Ganesh Cherian [01:16:30] And I felt like I had really misjudged him at school. And he was this incredible person that I had completely overlooked. And he changed my mission in some profound ways. One is that every morning we would get up and do our study and things. And he would always give me a hug, you know. And he did that every morning religiously. And it really changed the way I related to my future missionary companions. He became an incredibly good friend.

Ganesh Cherian [01:17:12] But I think the thing that changed me the most was that I had had this perception of him which was completely wrong. And coming to terms with the fact that I could be completely wrong when I felt so smart was really a transformative piece of missionary work. And even just in going to see some people's houses.

Ganesh Cherian [01:17:36] Cause I came with that idea of, I've got something that I can give to you, you know. But that idea that I could get so much from the people that I was teaching or in their homes really transformed my way that I interacted with other people. Because I wanted to know what was going on in their lives and how what they had that was special that I could relate to.

Ganesh Cherian [01:18:01] And it made me a better missionary. It made me a better person. In fact, it meant that when I came home from my mission, I changed what I wanted to do. I really was interested in kind of science, and I decided that actually I wanted to deal more with people. So I changed my course. Really.

John Dehlin [01:18:20] Would you say that your mission strengthened your Mormon testimony?

Ganesh Cherian [01:18:24] Yep, absolutely. I was all in. And it was brilliant.

John Dehlin [01:18:28] And were you influenced at all by kind of Joseph Fielding smith, Bruce R. McConkie, Mormonism, kind of the more orthodox, hardcore doctrinal Mormonism?

Ganesh Cherian [01:18:38] Yes, absolutely. Even before I went on my mission, I'd read answers to gospel questions. And Bruce Omar Konki's Mormon doctrine was really pivotal work for me. I read them. I felt like these people had the answers. And I had the answers too, because I read their books.

John Dehlin [01:19:03] So that would mean things like The Earth was 6,000 years old, not billions of years old, that Adam and Eve were the first humans, that Noah's ark and you know, was a literal story, that, you know, the black people in the world, you know, were less valiant in the pre existence and that's why God turned their skin black because of the curse of Cain. Those would have been the types of things that you would have learned and the type of worldview you would have assumed. Does that all sound accurate or not so much?

Ganesh Cherian [01:19:35] That's very accurate, all of those things. I mean, I don't know that I put that I thought about them too deeply, but absolutely thought that everything that the church was saying was accurate, that it was historical, that it was literal, that it was, you know, really had a handle on these things I'm. I probably didn't investigate them too deeply, but on the surface they felt right. True.

John Dehlin [01:20:05] Okay. Okay. So should we go on to post mission? Does that sound right?

Ganesh Cherian [01:20:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:11] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [01:20:11] Yeah. I think one other thing just about the mission and probably even the temple, I probably should just. Oh yeah, go back just a sec.

John Dehlin [01:20:21] So you'd have went through the temple around what year?

Ganesh Cherian [01:20:25] So I went in 1991.

John Dehlin [01:20:27] So after the big changes.

Ganesh Cherian [01:20:29] After the big changes. And there's something really interesting in the dynamic of the temple in New Zealand. Cause there's one temple and it's in Hamilton, which is seven hours away from Wellington, which means you can't just go for the afternoon. Right.

Ganesh Cherian [01:20:45] Part of my integral, part of being a youth in New Zealand was going on temple trips, often over a weekend. We would have a temple bus every month that would go overnight. We would go to the temple in the middle of the night, like 2, 3 o' clock in the morning. Because we'd start from Wellington at like 5 o' clock in the afternoon and we'd get up to the temple at one o' clock in the morning. We'd do a, you know, baptisms in the middle of the night.

Ganesh Cherian [01:21:15] The adults were doing sessions, endowment sessions, and then we'd get on the bus at 7 o' clock in the morning and we'd travel back to Wellington and we'd be back there Saturday night. So this was, you know, the temple. Going to the temple, spending hours and weekends going was an endequal form. I took out my endowments at 2 o' clock in the morning. You know, I traveled up on the temple bus six days before I went on my mission. I went through the temple in the middle of the night. I stayed up in Hamilton, cause that's where the MTC was. And I just didn't come back on the bus.

Ganesh Cherian [01:21:54] I stayed up there for the next few days before I went into the mtc. But I loved the temple. I know that lots of people kind of got in there and felt it was weird and unusual and out of sorts, but I loved it. I got in there, I felt like I was part of this, you know, secret club. And in fact, the temple wasn't even that shocking to me. I was reading the Old Testament, going up to the temple, thinking that we were gonna do like blood sacrifices and stuff. And so when I went to the temple and there wasn't that, it was kind of a little bit mild, I was a little disappointed.

Ganesh Cherian [01:22:33] But I, yeah, the temple became a really important place. You know, I Quite liked the, the ritual, even though it was different from being a normal member on a Sunday. I liked the meditative time in the temple. I liked the fact that it was a beautiful building and it felt like it was my home.

Ganesh Cherian [01:22:59] I recognised much later in the piece one of the things I loved most about the temple was guilt free, child free time. Because if you're living in Wellington and the temple's in Hamilton, the only way you go to the temple is if your spouse, you know, lets you go. Because that's, that's a lot of time out of family time and. But the temple was a place that you could go and feel, you know, welcomed.

Ganesh Cherian [01:23:24] So. So the temple was. I had a great experience. My mission was a great experience. I connected with lots of people from around the country, including companions who were. Who were from New Zealand, but also had a lot of American companions and Australian companions. And it set me up to be able to, you know, kind of tour the world. Cause I had a place to go anywhere I wanted to go. And probably the most important thing that happened on mission, of course, was that I met my spouse.

John Dehlin [01:23:57] Oh.

Ganesh Cherian [01:23:58] So she was a, A missionary from Seattle. She'd obviously got a better mission call than to her own country. And we became good friends, which meant that much later on in the piece, we connected again.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:15] How about that? Okay, a really quick question as you are using words like amazing and about your experiences basically from church college kind of on now with your mission. Here's my question for you. When I'm thinking about you as a teen through your mission, it feels like you were kind of put on.

Margi Dehlin [01:24:44] If we look at kind of how a lot of our Mormon upbringings are, we're usually with our family still through our teen years. Oftentimes we aren't in an all Mormon environment. So we're going to school. For many of us outside Utah, we'll just say with people from different backgrounds, we have family members. I had family members that weren't Mormon. And this I think naturally created some observations I had that infiltrated my Mormon upbringing. Right. So I was curious about. I actually had exposure to really good people who weren't Mormon that then made me kind of have. So I guess my question for you is, given that you were kind of put on this bullet train, if all of us are on like a train, because we're conditioned, we're going.

Margi Dehlin [01:25:35] We're conditioned to our families, we're conditioned going to church on Sunday. But you're literally, you're a lot of your experience once you hit church college Right. Is Mormon conditioning. It is basically a full throttle, 247 Mormon experience. Did you have moments where you had a gay friend or you had a. That kind of infiltrated some of these aspects of, let's just say, I don't know, the, the Mormon conditioning that brought you to a place of like, I don't know about that or that's a little bit inconsistent with, you know, this way of looking at things. Did you have experiences like that?

Ganesh Cherian [01:26:24] Yes, yes, definitely had those. I had a lot of people, a lot of friends who were non members, not members of the church. So I had deep friends who were operating outside of Mormon and some of them were Christian. So they kind of were wary of the church and let me kind of know that I had a friend who was.

Ganesh Cherian [01:26:45] Who I found out was gay, came out to me, actually was really afraid of coming out to me because he felt like I would, would change our relationship. And I, I don't know, I always felt like even though these church things were going on and I was certainly buying into them as being, you know, absolutely the truth, at the same time I had this other experience, experiential side, where I was connecting with people as people and valuing them as people. So I might have not seen the path they were on as being overly great or valuable. But I love them as people and I could slightly make the.

Ganesh Cherian [01:27:33] I guess it's in Mormondom, it's that kind of like, oh, it'll all be sorted out in the eternities. And that kind of idea of, I don't have to think too deeply about the conflict here. I can love this person as a person and where they are at in their lives and not have too many, you know, conflicts in my dissonance about that.

Ganesh Cherian [01:27:57] So I don't remember feeling overly challenged in that area. I certainly felt like the church was true and it was great and all of this, all of these other things would be sorted and I didn't necessarily have to worry about it or push back on something that didn't align.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:17] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [01:28:18] The only one exception to that is the priesthood ban because I didn't think I understood this till I was a teenager and some people were talking and I really felt conflicted in that. Cause I. Cause I was Brown and had already done that navigation between my European world and my, my ethnic cultural world.

Ganesh Cherian [01:28:43] And so that didn't sit easy to me. But I just believed, you know, I believed that it would all work out, that this was. There was some, you know, greater plan that God had that was going on and As a brown person in New Zealand, it didn't affect me on a day to day basis. Although, funny story, our ward in Wellington, the, you know, when that announcement in 1978 happened, it happened on a Sunday and in the States, but New Zealand is a day ahead. Right. We're in the future. Just coming from the future to tell you what it is.

John Dehlin [01:29:28] So

Ganesh Cherian [01:29:31] in Wellington ward that next weekend, they ordained somebody, a black member to the priesthood. A young fella. He was just a teenager. They ordained him to the priesthood. I think he was the first person in the world because we were, you know, just the way that the timing worked out.

John Dehlin [01:29:51] Fascinating.

Margi Dehlin [01:29:52] Yeah. Okay, so I'm kind of hearing. And then I was gonna ask you, amidst your teen years as well, up to your mission, if you had anything on the inside now, so less about external people you knew or things that kind of came in conflict with your Mormon world and Mormon brain. How about on the inside parts, aspects of feeling, sexual feelings or, you know, how you came to view your own identity? Did you have anything emerge in you in those years? What I'm trying to get at is how. What fit you had. Was it just an amazing fit for those years where you had very little dissonance overall, or did you have now within yourself these moments of, like, dissonance about, like. Well, I do feel this. So I've got a. Or I do actually have these feelings that go up against the teachings in some way. Or were you fully merged?

Ganesh Cherian [01:30:58] I was pretty fully merged in saying that I did. You know, there were contradictions. You know, I really liked girls. I. So I didn't listen. I didn't have that LGBTQ concern, but I, you know, I had feelings, I wanted to act on them. You know, those were exciting things for me.

Ganesh Cherian [01:31:24] And yeah, there was a bit of scrupulosity when I kind of, you know, did things like masturbation or, you know, mucked around with girls. And so there was certainly some shame, certainly some doubt. There were certainly lots of visits to the bishop, confessing things and that, and that release of feeling worried, actually, that gave me the sense that this was real, that it was true. And also that, you know, I wasn't perfect in this, but I always had really high self esteem. So even when I was low or when I felt like I was wrong, I managed to climb out of that quite quickly. And, you know, confessing to the bishop was a, you know, something that followed that process and it felt like a real lightening. So it felt very validating as a, you know, as a process, a Repentance process.

Margi Dehlin [01:32:29] Yes. Just follow the steps.

Ganesh Cherian [01:32:31] And I think there are two. There were a few things that, you know, I recognised too. There were. Gosh, there were a few scandals at church college while I was there, so.

John Dehlin [01:32:40] And of what nature? Just.

Ganesh Cherian [01:32:43] Well, oh, gosh, there was the, you know, boys and girls. This is a boarding school, right. So boys and girls got together and sometimes there were teenage pregnancies. So that was problematic. There were a couple of scandals between students and the wider community, adults in the community. So the. Like, I was. I was aware that just because the church had all these wonderful things and people were really trying hard to live them, that it didn't always play out that way. People made mistakes. Sometimes they were, you know, quite public mistakes. So in the scheme of things, I guess I felt like my stuff was my stuff and, you know, I got hard on myself at times, but, you know, otherwise I was. I was feeling good. So that validated the fact that I felt like I must be on the right track.

Margi Dehlin [01:33:40] Mm. Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [01:33:43] And, yeah, there was one of my friends who kind of read anti Mormon literature and I could see that, you know, things had changed for him and I didn't want to go down that road. You know, like, there's a real conscious effort to, you know, stay away from things that were problematic. And I was a good kid. Like, I really was good. Like, I didn't do many things at all. Like I wasn't interested in smoking and drinking. The one time I stole, I felt terrible. It just wasn't really me. The girls thing was me, but it wasn't. It didn't occupy a big space. Yeah, I really fitted in well. Incredibly well. Maybe too well.

Post-Mission Life and Meeting His Wife

John Dehlin [01:34:39] So let's see. Should we go to your marriage and then building a life with your wife? You said you mentioned you met your wife on your mission.

Ganesh Cherian [01:34:49] Yes. So we were friends. We got on well together, actually. She quite liked my companion. Ended up going out on a date with her when she got home. But I actually, there's a big gap between that. There's three years difference between when we finished our missions, but. I'll talk about that in a minute. But. So I went back to Wellington. I wanted to be near my mother. Yeah. Because I'd been.

John Dehlin [01:35:19] Had you served like as AP on the mission?

Ganesh Cherian [01:35:21] No, I hadn't. I had been. I really had only been a district leader.

John Dehlin [01:35:25] Oh, wow. So that wasn't the hyper achievement that you had experienced in the college, right?

Ganesh Cherian [01:35:30] No, but it was like I, like, my mission president loved me and I think he kept me in as a district leader so that I could be as a missionary. Like, I really felt like it wasn't the fact that I couldn't have been AP or zone leader, it was just that I was so good at kind of a really base level. And I love that. And I'm not particularly ambitious. Like, I'm not. I don't want to be things, I just am. And if nobody else is doing them, then I'll do them. But I'm pretty happy that if somebody's really good at doing something and they're there and they're doing them, then I'm happy to let them do it. I would rather be.

John Dehlin [01:36:11] Really?

Ganesh Cherian [01:36:12] Yeah, I'm just. I'd rather be number two or number three. I like filling in the gaps. I learnt early on in the pace and maybe through my academics that it was really hard to be number one. You had to work incredibly hard and you're always worried about being toppled from that. But I could be two or three or four, you know, on lots of different things.

John Dehlin [01:36:41] And it's a lot less stressful.

Ganesh Cherian [01:36:42] It's a lot less stressful and it's a lot more fun. You know, I could be the best, you know, in physics in church college. But that meant that I could, you know, I was, you know, I couldn't do much else, but I could be a decent student body president and have generally quite good academics and be across the board in lots of things and, you know, not have to be first.

John Dehlin [01:37:05] Nice.

Ganesh Cherian [01:37:05] So. And that's kind of how I've lived my life. I rather be down the totem pole a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:37:12] So you were saying there were a few years between the end of your mission and you getting married. What were the important elements to your Mormon story?

Ganesh Cherian [01:37:20] Well, I think that one was that the mission had changed me to really focus on people and that that was my great love. And so I. I'd done a lot of science and maths at church College. I'd excelled at those things and those sort of things that I thought I might like to do. But after a mission, I decided I really wanted to work with people and business. So I went and did a kind of a bridging course to learn about accounting and marketing and all of those kinds of things.

Ganesh Cherian [01:37:49] And then I went to. I decided I made a conscious effort to stay in Wellington because by this point, I'd been away from home for five years. Yeah, I'd been at church college for three and I'd been on a mission for two. I really had left a lot of my Formative life away from my home, from my. While I was at.

Ganesh Cherian [01:38:12] While I was on my mission, my sister, who was four years younger than me, she went to church college and she never came back from there. So I ended up going back to Wellington to be with my mother and be in Wellington. So I went to university there, even though I had some options to go to byu, Hawaii.

Ganesh Cherian [01:38:30] And I started at university and did some of the physics and maths that I had been really good at. But then I also did business. So I did three degrees. I did a commercial law degree, an accounting degree, and also I swapped my science from physics and maths through to psychology because physics and maths became really hard and all of the pretty girls were in psychology.

Ganesh Cherian [01:39:08] And I wanted to explore that part. So I did all those things. And then, like I said before, I reconnected with my father, who was now in Sydney. And so I went to visit him and see him after six or seven years that I hadn't seen him.

Ganesh Cherian [01:39:26] And that was a really good reunion. We'd been writing over the time, but actually to see each other in person. And he'd kind of become slightly homeless in Sydney, which was tricky, but seemed to work out okay. And I stood. So I went to Sydney a number of times to kind of connect with him and be with him.

Ganesh Cherian [01:39:57] And then I, towards the end of the time I was at university, I decided to do a bit of a world trip and go to visit. I had some family in Canada, so I wanted to see them. And also I wanted to see the United States and see this place that was the promised land. So I went to Toronto and to Ottawa and saw some of my Indian family, extended family.

Ganesh Cherian [01:40:22] And then I should also tell you that when I was 16, I got to go to Dubai to visit my uncle who was there. And he introduced me to my Indian family that I had not met. And then right after my mission, he, the sponsor, paid for me to go to India. So my sister and I went to India and met. You know, I got this Indian identity that I had never really kind of connected with before.

Margi Dehlin [01:40:57] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [01:40:58] Which was really significant and really important and really special. And all of my family in India were exceptional. Like, not only were they really personable, they were incredibly intelligent, well educated, lots of doctorates in the family. My grandmother, my step grandmother, she had a doctorate in physics.

Ganesh Cherian [01:41:35] And so my experience, my Indian family were incredible. My mother's family in New Zealand were farmers who were salt of the earth people. And my Indian family were this incredibly dynamic, powerful people who were educational so it was a really lovely thing to discover and to feel like that was part of me too.

Ganesh Cherian [01:42:00] Really changed my worldview and gave me an identity as an Indian that I never had before. Yes, I grew up as a Kiwi, New Zealander, European, even though my skin colour suggested that I had ethnic leanings, but feeling like, oh gosh, I'm Indian and these people are me and these are beautiful people who loved me.

