Introduction and Format of the Episode

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. I am both your host and the guest for today's episode. And here's what I mean by that. Today we have in studio the man, the myth, the legend, Rick Bennett. Hey, Rick.

Rick Bennett [00:00:14] Hey, John. How you doing?

John Dehlin [00:00:16] Good. For those of you who don't know Rick, Rick is the host of a really important podcast slash YouTube channel called Gospel Tangents. And for several years now, Rick has been interviewing what I would say mostly is members of the Mormon studies kind of scholarship community. He's interviewed Richard Bushman, he's interviewed Matt Harris, Shannon Flynn. Lots of cool people. It's a great library, a really important asset for those who are in the know. Even yesterday in my interview with Tom Thomas Murphy, he mentions how important Rick Bennett's stuff. Steven Pinager really loves Bennett. He mentioned it.

Rick Bennett [00:00:50] He's definitely a fanboy.

John Dehlin [00:00:51] Yeah, yeah. And we're, we're both mutual fans of Steven. So anyway, I've also known Rick for many years kind of on the blogger nacal, and he does great work. So Rick's wanted to interview me for a little bit. We tried an interview a few months ago, several months ago, and when, when it was done, it was during a really stressful time where we were getting a lot of attacks. And after Gerardo reviewed it, Gerardo said, I don't think we should release this. So it's one of those bootleg, unreleased interviews that now if I went back and watched it, maybe I wouldn't care. But anyway, Rick's back. He's willing to go one more time and try and interview me. And so Rick's can interview me for this episode, but I may ask some questions back because Rick is an active believing Mormon. So I'm always fascinated to understand how people who know more about church history than me, in Rick's case, still remain an active, faithful member. So I reserve the right to return some questions back to Rick and I'll turn the time over to Rick of Gospel Tangents for what I hope is a fun, edifying interview where I'm going to try not to get too exuberant. So I'm going to try and be uncaffeinated.

Rick Bennett [00:01:58] You can be exuberant. It's fine with me. I don't mind. So.

John Dehlin [00:02:02] Well, thanks for the honor of wanting to interview me.

Rick Bennett [00:02:06] Well, thank you. So, you know, John, I'm a little bit different in my style in that I usually, you know, I always like to go to somebody's academic history first and we're going to go there. But I'VE never met anybody that dated an Oscar winning actress. And so we gotta go there first. So who is this person that I'm talking about and tell that story?

Growing Up in Texas and Early Life

John Dehlin [00:02:29] Okay. Well, when I was a freshman in high school at Katy High School in Katy, Texas, which is a suburb of Houston, I met Renee Zellweger at a speech and drama tournament. She was into speech and drama.

Rick Bennett [00:02:44] Still is, I think.

John Dehlin [00:02:46] Yeah, still is a little bit, yeah. And she was just this bubbly blonde, you know, vivacious, talented, human. And we became friends from that moment of my freshman year. And we were friends all through high school. We were in the same graduating class. We did date. We used to sing Beatles songs together. We went to Galveston beach together. We did kiss. I will kiss and tell, but that's as far as it went. But I consider her one of my closest friends. We were so close that she made my girlfriends kind of jealous. But we were never.

Rick Bennett [00:03:23] I can't imagine why.

John Dehlin [00:03:25] Well, you know, she wasn't. She was cute and a cheerleader and she was a basketball player. She was on track, but she wasn't the most desired girl in the whole high school, but she was, you know, she was up there. But she was different from maybe some of the other more popular girls. She was just. She was really classy and she was smart, but she wasn't like an honor student. But she was smart. But again, she wasn't the most popular of the girls, but she was. Yeah, so I'm repeating myself. So anyway, I wanted her, of course, as a good Mormon boy. I wanted her to be Mormon more than anything. So I did. You know, the big story that you probably want me to tell is that I think it was my junior year, I decided to invite her to a steak dance. So I invited her to what I remember to be the New Year's Eve steak dance. And I brought her. And she wore. I just wore like, as I remember, like khakis and a blazer and a white shirt and tie. That was my standard outfit back then, as I recall. And she wore this lovely velvet black dress that just kind of went off the shoulder. And she is. She's petite. She wasn't buxom or anything. So I didn't think anything of it. It was certainly, certainly modest by my standards. But even back then, and as soon as we entered the chapel, some of the leaders, female leaders, just immediately kind of swooped and pulled me aside and said, renee, whoever this is, her dress isn't modest. She's either going to need to wear your jacket or go home. And change. And my. I'm huge. You know, I'm six. Six. By this point she's like five, whatever, Five and change. And I was just shocked. I was just like, oh, no, wait a minute. You don't understand. She's not a member. Like, we don't want to create this first impression. Can't. You know, I just thought for sure they would just like buckle and say, oh, okay, it's. It's a non member. No, no problem. But when I said that, the leaders said no. The girls, the other girls will be frustrated that someone has a. We have a double standard here. So I, I pulled Renee aside and I explained the situation, offered to let her wear my jacket. But she started crying and she asked me to take her home. So I took her home and dropped her off. She didn't want to do anything. She just kind of cried and went home. I remember going back to the. Weirdly, I went back to the dance and I remember just going into the chapel and lying down on one of the pews and just staring up at the ceiling, just like wondering what had just happened and why she was treated this way. It didn't make me question the church or anything because that was off limits. But it was definitely sad. We remained very close friends. I had this sense that part of her wanted to go to prom with me, but I wasn't. I was student body president and on the basketball team, but I wasn't popular like the football boys were.

Rick Bennett [00:06:40] How can you be student body president and not be popular?

John Dehlin [00:06:43] I'll explain. It wasn't a voted position.

Rick Bennett [00:06:46] Oh, really?

John Dehlin [00:06:46] So you got, you got chosen by the student. As I remember, you got. Well, you had to qualify. So you had to have served in a office on student council to run for president. So I had been president, like leader of the safety committee the year before. And no one else who ran against. No, there was no one else to run against me who had served on the committee, who was a. Who was a senior. So I ran on a post.

Rick Bennett [00:07:14] Oh, wow.

John Dehlin [00:07:15] I. That was different than class president. The class president was a close friend of mine and he was super popular. But student body president, Student council president was different. So anyway, I don't know. So.

Rick Bennett [00:07:27] So they didn't vote for student body president.

John Dehlin [00:07:29] Okay.

Rick Bennett [00:07:29] There was no vote at all.

John Dehlin [00:07:30] It was technically student council president. There was no student body president at my high school. There was student council president and then senior class president. So I was student council president and. And my friend Chad was student senior class president.

Rick Bennett [00:07:46] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:47] But they did vote. But I I voted. I ran unopposed.

Rick Bennett [00:07:50] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:50] So anyway, I was popular.

Rick Bennett [00:07:52] Ish.

John Dehlin [00:07:52] But I was a Mormon kid in a Baptist town, kind of goofy. So I was not. And by the way, football ruled Texas back then.

Rick Bennett [00:08:01] It still does.

John Dehlin [00:08:02] And it still does. So, yeah, being basketball player didn't. Didn't get me up there with. With the football players. So I was popular, but not that popular. So Renee chose to go to senior prom with the football player. I went with a girl I was dating. And I think maybe both of us were sad that we didn't go together. I don't know. I remember her seeing me dancing with my girlfriend at senior prom and her, like, crying and running away from the boy she was dancing with. I never actually talked to her about why that happened. In my mind. I thought it was because she was sad that we weren't at prom together. But that's just my high school memory. We stayed in touch when I went on a mission. I sent her a Book of Mormon that I signed. Tried to get her to join the church. She wasn't buying it. And then after my mission, I. I got back in touch with her. She was at University of Texas at Austin. She knew Matthew McConaughey. She said she had been in a couple Phil Collins, I guess she made a couple music videos. And. And she told me she was going to be an actress, and she invited me down to come hang out with her. Her boyfriend had just died by suicide. He was South African, Jewish. That's just what I remember, which was interesting. But I was afraid to go see her because I was afraid I would break the law of chastity if I was with her. And there was a spark there. So she invited me to go see her in Austin. I didn't, but she told me she was going to be an actress, which I kind of laughed off. And I'm like, are you serious? And she's like, yeah, I'm going to be an actress. So that was. That was the last time I talked to her until I was married to Margi and we were living in Chicago, and I saw the trailer to Jerry Maguire, and I'm like, holy crap, that looks like Renee. And it was. And I. I don't even know that. I've tried to reach out to her since she became famous. She's never reached out to me. There have been times in my. You know, there have been times where I'm like, I wonder how, you know, if she'll. Like, I. A couple times she came to Sundance, and I'm like, I wonder if she'll reach out, but she never has. She probably forgot about me the moment she graduated or the last time we talked from Texas.

Rick Bennett [00:10:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:26] Yeah. But anyway, that's my Renee Zellweger story, and I'm sticking to it.