Ganesh Cherian [01:42:25] And I had some legacy there. I was the oldest grandchild, oldest grandson and had, you know, I was carrying on the family name. Like I had this. It was almost like finding out that you were royalty, you know, like later on in life, you know, the Princess Diaries kind of thing. You know, it was really a pivotal moment in my life. How old were you? So that was straight after my mission. I was 20 years old.

Margi Dehlin [01:42:52] Wow, that's so beautiful. The way you describe it, I can really only imagine the significance of that. It's like you've lived a piece of your identity for, you know, years and years kind of in New Zealand and then you get this whole other piece of yourself that kind of fills out. It's really, really beautiful. You kind of skimmed over your dad and kind of when you meet up with your dad that he was houseless. Can you just feel like, were you aware of that when you went to visit him? That where you were aware of how he was living and how was that for you to see that? And do you see it as like a lack of support that he has or had throughout his life? Kind of being a transplant, being someone in a culture that's not like, how do you view that? I'm kind of curious how that was for you.

Ganesh Cherian [01:43:56] Yeah, like it was a bit confronting. Like I wanted to see him and I wasn't sure of the circumstance. And when I got to Sydney after my mission, I was, you know, there was a bit of trepidation there, but he was, he was living in a kind of a halfway house.

Ganesh Cherian [01:44:17] So it was a place where kind of like a boarding house for people who were on the margins. And, you know, I hadn't seen him for a long time, but we'd communicated. So it was really interesting seeing him in that space. I should add that growing up he'd had some mental health issues. I had gone to see him in the psychiatric hospital when I was growing up. And so I knew that he had some long seated issues, some trauma.

Ganesh Cherian [01:44:54] And seeing him in that space, I was young, 20 years old. I don't know that I appreciated it, but I could understand that things Were tricky, and I wasn't in a position where I could make much sense of that. But I had a lot of compassion for him.

Ganesh Cherian [01:45:14] And I was fortunate. I had some, you know, these friends from church college who were from Australia. I stayed with them and I would just kind of train into the city to see him and spend some hours with him and then train back. So it was a good opportunity to not have. I couldn't stay with him anyway. Cause he wasn't in that position. But it was made. It allowed me to engage with him, get a feel for him, but then also go back, retreat to this place of safety, this Mormon place of safety, too, where everything was. Was in the right place. Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [01:45:48] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:45:50] Yeah. Okay. So I'm seeing your development, your identity development, and your development of life experiences. That's quite a rich set of experiences. I guess I wanted to pause and just say one. You know, I was talking to someone at lunch yesterday who felt traumatized by their Mormon Church experiences, and she happened to be a woman. And we talked about how privilege can really affect your views of your Mormon upbringing and how in spite of being excommunicated and being viewed as the Mormon Church's top enemy, Mormon Voldemort, I still, like, think of my Mormon experiences more fondly than not fondly. And I tend to think of the Mormon Church's influence in the world as more positive than negative.

John Dehlin [01:46:37] And my viewers and listeners sometimes get really mad when I say that. When I think about what the church meant to you, based on what I've heard you say so far, when I think about what could have happened to a boy born from an Indian father and a New Zealand mother whose parents split up when he was 11 and his dad ended up homeless, you could have had a very different story by the time you're in your early 20s, but it sounds like largely because of your Mormon upbringing, you were kind of on top of the world, so to speak, in your early 20s. Do you think of the Mormon Church especially?

John Dehlin [01:47:17] Is it related to how it supported your mom and your. Your family once your dad left? Do you think of your Mormon experience as being phenomenally positive to your, you know, helping you reach adulthood in a healthy, happy way?

Ganesh Cherian [01:47:32] Yes, definitely. Overwhelmingly positive. Yeah, you know, there were bits and pieces, but of course, you know, yeah, I fit well. I seemed to do everything right. I got huge amounts of, yeah, just, well, privilege in the community, and it felt good. And the things that were out of place were often things that were outside of the Mormon space, like relationship with my dad. So you Know, I had all of this hope for the future because I had been invested in the church and there was a pathway. Right. I'd done, you know, done my Mormon mission. I was, you know, I wanted to get married, I wanted to have children. You know, these are things that were. Felt possible going forward. I had lots of friends. I, yeah, had great experiences. Yeah, it was all going pretty nicely.

John Dehlin [01:48:34] Living the New Zealand Mormon dream.

Ganesh Cherian [01:48:37] Yeah. Yeah, there were a few upsets, but generally pretty good.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:40] I was gonna say that that promise of Mormonism is. I just think it's really. It's hard to overestimate that. I think it's really powerful.

Ganesh Cherian [01:48:54] Right.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:55] The promise of what it could be, of what it could offer with regard to purpose, family, you know.

Ganesh Cherian [01:49:05] Yeah. I just ticked lots of boxes that made me feel like it was just all coming true.

Margi Dehlin [01:49:14] That's right. It's right there. You can touch it.

John Dehlin [01:49:17] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So should we go to your marriage and young family now?

Ganesh Cherian [01:49:24] So when I, towards the end of my university time, I decided to do a trip to North America, visit my. Some of these extended family who had ended up on the continent. I went to Toronto and Ottawa and then I.

Ganesh Cherian [01:49:40] While I was in Ottawa, I actually got a hold of Lindy's phone number. She's in Seattle. I rang her, I said, look, I'm on your continent. I'm not planning to come to Seattle, but if you. Do you have any suggestions, is it possible we could meet up? And she said, oh, actually I'm gonna be in Utah later in the month. And I said, well, actually I'm planning to be there that time, so maybe we could meet up.

Ganesh Cherian [01:50:10] I. She had. I'd found out that she had been doing some student teaching in Washington, D.C. and I really wanted to visit D.C. so I, I got some contacts from her. I actually went down to New York and New Jersey. Cause I had a second cousin there, a grand aunty who was there, who was. Who I'd met in India and she was living there. And so I spent some time there. I went to dc, Met her friends. One of her friends was actually driving across the country to Utah. So I got a ride with him and we went via Kirtland. So I went to church historical site and then I got to Utah.

Ganesh Cherian [01:50:53] And Lindy had come to visit her grandparents who were in Utah. And she stuck around in Utah so she could meet with me. There was some guy that she was interested in, she was trying to connect with. Anyway, we connected. It was just like old friends. It had been three years since we'd seen each other and we really hadn't had any contact in that time, but it felt great and it was fun. And I ended up flying home to her parents house in Seattle. So I met them as part of a side trip that I wasn't planning to go on, but it just worked out.

Ganesh Cherian [01:51:36] And while I was there it just felt great. So I proposed. Oh. And she said no. And she said, but just feeling like such an adventure. And I proposed again. She said no. And then we went to the temple in Seattle and I proposed again and she said yes. And then I said, oh, I'm not sure, you know, like it was, but we agreed to kind of meet up again in San Diego. I went back to Utah and continued my trip. I had lots of friends here from ex companions and people that I'd met that I spent time with in Utah. I went down to Arizona, met her grandparents, went over to San Diego, and she flew from Seattle and met me there.

Ganesh Cherian [01:52:31] And we, we went to the temple in San Diego, which was like Disneyland. And then we actually went to Disneyland. You know, we had this great time, went to Malibu. I was feeling pretty good. We went and got a ring from the pawn shop in Malibu.

John Dehlin [01:52:51] Now that sounded like porn shop.

Ganesh Cherian [01:52:53] Oh, yeah, sorry, yeah, pawn shop. This is a very pawn. I can't say the word.

John Dehlin [01:52:59] You asked me to mention that information.

Ganesh Cherian [01:53:02] Pawn shop.

John Dehlin [01:53:03] Pawn shop. No, I like how you say it better.

Ganesh Cherian [01:53:05] Say it again. Pawn shop.

John Dehlin [01:53:06] Okay,

Ganesh Cherian [01:53:08] either or P, A W, N rather than P, O, R, E. He got a ring. He got a ring, I got a

John Dehlin [01:53:15] ring,

Ganesh Cherian [01:53:17] you know, proposed again, we said yes, we'll get married. And then I flew from there to Sydney actually to see my father. That's a long flight from LA to Sydney. 15 hours. And then. And she flew back to Seattle. And then we didn't see each other for another three months.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:35] So how long was that span when you were together?

Ganesh Cherian [01:53:39] So we met up, I think just after New Year's and we. I flew back to New Zealand probably the end of January, beginning of February.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:52] So a month. A month kind of a month.

Ganesh Cherian [01:53:54] Month, kind of Kore. We had been friends, so that was really nice. And the other really interesting thing was that her parents had come to pick her up from her mission and my mission straddled her mission. So I started before her and ended after her. But we were friends. And so when she was traveling through New Zealand with her parents, she asked if there was anybody that she could stay with in Wellington. I said, why don't you go stay with my Mother. So her parents had met my mother, you know, many years prior and had loved New Zealand. And so Lindy's a little bit older than me, of course, because I was 18 when I went out.

Ganesh Cherian [01:54:34] She was 21. So. And by this point, of course, this is three years later. She's 26. Her parents, you know, she hadn't got married. And, you know, she was an independent woman who'd lived in D.C. and gone to BYU here at Provo.

Ganesh Cherian [01:54:55] So she was an independent person. And, gosh, even when we were together, her parents were kind of, you know, mildly excited that she would have this connection to New Zealand that they'd loved as. So I went back to university in my first kind of break. I flew to Vancouver. She picked me up. We drove through the border. They asked me why I was in the States. I said, I'm here to get married. I said, oh, that's a bit. What are you doing? Oh, no, we're going back to New Zealand. So we had a week together. She was still kind of humming Hurry whether she'd actually go through with this.

Marriage, Temple Sealing, and Building a Life

Ganesh Cherian [01:55:36] But. But we got married and sealed in the Seattle temple. My mother and my sister came. My sister was young, so she couldn't go through the temple. But my mother came, and our grand aunty and her son from New Jersey, they flew over for the, you know, being the Indian side at the wedding. So those were my only.

Ganesh Cherian [01:56:00] My only family. She had a big family. We had a reception in Tacoma, and then we had a brief stint honeymoon and we flew back to New Zealand.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:17] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:56:18] Love it.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:19] It's a whirlwind of a.

Ganesh Cherian [01:56:21] It was a whirlwind. We went from not seeing each other for three years to being married in. In three months. Most of that over long distance. So we, you know, we managed to avoid some of the pitfalls of other couples.

Ganesh Cherian [01:56:39] Cause we really just didn't have any opportunities. And it was. Yeah, it was a big leap of faith for her, for me, and, yeah, kind of melding our cultures. One of the interesting things that happened when we got married in the temple, one of her friends said to her, are you sure you're okay to marry Ganesh? You know, because of the racial thing.

Ganesh Cherian [01:57:07] So it was really interesting that that still was, you know, an issue for some people. I mean, my parents were interracial marriage. I didn't have a problem with that. And intercultural marriage and international marriage. So, you know, those things didn't worry me, but they obviously worried some of Lindy's friends.

Ganesh Cherian [01:57:32] And, you know, effectively, I went to the States. Like, my mother had gone on a trip before and come back with a souvenir. And it actually kind of was interesting that that worked out like that.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:44] Yeah, I mean, I do think it's kind of interesting that you got that. It sounds like on the American side. Was that a friend, an American.

Ganesh Cherian [01:57:53] Yes.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:53] Thing about the race, as opposed to a. Mm.

Ganesh Cherian [01:57:57] In fact, one of the oddities about getting married to an American and living in New Zealand was that suddenly my status in New Zealand went up because I had an American wife.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:10] Oh, interesting.

Ganesh Cherian [01:58:11] So I wouldn't have picked it, but six months from the time I got back. So I'm 23, Lindy's 26. I get called into the High Council in within six months in Wellington.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:27] Oof.

Ganesh Cherian [01:58:29] The stake president was somebody I knew and liked me. But I was now on the High Council. I got, I was a high priest. I, you know, I got a lot of kudos. And you know, Lindy is an American, but also because she's just a very dynamic woman, very capable. You know, she, you know, we became a little bit of a power couple in Wellington, which it set a few people because, you know, like, she made the Relief Society president and she's like late 20s and there's these older stalwart women who, you know, so there's not without its kind of little idiosyncrasies and challenges, but we certainly gathered some, you know, notoriety and, you know, and yeah, we were looking pretty sharp.

Margi Dehlin [01:59:26] And was it more, do you think? Was it the American or white or both? Like, if, if.

Ganesh Cherian [01:59:34] Well, I think it was probably more the American. Okay. That she was from this American church. And, you know, it's interesting, our ward is fascinating in the sense that it's in Wellington City, so we get a lot of international people come and oftentimes if they're American and they're coming and they're Mormons, these are like really top notch people. So Americans. And of course, we've got American missionaries. So Americans in New Zealand are seen to be really incredible because they're often the top echelon.

John Dehlin [02:00:09] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [02:00:09] They're professional people, they're the top of their field. Look, in our ward we have ambassadors and university lecturers. And Wellington's home of movies in New Zealand. So we had movies, you know, you know, movie executives. And, you know, like, the Americans that came to our ward were incredible people, incredibly well connected, incredibly proficient at what they did, absolutely intelligent. So I think New Zealand has a really. Or particularly the membership in New Zealand have a really inflated view of America. Because the Americans, the Mormon Americans that they know are really high end, you know, they're not the, you know, the riff raff. Not the riff raff. I didn't know that. I didn't appreciate that.

John Dehlin [02:01:05] No, we're all that smart.

Ganesh Cherian [02:01:06] Yeah, Ganesh, I know.

John Dehlin [02:01:07] We're all that smart and cool.

Ganesh Cherian [02:01:08] Absolutely.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:09] Are we?

Ganesh Cherian [02:01:12] So when Lindy came, you know, she was, you know. Yeah, she had a lot of. She came with a lot of kudos, and I benefited from marrying an American, which I didn't even consider that that was the case. It wasn't why we got married, obviously.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:28] Would that still be true, do you think?

Ganesh Cherian [02:01:30] Yeah, I think it's still true.

Margi Dehlin [02:01:31] Still true.

Ganesh Cherian [02:01:34] I certainly seen that. Gosh, another painful story. So I said before that I dated some girls that were from prominent Mormon homes who were European. And one of them, her parents were not very excited about me dating her. And. Yeah, they almost were very. They were very interested in their children going to the States and marrying an American. Because that would. Yeah. Cause it's the Mecca. This is the, you know, this is the gospel, and. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:02:22] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:02:22] And that was actually quite tricky to navigate. Not that I was cognizant of the American thing so much, but that idea that I wasn't worthy because I was from a convert background, because I was brown, because I, you know, hadn't really been tested in the church. Sorry.

John Dehlin [02:02:41] So let's imagine you and Lyddy, right?

Ganesh Cherian [02:02:44] Lindy.

John Dehlin [02:02:45] Lindy. You and Lindy, you know, about to get married or right after you're married. Let's imagine you, like, lying down in a. In the grass or in bed or on the couch, looking up into the sky, envisioning what your Mormon life was going to be like, what the key milestones would be in your wildest dreams. How would it play out in terms of kids, in terms of callings, in terms of career, in terms of, like, service in the church. How would you have probably both envisioned it all working out the Mormon dream, you know, as your life were to continue? In other words, what was kind of your contract or your hopes or your dreams entering into this Mormon marriage together?

Margi Dehlin [02:03:32] That's such a great question.

Ganesh Cherian [02:03:33] Well, I think that we wanted to do it, you know, we wanted to

John Dehlin [02:03:38] follow the plan, list all the things.

Ganesh Cherian [02:03:39] So we were gonna. We were gonna have a gaggle of children. You know, we were gonna have a big family.

John Dehlin [02:03:46] A quiverful.

Ganesh Cherian [02:03:47] A quiverful. Lindy. It was just me and my sister for Lindy. She only had a brother, natural brother, and her parents had adopted two Kids, so they always wanted more. So the idea of having a big family was certainly on the cards. I wanted to be, you know, useful. One of my major values is being useful. So being useful to my surroundings, my community, to the church, all of those things I think we absolutely envisioned, because we'd been missionaries, that we would in the future go on a couple missionaries, you know, that would certainly be the case.

John Dehlin [02:04:30] So possibly become a bishop or stake president or even a general authority maybe.

Ganesh Cherian [02:04:34] Well, I don't ever think that. I thought that that might be the case, maybe bishop. But again, I didn't really have, I don't. I just wanted to be useful wherever that was.

John Dehlin [02:04:45] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:04:45] I didn't have necessarily any ambition and neither did Lindy. We just wanted to be happy and healthy and, and have a good experience, raise these beautiful children in the gospel. And they would do, they would do the milestones that we would do. Right. Go on missions, get married in the temple, do all of those things. So that was kind of the idea.

John Dehlin [02:05:08] And your kids would eventually what, in the church?

Ganesh Cherian [02:05:12] My ones now, they would do the things. They would absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:05:17] What were the things?

Ganesh Cherian [02:05:18] Yeah, they would do, get the priesthood, they would go on missions, they would get married in the temple, they would have children of their own. We would just do, we would just repeat the cycle.

John Dehlin [02:05:31] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:05:31] Rinse and repeat over and over.

John Dehlin [02:05:33] That was the dream.

Ganesh Cherian [02:05:34] That was the dream.

Becoming a Bishop in Wellington

John Dehlin [02:05:35] Okay, so how many years between you getting married and you becoming a Mormon bishop?

Ganesh Cherian [02:05:43] 23, eight, nine years.

John Dehlin [02:05:46] Wow. So within 10 years of coming home from your mission, you had achieved the, you know, you would, you'd become a Mormon bishop in your ward and not a, not a non influential ward, right?

Ganesh Cherian [02:05:59] Correct. Well, it's. Well, I was 32, I think, so it's 12 years after my mission.