Rick Bennett [00:10:31] Do you have any pictures? I should get a picture. We need a picture for this episode.

John Dehlin [00:10:34] We may have a picture together, maybe. Yeah.

Rick Bennett [00:10:39] Yeah, I'd love to see that if I could. So. Yeah. So that's interesting. You kind of mentioned your mission there and that. Normally I wouldn't. I don't usually talk about people's missions, but you have quite a mission story, and I know. I think it was in one of your very first episodes of Mormon stories, like, 15 years ago. And so there's probably a lot of people who haven't heard that story and talk about your mission to Guatemala.

High School, Mission, and Early Faith

John Dehlin [00:11:08] Yeah, So I was like, I didn't ever try alcohol in high school. I didn't try smoking. I didn't try drugs. Like, I was a virgin when I graduated, you know, and I was seminary president and, like, really into church, so I was really orthodox. I believe, in my mind, I was really faithful and got called to Guatemala and did two months in the MTC under Pinniger, I think it was Rex Pinniger, Ed Pinner. Ed Pinner, yeah. 88 to 90.

Rick Bennett [00:11:41] I was under Durant. So I. I was just before. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:45] So Ed Pinniger, Guatemala City, North Mission, and long story short, went to Guatemala and immediately noticed that we were baptizing people that probably didn't have any business getting baptized. Drunk people, people down syndrome, people who didn't have all the discussions, people who hadn't been to church. And there are some companionships that were starting to baptize 10, 20, 30amonth. And there was one zone in particular, the La Laguna zone, where the zone leaders had over 40 baptisms in a month. And the zone had, like, over a hundred baptisms in a month with like, four or five companionships. So several of the companionships had, like, 20, 30 baptisms in a month. And I'm like, there's only 30 days in a month. How do you have 40 baptisms in a month? And the whole zone's doing it. So I talked to a friend who was in that zone, and he's like, oh, yeah, dude, it's crazy. Like, we'll. We'll goof off all week long. We'll swim and we'll swim. We'll go to movies. It's a party. But then on Saturdays, we'll go to a soccer field. Gather as many, you know, young, poor children as we can. We'll go to the poorest area of town, play a soccer match with as many young kids as we can, and then we'll invite them all back to the chapel to cool off and we'll have the baptismal font filled and we'll baptize eight or ten at a time.

Rick Bennett [00:13:21] These are just kids.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] These are all like just little kids, barefoot, poor, in a, the, you know, worst slums of, of Guatemala City, Zone 15 Laguna. So. And you know, he even told me that like kids were doing cannonballs in the baptismal font because there'd be no leadership at the baptism. The missionaries had the key to the chapel and they would just baptize like 10 at a time or more.

Rick Bennett [00:13:50] Was no service. There was no talk about baptism the Holy Ghost.

John Dehlin [00:13:53] I mean they may have done all that, but there was certainly no ward mission leader there, no bishop, no primary president, no parents. There were no, there were no discussions,

Rick Bennett [00:14:01] no signed consent form.

John Dehlin [00:14:03] No consent. No.

Rick Bennett [00:14:05] These are just kids that are eight to eight.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] Seven.

Rick Bennett [00:14:10] They bapt.

John Dehlin [00:14:11] They actually baptized seven year olds.

Rick Bennett [00:14:12] Oh wow.

John Dehlin [00:14:15] From, from what I remember. So yeah, but then the mission president loved it. Gordon Romney was my mission president and, and he loved it. He made those zone leaders apiece and then they would travel around the mission and teach these techniques to other missions. So early in my mission I talked to President Romney about it because I was a Fletcher, an arrow. Like I was an obedient missionary and it seemed like a perversion of God's holy ordinances. So I talked to Gordon Romney about it and he's like, elder, don't worry. You know, he said that once they, you know, when we plan a, when even if we just give them a Book of Mormon, that then there'll be a Book of Mormon in their home. But once they're baptized and have the gift of the Holy Ghost, even if they fall inactive, it could, it, it will give them a, a spiritual leg up for the rest of their lives if they have the gift of the Holy Ghost that may awaken later. And I'll never forget this. He ended by saying, and even if they are never active again, we won't have to do their work for them. You know, when they're dead, they will have had their work done. So I'm just like, you know, and I've been taught exact obedience by Elder Pinniger and that's, that was the way the mission worked. And so I just. Okay, I guess that's the way it's done. I Didn't do that ever on my mission. Like that felt wrong to me. But I, I just, you know, and I was just a few months into my mission at the time, so he made me a branch president, the zone leader early on. And, you know, I was British president twice and zone leader for most of my mission and. But towards the end we had a zone, we had a month where the mission president made a goal that every companionship would have a baptism in the month. And because we had had a really good month before, the pipeline in my zone was kind of down. And so we got to the end of the month and there were two companionships in my zone. A zone leader that didn't have a baptism yet. So I got a call from President Romney. He seemed disappointed and he told me the night before, fill up your baptismal fonts in the two areas. Frei Hannes and one other area, fill up the baptismal font. The APs are going to come pick you up tomorrow morning and they're going to show you how like real leaders in the mission manage their zones. So he picks me up, they pick me up in their Toyota Forerunner, Front Runner, whatever it was. Land Cruiser, I don't remember. Pick me up, take me to the first area, which was Freyjanas. And they like pick up the missionaries and they're like, all right, take us to whoever you're, take us to whoever you're investigating with. And we went to one guy and he, you know, they like offered him gum and ice cream and they're like, hey, any way we can get you to get baptized today? He's like, no, I'm not, I'm not feeling, I'm not ready. So we left and they're frustrated and so literally just start driving around the town and they go to the poorest part of town, drive up to the shack and they find this like 80 year old woman who was toothless and they're, they in a hut, dirt floors, like laminate. It's just like super impoverished. And they're like, hey, You know, do you want to follow Jesus and get baptized? And she's like half sane, half senile and she's like, whatever. So they walk her down to the nearest creek where women are like washing their clothes in the creek and she's praying to Mary on the way down. There was no discussions, no interview that I remember. Never been to church. And they literally baptized her there in the creek or the stream. And then they said to the missionaries, hey, can you make sure and confirm her with the gift of the Holy Ghost, we have to get to the next area. So we didn't even wait for her to get confirmed with the gift of the Holy Ghost. Go back up, drive to the next area and do something very similar, pressure someone else who, who's not ready to get baptized. And then I'll never forget on the way home, the. This is Elder Peterson and Elder Cruz. Like, I totally remember their names. Like, I mean, memory's weird. So they stop at a payphone and, and they call President Romney and they say, President Romney, we witnessed a miracle today. And they told him that the two areas had gotten a baptism. And like that felt, I mean, that felt dishonest. It felt like a desecration of the Lord's holy ordinances. It felt deceitful. I felt really gross and sick inside. So at the next zone leader conference where all the zone leaders would come receive instruction, I had my interview with President Romney and I told him what had happened because in my mind, kind of naively, he would never be okay with this if he knew, right? So I told him and weirdly, he started yelling at me, telling me that I was kicking against the pricks, that I was opposing priesthood leadership and that if I ever did something like that again, he would demote me. And because this is the second time I brought it up to him. And then, even though my companion had more time in the area than I did, I was transferred to Uspanton Kiche, which was like, as I remember, like a five hour bus ride to the nearest telephone and like an 11 hour bus ride to the mission home. And I was banished basically for questioning my priesthood leadership. And it was there I had, I had had asthma problems. I was, it turned out I was allergic to dust mites in Guatemala. So I, I had been in areas that were less dirty before and the President knew this sends me the dirtiest filthiest, one of the dirtiest filthiest areas in the mission.

Rick Bennett [00:20:42] He knew that you had asthma?

John Dehlin [00:20:43] Oh yeah. For sure, yeah.

Rick Bennett [00:20:44] Oh, wow.

John Dehlin [00:20:45] Yeah. Sends me to one of the dirtiest, filthiest areas in the mission, Uspantan Kiche. Look it up like it's. And wasn't even a telephone in the town. Imagine, you know, this is 1990, no telephone, right? And yeah, I got so sick that I called him after a month and I just said, I can't breathe here. And he says, come home, come back to the mission home. So I get on the bus, come back to the mission home, and the next day he had me on a plane flight home, sent me home and There was only four months to go on my mission, so I was kind of confused, but I interpreted that as him wanting to get rid of me because I was questioning. And by that point we were the second highest baptizing mission in the world according to my president. The only other mission that had more baptisms than us was the Chile Vinha del Mar mission which, which had over a thousand. And I just think he didn't want me ruining. Per month. Yeah, a thousand per month. And I think he didn't want me ruining his, his good thing. So I got sent home honorably. They offered me a release four months early and I'm like, I'm not ending my mission four months early. So I asked them to reassign me. They reassigned me to, to the Arizona Tempe Mission and I served my last four months there. They made me his own leader immediately when I arrived, so there was no question about my worthiness. He, he must have not spoke ill about me, which I was grateful for. And I served the last four months over the Spanish speaking missionaries in the Arizona Tempe Mission. And you were zone leader, Gilbert, is that right? Yeah, I was own leader over the Spanish speaking missionaries. Gilbert Chandler, Tempe, Queens Creek, kind of that area. And I actually, while I was there, Daryl Woolsey was the mission president. He had just been called as an, as a general authority or an air authority to go work in the Philippines. And so I told him everything that happened to me thinking that President Romney was just rogue. So he said, well, he'll deal with it. He'll go report it to church headquarters. And then he, he left the mission and Elder Bailey, David Bailey replaced him. And I never heard from Woolsey what, what happened, but I, I followed up with Bailey and President Bailey who's still alive and he said yeah, I did hear back from them and what they said is, is that he's only got a few months left on his mission. They didn't want to cause a big stir so they're just going to let him finish his mission. Gordon Romney. So that was in summer of, you know, 1990. I, you know, he, he gets released, I get released, go to byu. I find out later he was called to the missionary committee for the church to serve on the missionary committee for the church. And he was called to lead the church's sesquicentennial committee, which led me to believe that the church was okay with what he was doing. And that was the first time I wondered whether the church, whether the fish rotted from the head, you know, What? I mean, I didn't lose my testimony, but it was the first time I'm like, wow, something's wrong.

Rick Bennett [00:24:11] So who was leading? I know you said it was the sesquicentennial mission, but.

John Dehlin [00:24:15] No, the sesquice. There was a sesquicentennial, like, celebration for

Rick Bennett [00:24:19] Joseph Smith's death or something, or the

John Dehlin [00:24:21] church's founding or something.

Rick Bennett [00:24:22] I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:24:23] Okay, but, but, but, but Gordon Romney, I had told, was called to lead that committee.

Rick Bennett [00:24:29] Okay. That's what I want to make.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [00:24:30] I couldn't tell if it was him or Woolsey, but, yeah, it was Romney, not Wolsey.

John Dehlin [00:24:34] Yeah. And so when I find out Gordon Romney's, like, might be a general authority, like, literally my mind, I thought, missionary committee, sesquicentennial. Like, this guy may make general authority, and if he does, I don't know that my testimony could withstand that. You know what I mean? So I'm starting to feel like, really? And I worried about what damage he could do. So I ended up reaching out to some professors at BYU while I was there. Ted Lyon, Bill Bradshaw, Lamontolis. And I just, like, told him the situation. And they're like, it was Lamontolis who said, think I'm friends with Elder Oaks. Because Lamont Tullis, interestingly, was part of the committee that Leonard Arrington selected to write that. That set of, you know, set of books in the seventies. In the seventies that Richard Bushman ended up writing Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Early Mormonism for. Lamont Tullis was asked to write the book on the history of the church in Latin America because Lamontulus had served, I guess, his mission in Latin America. He was a political science professor, Harvard guy. Brilliant. I think I maybe still alive. I don't know. He. He said, I. I know Elder Oaks. For whatever reason, I'd be willing to put a cover letter on A letter you wrote to Elder Oaks. Because I was thinking about going to Nightline or, like, I was like, I wanted to be heard about this because I. I literally took the gospel so seriously. I felt like it was an abomination again to the Lord's holy ordinances. So if the church was going to just blow it off, I was gonna. I was gonna do whatever I could to like, make the church fix this problem before Gordon Romney was made a general authority. So I wrote a big letter. Bradshaw, Bill Bradshaw, Ted Lyon, who was the son of T. Edgar Lyon, who was an important church historian back in the day, and Lamontolis all reviewed my letter. I think it was Lamontolis, who put the COVID letter on it. Senate Elder Oaks. And then while I was doing Washington seminar for BYU, back in D.C. doing a congressional internship on Capitol Hill, I was like, in my apartment and I got a call and it was literally church headquarters. Can you hold for Elder Oaks, please? Wow. And Elder Oaks called me and I talked to Elder Oaks and he asked me a bunch of questions. He asked me if I was still active. He asked me if I. If my memory is that. He asked me if I still had an active temple recommend, which I did. I was still worthy. I was a faithful, you know, member at byu, didn't mess around. And. He, he. My memory is, is that he apologized for the experience that I had. I don't know if you use the word I apologize or if you just expressed regret, but what he did is he told me that he was going to be drafting a speech for the upcoming mission president and wives training that they do every whatever year, and that he was going to address this issue of like, using sales techniques and high pressure techniques to baptize people. Because also my mission, if you got seven baptisms in a month, you'd get a certificate with your name on it, and you'd get to stand up in front of the group and the president would hand you your certificate. And if you got 10 baptisms a month, you'd get a Janice Cap Parry serving with Joy cassette tape. And then you'd also get a special lunch with the mission president and his wife. You know, so they had all these incentives to get as many baptisms as possible. And in Oaks's speech that he gave to the mission presidents and their wives in training, he discouraged the use of sales techniques and high pressure techniques and sent me a copy of that speech after he gave it. And that saved my testimony for at least another 10 years, I think, just to feel heard to, To. To feel that direct reaching out and to see that the church was going to maybe try and do something about it. Unfortunately, I would talk to missionaries from that point further whenever I could. And, and I heard about, you know, baseball baptisms. I. I learned about the baseball baptisms in the UK in the early 60s, which Jeffrey Holland and Quinton Cook were a part of, by the way. I learned about the.

Mission Experiences and Baptism Pressures

Rick Bennett [00:29:19] What do you mean they were a part of. They were.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] They were. They were in those missions.

Rick Bennett [00:29:23] As, like, mission president?

John Dehlin [00:29:24] No, as. As missionaries.

Rick Bennett [00:29:26] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:29:26] My understanding is Quinton Cook and. And Jeffrey Holland were missionaries when

Rick Bennett [00:29:34] T.

John Dehlin [00:29:34] Bowering Woodbury was mission president over the British Isles in the early 60s. Now I could have that wrong, but that's my memory.

Rick Bennett [00:29:43] Okay. But they were essentially doing the same things. Hey, let's play baseball. Hey, let's go get.

John Dehlin [00:29:48] Yep.

Rick Bennett [00:29:49] Let's go cool off in the pool.

John Dehlin [00:29:50] Yeah. The church. Turns out the church has this long history of these techniques. It started with the baseball baptisms in the early 60s. There's an amazing Sunstone article about baseball baptisms that Michael Quinn wrote for Sunstone. It's really good. You can the PDFs available online. We should include it in the show notes.

Rick Bennett [00:30:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:08] But then there were Japanese baseball baptisms that followed the same pattern. And again, like, they had to excommunicate thousands of British converts because they were filling up all the roles because they want. American baseball was popular back then. Post war uk America was great because they had helped save the British from Hitler, you know, so. But they were filling up all the roles with all these young men that had no interest in actually being Mormon. But there was no way to remove them from the roles without excommunicating them. So all these missionaries had to do this cleanup where they were excommunicating. And I don't even think they had them attend a disciplinary council. They just kind of, as I understand it, had to just excommunicate thousands of converts because they were all baptized for the wrong reasons. So, you know, I learned about cheeseburger baptisms in North Carolina where they would give poor people cheeseburgers. And I heard about missionaries getting names and dates off of tombstones, which made no sense to me. And just the church has never stopped this. This problem. And it culminated in Elder Holland being sent to Chile for three years to try and clean up the mess there. I did an interview with Ted Lyon, son of T. Edgar Lyon, on Mormon stories, where he acknowledged that this happened because he was a mission president in Chile. He was an MTC president and a temple president there. And he was Elder Holland's personal interpreter. When Elder Holland went down to Chile, and Elder Holland ended up closing 30 stakes while he was in Chile, had to collapse him because the country, the church was dying in Chile because they had expanded wards and stakes based on the numbers. But there was no leadership substance behind it. And it turns out Philippines has had the same experience. Elder Oaks was sent to the Philippines for the same reasons.

Rick Bennett [00:32:06] What years were these where Holland went to Chile and Oaks went to the Philippines? I'm rusty on that with within the

John Dehlin [00:32:13] last 20 years, I would say late 90s, early 2000.