John Dehlin [02:06:06] Okay, okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:06:07] But the young.

John Dehlin [02:06:10] That's a young bishop.

Ganesh Cherian [02:06:11] It's a young bishop. Although in our area that wasn't necessarily unheard of. I guess lots of bishops were in their, you know, in their 30s. They tended to be in their 30s, so it wasn't unusual. But I had a, and I had a big lead up to that. Like I was in the High Council, I said, you know, first off. And then of course, we started having children, you know, pretty much straight away. And we have five boys. Five boys in eight years.

John Dehlin [02:06:40] That's it. Is that a gaggle? I think that's a cool office. Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [02:06:43] And in New Zealand, that's a massive family, Right. You know, two big or two or three's big. So that's a lot of kids.

John Dehlin [02:06:49] In a short amount of time.

Ganesh Cherian [02:06:50] Yes. And we were busy. We were so busy. And I was on the High Council and then soon after that I was on various bishoprics. I was on three different bishoprics before I was the bishop in. Cause Wellington is a really special place, but it's very spread out and it's very diverse and it's hard work. There are.

Ganesh Cherian [02:07:16] It's not like a ward where you might have 100 households and let's say four or five people in each household. So there's 500 people. This is a ward where lots of people are. Single people are coming there for university, they're coming there for careers.

Ganesh Cherian [02:07:37] It's not quite a big family ward, or at least wasn't by this point. There are 350 households and there are 500 people. Right. Most people are single homes with one person in them, so it's quite different. And we. So it just wore out bishops. So our bishops would last two or three years and then you'd have to get another one. It's just too hard on a family. And so I was a counsellor on the bishopric for a good eight years through three different bishops.

John Dehlin [02:08:23] Wow. Do you want to talk about. Is it okay to jump to what it was like to be a Mormon bishop? And did you make it the full five years or are there.

Ganesh Cherian [02:08:32] Yes, yes. So I guess one of the significant parts of that, which is a great Mormon story, is, you know, Wellington is, like I said, so diverse. It's the capital city, so it includes government. It's got ambassadors. We had ambassadors who were members of the church, you know, university professors and everything else. So we had, you know, people who had doctorates and people who were illiterate, people who were millionaires and people who had next to nothing. You know, like, it's such a diverse word and people from all over the world.

Ganesh Cherian [02:09:12] When I was the bishop, I had a counsellor who was from kind of Scottish ancestry, so he's got, you know, fair as anything with red hair. And then I had a guy who was from South Africa, you know, would be called mixed race, but he's black South African. So on the bishop record, I was the bishop. You know, it was all of the colours of the spectrum of human experience, which was just so beautiful and reminiscent of our ward when I was a counsellor.

Ganesh Cherian [02:09:46] We had this gal come to Wellington and she was really sharp and we made her the. I was in charge of the young adults, so we made her the young adult leader. Her name was Jacinda Ardern. And so I spent A lot of time.

John Dehlin [02:10:05] For those who don't know, she became the Prime Minister of New Zealand. And not just the Prime Minister of New Zealand. One of the most popular political figures in modern history. I think that's just my opinion. Just recently stepped down, right? Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [02:10:22] She's an incredible person. Although she just seemed like a normal young adult to me, really. But we used to.

John Dehlin [02:10:28] Really? Yeah. She didn't strike you as some prodigy or.

Ganesh Cherian [02:10:34] No, she was just. She was just down to earth, really capable, you know, just extremely capable. That's why we had her as our young adult rep. But I used to meet with her quite regularly. We'd have her in our house, of course, we'd have her young adult activities. I've got this lovely picture of in our lounge where we've got her and all the young adults and Lindy and all of us with our kids around, like, that's just how it was.

John Dehlin [02:11:01] So she was in your ward?

Ganesh Cherian [02:11:02] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:11:02] When you were bishop?

Ganesh Cherian [02:11:03] Yep. So by the time I was a bishop, she had moved out.

John Dehlin [02:11:06] Oh, bishopric member.

Ganesh Cherian [02:11:07] Yeah. But I was in the bishopric at the time, and because I was in that position, I had quite a lot to do with her. And we were good friends.

John Dehlin [02:11:15] And her fan, just really quickly, her family, they were like. Her parents were Mormon and she was

Ganesh Cherian [02:11:20] raised Mormon, so like I said, so her uncle Ian was the acting principal when I was church college, so I knew him well. Her dad, Ross, and Ian are identical twins. So one of the interesting things to know is that Ian Arden is Jacinda's second dad. I mean, literally, you know, can't be closer. Right. And she. Jacinda, didn't go to church college, but I'm not sure why. But she was a proficient community action person, so that's how she managed to be in the circles which were around politics, and she came to Wellington to further her political career.

John Dehlin [02:12:14] Fun.

Margi Dehlin [02:12:16] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:12:18] Other stories you want to tell that were crucial leading up to your becoming a bishop or summarizing your bishop experience.

Ganesh Cherian [02:12:27] So one of the other things is that the reason I went from being in the High Council to being in the bishopric was because they split the stake, and the Wellington stake got split, and I went from being the low man on the totem pole in the High Council to being number one.

Ganesh Cherian [02:12:49] And so I took that responsibility of being on the High council and being a senior member of the High Council, even though I was less than 30. Really? Seriously. And the stake president at the time was a prominent member of the church, and he and I did not always see eye to eye on the way that the gospel should be enacted. And so, like, I really like him and we get on, but I wasn't shy of speaking up and going, I don't think this is the way it should be. And so the stake president and I kind of clashed a little bit. And so he kind of moved me on from the high council and put me into the bishopric.

Ganesh Cherian [02:13:32] And that was fine. I didn't mind that at all. I had a great time in the bishopric, and then they made me bishop, which was a lovely experience. I guess it's really validating being made the bishop, you know, not that I ever really wanted to be or, you know, I thought I might be at some stage, but it was, you know, kind of arrived and I ticked so many boxes, which inevitably meant that you were going to be in that situation at some point.

Ganesh Cherian [02:14:05] Yeah, Margi, for you. I guess one of the things that was really interesting about that relationship with my father was when I was called to be the. When I was called to be the bishop, I was really. I got to go to Australia and see my father, and the fact that I had this really pivotal experience.

Ganesh Cherian [02:14:41] I went to. I went to go see him, and he was in a particularly bad situation, and I didn't know what to do. And I felt really responsible, but felt. Grumpy that I had to kind of look after my dad.

Ganesh Cherian [02:15:00] And so I went. I was going to the airport. It had been a particularly tough visit. I didn't know what to do. And I got to the airport and I got off the bus. Somebody there this must have seen. I was in a little distress. I don't know. He guy said, oh, look, I see you going to the same. Going back to Wellington. So I've got some lounge classes for the Air New Zealand lounge. Would you.

Ganesh Cherian [02:15:26] Would you like to, you know, would you like to go with me? And I said, oh, that'd be great. So anyway, we went to the lounge. So kind of him to do that. And he asked me what I was doing in Sydney, and I told him about my dad and what had happened. And he goes, gosh, I feel really sorry for you. And I was like, I feel really sorry for me, too. Like.

Ganesh Cherian [02:15:51] And it was the first time I'd admitted that I was resentful, that I felt like I had to take care of my dad and he wasn't there to be able to take care of me.

John Dehlin [02:16:06] And

Ganesh Cherian [02:16:08] then I started to think of all of the wonderful things of people taking care of me, even, like, this guy who had just done this act of kindness for me and all of the wonderful things that have happened in my life, people who had been there for me and how much parental care I'd been given along the way, and in my responsibility as a parent now, nurturing these five boys who had come along.

Ganesh Cherian [02:16:36] How lucky I felt and how lucky I had felt that the church had provided so many of those experiences and care and stability and foundation that allowed me to then be a parent to my own parent. And so when I was called as the bishop, you know, like, it was really pivotal that I had, you know, validated me as somebody that could take care of others because others had taken care of me.

Ganesh Cherian [02:17:09] It felt very. It felt like an honour. And it's something that I really wanted to do well. And funnily enough, because that perspective of my dad changed, and I felt now grateful that I got to be this kind of support for him. It changed our whole relationship. And it meant that he, in that first year of me being bishop, he changed. I changed. I got to bring him back to New Zealand to meet my family. Cause up until this point, he hadn't met them.

Ganesh Cherian [02:17:45] He had a. We had a really lovely experience. I brought him back to New Zealand a few times. My mother reconciled with him, or at least got rid of her resentment for him. My sister reconciled with him and managed to have a relationship with him. And he died after that year. And it felt like me being bishop and connecting with him at that time was a real miracle and a miracle that the Church had employed to kind of heal our family across the board. So it was a really special time.

John Dehlin [02:18:26] Beautiful.

Margi Dehlin [02:18:26] Sounds like it.

Experiences and Challenges as a Bishop

John Dehlin [02:18:28] All right, so, Ganesh, if you were to kind of share with us maybe some of the most important parts about your service as a bishop, what would those stories or what would those elements be?

Ganesh Cherian [02:18:43] I think the thing that I liked most was just all of that lovely people contact. I'm a real people person and being able to be useful was really important to me. So, you know, meeting with people and feeling their great angst in their lives and hopefully being able to help. I think sometimes just even being there and being a listening voice was really helpful. And I really took that seriously. I really took that outreach. In fact, what I did was I arranged my work. I ended up. I was working for a law firm at the beginning, and I realised I just didn't have enough flexibility in my time. So I actually acquired a business and made the business work so that I could be there four days a week. And I took a whole day to be a bishop. On top of what was happening in the week.

Margi Dehlin [02:19:44] Wow.

Ganesh Cherian [02:19:45] And that was transformative. Cause in Wellington, it's a very heavy burden to be the bishop. And like, it's at least a 20 hour thing a week. A week. Unpaid, Right, unpaid.

Margi Dehlin [02:20:00] Just like to.

Ganesh Cherian [02:20:02] And I. Because I spent this day a week as well. And often we would. The temple's seven hours away. Right. So I'd take trips and take people to the temple. So I was doing 30, 40 hours a week being the bishop.

Margi Dehlin [02:20:17] Wow.

Ganesh Cherian [02:20:19] And the war just soaked that up. You know, the area was needful. There were so many households, there were so many people in various circumstances and I was able to meet that. One of the things that became quite apparent after the first year was when you first become the bishop, you know, everything's new and you can blame it, blame anything that doesn't work on the old guy.

Ganesh Cherian [02:20:46] But a year into it I realised some of the stuff was reoccurring, that it didn't work quite as well. And I started to get panic attacks. You know, the phone would go off or I'd get a text and I would be in. I'd never experienced that before. I'd always felt so capable and now as a bishop, I was, you know, I felt really responsible and I.

Ganesh Cherian [02:21:13] And I didn't have as many answers as I thought I should. So I started to have some mental health difficulties and it was somewhat mirroring some of my ward members. I think one of the things I didn't realise as a bishop, that there were a lot of people struggling with their mental health and, you know, they'd come to me with answers and I, you know, I got this mantle. So I felt like I should have answers for them and sometimes I didn't. I had a lot of care and empathy, but, you know, it was tricky. And so I learnt I had to learn and that I needed to prioritise my health so that I could actually help other people.

Ganesh Cherian [02:21:59] I actually went to a fireside. It felt like a bit of an answer to prayer, really, because they talked about. It was a leadership fireside and they talked about taking care of yourself and by doing some physical activity. So I started swimming, I started doing a class. One of the members actually was a singing teacher, very lovely English guy called Charles Humphries.

Ganesh Cherian [02:22:26] And he. I went to his house. It was a good chance to check on his family, but it was even better for me personally to learn something. And so I recognized early on that in order for me to be healthy, I had to have some physical outlet, but also needed some Mental outlet. So something that I was doing just for myself that improved things really kept me sane, and it put me in a position where I could still help other people.

Ganesh Cherian [02:22:55] So I was a very dedicated bishop. The ward really blossomed with me as the bishop because I had time, really, that was the main ingredient. And I cared. And so we had some incredible people. We had a couple missionary who got assigned to our ward, who were incredible. Mentor to me, but also did some of the intrinsically beautiful things that needed to be done in our part of the world, particularly with the young adults.

Ganesh Cherian [02:23:31] We had a lot of people away from home, discovering them, you know, their lives. We had a ton of marriages, young marrieds that ended up getting together while we were. While I was the bishop. So I attended a ton of weddings as well, a few funerals.

Ganesh Cherian [02:23:49] It was busy, but it was. It was building and growing. Lindy was incredibly supportive. When I look back, she just, you know, assumed that all because, you know, our goal was to be useful, all right? And she. She absorbed a lot of the, you know, the care of the kids so that I could be available for being the bishop, which was a massive weight and.

John Dehlin [02:24:17] Cause it's one thing to build your career. It's another thing to have a healthy marriage. It's another thing to have five children. And then you add on that being a bishop of 300 whatever, plus people and trying to help them in their lives. I mean, that's too much for almost anyone.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:34] Very full plate. And it's a very full plate to be a mother of five children and to have your spouse tending.

John Dehlin [02:24:40] Gone all the time.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:41] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:24:42] Or a lot of the time.

Margi Dehlin [02:24:43] Both full plates.

Ganesh Cherian [02:24:44] Yeah, yeah, it was full on, and yet we seemed to make it work. We held lots of events at my house so that, you know, we could, you know, have people come and have dinner with us so I could feel like I was ministering while still being at home. We had young adults, particularly, come and live at our house. So, you know, I was the bishop, but I also had, you know, members of the ward living, helping, being extra adults for Lindy, but also, you know, providing them a place and a community. Yeah, it was pretty full on.

John Dehlin [02:25:23] Do you think of it as one of the happiest sort of times of your life?

Ganesh Cherian [02:25:29] Yeah, looking back, yeah, it was pretty incredible. And I. Yeah, I'm a people person, so I thrive on people, and so it gave me energy and I could feel really dynamic and, yeah, it was great.

Margi Dehlin [02:25:47] It does feel like an important component, though, was you having a moment of shift to prioritizing your own mental health though. Do you agree with that?

Ganesh Cherian [02:25:57] Yep, absolutely. I recognize that there were some limits and I was, you know, and being able to say no was really important. But as a bishop I felt responsible. So I felt like I needed to make the first contact even when things were going on. Everybody wanted to hear from the bishop. Wasn't enough for the, for the counsellors. So I was very practically involved in pretty much everything. One of the couple of highlights, I guess, or one highlight, one low light maybe. We had, we had some. We became aware that some of our young marrieds were having struggles with their relationships, particularly on intimacy areas.

John Dehlin [02:26:48] So your sexual intimacy.

Ganesh Cherian [02:26:50] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:26:50] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:26:51] So we, we got together, we made a plan. The release today present who I had was just brilliant. She was very onto it and we, we held a fireside for our young marrieds and we brought them all together. We didn't tell them what we were going to do. We brought them all together and we went through the book and they are not ashamed to talk about, you know, sexual and intimate health.

Ganesh Cherian [02:27:20] We recognised that some of our young adults had some less than ideal ideas about sex because of their relationship to the church. You know, the idea that sex was only for procreation or that, you know, that it was a sacrificial kind of a thing. So we changed that around. We gave.

Ganesh Cherian [02:27:46] I was generally pretty good at giving sex talks to the youth and the young adults. But this was a whole nother level and it really improved lots of those people's lives. They still talk about it today and I think it had a knock on effect to lots of other young marrieds who as they were talking to each other.

Margi Dehlin [02:28:04] That's brilliant.

Ganesh Cherian [02:28:04] I think it was pretty cool. I did have a woman who had, you know, part member family who her husband wasn't a member. But she had some struggles and she talked about the book of Abraham being an issue and I remember her being in my office talking about this and I just, I had nothing for her. Like I didn't even know the issue really. And I didn't really even want to know the issue because I, you know, I was kind of like, oh, that's just that thing over there that we just don't talk about. And I, and I figured it was just all okay. I just, I just didn't have any time to study.

John Dehlin [02:28:50] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [02:28:51] You know, like there was no time. There was barely any time to read your lesson manuals before you went to class. Right. So you'd wing it most of the time. And, but, and too, as A bishop. Every time I went to a class, people would ask my opinion. You know, I felt like I had the answers. And. Yeah, so those are some.

John Dehlin [02:29:12] One of the questions I get all the time is like, do the brethren, do the general authorities know about the problems with the church? And, you know, one common theory is they're so busy, they really. Even if they hear about issues occasionally, they don't really have time to dig in to really understand the problems with the church. Based on your limited experience as a bishop, could you see that as being a plausible theory?

Ganesh Cherian [02:29:37] Well, it was certainly my case. I, you know, I loved the church. I love church history. Right. I'd been to Kirtland. I was interested in these things, but, you know, I just had no time, you know, I felt like to invest

John Dehlin [02:29:51] in doubts or to, oh, to even

Ganesh Cherian [02:29:53] just kind of go any deeper than the Sunday school manuals.

John Dehlin [02:29:56] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [02:29:56] You know? You know, really, anytime I was in any meeting or around any other people, I was thinking about what it was, who I needed to connect to and where they were at in their lives and what was going on and if there was something I needed to do to help them to get to that next place or alleviate their suffering or whatever it was. There was just. No. Yeah, that was my reality, and it was a lovely reality. I felt really useful. People felt cared about, the ward increased, but. But more than that, we were enjoying it. We were having fun. It was nice.

John Dehlin [02:30:38] Did you have to preside over any disciplinary councils as a bishop that you want to talk about or can talk about?

Ganesh Cherian [02:30:44] Yes, several. Several, yes. But they all felt like quite building things. People who had tough stuff in their lives that they wanted to get to the next level. So those bishopry councils were a chance to really dig deep in that and look for a really big leap forward. So they always felt like really genuine things. Generally, I wasn't. We weren't having councils for people who were out or off, you know, it was for people who were in the church who were active, who wanted to resolve stuff so they could get to another place in their lives. So.