Rick Bennett [00:32:16] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:32:17] Because when I met with Elder Holland for the two lunches that I had with him, let's just say around 2009, 2010, I talked to him about his time in Chile and he acknowledged all of this, including the 30 stakes. And he said there were people protesting, you know, the area offices. There were like parents protesting the area offices in Chile because their kids had been baptized without their consent. Like he said, it was a public relations fiasco for the church and just, just the vitality of the wards and the units and the members there. So that's a lot. You asked. That's a big question. But anyway, I knew it was. Yeah, but, but that, you know, I can't. That was the beginning of, of my real questioning about the church was just to see, just to see a problem so big be generally ignored or downplayed, to experience ecclesiastical abuse firsthand, to be punished for doing what was right, and then to see the top leadership bungle it and really not be able to fix it. And I talked to Elder Holland about this and he was like, he said to me, my brother was there, um, he said to me, people think that like, if you're an apostle, you can just change the church. And he's like, number one, if you're a junior apostle, you've got 14 other people to contend with. The, the, the, the, the, you know, the leadership of the church is run by unanimous consensus. So nothing gets done if there isn't unanimity in the quorum. And until you work your way up in seniority, you're just one of like 15 voices anyway. And then even if you like tell the church what to do, you know, he, he made it sound like that doesn't mean the church members are going to do what you tell them to do. And then he also talked about this mid level management, that it's hard to manage these mid level managers. And my sense from him is, is that these mission presidents and area authorities, they're bucking to become general authorities or apostles. And so sometimes they'll engage in shenanigans. That's just hard to manage and control when you've got so many around the world. So he kind of, he actually said to me, who are the brethren? Because I, because, because I refer to the brethren as like the first presidency of the Quorum of the twelve. And he kind of made the joke like, who are the brethren? Like, we're just a bunch of individuals. That's the sense I got that we're just a bunch of individuals trying to do our job. And if you think that one apostle can make substantive, meaningful change in this church. He just kind of laughed at that idea. Not, not expressing doubt. I, I think he's aer believer, but he's just like, it's way more complex than anybody would ever would ever guess. So anyway, that's, that's, that's my story.

Rick Bennett [00:35:12] Yeah, no, no, that's really interesting. Do you, do you think it's still going on today or.

John Dehlin [00:35:18] Oh yeah. All the time.

Rick Bennett [00:35:19] You still think it is?

John Dehlin [00:35:20] Every, I mean what I got a sense for is that a mission will be sagging and so they'll call a mission president that's like a military guy or a corporate, you know, person, and they'll go and they'll ramp up the baptisms and then it'll get out of control and there'll be complaints and they'll have to tamper down. And then when they call the next mission president, it'll be someone who goes in to clean it all up, who's more low key, who's not about the numbers. And almost every mission missionary I've talked to, there's been that kind of cycle within the mission. But if you, if you go to, I mean if you go to Latin America or the Philippines and you look at the roles, unless they've been purging them, the activity rates in Latin America and the Philippines are like 10% their awards with like a thousand members on the rolls and like 50 people are attending like it's crazy and, and they've been collapsing wards and stakes to try and fix this problem. But it's undeniable and it, it, you know, how would you stop it? Unless they put into the, the missionary training, Never baptize someone ever without, you know, multiple times attending church. And all the six discussions and a really good sense that they have a mission. But that wasn't in the white handbook, that wasn't in the God, that wasn't in the missionary training.

Rick Bennett [00:36:49] That might have teach all six discussions and go to church.

John Dehlin [00:36:52] You think that was a rule that

Rick Bennett [00:36:53] you could rule in my mission, but

John Dehlin [00:36:55] was it a rule in the white Bible and was it a rule in the training curriculum? I would, I would be willing to bet a hundred dollars that that was not a stated rule in the missionary curriculum, that you had to go to church at least twice and receive all discussions before baptism. I'd be willing to, it may have been a mission specific rule, but I would be almost willing to bet a large sum of money that it was not a global policy.

Rick Bennett [00:37:25] Well, I agree with you that it probably wasn't a global policy, but like that was a big deal. I went to South Carolina, so I was, I was American. But. But yeah, that was a big deal that we had. They had to come to twice, had to teach all six discussions.

John Dehlin [00:37:39] Like Mike, I would be curious to see if what happened was a previous mission president. Things had gotten out of control and so they called your mission president in to clean it all up. I'm not saying that's what happened, but that's a pattern that I've, I've heard about over and over and over again. But if you talk to almost any missionary, especially in Latin America or the Philippines, they'll have stories about how either things were out of control when they were there or they were in areas where things had been out of control before and they had to be cleaned up.

Rick Bennett [00:38:10] Yeah, but it seems like I've heard those stories. It seems like it happens in Latin and South America a lot more. Until I heard your stories, I didn't know about Japan or the UK or anything like that. I mean that was back in the 60s, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:38:25] It also happened in Southern California. Yeah. Also I guarantee it's happening in Africa right now. Guarantee it. And the one thing that. Have you ever had Matt Marinich? Is that his name?

Rick Bennett [00:38:39] I don't know who that is.

John Dehlin [00:38:41] So there's a guy that has a website called the Camorra Project where he tracks. Oh, where he tracks LDS statistics in detail.

Rick Bennett [00:38:48] I thought that was Craigen. What's the nice name?

John Dehlin [00:38:50] Craig Ryan Cragan is a, is a scholar, but he doesn't do the Camorra Project. Kamora Project is done by this guy named Matt Marinich. Peggy Fletcher often uses him as a source for her articles on church membership and growth. But check out the Kimora Project and, but just, but just talk to anyone in the know whenever they do a census in like Brazil or Argentina or Chile or Mexico, the number of people who self identify as Mormons is literally a fraction of the number of people that the church claims on the church membership roles.

Rick Bennett [00:39:27] Right.

John Dehlin [00:39:27] And that's because of all these people that were baptized as an 8 year old or a 10 year old. The never went to church, never had a testimony and have never identified as Mormon. But the church keeps them on the

Rick Bennett [00:39:38] may not have even known they were baptized.

John Dehlin [00:39:40] A lot of them wouldn't even remember it because it was just something that happened. They were a kid. Right.

Rick Bennett [00:39:44] Right.

John Dehlin [00:39:44] Yeah. So that's why I'm sure your listeners, viewers know that like the church boasts 17 million or 16, whatever, 8, but there's probably only 3 to 4 million active members across the world right now. And this has been true for many, many years. Yeah. As I understand it.

Rick Bennett [00:40:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:06] Have Matt Marinich on your podcast from.

Rick Bennett [00:40:09] Check him out. So I, I knew about Craigen, but I didn't know about him.

John Dehlin [00:40:12] Craigen's ex Mormon.

Rick Bennett [00:40:14] Yeah. But he, he does stuff on. Because I swear he was just on Peggy Fletcher's Mormon Land podcast.

John Dehlin [00:40:21] He's brilliant. And he's a, he's a, you know, he does social science.

Rick Bennett [00:40:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] But this guy, Matt Marinich is, is different.

Rick Bennett [00:40:28] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [00:40:31] Well, cool.

John Dehlin [00:40:31] I hope that didn't take too much time.

Rick Bennett [00:40:32] No, no. This is why we're here.

John Dehlin [00:40:35] This is a big. This was my very first episode of Mormon Stories.

Rick Bennett [00:40:37] Was it your first.

John Dehlin [00:40:38] I tell this. Yeah, my very first episode in 2000.

Rick Bennett [00:40:41] There's probably a lot of people that haven't heard this and so it's probably good. It's been 16 years or I don't know how long.

John Dehlin [00:40:47] 17 years. And yeah, I don't think I've ever recorded it on video in this depth. So I'm. Thanks for asking.

Rick Bennett [00:40:53] Yeah, no problem. So let's dive in, into your academic history. I usually do that. I know you went to BYU and.

Post-Mission Life and Career Beginnings

John Dehlin [00:41:04] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [00:41:04] So what, what can you tell us there?

John Dehlin [00:41:07] Yeah, so I, I graduated like 11th of my class in high school. I was a late bloomer academically, but I did get a, a two year scholarship to BYU Academic and I was able to keep a 40ish GPA and renew it. So I had an Edwin Hinkley scholarship for my last two years at byu, which was a full ride and full tuition and books. But I decided to study political science and international relations. I, I had a great GPA. I graduated with a 3.96 GPA summa cum laude.

Rick Bennett [00:41:46] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:41:46] And did Washington seminar, got into law school, got into BYU law school. Got in the University of Texas law school, Got waitlisted at Harvard, but didn't get in Harvard. Those are the only three law schools I applied to. But I didn't know anyone who loved their job as a lawyer, so I didn't want to just go to law school and then hate my life. I was really a believer that you had to love and believe in what you do as a career because you only live once. You can't take it with you, as they say. That was a film. I watched a movie by Frank Capper called you can't take it with you or that was the theme. And it was at a BYU film class that I watched that movie and it just sold me on the idea that you don't just go for the money, go for a fulfilling, meaningful job.

Rick Bennett [00:42:32] So why did you choose political science? Did you want to become a.

John Dehlin [00:42:34] Well, I chose political science before I, you know, so I, I thought, yeah, I thought I might want to be a politician.

Rick Bennett [00:42:43] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:42:44] But then I went and worked on Capitol Hill and just got disillusioned with all the graft and, and with, with all the special interests and the way congressmen could be bought off, and I was just disillusioned.

Rick Bennett [00:42:58] So that was after you graduated from

John Dehlin [00:42:59] byu, that what, that you started working in? No, it was during Washington seminar between my junior and senior year.

Rick Bennett [00:43:06] Oh, okay.

John Dehlin [00:43:07] Which was the same time Elder Oaks called me.

Rick Bennett [00:43:10] Oh, okay, interesting.

John Dehlin [00:43:11] But it was there that I, then I was stuck with my degree because I couldn't go back at that point. So I finished political science, applied to law school, but at that, by that point, I knew I didn't want to be a politician, and I, I just was unsure about law as a career I would enjoy.

Rick Bennett [00:43:28] Okay, so so you, you graduated and then, well, you ended up at Microsoft somehow. Yeah. I don't know if you can tell us about that.

John Dehlin [00:43:39] Yeah, so what happened was, what happened was I got married in the D.C. temple to Margi. And my first real job was with Bane and Company, which was Mitt Romney's company. So I was at Bane when Mitt Romney was at Bane. You know Mitt. No.

Rick Bennett [00:43:57] Is he related to Gordon Romney?

John Dehlin [00:44:00] Yeah, Mitt Romney and Gordon Romney were cousins, for sure.

Rick Bennett [00:44:03] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:44:03] Yeah. So I went to Bain Dallas. Mitt was at Bain Capital in Boston. I was in Bain Dallas. And, and Bain is a management consulting firm that helps turn around Fortune 500 companies. So I did that. But that's when the Internet first emerged. So this is around 1994. I first saw my Netscape Navigator and the, you know, the Internet being used, and I, I, I was just like, whoa, this is going to be big. So I left Bain, went to Chicago to work for Arthur Anderson, which was a big accounting, which was the number one accounting firm at the time. They were big into tech. My brother had worked there before he left for Microsoft, went to Arthur Anderson, started to learn computers, eventually became a programmer, did computer programming for a few

Rick Bennett [00:44:59] years, including Arthur Anderson. I always thought of them as like an accounting firm.

John Dehlin [00:45:03] Yeah, they were an accounting and audit firm. They were the largest one in the world, based in Chicago. But they had, they were cutting edge with, with tech. And so I went there as part of their tax and technology group so I could learn Computers. So I didn't need an accounting degree to be able to help them run their computers. So it was just like a boot camp. It was like a tech boot camp.

Rick Bennett [00:45:26] So they just trained you to become a programmer essentially?

John Dehlin [00:45:29] No, they trained me to be like a IT systems guy. And then I left after only a year. And then I joined a tech consulting firm called Perrin where I taught myself to program. I mean, there was so much of a demand for programmers that you could teach. You could literally like bring a programming book to work, set it there on the table, ask them what they needed, and you could like learn on the job studying the, the manual and programming. And I, I did some self study, took some exams, got hired on Perry and as a computer programmer in Chicago and just started programming.

Rick Bennett [00:46:08] And you just taught yourself how to program?

John Dehlin [00:46:09] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [00:46:10] What did you use? I'm just curious. I'm a, I'm a computer science guy.

John Dehlin [00:46:12] So, so what, what, what program programs?

Rick Bennett [00:46:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:46:15] Okay. So I started doing Visual Basic for applications.

Rick Bennett [00:46:20] Okay. I know a little Visual Basic, vba,

John Dehlin [00:46:23] so that I did that in Excel and in Access. So I, so I learned, so I learned Access is my database, VBA is my programming language. And then I learned Visual basic, Visual Basic 4. And then slowly I learned SQL Server so I could do enterprise backend because

Rick Bennett [00:46:40] Access wasn't big enough.

John Dehlin [00:46:42] Yeah, exactly. Yep. And I love Access to this day. I still use it to do my donor. I do too, at the end of the year. Yeah, so I was a VB SQL Server programmer. For the most part. I did that.

Rick Bennett [00:46:54] Yeah, we got a little nerdy there.

John Dehlin [00:46:55] But I love it, I love it, I love it.

Rick Bennett [00:46:57] I'm sorry to the audience, they're probably like, what are they talking about?

John Dehlin [00:47:00] No, there's always somebody that's like, I love VB or client server programming. Did that for a couple of years. One thing that people always like to hear the story of is that I, after I worked at Perry for a bit, we wanted to move back to Salt Lake. So we like around 96, 97, we moved to here, to Salt Lake in Cottonwood Heights. And I got a job at church headquarters. So I worked one year at church headquarters during their Y2K initiative. Oh, I remember that they were converting Data ease. These are DoS based databases, data Ease databases into Access databases. And because I had program with Access, they brought me on. Right. And the coolest thing I did for the year I worked at the church was I worked on a general Authority candidate tracking system where they, in Access, they had a database where they would Track mission presidents, temple presidents and stake presidents. And whenever area authorities or general authorities would go out in state conferences to interview all these people, they needed kind of like a knowledge management system to track the progress of these potential general authority candidates over time. So they'd ask them questions about their financial situation, did they have any debt, how was their wife, how were their kids, were there any members of the family that had mental illness and other impressions. And they would track these candidates for general authority until they selected them. So that was the coolest thing. I think Greg Brown was working in the area office in the, in the presidency of the 70 office at the time. And that was my coolest assignment while I was at church headquarters.

Rick Bennett [00:48:47] And so if somebody had mental illness in their family, they were disqualified.

John Dehlin [00:48:51] Well, I can't say how the final decision was made. I'm sure nepotism was highly involved in that decision, but that was a factor.

Rick Bennett [00:48:59] Yeah. Wow.

John Dehlin [00:49:01] I mean, you, you could imagine if, if, if there's a family member who would be very embarrassing to the church, once this person started rising in the ranks of leadership, they would want to screen for that.

Rick Bennett [00:49:14] Like a Billy Carter with.

John Dehlin [00:49:16] Yeah, exactly like Billy Carter. Yeah, yeah. Like a wife with a drug addiction or a alcohol. Alcohol addiction, you know, whatever.

Rick Bennett [00:49:26] Right.

John Dehlin [00:49:26] A gay son.

Rick Bennett [00:49:27] Right.

John Dehlin [00:49:28] Heaven forbid.

Rick Bennett [00:49:28] Well, that's not a problem anymore, is it?

John Dehlin [00:49:32] I mean, we've come a long way.

Working at the Church and Early Doubts

Rick Bennett [00:49:36] Any other insights into your year at the church there?

John Dehlin [00:49:39] Ah, no. I mean, it was just super bureaucratic. Nice people. It was super inefficient and bureaucratic. Super inefficient. It was there that I got hold. I wish I had this information. It was there because of my experience on my mission. I wanted to know what the activity rates were for the church. And because I did some consulting for like the building construction department in the church for constructing chapels, I was able to get the data for ACT for total membership per ward or branch and then active membership per ward or branch in the church. And I imported all that into Excel or Access and I crunched the numbers and I found like a one third activity rate globally back then. And you know, at the time I would never have shared that. Like, you know, I didn't want to violate confidentiality. So I don't have that data and I didn't publish it. But that's when I was like, whoa, it really is low. What I thought. It really is around a third. So a third of the people the church claim are active, you know, a third of the members that the church claims are actually active. And I think it was only a third of those were temple recommend holders. So anyway, that was interesting.

Rick Bennett [00:51:03] Interesting. So your brother used to work at the church, right? Did he help you get that job or, and, and does he still work at the church?

John Dehlin [00:51:09] So he had nothing to do with me getting the job for the church because he was at Microsoft at the, the time. Okay, so I worked at the church before he did. Oh, interesting. But while he was at Microsoft, he helped, he helped me find leads to apply. Took me seven times to get hired, seven formal interviews over multiple years to get hired at Microsoft. This is the time where if you got hired at Microsoft, you get stock options, and within five years you'd be a millionaire. You know, there just, that's what happened. So it was really hard, really competitive to get in. So it took me seven tries, but eventually I got in around 97, 98. I got hired at Microsoft while my brother Joel had been there for several years. So that's when we moved to Seattle, left working for the church, and I did seven years at Microsoft in Redmond.

Rick Bennett [00:51:58] And you got stock options and you're a millionaire now?

John Dehlin [00:52:00] I got stock options, but no, I left. I left between the appreciation on my house and the vested stock options and, and us paying down our mortgage, I left Microsoft with like $240,000. And we used that to buy our house in Logan with cash so that we wouldn't have a mortgage.

Rick Bennett [00:52:23] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:52:24] So because Microsoft was a great career, I met Bill Gates twice. I presented on stage with Steve Ballmer, the CEO who now is the owner of the Clippers.

Rick Bennett [00:52:35] Right.