John Dehlin [02:31:30] So courts of love.

Ganesh Cherian [02:31:31] Courts of love. Exactly. Exactly. I didn't realize how problematic those were. I guess the other thing, too, I, you know, I was young. There were people who come to me with some really tough circumstances. You know, marital problems, abuse issues. You know, these were things beyond my kind of scope. But I really wanted to be helpful. But oftentimes I don't think I was as helpful. I did refer people to LDS Family Services for counselling, but, yeah, I always Felt like there wasn't a lot of training.

John Dehlin [02:32:11] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [02:32:13] And the training that I was getting, too was kind of like, there's the church, but then there's the unwritten rules that were going on. So. And it was very apparent that I was there to represent the church. So while my. You know, I'm a people person, so I'm really there to care this person that's coming into me, but in the background, there's this idea that I'm. I'm the representative for the church, and so I need to tow the party line. In fact, I always used to get in trouble with the Stake presidency because I'd just do what I thought was right. And oftentimes that would be not necessarily the unwritten rule of things. So I'd always slightly get in trouble. But there was a real emphasis on the good name of the Church and me preserving it as the bishop.

John Dehlin [02:33:09] For those who aren't aware, there's literally a talk, I think, by Boyd K. Packer called the Unwritten Order of Things, which is basically him saying, yeah, there's the handbook, but there's all sorts of things you need to do, all sorts of ways you need to conform that aren't in the handbook. And he wanted to make that explicit. So he gave a general conference talk.

Ganesh Cherian [02:33:30] Oh, and we had leadership on that one particular thing. Somebody came in and talked about all the things that you should be doing that nobody actually tells you about.

John Dehlin [02:33:40] Yeah. Because there are things you don't want in writing if you're the church. And there are certain things you want done. Sometimes you don't want to ever put them in writing, but you still want them done right.

Ganesh Cherian [02:33:49] And I guess one of those things was, you know, talking to the youth about their sexual selves, which I was really, you know. Cause I'd been in that situation. I'd been the person, the kid who'd gone to confess to a bishop. So I knew it could be a good experience. Experience, but also a tricky experience. So I generally tried to be hands off. And if they wanted to talk to me about stuff, I would talk to them.

Ganesh Cherian [02:34:17] But if I would try not to make it a big deal. And I did periodically do lots of, you know, kind of sex talks with the youth and the young adults. I felt like there was a really big responsibility, But I also wanted to make sure that they knew that sexuality was a good thing, that this was gonna be a benefit to their life, that this is something that they should enjoy. And, you know, those boundaries were there to help make sure that it was something that was gonna be really positive in their lives rather than a constriction, more of a, you know, a foundation to work from.

John Dehlin [02:35:00] Any memories of counseling an LGBTQ youth or adult and trying to help them navigate active faithful membership and their, you know, same sex sexuality or.

Ganesh Cherian [02:35:12] No, I never.

John Dehlin [02:35:13] Never came up.

Ganesh Cherian [02:35:14] Never had that situation.

John Dehlin [02:35:17] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:35:18] Which is surprising, actually, because it must have been people in that. Yeah. I was quite aware that any bishop, there's some things that you gravitate towards them for and then some things that some of the members are probably waiting for the next bishop to talk to. And, you know, I was a young guy maybe, you know, there were probably some things that people talked to me that they wouldn't have talked to me, to anybody else about. And there were probably things that they totally avoided with me.

John Dehlin [02:35:47] Yeah. Would you say that being a bishop strengthened your marriage, was neutral for your marriage, or was hard on your marriage?

Ganesh Cherian [02:35:58] All three? I think that, you know, it made us feel incredibly grateful that we were in this position of care. But it did take a lot of time, and that got resentful at times. So, you know, it was an ongoing negotiation. I think I was called to be the bishop on Mother's Day. I think Lindy felt like that was a real difficulty. You know, it's like, ah, you. You called him to be the bishop, and now he's gonna be completely away. It's Mother's Day, and I'm going to be by myself, really. And not just for this day, which is Mother's Day, but actually for the next foreseeable future.

John Dehlin [02:36:45] Did you make it full five years, or.

Ganesh Cherian [02:36:47] Yes, I was almost six years.

John Dehlin [02:36:48] Oh, wow. Others only lasted two or three, you said.

Ganesh Cherian [02:36:51] Yeah, yeah. So I went the distance. In fact, I didn't even see the release coming. Like, I absolutely thought I was going to be in there for the long haul. The bishop of the Samoan ward, who, which was in the other unit, he'd been there for 10 years because they hadn't been able to replace him. And when, you know, when I got released, he was really upset because he was like, it's time for me to be gone. He's a really lovely guy. New Zealand is full of sports stars, and one of his sons is a prominent All Black.

John Dehlin [02:37:26] And for those who don't know, All Black is what? New Zealand's most popular rugby team, is that right?

Ganesh Cherian [02:37:31] It's the national team.

John Dehlin [02:37:32] So to be, like, the best rugby team in the world, is that. Is that fair or not?

Ganesh Cherian [02:37:36] Yep. They are the best in the world. And it's a real privilege, a real pride in New Zealand to.

John Dehlin [02:37:43] Is that a controversial statement to say they're the best in the world?

Ganesh Cherian [02:37:46] Well, the world is catching up and we don't always win, but we win most of the time, which is really good.

John Dehlin [02:37:53] And there are a lot of Mormons on that team, historically. True or not true.

Ganesh Cherian [02:37:58] Yep. So some of the most prominent. Sid Going is a really prominent all black. In fact, he's long since passed away, but his wife is in our ward now. Maunonu, who's, you know, a prominent all black legend. John Olamu. Sorry, Maanonu and John Olomu. So John Olomu married my best friend's ex girlfriend. So he. And then he joined the church and he probably the most famous rugby player in the world ever. He died unfortunately due to kidney disease. And Todd Miller, also an all black, also a bishop. So yeah, there's been a number of prominent sports stars that are members of the Church. In fact, the church in New Zealand has a really high value. It's thought of very well. So it's a big deal.

John Dehlin [02:39:03] And is rugby the number one national sport of New Zealand, would you say?

Ganesh Cherian [02:39:07] Yep, but we accept. We, you know, a bunch of New Zealanders love the idea that we punch above our weight. So Dame Valerie Adams is a, you know, she's a member of the church, but she's also, you know, the foremost, you know, shot putter in the world. Sporting is a big deal. Her brother Stephen Adams is in the NBA. So yeah, there's. Yeah, we like to think that we're really special. We've got Peter Jackson in Wellington, of course, who's a prominent director.

John Dehlin [02:39:44] Lord of the Rings.

Ganesh Cherian [02:39:45] Lord of the Rings.

John Dehlin [02:39:46] The Beatles. The Beatles, Little Let it be thing.

Ganesh Cherian [02:39:49] King Kong.

John Dehlin [02:39:51] Wait, is Peter Jackson a Kiwi?

Ganesh Cherian [02:39:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:39:54] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:39:54] Yep, yep. And a Wellingtonian. So he's a big part of that. James Cameron lives in New Zealand and he's producing the Avatar movies out of New Zealand. So, you know, we, we. Yeah, yeah, we have a lot of pride, A lot of pride. Especially when it comes to the Aussies, you know, we like to have a bit of famous rivalry.

John Dehlin [02:40:13] You're better than the Aussies.

Ganesh Cherian [02:40:14] We like to think so, yes. They don't even know we exist. It's kind of like Canada and the U.S. you know, like Canada knows everything about the U.S. like, oh, there's that country somewhere up there that we've never been to. Even though it's like a 45 minute drive.

John Dehlin [02:40:29] I'm telling Simon and Neville and Tiny

Ganesh Cherian [02:40:33] what you just said, basically, yes, I'd love it.

The End of His Bishopric and Family Toll

John Dehlin [02:40:39] All right. Anything else about be a bishop, or should we? I mean, I know like one key theme is going to be how does a super faithful active Mormon bishop start having some deconstruction of their Mormon faith? So what are the stories you want to tell before we kind of start talking about how things start unraveling a little bit for you?

Ganesh Cherian [02:41:00] Just that being the bishop was a really lovely experience. For me personally, I felt very grateful to have been in that position and the care that I got to give and to receive. Yeah, it's phenomenal. I. Yeah, really appreciate it. Yeah. Important.

John Dehlin [02:41:24] Around what year did you stop serving as bishop? Do you remember?

Ganesh Cherian [02:41:28] So I was the bishop from 2004 through to 2010.

John Dehlin [02:41:34] Okay. And during your time as bishop, Mormon bishop, was there anything that caused you to start questioning your Mormon faith that was significant? You mentioned the Book of Abraham thing, but not really. Would you say by the time you ended your service as a Mormon bishop, your testimony was as strong as it had ever been?

Ganesh Cherian [02:41:54] Yep, absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:41:55] Okay. And again, that year was 2010. 10. Okay. So in my timeline, I'm like, All right, we're six years into Mormon stories. 2010, that's about two years. No, that's about four years before the gospel topics essays start coming out. So the Mormon Internet by 2010 hadn't really come into your awareness?

Ganesh Cherian [02:42:22] No, not really. Although when I was at university, I had participated on some, you know, sites. This was really the beginning of the Internet. And I participated on some sites being a bit of an apologist, you know, talking about, you know, Mormon dim in its time, but not really.

Ganesh Cherian [02:42:41] And again, I was so busy. Right. This was, you know, even when I was in the bishopric through to when I was the bishop. So that's eight plus six. So 14 years, you know, pretty full on. Like, I wasn't really doing much more than connecting with people and having a church experience. My anything outside of that was different. The only times that I really got times to look at that was when we came to the States because my wife's American, of course, and all of our kids and we'd come to visit the in laws in Seattle or I'd come down to Utah. And so the only time I got to really see and enjoy and maybe even think about Mormon culture and history was when I was traveling. And then I was kind of a tourist. So I'd come to Utah several times. Seattle. And I'd stayed there for a bit.

John Dehlin [02:43:36] I have to ask around 2004, a book comes out called Losing a Lost Tribe by Speaking of Aussies by Aussie Simon Southerton, a Mormon bishop in Australia who is a geneticist who just sort of does an analysis of Lamanite, you know, you know, Native American slash Pacific Islander DNA and finds no tracing back to Israel as the Book of Mormon purports by. By the time you're released as bishop, had you even ever heard of Simon Southerton or the book Losing a Lost Tribe or the DNA Book of Mormon controversies or were you in a bubble that, that never even hit your consciousness?

Ganesh Cherian [02:44:17] I hadn't heard of Simon Sutherton or the book, but the bishop I took over for who I was the counsellor to, I knew that his brothers had left the church about, you know, DNA and the Book of Mormon. So I knew that bit, but I again I just, it was put it away. I wasn't in a position to really figure out that kind of stuff and I didn't. I mean although I knew this guy really well, I didn't know his brothers very well. So that was the only thing I kind of knew about it.

John Dehlin [02:44:54] Okay. And I'm not sure when Gina Colvin started blogging, but you know, at some point Gina Colvin with her blog Kiwi Mormon comes on the scene. And you don't hear much from Gina these days in sort of progressive or post Mormon circles I think because she's really started dedicating her life to kind of community of Christ slash Christian ministry. But back in the day Gina was a real intellectual cultural force and she still has a very strong influence. Had you heard of your fellow Kiwi and her blogging exploits prior to or up until you being released as a bishop?

Ganesh Cherian [02:45:36] So I met Gina when I was a bishop.

John Dehlin [02:45:39] Really?

Ganesh Cherian [02:45:39] Yeah. So we had a mutual friend in common who was getting married in Sydney and she and I ended up kind of being there together and spending quite a bit of time together. So that was really nice. I got to meet her, she was great. I really didn't start kind of look at what she was doing or reading until after I was bishop and I. So my mother in law, Lindy's mum has Huntington's disease and it's a degenerative disease. It's terrible. It's one of the most awful things.

John Dehlin [02:46:22] And it's fatal, right?

Ganesh Cherian [02:46:23] It's fatal. It kind of onsets its genetic. So it's 50, 50 chance of getting it.

John Dehlin [02:46:32] If your parent has it, right?

Ganesh Cherian [02:46:33] If your parent has it, yeah. So and it tends to onset in middle age, so between 40 and 50 and then it just.

John Dehlin [02:46:41] It's like a ticking time bomb.

Ganesh Cherian [02:46:43] Yeah. Robs you of everything.

John Dehlin [02:46:44] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [02:46:45] Your motor function, your mind, everything.

John Dehlin [02:46:48] This is Lindy's mom.

Ganesh Cherian [02:46:49] Lindy's mum.

John Dehlin [02:46:50] Oh, no.

Ganesh Cherian [02:46:50] And so I was aware of this when we got married.

John Dehlin [02:46:53] Oh. Which meant that Lindy could. Had a 50. 50 chance of having it.

Ganesh Cherian [02:46:59] In fact, when I was the bishop, we'd. We decided because we understood what it was going to mean, so we decided. Well, there was a lot of promise that this would be cured by the time, you know, we're down. Down the end. But we decided that we would have three kids and then Lindy would get tested. We didn't want to get tested first because we just didn't want to, you know, peg our lives on this genetic test. So we had three children, and then we got. And then Lindy got tested because if she was positive, we weren't going to have any more children. And as it turned out, she was negative. And so she. So we went on to have two more children.

John Dehlin [02:47:47] And if you don't have the gene, then you don't pass it on to your kids. Right. Okay. Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:47:56] But Lindy's brother has Huntington's, so he's in a care facility here in. Here in Utah. Just down the road, actually, in Murray.

Margi Dehlin [02:48:05] It's brutal.

John Dehlin [02:48:07] I mean, that's such a hard decision. Do we have kids? You know. Wow, that's an intense decision.

Ganesh Cherian [02:48:15] I just went and visited him the other day. I hadn't seen him in seven years.

John Dehlin [02:48:18] Yeah. And I just meant for you and Lindy to decide whether or not to have kids.

Ganesh Cherian [02:48:22] Yeah, it was. It was an act of faith. We wanted to have kids.

John Dehlin [02:48:25] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [02:48:25] We were, you know, we've. Oh, gosh. And we'd be promised by the church.

John Dehlin [02:48:29] Right, that, you know, like, patriarchal blessings and all that.

Ganesh Cherian [02:48:33] Put children first, put, you know, those things. All of those things will be taken care of. So we were, you know, we had a whole lot of faith that everything would work out. Plus, we, you know, we went uninformed about the thing. So we put some safeguards on that. We decided, okay, if we got. If Lindy has Huntington's, then we'd need the children to be older, you know, we wouldn't have young children, those kinds of things. So we definitely thought about it, but it was a. Yeah, it was. It was a significant thing in the back of our head.

Early Seeds of Faith Deconstruction

John Dehlin [02:49:07] Okay, so you were released after six years service, and then what? You know, whatever you want to talk about leading to the beginnings of your faith deconstruction.

Ganesh Cherian [02:49:23] So I was put back into the High Council because they want you to get you out of the way ward so that you're not kind of distracting everybody. One of my previous counsellors ended up being at this point, the bishop.

Ganesh Cherian [02:49:38] And then, you know, I just enjoyed not being bishop for a little while. Like it was a bit of an adjustment, you know, to not be in charge of everything and not having everything on and to kind of reconnect with my children. One of the nicest things that had happened in the couple of years, my last couple of years of being bishop, is that my oldest child had become, you know, youth age. So then I was able to take him along to a lot of the activities I was doing.

Ganesh Cherian [02:50:07] And that was really nice. It took a lot of pressure off Lindy to have at least one kid out of the mix. But, you know, in that time after bishop kind of reconnecting with these boys and doing stuff with them is, you know, it's more of a hands on parent.

Ganesh Cherian [02:50:25] But then the other thing we decided was that they were at a good age. Lindy's mother couldn't travel any longer. My in laws who had, you know, been working for Boeing, which is why they were in Seattle, they decided to retire to Wyoming because my father in law was originally from Montana and he and the retire, he wanted to go back to that kind of area. And they have really good retiree laws in Wyoming.

John Dehlin [02:50:58] No state taxes, correct? Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [02:51:00] And so, and also then there's no sales tax in Montana. So he chose a border town which was Powell, Wyoming. So it's just kind of north east of Cody, which is from the east gate of Yellowstone, which is in the

John Dehlin [02:51:15] news right now with Mormonism. But that's another story.

Ganesh Cherian [02:51:18] Yes, yes, indeed, very much so. So, so we decided we would go in and live in Powell, be close to the in laws, give the kids an American experience because they're all American citizens and, and fit in with their ages. The youngest one would be start elementary and the oldest one would be in the beginning stages of high school. So it worked out kind of well and so I organized my business so I could be away from it. And we came to Powell in the middle of 2011.

John Dehlin [02:51:51] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [02:51:53] And so, and, and this allowed me to really kind of explore America because up until this point I'd been a tourist. Now I'm living here. It was a different experience. That's where I said, you know, I learned pretty early on I read the Book of Mormon differently in America than I did in New Zealand because the focus on the Heroes was slightly different.

Ganesh Cherian [02:52:19] And I found, well, Gina was doing her podcasts and blogs and stuff like that, and I was reading those things and it was good to recognise some of those oddities of the American culture in our church. And that was kind of the thing that really kind of deconstructed me was that New Zealand, you know, the church, you know, looks to America as being the way it should be. And when I got to the States and was living in a ward and really functioning as, you know, in the culture, I recognised that, you know, it was fine. And these. That we had some amazing people in Powell, but actually they weren't any better than the people in New Zealand, you

John Dehlin [02:53:08] know, I mean, it sounds like your ward in Wellington was pretty amazing.

Ganesh Cherian [02:53:11] It was amazing, yes.

John Dehlin [02:53:12] And I'm sure there's some quirkiness in a Wyoming Mormon ward.

Ganesh Cherian [02:53:16] Yes, yes, there definitely was. But the people were just so good. I just loved it. And they made me an early morning seminary teacher.

John Dehlin [02:53:25] Oh, fun.

Ganesh Cherian [02:53:25] Which was so cool. I got the seniors. So it was. We got to, you know, do the Old Testament at kind of a higher level because they broke up. There was enough members in this town, about 10%, that they had, you know, dedicated classes.

Ganesh Cherian [02:53:39] And so that was fun. I had the experience of being a bishop, so I had a bit of kudos in the community and I was kind of on sabbatical. Like I was running my business from. From a distance, but I was also just playing, you know, I could do different things. I took up little odd jobs. I got a green. I had a green card. So I did, you know, I taught at the local community college on international business. And I.

Ganesh Cherian [02:54:11] There was a guy on the ward, a bot, actually. He had Ms. And so I got to be his caregiver. It's the first time I've ever been a caregiver. What a wonderful, compassionate thing to be. And he loved me being a caregiver. Cause I was a guy and he was used to tiny women that he was worried were gonna drop him in the shower kind of a thing.

Ganesh Cherian [02:54:38] And we had these lovely talks and it was fabulous. And then the Mormon moment happened. You know, Mitt Romney's running for president and Republican ticket and our little tiny town of Powell, which has a significant Mormon population, but it's still small, you know, there started to be these anti Mormon articles in the paper against Mitt Romney and I'm like, oh, gosh, this is really interesting.

Ganesh Cherian [02:55:11] And. And then of course, Mitt Romney got the Republican nomination and suddenly everybody just fell into line, you know, Suddenly, those articles faded away, and people saw Mitt Romney as a valuable Republican. And so those intersections between religion and politics really interested me. I was really curious about how this kind of played out. I was really interested, too, why Mormons in the Mountain west weren't liked in our small town, where I'd come from New Zealand, where it's pretty secular, but actually, Mormons were well liked and well represented, and so those kind of issues. So that political thing really was really interesting to me.

Ganesh Cherian [02:56:02] And so I started to ask questions. Right. Talk to people. Why aren't you? And then I found out about things like the Mountain Meadows Massacre and understood that there was a. There was a history of violence in the Mountain west and in Missouri, which the church had represented in a completely different way than I had understood in New Zealand. Cause we're at the bottom of the world. We're kind of pacifists.

Ganesh Cherian [02:56:29] And when I came to live in the States, I recognized that there was a real militarisation of American culture that, you know, and that was something that played into that violence component. So, yeah, those. All of those same kinds of things were massive for me. And then it started. I started looking at those history bits and realizing, I don't know if we were persecuted as much as we were.

Ganesh Cherian [02:57:06] We had done some persecution, and that really rocked me as a. As a member of the church. So that was a big thing for me.

John Dehlin [02:57:15] Meaning Mountain Meadows Massacre. Yep.

Ganesh Cherian [02:57:18] Even, you know, the Black Hawk War, you know, the genocide of the native peoples in the Mountain west, you know, because Brigham Young was here and they took the resources. You know, those things really were challenging. And the flip side of that was the racial stuff, you know, because, you know, I presented as being Latino in my little town, and people would treat me as such until I opened my mouth. Right. The moment I opened my mouth, they could tell I was from New Zealand. And suddenly I went. I flipped from being not that great to being amazing, you know.

Margi Dehlin [02:57:56] Huh.

Ganesh Cherian [02:57:57] Wyoming people love their hunting, and they all know that the best hunting in the world is in New Zealand. So the moment I talked about New Zealand, they were like, gosh, that's my dream is to go to New Zealand. And all the hunters hunt a red stag.

Ganesh Cherian [02:58:13] So I went from being. So this idea of privilege and prejudice really, you know, ignited my, you know, my feelings about, you know, gosh, in this moment, I'm driving down the road in my car, and I'm being pulled over by the police, you know, slightly being targeted. And the moment I open my mouth, I'm A New Zealander, and suddenly, you know, they just want to know all about me. And, you know, it was a really interesting dynamic that played out for me personally, but it gave me an insight into this kind of idea that, you know, that racial tension in the United States was a really significant one that I had not factored or had not observed before.

Ganesh Cherian [02:58:55] And I started to understand that that was really the basis of things like the priesthood ban, which I had always kind of dismissed as being kind of semi prophetic and now recognized as being much more cultural. So those two. Those two areas were very big. We also, while we were in the States, we did a couple of. We did a church corps. We went to. From Independence to Nauvoo to Winter's Quarters and all that kind of stuff. I really lapped up. I loved the history, but I started to recognize that the history that I had known in the church was not the history that was actual reality.

John Dehlin [02:59:43] Don't get into that.

Ganesh Cherian [02:59:45] Yeah. So then I started researching. I started wanting to know why and how and. And where and when and putting things into place to understand how it was that the church was the way it was. And for me, that also meant looking at my faith and figuring out what was important and how I might be different from my Wyoming counterparts in terms of the things that I thought were important in the church. So I did quite a bit of research. I started to realise some of the narratives that we had weren't great. And then our time ended in a few of those.

John Dehlin [03:00:31] List three.

Ganesh Cherian [03:00:32] So probably the most salient was the Seer Stone production of the Book of Mormon. Because when I was a missionary, of course, I'd come across that. People had told me that and I'd asked my mission president, oh, what's this about? And he'd say, no, that's anti Mormon law. I said, yeah, that's terrible. Yeah, what a terrible mischaracterization of what had happened. There's plates, of course. What are you talking about?

John Dehlin [03:00:55] Stone in the hat, Urim and Thummim in the plates, not stone in the hat and no plates.

Ganesh Cherian [03:00:59] So that. And I was like, oh, my gosh, there's a lot of things I just don't know. So that was probably one of them. Polygamy to some extent too. I didn't realize how prevalent and prominent polygamy was in the factoring of how the church was made up. And I started to become aware of that just in a small measure. And that was kind of a little concerning. So that was probably the other one that was the biggest. Yeah, those, probably the other two that were important.

John Dehlin [03:01:35] Anything else about the Book of Mormon?

Ganesh Cherian [03:01:38] I certainly got the Book of started to get an inkling that, you know, this is maybe not necessarily a historical work, but I kind of still loved those characters. They felt real to me. So I really didn't want to address that at that point.

John Dehlin [03:01:55] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [03:01:57] And so my mother in law actually passed away while we were there, which was really great that we were there and. But it was a bit of a change. And my father in law, he'd been caring for her for 20 years and he just really wanted to get on with his life. So he got online and he actually ended up getting married like six, seven weeks later. Oh, wow. Pretty.

John Dehlin [03:02:27] That's not unheard of.

Ganesh Cherian [03:02:29] Yeah, yeah, I know it was tough

John Dehlin [03:02:32] after she had died.

Ganesh Cherian [03:02:33] After she had died, yeah. Yeah. Nothing prior. And she. This woman was like in a completely different state and, you know, she had to upend her life and come to Wyoming. They're still together and doing really well. But I was the witness in the marriage. Cause my wife can't be the witness. Right. Cause I'm the guy. Oh, that was the other thing that got me was the patriarchy stuff that really started to. And this was a good.

Confronting Patriarchy, Race, and Privilege in the Church

John Dehlin [03:03:01] How so? Patriarchy stuff? What do you mean?

Ganesh Cherian [03:03:03] Well, I mean like the role and status of women in the church. Like, Lindy was always a pretty forthright person, so she never felt disadvantaged church wise. But coming to this, even as a bishop, I knew I had a lot of veto. Like my relief present was amazing and she, she could do anything she wanted, I would fully support it. But I was really conscious that I could veto her at any time and say, no, you couldn't, you know, do that. But she couldn't veto me. Right. Like she couldn't say, bishop, you can't do that, I'm not gonna let you. But I could say that to her.

Ganesh Cherian [03:03:40] So those kinds of things. I kind of understood that patriarchy didn't sit well with me very much. And then when I was in the States, I recognised that that was a. Again, that was a real American cultural thing. New Zealand's a lot more egalitarian when it comes to partnerships.

John Dehlin [03:03:57] And you had a female prime minister.

Ganesh Cherian [03:04:00] Yes, yes. And we'd already had a female. She's like our third female prime minister.

Margi Dehlin [03:04:04] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:04:07] So, you know, sitting in the celestial room in the sealing room with my father in law getting married and I'm one of the witnesses, but I could be the witness that my wife can't be. It was really?

John Dehlin [03:04:18] And it's her dad.

Ganesh Cherian [03:04:19] It's her dad, yeah. And he's getting married. Sealed again. Right. So he's a polygamist.

John Dehlin [03:04:26] Yeah. Because he's still sealed to his late wife.

Ganesh Cherian [03:04:28] Yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [03:04:29] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:04:30] So those were, those things were really interesting to me to think of how those dynamics play out between what gets valued in our community as opposed to what doesn't get valued.

John Dehlin [03:04:40] It always strikes me how sometimes long it takes people to process things that are right there in front of their eyes the whole time. Because by this age, you're, you're, you're how old?

Ganesh Cherian [03:04:53] By this time, I'm knocking on 40.

John Dehlin [03:04:56] Yeah, so you're 40 years old. Not a, not an uneducated guy into the church. But all these things, whether it's race or gender or polygamy or Book of Mormon stuff or DNA, like somehow it was there the whole time. But you never even. And you already explained why. But isn't it interesting how like, you can go four decades before you start seeing it?

Ganesh Cherian [03:05:25] You know, and that was really my big questioning, right, was that I, here, I was a bishop, and the reason I was a bishop was cause I just ticked so many of those boxes, right? That made me privileged in this community.

Ganesh Cherian [03:05:40] And the message I got as a bishop was, you've got to get other people to those checkboxes, and if they're not checking those boxes, there's something wrong with them. So even though people come, I remember this one time this woman came into, you know, young adult, maybe she was a single adult by this point, but she came into my office and she's like, bishop, what's wrong with me? I want to get married, I want to have children, and nothing is happening.

Ganesh Cherian [03:06:11] And you know, I'm very empathetic and I'm, you know, there's nothing wrong with her. She's lovely. And I'm giving her all the right affirmations. But at the same time, I'm thinking, gosh, what is wrong? You know, what is out of a place in the background?

Ganesh Cherian [03:06:33] You know, we do family history so well. We should know, right? There are tons of people who never get married. There are tons of people who never have children. And we have them all on our family group sheets, right?

Ganesh Cherian [03:06:48] There are thousands of them. But the problem is, of course, our parents got married, so therefore we are. And they're our grandparents and great grandparents and stuff like that. We once people, you know, our grand aunt, you know, aunties, or our grand uncles and our cousins and things like that. The ones that don't get married. Their lines don't go any further. So we kind of think about them in that kind of ethereal other.

John Dehlin [03:07:11] But even if we do think about them, there's always the justification that you mentioned earlier, which is, ah, some would say that's the beauty of Mormonism. Joseph Smith would say, oh well, they'll get, they'll find their eternal companions in the afterlife and they'll have their kids in the afterlife. That's what's good about Mormonism, not what's the problem about Mormonism. Right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:07:32] And lots of people hold onto that, especially when their lived experience doesn't match the tick box validations that go on in their lives. Even when you untick the box. Right. Because that's, you know, marriage is a big tick box of Mormonism. But it's actually quite arbitrary. I came to understand.

Ganesh Cherian [03:07:52] So if you don't get married, you don't tick that box. There's a certain level of othering that you get if you've ticked that box as a married person and then you untick it to be divorced. That's a whole nother series of privilege and prejudice that you're working with. I think that's why it doesn't happen in New Zealand. But it seems to happen a lot here. People get married like four or five times. In New Zealand you might get married once and then you have, you know, partners or whatever. But here in the States, the cultural norm and the privilege is for marriage. So if you are going to be with somebody, you're gonna get married to them.

Ganesh Cherian [03:08:29] Cause that gives you elevation in the community. And Mormonism has these tick boxes. Right. You know, men are more important than women. Right. As a bishop, I can veto the really slave president, but she can't veto me. There's no place in the church that a woman can tell a man what to do.

John Dehlin [03:08:49] No.

Ganesh Cherian [03:08:49] Except for maybe primary president if he's got a teacher, you know, that's a male. It just doesn't happen.

John Dehlin [03:08:56] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:08:57] And a married person, if a single person can't tell a married person what to do.

John Dehlin [03:09:01] Right?

Ganesh Cherian [03:09:02] No, you have to be married to be the bishop. You have to be married to be a general authority. You know, all of the men who have voice in this church are married. And you might get some voice like Wendy Nelson if you're, if you're. The person you're married to is a significant man. But otherwise you wouldn't hear from that person.

Margi Dehlin [03:09:27] That's right. Such a good point.

Ganesh Cherian [03:09:29] But it also means that actually there are no single male voices you know, there's not a single man that. I mean, single, like a not married man who can voice what it means to be that.

John Dehlin [03:09:40] Yeah. Even if you're a faithful, celibate, gay Mormon man, you can't be a bishop.

Ganesh Cherian [03:09:46] Can't be a bishop. You're not gonna ever speak at general conference.

John Dehlin [03:09:50] Yeah, right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:09:51] It's just not gonna happen.

John Dehlin [03:09:52] Or become a mission president or any of the. Yeah, yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:09:55] Nothing. Nothing for you.

John Dehlin [03:09:57] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:09:57] Right. And that goes along. So, you know, there's all of these little tick boxes, and when you. When you tick enough of them and if people around you are not ticking as many of them, you get a lot of privilege, a lot of prominence. And I certainly suffered from that. And it was.

John Dehlin [03:10:13] Benefited from it in a way. Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:10:15] Oh, absolutely. Benefited because people wanted to hear my opinion. Right. Walk into a class. Oh, Bishop, tell us what you think about this. Right.

John Dehlin [03:10:23] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:10:24] I had a huge voice, and so then I was slightly invested in keeping my voice, so I would shy away from things that made my voice less. Right. I don't wanna look at the issues of patriarchy because that would make. Make it. I would soon come to the understanding that it was unfair and therefore, gosh, I'm being advantaged for my arbitrary gender assignment. Right?

Margi Dehlin [03:10:52] Yeah, you're benefiting.

Ganesh Cherian [03:10:53] And somebody else is being disadvantaged by their arbitrary gender assignment, so. Or sexuality. Right. I'm heterosexual, so I get all of this. You know, marriage and family disadvantage me. I want to have children. So, you know, being a parent is fabulous. But what if you're infertile or what if you hate being a parent?

Margi Dehlin [03:11:12] That's right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:11:13] So there's. And the checkboxes that give you privilege are natures of God. So these are the things that Joseph Smith identified were key to being God. You know, he's a man, he's married, he's polygamous, he's got priesthood, he's a parent, he's making covenants in the temple, he's a temple attender, he's heterosexual, he's white, he's American. And you know, and you know, he's got some prominence, some genealogy that gives him some link to the past. Right. So all of those things are factors. And if you're 10 out of 10, you were Russell M. Nelson.

Margi Dehlin [03:11:57] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:11:58] And in Wellington, I was probably, you know, of course, I got. I was probably a six and then I got married to Americans. So suddenly I'm a seven, you know, and, you know, everybody around me is a six or a five. And so I've got prominence until I start unchecking some of those boxes because they don't fit with me.

Margi Dehlin [03:12:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I totally can see that. The idea of the privilege and ticking off boxes. Getting back to kind of this idea of, like, your privilege, kind of. What would we say? Extending your travel in the church or. Right. Because you were kind of comfortable and benefiting. I'm also intrigued a little bit. I also wonder this layer of if you were touched directly by. If you had a child that was LGBTQIA or if it kind of hits you someplace really closely. I think that's another thing that can all of a sudden thrust someone into seeing things in a new way. And I also think the fact this busy thing, this.

Margi Dehlin [03:13:14] A million things to do. I'm responsible for so many people. I also, like, think it's interesting. You had time in Wyoming. You had more time actually to be a reflective person and to think and to connect with yourself. And I do think that is an important thing to note when we're working in systems, when I now, when I start to feel too rushed, too busy, that there's this long list of things that keep me from connecting with myself. And there it's like, what would I say?

Margi Dehlin [03:13:56] It's so important that it's like your salvation or your family's salvation. There's a lot riding on it. I'm like, oh, I'm vulnerable. I'm vulnerable to, like, not seeing things that might be very apparent, you know, that disconnect from self in keeping you busy and really feeling overly responsible for all these things. To me, that's like a danger sign.

Ganesh Cherian [03:14:24] It's so easy to do in anything. Right. You can get so involved in your career and the things you do, you stop taking time out to look at it from a distance and evaluate whether it's good or productive or successful. And, you know, sometimes we get.

John Dehlin [03:14:40] Or true.

Ganesh Cherian [03:14:40] Or true. Or true, you know? Well, I do attach myself to the busy and think that I'm successful because I'm busy.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:50] That's right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:14:51] It's easy.

Margi Dehlin [03:14:51] I think it does exist in other systems.

John Dehlin [03:14:56] And if you're obtaining. It sounds like for you, maybe if you're obtaining social capital, then why question it? Right?

Ganesh Cherian [03:15:02] That's right. And I get to your point, Mikey. You know, you don't. It's the empathy that switches you out of that. So you realize, hang on a second. This is not fair. Why are they not getting the same benefit out of this? I mean, when I was a bishop, I explained it because I'm so close to the spirit, and I'M doing everything right. And, you know, so why are they feeling terrible then? Maybe they're not praying hard enough or feeling hard enough. But then when you realize they're doing, they're going as hard as they possibly can and the system is not giving them the validation in return and you realize that it's arbitrary, then you go, oh, my. I can't. I need to address that. If I'm going to be this empathetic, caring individual, I need to look at that better.