John Dehlin [00:52:37] Had a really rapid ascent. I did demos, technical support for the Salesforce, speechwriting for executives, and then business management for vps. But I was always depressed inside because I had my faith crisis at Microsoft while I was teaching seminary for the church in my Issaquah ward. And, and I just got super depressed. So for the last three or four years of my time at Microsoft, I was like, unshaven, wore Birkenstocks.

Rick Bennett [00:53:07] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:53:08] Like, just depressed because I, I, I studied, you know, the Seminary Institute manuals. That's where it started. Got church history in the fullness of Times, that dark green manual, and learned a bunch of stuff, and that was troubling. So then I read Bushman's book, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Early Mormonism. I read about Leonard Arrington and, and Lowell Bennion. And then eventually I went to Michael Quinn and, you know, I read Simon Southerton, Losing a Lost Tribe. I, you know, Eugene England and Little Bennion. Biographies. Then eventually I read Fawn Brody Knows no Man Knows My History. And that's what, that's what kind of. Well, that and Bushman's book, it was, it was the one, two punch. It was Fon Brody's no Man Knows My History. But then Bushman's book, confirming basically all the stuff that I read in, in no Man Knows My History, knowing that he had been a, was a patriarch and a stake president and a faithful Mormon. I could always discredit Brody as being, as being having an ax to grind and is not being credible. But once I paired Bushman's confirmation with Brody's history, it's like, well, this is true. He was a folk magic treasure digger and he was a polygamist and he lied about it. And one of my friends named Paul at Microsoft introduced the term polyandry to me because I thought it was the polygamy that was disturbing. But he's like, have you ever heard of the polyandry? And I'm like, what's that? You know, because this is back in 2001, 2002. There's no podcasts, there's no Facebook, there's no Instagram, there's no CES letter. There's just books. There's not even a website. It's like Sunstone barely had a website, and all it did was release like, the September 6th anniversary videos. And even Sunstones weren't online yet. So there's no. How would you learn about the church except through books? And none of the books mentioned the word polyandry, by the way, that I'm aware of.

Rick Bennett [00:55:16] I thought rough stone rolling did, but

John Dehlin [00:55:18] I, I think rough stone rolling came years later. So I'm talking about 2000, 2001.

Rick Bennett [00:55:22] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:55:23] I think Rustone Rolling was released in 2004, 2005.

Rick Bennett [00:55:26] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] But I, I. Does the, does the word polyandry appear in rough stone Rolling? I'm not sure.

Rick Bennett [00:55:32] I think it does. It's been a long time since I read it and I mean, that was, was really troubling to me, I'll tell you that.

John Dehlin [00:55:41] So, yeah, so. But it doesn't appear like Joseph Smith in the Beginnings of Early Mormonism because it was part of that Leonard Arrington series. It only covered, like, pre. Joseph, pre Joseph Smith's ministry to, like, the founding of the church. So it didn't talk about polygamy at all. So there wasn't rough stone rolling yet. So, so.

Encountering Troubling Church History

Rick Bennett [00:56:02] But you were bothered by the treasure digging in Joseph Smith and Beginnings of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:56:07] I was bothered by it All I was bothered by, I was bothered by the treasure digging, the peep stone in the hat. I was bothered by the Kirtland bank scandal, by Mountain Meadows Massacre, and that the fact that the church would teach about Hans Mill in its curriculum. But I could never find any, any teachings about the Mountain Meadows back then. So I'm like, why would you make us feel sorry for you with Hans Mill Massacre but never take ownership of Mountain Meadows? That's just my memory of, of how the church handled those types of things. But then I was troubled by the polygamy, by the COVID up, by learning what actually happened at Carthage Jail where Joseph Smith was basically killed for lying and for his polygamy and, and, oh, and just the whole like head of the Nauvoo Legion and like marching soldiers into neighboring towns and the way he manipulated the, the political parties in Illinois and, and kind of deceived them and was just kind of, you know, and then the Council of 50 and the Danites, all that stuff was just like, this guy was crazy. This guy was completely out of control. He lost his marbles and he's like cheating on his wife, calling it polygamy from God and lying about it to almost everybody. And I just couldn't square that with. And I never.

Rick Bennett [00:57:32] So you felt this way back in

John Dehlin [00:57:34] the late 90s, early 2000s or early 2000s? Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Rick Bennett [00:57:42] I just remember when you started Mormon stories, it seemed like you were a lot more neutral, but you were pretty much disbeliever.

John Dehlin [00:57:55] Okay. You're raising a really important point. So let me go back.

Rick Bennett [00:57:58] Yeah, the thing is, I don't want us to take where you are today and then say that's how I was in 2000 or whatever. I'm trying to change the mindset.

John Dehlin [00:58:07] This is a really useful line of questioning and there's, there's some ethical stuff there that I always had to kind of struggle with. So let me go back so in. While I was at BYU the September 6th, where I communicated. So I was at BYU in the fall of 93 and I, I was there. I, I went to a press conference held by Paul Toscano and several others, like at a local hotel there in Provo where they're like doing a press conference about their excommunications.

Rick Bennett [00:58:35] So you're still in college, you're a political science major.

John Dehlin [00:58:38] Yeah. One thing I didn't mention is that

Rick Bennett [00:58:40] you're still a believer.

John Dehlin [00:58:42] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [00:58:42] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:58:43] Yeah. So back during those days, BYU had this honors program at the Maser building, which was Freaking amazing. And they had these types of courses called Honors Colloquium where they would group your general education courses up and what you would do is you would, you would sign up for Honors Colloquium, that was a six hour credit hour commitment each semester for a full year. And you'd be in this big cohort of like 60 students who had all made it the Maeser Building for two hours a day of, of coursework instead of one. And it, you would, they would, they would. You know, in my case, there was Ted Lyon, Lynn England from sociology. So Ted Lyon was Spanish literature. Lynn England was sociology. And then Clayton White was an ornithologist in the biology bioscience department. He was a hawk expert, bird guy. So they would group teach you and they would integrate science with literature with, with social studies. You would have this big cohort of the most intelligent students on campus and it would cover a full year four of your GEDs you would knock out all at once through this integrated experience with this cohort of brilliant honor students. So most, most students took that as a freshman. And I did mention when I was a freshman, I was in the honors dorm and I, Mary Holland, Jeffrey, Jeffrey Holland's daughter was in our ward. So I got to date Mary Holland as a freshman at byu.

Rick Bennett [01:00:28] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:00:29] And I got to play tennis with Elder Holland once because Mary set up a tennis match and I beat him like 6, 0. But he had just ruptured his Achilles and was healing from that. So I mean like. But I did play tennis with Elder Holland once and I did date his daughter Mary. And then she Dear John to me, so to speak, not literally, but she, she married a doctor while I was on my missions or aspiring med med school.

Rick Bennett [01:00:52] Your name is John, so you would get.

John Dehlin [01:00:54] I know I get Dear John no matter what, But I was in the honors dorm my freshman year, but I, I wasn't in the honors program really. But so I didn't do cloak, so I didn't do colloquium as a freshman. But, but when I got off my mission and met Ted Lyon, he encouraged me to join Honors Colloquium. So I did. And so I was a sophomore in the Honors Colloquium program at byu. And it was there that they would like bring in Van de Graaff to talk about evolution. They would, they would bring in scientists to talk about the global flood. They would talk about abortion, and you know, they bring in Bill Bradshaw to talk about in vitro fertilization and the implications of, of abortion as it related to spirits and spontaneous abortions and fetuses like it was, it was like professors that were Sunstone and Dialogue readers at BYU in this course where they would tackle head on all of the most controversial issues in the church, including feminism, while the September 6th were getting excommunicated. And so was Eugene England at BYU

Rick Bennett [01:02:05] at that time, do you know?

John Dehlin [01:02:06] Yeah, Eugene England was, but this was Lynn England that I Brothers or something or. No, no, just not really different. Okay, but Eugene England was there. I never took a class from Eugene England, but Margi did my, I think my, my wife Margi. But, but this was really interesting because I was exposed as a sophomore to, I mean I had doubts growing up. I, the one true church thing always felt weird to me. Polygamy always felt weird to me and the black priesthood ban always felt weird to me. And I was surrounded by Baptists and Katie and they had watched the God Makers and so you know, I, I, I was familiar with rumblings about, you know, Mormonism and stuff and critics of Mormonism. So like I always, I, I, I read the Book of Mormon cover to cover as a junior in high school, prayed did follows Moroni's promise that I never got the answer. I actually prayed twice that night or morning and never got the witness that my, that my seminary teacher sort of promised me that I'd get. And I, you know, I struggle with that. So even up through the mtc, I couldn't say that I knew the church was true. I believed it was true, I loved it, I was obedient to it, I was one of its best spokespeople, you know, where I grew up. But I couldn't say I knew it. All I could say is I hoped it or I believed it. So on my mission I just said I'm going to just tell people I know when I don't and just hope that the testimony follows saying, you know, so yeah, and so I served a successful mission, had that problem. But I always had cracks questions in my mind. I once divided as a high school sophomore. I think I divided the number of Mormons in the world by the total number of people in the world and it was less than 1/2 of 1%. And I'm just like really Heavenly Father, like that's the best you could do with your one true church is like one less than one half of 1%. That seems really inefficient. But I just, I put those things on the shelf. So when I was at BYU as a sophomore I took this honors colloquium class, got exposed to all the controversial issues and learned about Sunstone and dialogue. But I also learned about Lowell Bennion.