Margi Dehlin [03:15:52] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:15:53] And of course, there's little sparks. Right. My sister suffered from infertility and I had five children. Gosh. She was feeling terrible and I was feeling great, you know, But. Yeah, sometimes you just don't see it. Maybe I didn't want to see it slightly complicit because it advantaged me.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:14] Yeah. Mm.

John Dehlin [03:16:16] And what's tough is it also gives you meaning and purpose, like we all want, we all need as humans. Identity, meaning, purpose, community. And like it was. It's not like it was. I mean, I don't know. It doesn't appear as though it was damaging you. It appears as though it was blessing your life. So, like, in so many ways, it was actually probably a healthy, good thing for you.

Ganesh Cherian [03:16:42] It felt that way, I guess, until I realized that it was not necessarily that case. You know, other people were big. My advantage was coming on the backs of somebody else's disadvantage.

Margi Dehlin [03:16:54] That's right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:16:55] Right. And I couldn't. That was. I couldn't justify that.

Margi Dehlin [03:17:04] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:17:05] And I needed to look at that more carefully. So.

John Dehlin [03:17:09] So you started to have an awakening, so. To the people that Mormonism was hurting. Yes.

Ganesh Cherian [03:17:15] Yes, I did. And that led me to the. You know, so we came back to New Zealand, this was after the election, and it was funny.

John Dehlin [03:17:21] Cause Romney loses.

Ganesh Cherian [03:17:23] Romney loses. And, you know, Wyoming's a red state, so nobody even campaigns here. Right. And it's always a. You know. But I said to. I used to joke with my friends in Wyoming, I'd go. Cause there was that. Remember there was that hurricane just before the election. And I said.

Ganesh Cherian [03:17:39] I said, look, obviously God has chosen Obama because he created that hurricane. And disasters always favour the incumbent because they can do something about it. Right. The people who are challenging can't do anything about it. And so I said that it was a jest, but it was kind of almost playing with that idea that when we think that, you know, we always think God is on our side and for our guy or our person or our thing. And it was just me playing around with those ideas of privilege and prejudice and how we interpret it when we win and the other person loses. And also when we lose and the other person wins, so.

Ganesh Cherian [03:18:20] And so then we came back to New Zealand. They put me back in the High Council, visiting wards, and I'm having lots of questions. I'm doing lots of research in the background. I've got time. And then, fortunately for me, the church releases the Gospel topics essays.

John Dehlin [03:18:38] So now we're around 2014.

Ganesh Cherian [03:18:40] Yes. So this is beginning late 13, early 14, 2013, the end of 2013, just after conference, too. So they obviously didn't want to broach a conference. I think it was November. And they released the Race in the Presidia one night, which I think was first, and subsequently a few others in quick succession. And they confirmed all of the things I'd already come to terms with. And so I knew that what I was grappling with was accurate, and so I wrote a blog.

John Dehlin [03:19:17] So they talked about Nauvoo polygamy, talked about the Mountain Meadows Massacre, these essays. They talked about the Book of Abraham, which you had kind of ignored previously. They talked about race in the priesthood, even Mother in Heaven. The essays, really, they covered DNA in the Book of Mormon. They somehow missed Book of Mormon historicity and anachronisms, but they covered quite a bit.

Ganesh Cherian [03:19:43] Yes. And those first few ones, particularly the violence and the race one, really piqued my interest. You know, the Seer Stone use those. All of those things were things that I really come to terms with. And by this point, I was working with Gina a little bit, and so I decided to write a little blog on her Kiwi blog.

John Dehlin [03:20:07] You were a guest blogger on Kiwi Mormon?

Ganesh Cherian [03:20:09] I was, yeah. Guest blogger on Kiwi Mormon. And I wrote it from the standpoint of being a previous bishop who, you know, the. The Gospel Telpix essays were coming out, and it had changed the landscape.

John Dehlin [03:20:21] Now, by this point, I had asked Gina to take over a Thoughtful Faith podcast. So she was podcasting about being a progressive, faithful Mormon and really just holding down that space, which Dan Witherspoon had also held before. Kind of an important. No, Dan had his own podcast, Mormon Matters. But between the two, Dan and Gina were playing a very prominent role in liberal, progressive, faithful Mormonism.

Ganesh Cherian [03:20:51] Yep. Which is my space. Right. So I was working with her on that. I was a guest on her podcast several times.

John Dehlin [03:20:59] You were on a Thoughtful Faith as well?

Ganesh Cherian [03:21:01] Yep. Well, I was. You know, she interviewed me and we collaborated on a couple of things, and I wrote this blog for Kiwi Mormon, and it went viral and sparked my stake presidency. Really getting worried about me and thinking I was apostate. But the church had released these things, and I was just really referring to the essays.

John Dehlin [03:21:28] And by the way, onthoughtfulfaith.org, i just searched for Ganesh, and I found at least three episodes. So they're there.

Ganesh Cherian [03:21:39] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:40] So we'll maybe include those in the show notes.

Ganesh Cherian [03:21:43] Okay. Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:21:43] Yeah. Okay. Keep going.

Ganesh Cherian [03:21:45] And so when I did the blog, I got released from my calling on the High Council. But they did it very nicely. They didn't, you know, didn't make a big song and dance about it, and they released other people at the same time, so it looked like it wasn't just about me.

Ganesh Cherian [03:22:06] And they were very kind to me because really close friends with the stake president and one of my really close friends who had been the bishop prior had been in the stake presidency. So it was really good. But I.

Ganesh Cherian [03:22:23] In the release of the Gospel topics essays, and my understanding that things weren't as they were and that confirmation from the church, really. That sparked a. A great deal of unease for me. And so I spent a lot of time really investigating, sometimes getting very grumpy. I ran whole marathons at that time based on how I'd been frustrated. So I just, you know, go out and run and run for hours and come back. So, funnily enough, our award had a group of people that started a running group, and so I used to run with them, and we used to run, and we did half marathons and then marathons. And I did that all while, you know, deconstructing a lot of Mormon thought and culture and history. Just on runs.

Margi Dehlin [03:23:12] Yes. I've heard this a lot, actually, with people hiking, running, physical.

John Dehlin [03:23:18] And often they're listening to POD and they're listening to podcasts. That's a way to exercise, get frustration out and to learn.

Ganesh Cherian [03:23:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:23:25] In the process. I'm not trying to project that on you.

Ganesh Cherian [03:23:28] No, no, I was doing that, too. So that's. But it was a really a great way of, you know, getting rid of the angst while also processing it, so. And it had very little kind of downsides. My wife at the time was kind of like, oh, gosh, this is a big change. She knew my thoughts had changed. Cause I'm pretty open. Like, it's not like I'm a wallflower, but. But now that. Now that that was really well known to the rest of the ward and the stake, that was quite a big deal. And she thought, gosh, we might not be able to stay together.

John Dehlin [03:24:05] Word starts to get around in the stake.

Ganesh Cherian [03:24:07] Oh yeah. Like the moment I did the blog, it was. Yeah, everybody knew.

John Dehlin [03:24:10] I mean, what people don't. It's weird because Gina was playing such a prominent role for so long. Eventually Gina gets called to a disciplinary council and everyone rallies around her. Gina Colvin. And then she's not excommunicated and then she decides to resign shortly thereafter. But I mean that she was never the same after she was called into a disparate council. So I mean, her work was clearly sending ripples throughout the church in New Zealand. So I'm sure you and her, that was just not fun for the local leadership there.

Ganesh Cherian [03:24:51] And you know, because I had gone to church college because I'd served my mission in New Zealand. New Zealand is a village. Anyway, in terms of the church, I'm very. And because I'm bishop in Wellington, you know, like I'm prominent as a person that people like but also look up to. And so it's a. Yeah, a really, really big deal.

John Dehlin [03:25:12] And so you're saying your wife was starting to wonder, Lindy was starting to wonder if you were going to be able to stay married.

Ganesh Cherian [03:25:18] Correct. Yep.

John Dehlin [03:25:20] Well, that sounds serious.

Ganesh Cherian [03:25:21] Yeah, it's pretty serious. But we're good friends too, and. And she appreciates me. And so she was studying at the time, becoming a midwife and she managed. For me it was a lot about the history and the accuracy, but for her, she kind of looked at it from a completely different direction and thought a lot more about the people and the fairness and it ended up that she had her own deconstruction and came away.

John Dehlin [03:26:01] So she studied, she, she started becoming open minded about the truthfulness of the Mormon Church. Probably based on your deconstruction.

Ganesh Cherian [03:26:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:26:11] And through concern about marginalized peoples.

Ganesh Cherian [03:26:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:26:15] Ended up having her own deconstruction.

Ganesh Cherian [03:26:17] Correct.

John Dehlin [03:26:18] And was that within a year of yours or within a few years?

Ganesh Cherian [03:26:22] Within the next couple of years.

John Dehlin [03:26:24] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [03:26:25] Yeah. And we did things very slowly. So slowly because the kids were so, you know, teenagers in there, busy having a good time. The church. So it was, you know, we, we did it very, very slowly. Yeah. And that's a whole nother story, I guess, but, you know, over the period of time in our Life. So that's 10 years ago now.

John Dehlin [03:26:47] No, it's still 10 years ago.

Ganesh Cherian [03:26:49] So, you know, that's still. It's a lot of time. So then after that, I guess I, the church being open with the gospel topics essays allowed me to really go, okay, I really need to understand this better. And I want to understand why, why I would miss these things. You know, like you're just saying, how was it that I was a. I felt like a critical thinker, but actually I wasn't, so why wasn't I a critical thinker? What things could I have done better?

Ganesh Cherian [03:27:22] And the essays on polygamy really shook me and I realized I just had a really basic knowledge of what that was all about and I needed to know more. So I did a whole lot of research on that. Lindsay Hanson's park, her podcast, the Year of Polygamy was really instrumental in kind of understanding, kind of the background.

Ganesh Cherian [03:27:50] But I did a lot of. A lot, a lot of research and ended up doing a number of articles on Kiwi Mormon, one of which was around polygamy and tracking its development and its impact on Mormon culture through to the present day. And I realised that the polygamy was a really important factor that had massive, massive implications.

Ganesh Cherian [03:28:17] So that took me a long time to write, six months or something like that. And then just over the years, I've just. After you get past the frustration and the angst, you know, you kind of start to see Mormonism is quite fascinating. A real kind of petri dish of human emotion and development and.

Ganesh Cherian [03:28:46] And thinking, you know, group think as well as, you know, people doing incredible things. And so I kind of put on my anthropology hat and, you know, kind of looked at Mormonism from a objective position with an understanding of how the inner workings are and tried to deconstruct a lot of the things that.

Ganesh Cherian [03:29:11] That Mormonism is and why and how to try and get some of the answers to, you know, how did Mountain Meadows Massacre happen? Why did these people do these terrible things to others? You know, why did we, you know, go down this track of denying the priesthood to black members and stop them from attending the temple? You know, why have we got to the point where we, while we're dying on this hill of LGBTQ issues, you know, and tried to figure out a way to understand how these things are made up.

John Dehlin [03:29:53] So you started really getting into Mormon studies, basically.

Ganesh Cherian [03:29:56] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And so part of that has been real interest in a writing, you know, kind of deconstructing that. So trying to lay out an understanding of the chronology so you can figure out why it is that things have, you know, worked the way that they did, and then trying to put it down on paper so that you can figure out how to track it.

Examining Book of Mormon Historicity

Ganesh Cherian [03:30:26] So most recently, so two years ago, there were a couple of. Things that happened that made Me really look at Book of Mormon historicity, because like I said before, I really liked those characters, right? They felt real to me. They were people to me. And so I really, even though I deconstructed a lot of other things, I hadn't really deconstructed the Book of Mormon.

Ganesh Cherian [03:30:55] The process was weird and problematic, but the text I still have a huge fondness for. So a couple of things that happened. One was that William Davis talked in Sunstone. This was during COVID of course, looking

John Dehlin [03:31:13] at visions in a Seer Stone.

Ganesh Cherian [03:31:16] Is that the book Visions of Seer Stone? Yep. And talked about the oratory mechanism of producing the Book of Mormon and how that was very much akin to sermon Culture of 19th century Early America and how many of the textual features of the Book of Mormon mirror sermon culture in the 19th century. So I found that fascinating. That was really an idea of, oh, gosh, how could this book be produced? And the other one was, you know, Dan McClellan, his work on biblical scholarship, and then the few times that he talked about the Book of Mormon, you know, if you go to the comments and look at what he.

Ganesh Cherian [03:31:56] How he was responding, you know, his key message was the preponderance of evidence is that the Book of Mormon is a 19th century text. And he, you know, one of his tiktoks would say, you know, look, if you really want to understand the Book of Mormon, you need to look at it from a 19th century lens.

Ganesh Cherian [03:32:15] So those two things made me think, gosh, you know, I wonder if I could write. Write a little article about, you know, some of the oddities I'd seen in the Book of Mormon that might be, I think, interesting to explore.

Ganesh Cherian [03:32:28] So I started to write an article and a couple of issues, and then I realized that there was a pattern, Right. And the pattern is, you know, you've got Joseph Smith's environment In the early 19th century, you've got his family, his immediate family, and then you got his own personal circumstances. And those things seem to all correlate very closely with some specific things in the Book of Mormon.

Ganesh Cherian [03:32:57] So you could see that what was happening in his life was also happening in the Book of Mormon. And then you could even track that

John Dehlin [03:33:06] his dad was a visionary. He was the son of a visionary. Maybe his brothers were mischievous at times. His dad had a dream much like the Tree of Life. They got kicked out and had to travel quite a bit. That sort of thing.

Ganesh Cherian [03:33:24] Yeah, that sort of thing.

John Dehlin [03:33:26] There was a lot of religious conflict in their home, which then plays out into the narratives about which Church is true. And how do you find out? Not to mention the treasure digging and, and finding treasure in a hill, which sounds very much like Moroni. You know what I mean? Right, that sort of thing.

Ganesh Cherian [03:33:48] Yeah, it's all of those things. Yeah. There's these close correlations between what's in the text of the Book of Mormon and what's happening in Joseph's life.

John Dehlin [03:33:59] Oh yeah, all the sermons in the Book of Mormon are Protestant, basically 19th century Protestant sermons, much like the ones Joseph would have heard in the burned over district, you know, when he was, you know, in the 1830s or 20s. Sorry, when he was trying to figure all this stuff out.

Ganesh Cherian [03:34:15] Right, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'd done all that work on particularly polygamy too, tracking that through. And you can. The other part of that is you see that this carries through to the early Doctrine and Covenants, like the Church is trying to implement the messages of the Book of Mormon. And that's a, you know, so you can see there's a, there's a huge correlation. Those five things are all heavily correlated. The environment, the family, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, early doctrine, covenants, all very, very correlatable. But then you see the Nauvoo Church, what becomes is quite different. Sometimes even the exact opposite.

John Dehlin [03:35:02] Yeah, like instead of polygamy's forbidden, polygamy is required.

Ganesh Cherian [03:35:07] That's right. That's a complete contradiction.

John Dehlin [03:35:10] Yeah, totally. God's one, now God's multiple, right?

Ganesh Cherian [03:35:14] Yes, exactly. And so then you can also see these little pivots that happen in particularly the 1830s. Sometimes at the beginning, sometimes in the middle, sometimes at the end, where what the Church and Joseph Smith is trying to implement is not working. And there's some conflict, some massive eruption or some pivot and it flips. And then the Nauvoo era is completely different.

Ganesh Cherian [03:35:43] So you've got these five correlated things to the beginning of the early Doctrine and Covenants. Then you have this pivot point and then you have what ends up being the Church in Nauvoo. And that arc of development you can track over, you know, just tons and tons of issues. You can track it under polygamy, you can track it under freemasonry, you can track it under treasure seeking, you can track it under theology, like the nature of God, you can track it.

Ganesh Cherian [03:36:20] And the ways that American colonial settlers talked about early America. And that arc is robust. And so I started writing and using that kind of arc, I could find things that I wasn't even cognizant of because when you read the Book of Mormon, you see the things that.

Ganesh Cherian [03:36:45] That relate to you. You're not often aware of the things that other people kind of pick up on. But if you have that kind of formulaic key, you can look at these different issues and you can track them through and you can see the development, you can see the change. You can see that this is really specifically related to Joseph.

Ganesh Cherian [03:37:14] And so that, you know, a few. That little article I thought I was going to write ended up being a massive book. So it's turned into a whole endeavor.

John Dehlin [03:37:27] And maybe Margi, you can grab it, the book's over there and we can have Ganesh actually show it. But tell us what the book's name is probably gonna be or what it is. I know you mentioned before.

Ganesh Cherian [03:37:37] So it's 19th century evidences and Development of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

John Dehlin [03:37:45] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:37:46] So it's designed to be a bit of a. Oh gosh, it's right here. But the.

John Dehlin [03:37:53] Hold it up and I guess it's not totally readable. But that's not going to be what it actually looks like.

Ganesh Cherian [03:38:03] No, no.

Margi Dehlin [03:38:04] You can show the thickness too.

Ganesh Cherian [03:38:06] Oh yes.

John Dehlin [03:38:07] Like just how it won't be that thick though.

Margi Dehlin [03:38:10] But it's not an article.

Ganesh Cherian [03:38:12] It's not an article anymore and hopefully it's gonna be useful. Cause I think that for me, like, I love the church, I guess that we started with that as the premise at the very beginning. And I want it to be amazing. Obviously there's some stuff which is less than amazing, but there is.

Margi Dehlin [03:38:34] I'm noticing a pattern of understatement in

Ganesh Cherian [03:38:38] the way you talk,

Margi Dehlin [03:38:41] but do continue.

Ganesh Cherian [03:38:41] Sorry, continue. Okay. So I hope so this has become. It was started off as an examination of the Book of Mormon, but it's become more of an examination of Joseph Smith. So his life, where it went to on all of these different issues. And you can see Joseph as a human, as a person, which I think is better than what we've currently got.

Ganesh Cherian [03:39:11] But it also shows that there are some places where he has been really innovative, incredibly inspiring. But there's a. Certainly lots of other places where he has been terrible, where it's horrific and the ramifications and the consequences are unthinkable.

Ganesh Cherian [03:39:32] So in terms of that the book is a real. Or hopefully Dan McClellan said it too. Right. He's going. Most people look into the Book of Mormon from either the idea that Joseph is a fraud and that the worst thing ever, or they're looking at from the point of view that Joseph is this incredible prophet and it's the most important thing ever.

Ganesh Cherian [03:39:57] And I hope to have struck a balance in the middle where you see that the Book of Mormon and the church and the development of the church is very human. It's very relatable, it's incredibly. Important if we'd see ourselves in that same light. Because if the Book of Mormon was written by Joseph or created, produced by Joseph when he was 23 years old and he's idealistic and he wants these things to be, you know, he wants the concerns that he has to be addressed.

Ganesh Cherian [03:40:36] Maybe he's not quite cognizant of all the privilege that he has in this community, but he wants it to be better. And so he's, you know, and he puts his ideas down by voicing them through ancient prophets so that they have some merit, they have some mechanism of speaking. And then people take those concerns and they run with them as well. And he's able to then try and implement them, which he does in the early church. But of course, like all of our idealistic ideals when we're kids and young adults, they don't really translate into the real world. And so he has to change, he has to pivot. And some of those pivots end in some really interesting, amazing things. And some of those things, pivots are horrific and really challenging.

Writing a Critical Book on the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [03:41:33] So do you want to, and like we'll do an entire episode on that book. Do you want to just give a sampling of like some of the things you highlight in the book just to give people a taste for why they would want to buy the book and what cool things they would learn from it?

Ganesh Cherian [03:41:51] Yeah, well, I think one of the things I, you know, if we're going back to that theme of prejudices and privileges, one of the things that I think is fascinating is that you can look at the, that Joseph is concerned about and they're really practical things. There are things that I was concerned about as a 14 year old that was reading the Book of Mormon. Right. Like I don't have a lot. And there's people with some really nice clothing, you know, they're all showy and I feel terrible, you know, and Joseph identifies that that's identified in the Book of Mormon again and again. The idea that, you know, kind of secular pride starts with costly apparel.

Ganesh Cherian [03:42:31] It is just again and again and again. And then you have the next section of secular pride. So there's, there's, I think the prejudice in the Book of Mormon are really fascinating because there's almost like three different areas and three different levels of severity. So there's secular concerns, there's religious concerns, and then there's political concerns that Joseph has. And there are three different areas of severity. One's pride and then corruption and then abomination.

Ganesh Cherian [03:43:12] And so you get this kind of matrix where you go secular pride is costly apparel and secular corruption is, is lawyers. There's a whole lot of anti lawyer sentiment in the church. And secular abomination is secret combinations and conspiracy.

Ganesh Cherian [03:43:35] And so you see Joseph concerned about these things. These are things that we're concerned about today. But they play out in really interesting ways because Joseph ends up, you know, wanting really nice clothing. Joseph ends up becoming a lawyer when the basis of the Book of Mormon is kind of really a lot of anti lawyer sentiment. And he becomes a freemason when the Book of Mormon is really against kind of secret combinations and secret groups.

Ganesh Cherian [03:44:07] So we have this really interesting flip because at 23, he's idealist. By 35 he's utilizing these systems to advantage him. And so you can do that with religious pride, which is fine buildings, religious corruption, which is priest crafts, and then religious abomination, which is Catholicism or the great an abominable church. Right. And then you can do this with the political system. So kings, you know, the Book of Mormon's really anti kings. It's really anti taxation and it's really anti polygamy, which is. Polygamy's linked to the sexual excesses of political leaders like kings.

Ganesh Cherian [03:45:00] And you see that on all of those three things. Joseph also flips. He goes, the Book of Mormon's anti king. And then in Nauvoo he gets crowned

John Dehlin [03:45:09] king of the King of the World.

Ganesh Cherian [03:45:11] King of the world?

John Dehlin [03:45:12] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:45:14] In the political system he's anti taxation in the Book of Mormon. But in Nauvoo there's a system of heavy taxation. People get fined all the time for their misbehavior and there's tithing and all of those things. And then of course, of course, polygamy is the ultimate. You know, it goes from the Book of Mormon not being anti polygamy and then polygamy being required in Nauvoo. And so if you track all of those particular nine prejudices in the Book of Mormon, you can track them through the early Doctrine and Covenants. And the Doctrine and Covenants has those same pre, those same prejudices. Then there's some pivot that changes Joseph's mind on this particular aspect because of some conflict that's going on.

Ganesh Cherian [03:46:06] And then he implements those same prejudices that are existing in the Book of Mormon. He adopts them as his way of working. And that's a very normal thing that all of us do. Right? We have our ideals as youngins. We realize, working in the real world, that some of those things need to change, and we adopt some of the things that we used to think were bad.

John Dehlin [03:46:35] So, like, for people who have lost their faith in the church or deconstructed their faith or are not liking the Church, one of the Holy Grails for them is to, like, find the silver bullet evidence that the Book of Mormon is not a historical document, that it's a work of fiction, and that Joseph is the author. So let's just say that that's one motive or endeavor for studying Mormon church history and for writing about it. If there were a pie chart for your motivations for writing this book, how much was disproving the historicity or the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon? What percentage of the pie chart? What was your motivation for writing this book, if you could even estimate?

Ganesh Cherian [03:47:25] I don't know. I don't think I thought about it in those terms. No, I think I thought about it in the idea of, can I understand this better by looking at what themes are here and can I track them better? Does that make sense? Like, you know, I want to understand why it is that these things changed. Like, I'm really conscious that the church in Nauvoo is quite different from the church in Kirtland.

John Dehlin [03:48:00] And Mormon theology in Nauvoo is extremely different than 1830 Book of Mormon, Mormon theology.

Ganesh Cherian [03:48:08] Well, 1830 Book of Mormon theology is

John Dehlin [03:48:11] normal Christian theology, Protestant, early 19th century frontier Protestant Christian theology.

Ganesh Cherian [03:48:19] Exactly.

John Dehlin [03:48:20] I mean, even Mormon and Alma and Helaman are preaching frontier, early 19th century, you know, upstate New York Protestant theology.

Ganesh Cherian [03:48:31] Right, that's exactly right.

John Dehlin [03:48:32] Yeah. Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:48:33] And so how does it get to Nauvoo? What are the mechanisms that get it there? And so I'm really interested in that. Like, why? Why isn't Care of the Poor a really seminal focus of the Church? Because it's a seminal focus of the Book of Mormon. So how did it get to not be, you know, in the latter church? But it actually wasn't in Nauvoo either. Things had changed quite dramatically from Nauvoo. And so actually, the modern church ends at Joseph's death. Like, there's not a lot of innovation that happens after his death. And even the stuff that Brigham Young did gets walked back. So the church as we kind of operate it today is the church that Joseph died with in 1844. So what got the church from the Book of Mormon? Thinking things like, you know, the poor, the, you know, sharing is the most important thing that we should be doing,

John Dehlin [03:49:34] and material imperialism is the worst.

Ganesh Cherian [03:49:36] Yes. How do we go from that to the current church? Well, actually, it went there much sooner than that went there in Joseph's lifetime. And he changed quite dramatically.

Margi Dehlin [03:49:47] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:49:47] He went from being, you know, grateful he had a bed to sleep on to demanding that the church members build him a house.

John Dehlin [03:49:55] A mansion.

Ganesh Cherian [03:49:56] A mansion.

John Dehlin [03:49:57] I mean, the Nauvoo. His Nauvoo house is called the Nauvoo Mansion.

Margi Dehlin [03:50:00] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:50:00] Right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:50:01] Right.

John Dehlin [03:50:01] That's right.

Ganesh Cherian [03:50:02] I don't want to play it, but that's right. So how did he go from there? And if. And when did it change? When did he. When was that pivot where that changed and is that really God? I guess if you're thinking about it from a theological standpoint. But I tried to keep God out of it, even though we're talking about God, of course. The idea of, okay, well, if we track this through Joseph, can we understand these changes in the church? If we look at Joseph's life and what happened in the process?

Ganesh Cherian [03:50:39] And I think I can. I think that that's what the. You know, I've got 55 different themes you can, you know, 45 of them you can track through from. You know, this is early 19th century America. This is his family. This is what's in the Book of Mormon. This is what's in the early Doctrine Covenants or the Book of Moses. And this is what gets, you know, this is some pivot that's happened. And then into Nauvoo, it's a completely different story.

John Dehlin [03:51:11] So did you try submitting it to either signature books or covert books as a publisher?

Ganesh Cherian [03:51:16] No, I didn't originally because I just. I was doing it for fun. But in listening to people like Dan Vogel, you know, and others who are publishing, it seemed like the lead time was, like, years. And while I appreciate that, if you're gonna do something, you know, really significant and detailed, you know, it needs to take years. I didn't want to take years to get to this point.

John Dehlin [03:51:46] So you're self publishing?

Ganesh Cherian [03:51:48] Self publishing, yes.

John Dehlin [03:51:48] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [03:51:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:51:49] Do you want to talk about the controversies with the title and church, legal or not?

Ganesh Cherian [03:51:55] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [03:51:56] Gosh.

Ganesh Cherian [03:51:56] It's been really interesting, too. So in the process of doing this, I really wanted to kind of peer review the book and what I was writing because I wanted to make sure that A, it was accurate, but B, it wasn't going to be too horrific for the people who know me and maybe concerned about my own motivations.

Ganesh Cherian [03:52:23] So I put it out on Facebook that I was doing. I thought I better, you know, let people know, particularly my family and friends, that I was doing this work. So about nine months ago, I put out my personal Facebook page and said, look, this is what I'm doing.

Ganesh Cherian [03:52:39] This is where I've got to. I really appreciate anybody helping me out to critique what I'm doing. And in doing so, I'm going to do a TikTok for every chapter and kind of go over the material I've got so far so that other people can add or subtract or give me an understanding of it.

Ganesh Cherian [03:53:05] And so that's what I did. And that created a huge stir. There were, there are some people who are really excited about me doing this. There's other members of my friends who felt really threatened by me doing this. And so this sparked a lot of debate on my personal Facebook page.

Ganesh Cherian [03:53:28] One of my friends, dear friend, basically said, you're in full blown apost messaged me. So personal message said, you're on full blown apostasy. You need to be stopped. That kind of a feeling. And then other people going, oh, this is so refreshing. We want to look at this differently. I think you've got an incredibly empathetic, kind way of looking at things and I think that you'd really help to broaden the understanding of this important subject.

Ganesh Cherian [03:54:04] So really mixed bag. But about in May, I just was needs to. I needed to finish it and I wanted to push myself to finish. So I did up a little cover which mirrored the Book of Mormon, the blue Book of Mormon cover with the wording, and put that out on my Facebook page telling people I was planning to publish in a month so that you could be ready for this. I got a lot of, you know, great feedback and people excited about having a look at it. Lots of active members, I'm an active member. They're interested in seeing it. And then I got a letter from the church or church lawyers in Auckland.

John Dehlin [03:54:54] Based on your Facebook post?

Ganesh Cherian [03:54:56] Based on my Facebook post. Wow. So. And obviously one of my dear friends had passed that on to the church and they took exception to the fact that the COVID and it was really just. An idea that it looked a lot like the Book of Mormon cover. And so the church sent me a cease and desist letter saying that I couldn't publish and I should withdraw anything that has been published.

John Dehlin [03:55:28] What were they upset about, like, people published books about Mormon. Like William Davis published his book. Like, was it copyright stuff?

Ganesh Cherian [03:55:36] So they. So the initial thing was on trademark, the idea that I was using the words the Book of Mormon and that people might be confused by my book as being authored or authorised by the church that they would perhaps read it not knowing that it wasn't the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [03:55:59] I mean, that's weird. There's the musical, the Book of Mormon. There's like, how many books even published by Deseret Book include the name, you know, the title of the Book of Mormon in the title of their book.

Ganesh Cherian [03:56:11] Right, Correct, correct. And there are a number of books which look. And they have the same title and feel as the. The current blue copy of the Book of Mormon. So absolutely. They. It's not like anybody's done this book.

John Dehlin [03:56:27] Joanna Brooks, isn't her book called Book of Mormon Girl? Yeah, like, okay, yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [03:56:33] So I think that they took exception because probably one of my friends had taken exception and put it towards them. So then I. But it did give me the chance to have a look at the Book of Mormon, the words the Book of Mormon as a trademark. And actually there's nothing stopping you from doing, from making your cover look like the Book of Mormon.

Ganesh Cherian [03:56:56] The Book of Mormon layout for the COVID of the Book of Mormon is not trademarked at all. The words the Book of Mormon are trademarked. So you can't call your thing thy Book of Mormon, but in terms of the layout, it's really not an issue. So I got my lawyer involved. Cause you have to do this via lawyers, of course. And a friend of mine, and he wrote back and said, look, this is not an infringing trademark. And. But we're not. I'm not set on the COVID I'm willing to change it. So I changed a little bit, sent it back. They came back in even more forceful letters saying basically, not only do we not want you to use the Book of Mormon, the words in the COVID we think that the. The content and the content of your. Your tiktoks are inflammatory and we want you to destroy all working copies of your book.

John Dehlin [03:57:55] Or what?

Ganesh Cherian [03:57:56] Or they were taken out.

John Dehlin [03:57:58] An injunction, not your disciplinary council. Excommunication. You mean like suing you?

Ganesh Cherian [03:58:06] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:58:07] Okay, Correct.

Ganesh Cherian [03:58:09] So that caused quite a bit of angst and. But it was really interesting to see. You know, sometimes you find yourself in a little bit of a surreal moment where you're going, am I really that important to the church? I can't see that I'm that important. Why? I'm flattered that they're willing to take such an interest in me, in my writings, but I don't think it's warranted by any means. So we've since sent back a revised cover of the Book of Mormon, changed the colour to gold rather than blue, which is interesting because actually when you reinverse the royal blue, you get gold. So that's probably how they originally got the Book of Mormon to be blue in the first place. And then they've. So we've acquiesced a little bit and they've backed down and it seems that I'm now able to publish, so that's what I'll try and do.

John Dehlin [03:59:17] Nice. Are you excited? Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [03:59:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:59:20] But.

Ganesh Cherian [03:59:21] Well, I'm just. I just want it to be over. It seems like it's just taken such a long time. And the problem, of course, whenever you write something. Cause you look at it a thousand times and then you. In any creative endeavour, you go, oh, this is crap. Like, you know, you look at it and you go, oh, this is nothing. I started reading Dan Vogel's biography, his second biography, and it's just so brilliant, you know, like. And I'm not even in the.

Ganesh Cherian [03:59:51] Not even, you know, near that kind of quality, which I feel. And yet I think I've got something that's really unique. I had. Michael Marklead had a look over the thing, you know, and he went through it all and he checked out my stuff and he's no slouch. He's no slouch and he's just such a lovely, lovely man.

Ganesh Cherian [04:00:13] But he said, I'd never seen this before and this is really unique and I think that it's got something of value to add. And that's my great hope, right? Like, if this idea of New Mormon history, where we're utilising the Joseph Smith's Papers project to make these source documents available for anybody to research that and really admitting to a much more human Joseph than we have in the past, that if we're willing to do that. Actually, you know, these are some of the stories that I think we need to tell and we need to see him in a much more fuller context. What we decide to do with that, once we have it, is entirely, you know, I guess it comes up to your whole ethos of, you know, informed consent.

Ganesh Cherian [04:01:04] But if we understand what's going on and we understand how it all came to play, we can decide, well, these are some things that we think are really important that we want to carry over. And these are Some things that maybe we've gone off on a tangent on that are not good or not right or not worthwhile to pursue. So I hope for that to be the case.

Why Mormonism Still Has Value Despite Its Problems

John Dehlin [04:01:27] So, so many people that deconstruct their Mormon faith end up like, angry at the church, hating the church, wanting to take the church down. They often don't want anything to do with church activity, and they often want to resign their membership and have nothing to do with it. What has led to your decision to maintain your membership and even continue attending and to do Mormon history, but as a member in good standing, what's behind that versus the other more antagonistic routes you might possibly take?

Ganesh Cherian [04:02:17] Gosh. Well, I don't know if I'm in good standing. My stake president has already told me if I publish this book that I'm subject to church discipline, so that's a likely scenario that I might not be a member any longer.

Margi Dehlin [04:02:32] Okay.

John Dehlin [04:02:33] Would you attend your disciplinary council if they held one? Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [04:02:36] Yeah, I think so.

John Dehlin [04:02:38] You don't? And do you want to be excommunicated?

Ganesh Cherian [04:02:40] No. No. Like, I'm philosophically opposed to excommunication. I think that that's a. It's a violence, which is what I'm totally against and what brought up this whole thing in the first place. But also I think that, you know, if people like me who care leave or are ousted, then the church becomes a little bit smaller and more insular and more extreme and becomes worse. So I'm interested in voices that are different, that allow for a breadth of understanding.

John Dehlin [04:03:18] Like Dan McClellan.