Rick Bennett [01:04:31] When was the message about warning about symposia? What year was that?

John Dehlin [01:04:37] I mean, it was all leading up to those September 6th communications.

Rick Bennett [01:04:41] So you were learning about Sunstone from BYU professors who were going to Sunstone, is that right?

John Dehlin [01:04:47] Or they were reading Sunstone, but may have been afraid by that point to actually attend. But they were certainly plugged into, you know, because Eugene England had started dialogue back in the 60s. He was a BYU professor still.

Rick Bennett [01:05:00] Right.

John Dehlin [01:05:01] And yeah, this was during the time where. And it was probably a little bit before 93 that that warning on symposium came out. But they basically warned about study groups prior, you know, in the years prior. And then they warned about Sunstone or symposia.

The September Six and Deepening Faith Crisis

Rick Bennett [01:05:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:19] And then, you know, the crap really hit the fan when. When these. When. When the September six were excommunicated. But that wasn't the only controversy. While I was at byu, there was a big Mother in Heaven controversy where Cecilia Konchar Far, who was a feminist professor, English English Department, byu, and Gail Houston, also a feminist English Department person at byu. They were talking a lot about Mother in Heaven and praying to Mother in Heaven. And then David Knowlton, who's still alive, if you haven't interviewed him yet, you really should. He was a BYU professor, sociologist that was talking about the church missionary program in Latin America and, you know, the CIA. He. He did an article in Sunstone about phallic symbols in Mormon architecture. He was also gay. But several professors at BYU were kind of let go or denied continuing status because of their publishing in In Dialogue or Sunstone. So that was happening. Gail Houston, Cecilia Farr and David Knowlton were all let go. David Wright, who is a historical criticism guy, that inspired David Bacavoy, he was excommunicated and let go from BYU around this time. And then. And then the September 6th stuff happened. So all that's happening. And Joanna Brooks is leading feminism feminist marches at BYU as a fellow student. I didn't know her, but I would see her and I'd be like, wow, that's. She's impressive. And all of that was going on while I was a BYU student.

Rick Bennett [01:06:51] Student. So.

John Dehlin [01:06:53] But the.

Rick Bennett [01:06:54] But those were the liberal days of byu, apparently, huh?

John Dehlin [01:06:56] I mean, yeah, I mean, and the seventh and Student Review, which was an alternative newspaper, you could. You could read the Daily Universe, or you could read the Student Review, which would talk about all the controversies. And There was the 7th East Press before Student Review.

Rick Bennett [01:07:09] Right.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] And so, yeah, there was a lot of intellectual fervor and liberal and conservative kind of stuff going on at byu. My saving grace were these were Bill, Bill Bradshaw, who, who, who believed in evolution, you know, was probably pro choice, but he had served as a mission president in Vietnam and as a stake president and was faithful, but had been to Harvard, but was faithful. And Ted Lyon and Lynn England and Clayton White all presented as faithful. And they introduced me to Eugene England, Lowell Bennion, Leonard Arrington, and the book, the book A Thoughtful Faith that was edited by Phil Barlow, which was this collection of essays of people like Richard Bushman, Laurel Thatcher, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, and many, many other faithful Mormon intellectuals and scholars. So I read A Thoughtful Faith and I'm like, oh, wow, you, you can stay in the church and still have doubts or questions or even be a semi believer. You could be a buffet Mormon but still stay in the church. And the same thing with, you know, Lowell Bennion, like, that dude's freaking amazing. And he was able to stay in the church. Eugene England, you know, Leonard Arrington, I'm like, I can do this. You can stay in the church as a liberal, but still be faithful. So that got stuck in my brain by the time I graduate from byu. Now, the reason I went back.

Rick Bennett [01:08:39] Did you identify as a liberal at this time?

John Dehlin [01:08:41] Probably. Okay, probably, yeah. As a liberal Mormon, maybe. Yeah, that was a curse word. I don't think so. The other really important essay that I was introduced to was Richard Paul. It's spelled Pole, but it's pronounced Paul. His essay, what the Church Means to People Like Me. And he introduced this concept of a Liahona Mormon versus an Iron Rod Mormon in the essay. And Iron Rod Mormon is like a closed minded, dogmatic, orthodox Mormon that closes their eyes, holds onto the rod and does what they're told, believes what they're told. A Liahona Mormon is somebody that, you know. The Liahona only worked when you asked it questions and it would respond, but it took faith and you didn't know where you were going to go and you had to use your own thinking and process. And so the, the essay introduces this idea of you can, you can be a liberal, progressive Mormon and you don't have to believe everything or follow everything. And that just blew my mind open because I had not been raised that way. So. And then, and then Eugene England had this essay, what the Church Means to People Like Me, where he talked about the church being good. Like, like it's a place where you can practice Christianity and the ward setting Is a, is a place where you can express Christianity and the flaws are, the bugs are features because you learn to be a better Christian by all the imperfections in the church. And it was this type of liberal progressive Christianity, Mormonism that I was inoculated with as a BYU student such that when. So I leave in 93, go to Bain, you know, go to Perian, work for the church, end up at Microsoft, lose my faith fully.

Rick Bennett [01:10:28] Right, because you were a seminary teacher.

John Dehlin [01:10:29] Yeah. And I.

Rick Bennett [01:10:31] Early morning. That sucks. Right? You're more of your early morning person to me, I think.

John Dehlin [01:10:36] Yeah. Oh yeah. I get up at 4 or 5 most of the time without an alarm clock.

Rick Bennett [01:10:40] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:10:41] But yeah. So a year and a half into my seminary, I lose my faith fully. This time it was fully because I didn't know all this stuff. I didn't. I learned all that sunstoney stuff, but I didn't really learn about the stone, the hat. I didn't learn about the polyandry. I didn't learn about Joe Smith lying. Like I didn't know all the details about it because I'd never read no Man Knows My History. I had only seen Hugh Nibley's pamphlet no ma', am, that's not history mocking no Man Knows my History. And I thought, well that's dangerous. I can't read that. That's apostate kind of stuff. So I was okay with sense of dialogue, not okay with Farm Brody. Fast forward to my time at Microsoft, lost my faith fully. But then Leonard Arrington, Lowell Benny and Eugene England were there to catch me. And even though it was a dark night of the soul for me, I, I thought, no, but let's keep the spirit of Lo, Benny and Eugenie. You know, let's keep the spirit of them alive. And so I wrestled for a few years trying to figure out what to do. And then I said, I'm going to leave Microsoft. I'm going to quit this dream job making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year stock options. No Bill Gates rising. I, I'm not trying to brag. Rising star in the company. In many ways I'm going to leave it all behind because life isn't worth living if you don't love and believe in what you do. And I'm not getting fulfillment helping Microsoft sell more boxes of software. This is my calling. And I don't know how I'm going to be a help, be a solution to this problem, but I'm going to do my best. And at the time, 2004 iPods were like in beta. I'm not talking about iPhones, I'm talking about ipods. Like, I'm not even sure the first ipod had really come out yet. Bluetooth hadn't really been implemented and certainly podcasts were not a thing. So I leave in 2004, I get a job at Utah State in a PhD program where I could work with MIT. And I started in this field called instructional technology that tried to marry education with technology, but I got to work with mit. So I'm like, this seems like a cool landing spot to try and figure out what my next steps would be to help solve this faith crisis problem. Because at Microsoft, I'd met a lot of Mormons who were closet non believers at Microsoft who were gay, but they didn't want to tell their spouse or they were got caught masturbating by their spouse and now we're like in the doghouse or they lost their faith but they couldn't tell anyone and they were all like depressed and broken or divorced from faith crisis stuff all at Microsoft. And I'm like, there's no, there's no help for these people. And I'm struggling and it's just unacceptable that the church has no support for people like me, for people like my friends at Microsoft. And so I love Microsoft. Came to Logan, got into PhD program, went, went in instructional technology. And during that first year, 2000-2000-2004-2005, I attended my first Sunstone. Dan Witherspoon was the executive director, and I met the Dialogue crowd and I discovered the blogger knackle. So right then in 2004, I discovered

Faith Crisis While Working at Microsoft

Rick Bennett [01:14:09] what was on the blogger and ACO back then. There wasn't much, was there?