Ganesh Cherian [04:03:19] Like Dan McClellan, yeah. You know, because, gosh. Oh, funny story. So I was. I went to see my mission presidents wife the other day. Alta Lloyd, my mission presence, died many years ago. And she is a incredible person, formidable. She lives in Cadesville and she is. Her and I have been friends, you know, beyond the fact that she's my mission mother. You know, we are friends and I know from my Facebook posts that she's been a little concerned about me.

Ganesh Cherian [04:03:54] So I thought I said as I was here, I'd go and see her and visit with her and just assure her that the same person that she always knew and that, you know, just lovely. So we had a very upfront conversation because she's up front and so am I. And during the course of the conversation, I'm presenting my ideas and she's presenting hers. And we're dialoguing with a lot of love because we do have a lot of love for each other. And she said to me, I know what's happened to you, Kadesh?

Ganesh Cherian [04:04:29] You've read some of those books, you know, those, you know, anti Mormon, anti Mormon books. You know, you've been influenced by, you know, Richard Bushman.

John Dehlin [04:04:43] Richard Bushman led you as a faithful Mormon patriarch.

Ganesh Cherian [04:04:51] Her kind of feeling was that, you know, people like Richard Bushman are really pushing people out of the church because they're telling things that are not faith promoted. And she had. It wasn't just me. She had lots of examples of people who had read Rough Stone Rolling and felt like, you know, this wasn't the church they wanted to belong to. So she was really quite worried about that. And I've had friends who've read that and been concern, but I've read, I've had friends read that and feel relieved, right, that Joseph is a real person, not just this kind of near deity person. So I think it really depends on your viewpoint.

Ganesh Cherian [04:05:33] And I hope that that's the case with my book too, that people read it and go, oh, I understand now. And for some people that's gonna be. I understand. I'm just, I'm so excited about being here with that kind of understand.

Ganesh Cherian [04:05:45] And some people are gonna read it and go, oh, gosh, I understand that. And oh, gosh, I don't want to be involved with that. I get that that's gonna be the case. But I think if we're gonna have a accurate new Mormon history that takes into consideration that Joseph was an actual person, not just a demigod, we're going to have to confront that idea that things are messy and human. And I hope that my book gives me, gives people that opportunity.

Ganesh Cherian [04:06:17] And if, and I need to do the things that I think are worthwhile and if that means that my membership might be called into question, hopefully I can defend it because I want to stay. But I feel like that's an important marker. So.

John Dehlin [04:06:36] So going back to kind of what is a very common path, which is sort of the critical. Angry at the church, get away from the church, take the church down. Church is illegitimate. Even kind of the church's occult mindset. There's a mindset that's like the Book of Mormon is fiction, which means Joseph Smith was a fraud, not to mention his polygamy. And, you know, some would say even reaching the level of sort of sexual predation, like because of all those problems. The church, they would say, oh, the church is a cult or the church is corrupt and so to heck with it all, it should all go away.

John Dehlin [04:07:16] What I'm hearing philosophically is you don't think the Church should go away. You want to retain your membership and you think there's a way to. Even though the Book of Mormon you would acknowledge now is fiction, there's still a way to even engage that book in a way that can be healthy and enlightening for an individual or even for a community.

John Dehlin [04:07:43] What is it that informs your perspective that Mormonism is not only not to be thrown away, but in spite of Joseph Smith and scriptural problems, is worth maintaining, strengthening and engaging with in spite of Joseph's flaws and the historical problems with the Scripture. What informs that? What's your vision?

Ganesh Cherian [04:08:12] I guess, firstly, my vision is understanding. I think if you've got better understanding, you're able to make better informed decisions. I think that's the. The basis and the whole idea of deconstructing and looking at things in a much better light is hopefully being able to then take that light and do something better with it.

Ganesh Cherian [04:08:36] I don't think the Church is going away anytime soon. It's got hundreds of billions of dollars, right? So it's going to be around. So I would like to see them use those hundred billion dollars to do beautiful things. And I think that we've got a lot of blueprints of that in the Book of Mormon. I'd push back on you with the idea that the Book of Mormon is fiction.

Ganesh Cherian [04:08:58] I don't see it as fiction. I see it as. It's not historical and it's not ancient, but it's born out of the truths that Joseph Smith and the ideals that Joseph Smith had in his life in 1820. And he utilized fictional characters like ancient prophets, so Pseudepigrapha to enact some ideals that he thought were really important we should address.

Ganesh Cherian [04:09:31] And that's not so different from many of the books in the Old Testament and the New Testament that have, you know, are not historical but have value for, you know, looking at the world and understanding a connection to God and doing those things. So I hope that we. Look, there's lots of things in the Book of Mormon I don't agree with. I don't agree with the skin curse, for obvious reasons, but I think that if we can understand that the Book of Mormon makes reference of things like, you know, skin curse about this othering that happens between colonial settlers and Native Americans, that if we can understand that interplay and recognise that that was very much a feature of Joseph's day, that we might be able to jettison that from our cultural makeup. Does that make sense, that that give

John Dehlin [04:10:33] you a. Yeah, And I definitely don't want to squabble or nitpick, but. But I think a literal translation of the word pseudepigrapha is false text. And I guess I was just assuming that if something pseudepigrapha, if it's text written, attributed to someone who didn't write the text, therefore that's false text, therefore it's not historical. I get. I don't mean to quibble, and it doesn't, but I guess I'm struggling to understand why you wouldn't say it's fiction, the Book of Mormon.

Ganesh Cherian [04:11:08] Well, to me, it's not ancient. Right. It's not a story of America. It's not a story of Native Americans. So it's not ancient, those kinds of things. But it is a story about. Effectively about Joseph Smith, and it's a story about people who are marginalized, who are living in a world where, you know, things are tough, things are happening to them, their reaction to it, and also how they're interpreting that in their lives so that they can move forward. And I think that the Book of Mormon offers lots of those kinds of examples.

John Dehlin [04:11:43] Yeah. And I'm not trying to, like, correct you or reframe what you're saying, but, like, some would say autobiography is the highest form of fiction. In other words.

Ganesh Cherian [04:11:57] Right.

John Dehlin [04:11:58] Just because someone is writing nonfiction doesn't make it accurate or true. But I think some, like Margi, who loves literature, would say fiction can be some of the most profound and true, you know. You know, types of writing in all of literature. What I'm hearing you say is the Book of Mormon. We can learn a lot from it. It can be inspiring, it can be informative. It can just help us understand the world better and to be better people. But it can. It can be fiction and still be that. Yes.

Ganesh Cherian [04:12:38] Yep. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:12:39] But I'm not. But I'm not trying to quibble. I'm just trying to. I do want to understand if you literally mean it's not fiction. I want. I do want to understand what you mean by that.

Margi Dehlin [04:12:47] Yeah.

Ganesh Cherian [04:12:48] And you're absolutely right.

John Dehlin [04:12:49] Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [04:12:49] I think that it's. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:12:51] So it's inspiring, it's instructive, it's useful, and for you, it's profoundly so.

Ganesh Cherian [04:12:59] Yeah, Yeah, I think so. I think I've. Yeah, I love it as a text. I think there are beta texts. Like, I'm not suggesting the Book of Mormon's the epitome of great writing and understanding, but I think coupled with the way that the Church operates and also our personal experience in the church.

Ganesh Cherian [04:13:22] It gives us ways to reflect our experience and understand it better and hopefully, you know, take those lessons and apply them throughout our lives. They're not just church lessons. You know, the othering that happens in the Book of Mormon, that's the othering that happens, you know, in normal life. Right.

Ganesh Cherian [04:13:45] That feeling of persecution that we sometimes feel, that's a feeling that we get and that we propagate as we go out. Feeling of superiority also. Right. That somebody else is less than us. Those are things that we can address.

Ganesh Cherian [04:14:07] And if we can see that these are the things that happened to Joseph throughout his life, then we can all also see that these things happen to us. It's probably the reason why the Book of Mormon we found profound in any way as we went on. But actually they're good mirrors for looking at human behaviour, looking at human systems and figuring out why things worked and why things didn't. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [04:14:36] It's an exploration of the human condition, Correct? Yeah. Right.

Ganesh Cherian [04:14:40] And I think that's what's what, you know, we've already got to the point, right, where we. We look at the Book of Abraham as pseudepigrapher, I think that there's definitely a speaking and leaning, an understanding. The Book of Mormon is probably in that category, you know, and maybe in the next 10 to 20 years we will. We will come to terms with that.

Ganesh Cherian [04:15:06] Over the pulpit, maybe. Even so, then, I hope that this is kind of seminal work that allows that transition to happen, because I'm just some guy at the end of the world on my computer in my lounge coming up with this. And the only reason I could even do this is because the Church has published this stuff on the Joseph Smith's Papers Project. You know, I don't have to come to Salt Lake to look through archives to investigate this stuff. I can do it on my laptop in my living room. And that means that every single other member of the church, or anybody interested in Mormonism can do exactly the same thing.

John Dehlin [04:15:46] So are you saying many of the sources in your book are from the Joseph Smith Papers Project?

Ganesh Cherian [04:15:50] Yeah, it's primarily the Joseph Smith Project.

John Dehlin [04:15:52] So you went to primary sources?

Ganesh Cherian [04:15:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:15:54] Oh, okay. Wow.

Ganesh Cherian [04:15:56] But a lot of it's. Yeah, this is new Mormon history. This is what you can discover for yourself. So somebody's going to talk about this stuff? People already are. Dan Vogel is already doing this stuff. Richard Bushman is already doing this stuff, just at a higher level than me.

Ganesh Cherian [04:16:17] But anybody can do this, and I'm just anybody. The one thing that I think that I've got an advantage of. And why I think maybe I am in a unique position to do it is because I've done all that deconstruction and I'm not angry.

Ganesh Cherian [04:16:37] I'm investing my ward. I go, I want it to be there. I love this space. But also I recognise I'm hopefully objective enough to say that there's some things that need to change and I've got enough privilege through my Mormon cred, my boxes that I've ticked, that I've. That hopefully I've got a voice to be able to voice these things in a compassionate, understanding way that hopefully will allow the bridge between those two worlds. You know, of gosh, this is a fraud and therefore everybody has to leave it or this is the best thing ever. And, and you're an apostate if you call anything out.

Ganesh Cherian [04:17:21] You know, those are the polemics that I think are a part of our current political climate. You know, us versus them. But if we really want to gain understanding and be better, we have to bridge that divide. So, hoping that this is it.

John Dehlin [04:17:39] And as I hear your story, I'm reminded of, like, Sam Young or Juanita Brooks or so many people who love the church, wanted the best for the church, put in their 10 cents to try and help the church, and then they risked punishment for it or even extra communication for it. And there's a big long list of people I could mention. Knowing that you love the church, are grateful for the Church's influence in your life and love the Book of Mormon. How do you think you might feel if you're excommunicated for what you consider to be a offering of love to Mormonism? How will you feel if excommunication is your fate?

Ganesh Cherian [04:18:26] I guess I began this project with the idea that that might be the case. I hope it's not. You know, I hope that I. That I'm a. That they can stop happening. Right. So I. I'm encouraged by the fact that Gina Colvin, you know, didn't get excommunicated. And I'm. And I'm terribly sad that other people have, you know, Natasha Halfa more recently, you know, so I think that we need, if we're gonna get to this new maturity in the Church, excommunication for this kind of stuff has gotta go. And I guess we, you know, I don't know what will happen and I hope that I can represent this. Well, maybe I won't. I don't know. I guess I don't hold myself to the outcome. I Held myself to the idea that this is the thing I think is right and worthwhile doing.

John Dehlin [04:19:39] So sort of do what is right. Let the consequence follow. Is that what you're saying?

Ganesh Cherian [04:19:43] That sounds vaguely familiar. I don't know where that.

Margi Dehlin [04:19:45] Where is that from?

Ganesh Cherian [04:19:46] Where did she.

John Dehlin [04:19:47] Where did we come up with that really quickly? Because I know we gotta run. Where do you now stand on God, Jesus, sort of faith at all, the afterlife? We gotta do it quick, but just reconstruction, you know, basically, I hope for

Ganesh Cherian [04:20:06] all of those things. I absolutely. You know, I think they have been inspiring to me and they've helped inform my life. I recognize that they're without a lot of evidence, and so I have to operate on the basis that they could not be. They could in many cases, not be the case, but I hope for them. So I live my life on the basis of care and understanding and kindness and with a lot of fun mixed in there. So to make it all worthwhile and hope that whatever I do, if there are. If there is more past this life, that I will have lived my life fully here, but also contributed to somebody else's betterment, that means that I can be useful somewhere else, too.

Hopes for Family, Faith, and the Book's Reception

John Dehlin [04:21:10] We talked about you and your wife dreaming about the Mormon life you would have until death do you not part? Which would include all your kids serving missions, all your kids getting married in the temple, lifelong church service, and even multiple missions. I guess there's two quick parts to that. How's that? I mean, you've kind of told us how that's kind of shaped out. And then how do you feel about that? That dream no longer being what you and your wife are kind of working for? The dreams changed.

Ganesh Cherian [04:21:43] Dreams changed.

John Dehlin [04:21:44] How does that feel?

Ganesh Cherian [04:21:46] Pretty good, actually. Like, at the beginning, of course, there's a degree of loss where you think, oh, gosh, all the things I've invested in are not coming to fruition.

John Dehlin [04:21:54] Did your kids serve missions? Did your kids get married in the temple?

Ganesh Cherian [04:21:57] No, none of them. Nobody's active in my family except for me.

John Dehlin [04:22:01] What? Your wife's not even. You're active and your wife's not.

Ganesh Cherian [04:22:04] No.

John Dehlin [04:22:05] And all your kids are out. Okay.

Ganesh Cherian [04:22:07] But they're all gorgeous humans, you know, like, they are thoughtful, kind, amazing, compassionate, interesting, innovative explorers. Right. They're just fabulous. And they have no animosity towards the church whatsoever. They appreciate their time. They go to church on occasion, either with me or with their friends who have served missions or prominent things happening in their lives. They are absolutely just great.

John Dehlin [04:22:46] So I'm not sensing a lot of feelings of disappointment. No. That your Mormon dream hasn't worked out the way you thought.

Ganesh Cherian [04:22:55] Well, in time past, most of my angst around the church was not about the thing not coming to pass so much as me having taught something to somebody else, or, you know, like we talked about the prejudice and privileges stuff, you know, me being advantage over somebody else, you know, being advantaged because somebody else was marginalised. Those are the angst that I had over the church. And actually coming to terms with that was me taking accountability. That, yeah, I was advantaged. And I need to use my privilege, for lack of a better word, to, you know, raise voices that haven't been heard, because I've got a voice and, you know, slowly I've unticked some of those boxes, so my voice is diminished.

Ganesh Cherian [04:23:51] But. But in saying that, like, I, you know, what do I really want? I want capable, beautiful humans who are doing kind things, you know, and I've got that in my family. And I think the church has enabled me to have a good foundation in a lot of those things.

Ganesh Cherian [04:24:14] It actually didn't come to the party and I think it should. Right. It should be the most caring, compassionate, inclusive community. And it's not. So there's definitely some things that need to change. But I. But almost kind of fortuitously, I guess, you know, not seeing that Mormon dream right through to its fulfillment has opened up lots of other things. I realised that it was quite a narrow dream to begin with, and now that my world has opened up, it's so much more than that. And I mean, and then there are people like my mission president, whose wife, who is just loves her space and is incredibly validated by it and wants to continue, and it's all power to her.

Ganesh Cherian [04:25:07] And my mother is in the same category, my in laws, you know, that's fabulous. And I think that they should be able to do that. At the same time, there is maybe I just have a much more expansive vision of Mormonism, that it could be more like what the Book of Mormon suggested it could be. And I want to see that come to fruition and I'm excited about it.

John Dehlin [04:25:35] Love it. I love it. All right, well, this has been super powerful and inspiring and it's just been lovely to get to know you, Margi. Any final questions?

Margi Dehlin [04:25:48] I don't think so. Yeah. Thank you.

John Dehlin [04:25:50] You enjoyed getting to know Ganesh a little bit, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [04:25:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:25:53] Margi's like, who is this Ganesh guy? Why are we interviewing him?

Margi Dehlin [04:25:57] Not exactly like that, but there was some creative license you took there, but it has been a pleasure. Thank you.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [04:26:08] All right, well, we hope the church leaves you alone. We hope your book is wildly successful. Tell us the name of the book one more time.

Ganesh Cherian [04:26:15] So it's 19th century evidences and development of the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Latter Day Saints.

John Dehlin [04:26:21] And hopefully the church doesn't sue you. Hopefully you don't get excommunicated. And we want to have you back to dig into your book.

Ganesh Cherian [04:26:29] Fabulous. And I'd be happy to do that because I think it's. Yeah, hopefully it's useful at the end of the day. That's what I hope for the most.

John Dehlin [04:26:37] All right, well, Ganesh and I hope we can have a sunstone or thrive New Zealand someday.

Ganesh Cherian [04:26:47] That would be brilliant.

John Dehlin [04:26:48] Would that be fun?

Ganesh Cherian [04:26:49] Yes.

John Dehlin [04:26:50] Do we invite the Aussies or do we not invite the Aussies?

Ganesh Cherian [04:26:52] The Aussies are all good fun. So, you know, if they get to come, it would be great.

John Dehlin [04:26:56] All right, so we'll see if. If we can pull that off in the next year or so. All right, Ganesh, thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. And Margi, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much for writing Shotgun.

Margi Dehlin [04:27:06] Yes, thank you.

John Dehlin [04:27:07] All right. All right, you guys, thanks. Thanks, Ganesh. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Please do check out this amazing book and please come back for the next part of this episode where Ganesh shares with us his important research. Be good to each other. Be kind to each other. Take care out in New Zealand and Australia and anywhere else where Mormons or never Mormons are learning about Mormonism. Be kind to each other. And we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care of.

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