John Dehlin [01:14:12] No, no, there's Times and Seasons.

Rick Bennett [01:14:14] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:14:15] And Feminist Mormon Housewives around then and by Common Consent and Millennial Star. So there are like at least four prominent blogs that that's where all the action was happening. That plus there were some. There was, there was a Internet forum called New Order Mormon that was basically advocating for what's called a middle way, where you could be a non believer or a buffet Mormon, but still say faithful. It was called New Order Mormon. I'm super bummed that that website doesn't exist anymore. So you could go on there and chat with all these people that are making the church work even though they don't believe anymore. And then there were some Exmoor. There was Ex Mormon Forum by that point. ExMormon.org it's probably still around. And then there was like Zion City Limits or zlmb view from the foyer. There were these other forums, they're like chat forums, bulletin boards, where you would have these really in depth arguments by text about the church and its history and its truth claims and current events. So between the, the bulletin boards and forums, the blog and the blogs there, there was a lot. And Sunstone, there was like this rich Mormon intellectual discourse that I got introduced to in 2004. And I, I went to Dan Witherspoon and I'm like, dude, you need to get with the Internet because the Internet's going to be big. And at some point he brought me on. They made me executive director of Sunstone and I created the first. I created a Sunstone.

Rick Bennett [01:15:54] You were the Lindsay Hansen park of Sunstone.

John Dehlin [01:15:56] I was the Dan Witherspoon, Albert Peck, Peggy Fletcher Stack, Lindsay Henson park of Sunstone for.

Rick Bennett [01:16:02] I didn't realize that.

John Dehlin [01:16:02] Yeah, I was on the Sunstone board and then they made me executive director and I created a podcast called Sunstone Podcast. And I did a few episodes. I interviewed Armand Moss, I interviewed a few other people. Richard Dutcher.

Rick Bennett [01:16:15] I never got Armand on my podcast. He passed away.

John Dehlin [01:16:17] So I've got an episode where I interviewed Armand.

Rick Bennett [01:16:20] I remember that. It was a good one.

John Dehlin [01:16:22] Yeah, yeah. So I tried to help Sunstone come into the Internet age. Dan and I didn't see eye to eye. Love the guy, but I resigned from Sunstone because. Just too much tension with Dan on, on how to, where to take Sunstone. He was still stuck in like the publication magazine mode. I helped with the digitization of Sunstone magazine to put it on the web. I was proud of being involved in that. Tried to start a Sunstone podcast, but that I was, I wasn't going to leave my job with MIT to like argue with Dan Witherspoon about the direction of Sunstone.

Rick Bennett [01:17:01] Like, that's what.

John Dehlin [01:17:02] Sunstone was dying. Sunstone was dying. It was hemorrhaging. The magazine was losing subscriptions, they were tanking in revenue. And I wasn't going to risk leaving MIT to like have to pull Dan Witherspoon along. And I love Dan, he's a brilliant person. But I, I just, I, I had to resign from that.

Rick Bennett [01:17:22] So you were working at mit? Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for those who don't know what that stands for, while living in Logan.

John Dehlin [01:17:29] Yep.

Rick Bennett [01:17:30] And you started OpenCourseWare, is that right?

John Dehlin [01:17:33] Yeah, I was the executive director of MIT's Open International OpenCourseWare consortium.

Rick Bennett [01:17:39] We actually use that at Western Governors University. So I'm, I, I've used that.

John Dehlin [01:17:45] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [01:17:46] Yeah, you basically wrote the code for that or.

John Dehlin [01:17:48] No, what, what my job there. Well, I helped. Utah State had a team that built some software to support the releasing of course materials online for free.

Rick Bennett [01:17:59] Right.

John Dehlin [01:18:00] But my role was director of the international consortium. So I would go to universities in Japan, in China, and, you know, in the United States and teach them about OpenCourseWare and try and get them to commit to releasing their course materials online for free, and then to join the consortium where we would meet, you know, once a year, every other year, twice a year, whatever, and try and grow a movement of universities sharing their education materials for free. So I got to go to Spain and Japan and China all as the. The director of the Open Stories Courseware Initiative. And I was. I was told Open stories of the Open. What I say?

Rick Bennett [01:18:45] You said Open Stories?

John Dehlin [01:18:46] Yeah, Open Courseware Initiative. Yeah, I was, I. I was there. I was told I was MIT's only employee west of the Mississippi, so. So, yeah, that was a cool thing. I named the Open Storage foundation inspired by the Open CourseWare. So the OpenCourseWare consortium was inspired by the Open Source Software movement.

Rick Bennett [01:19:12] Right.

John Dehlin [01:19:13] And then I named my non profit the Open Stories Foundation. Inspired by. By those two things. So, yeah, so parallel to working with Sunstone, I. While I was in that USU program in 2004, I learned about blogs, I learned about wikis, and I learned about this thing called podcasts. And I had an iPhone or I had an ipod before iPhones even came out. And I downloaded itunes.

Rick Bennett [01:19:44] Was that contraband at Microsoft? I guess you're out of Microsoft by then.

John Dehlin [01:19:48] Yeah, yeah, Microsoft. Bill Gates wasn't a big fan of the Internet back in the day, believe it or not. So Microsoft was resisting all this web stuff.

Rick Bennett [01:19:55] Neither was Noel. I was a big novel guy. I don't know if you knew that, but.

John Dehlin [01:19:59] Oh, yeah, of course. I worked for WordPerfect.

Rick Bennett [01:20:01] Oh, I don't like Perfect, but I thought Noel had some amazing networking software.

John Dehlin [01:20:07] Well, I worked for Word Perfect after Novella bought Word Perfect.

Rick Bennett [01:20:10] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:20:10] So I worked for that. Anyway, so in 2004, all the blogs are happening wikis, but. But there were only a couple podcasts. There's one called. There was one called Catholic Mormon.

Rick Bennett [01:20:27] I remember that one.

John Dehlin [01:20:28] And there was one. Mike Norton had a podcast called the Church Is Not True. Very subtle, very subtle. Named podcast with this person that he co hosted with this guy named Mike. And there was maybe one other, this Mormon life, I think it was called Dallas Robbins. Yeah. And I'm like, podcasting is going to be huge. You know what I mean?

Rick Bennett [01:20:55] Did you start Mormon Matters before Mormon Stories?

John Dehlin [01:20:58] No, Mormon Stories was first.

Rick Bennett [01:21:00] Oh, it was okay.

John Dehlin [01:21:00] Yeah. I almost named Mormon Stories of Thoughtful Faith. In fact, the first name I decided on was A Thoughtful Faith. But then I attended a storytelling digital storytelling course in Hawaii at some instructional technology conference where I learned about digital storytelling. And I just got converted to the idea that stories were the most powerful way to communicate with people. So last minute, I changed the name of the podcast from A Thoughtful Faith inspired by Phil Barlow's book, Right Two Mormon Stories. And I released it in 2005, that first episode about my mission while I was still trying to work with Sunstone and Dialogue. I. I was trying to consult Dialogue. I met with the Dialogue board, tried to convince the Dialogue Board to partner with Sunstone. Well, to partner with me. And Mormon Stories, Steve Evans ended up creating By Common Consent. And there was a relationship between By Common Consent Blog and Dialogue for many years. But that's when I became friends with Greg Prince. He was on the Dialogue board, and he was the first person I interviewed for Mormon Stories. After my solo episode, I interviewed Mike Norton's partner. Mike. I mean, Mike Norton's partner. I'm forgetting what his fake name was at the time. But yeah, 2005 is one of those tomatoes. Roasted Tomatoes was Jason Jay Nelson Seawright at the time. He and his wife Taryn were bloggers. They had a podcast called, like, Latter Day Liberation Front, but I think they also blogged for By Common Consent. But that was a.

Rick Bennett [01:22:42] This is a good history of the blogger.

John Dehlin [01:22:44] That was the first mixed faith couple or, or like, couple that I interviewed on Mormon Stories really early on. Roasted Tomatoes and Serenity Valley was their fake names from the blogs. But anyway, that was a really, really long way of talking about what my motives were when I started Mormon Stories. So you asked an hour ago, like, what my belief status was when I started Mormon Stories. I absolutely knew that the Mormon Church was not what it claimed to be, that the truth claims would not, could not hold up, that the Book of Mormon was not historical, that the Book of Abraham was a problem and the church wasn't the one true church for sure. And I'd been inoculated with enough progressive Mormonism by that point that I believed all we needed was sunshine, that if we could talk openly about the church's problems and the truth claims, talk openly about the racism, the homophobia, the sexism, feminism, and administration problems, that somehow we could find a way to have thoughtful faith, integrated, progressive faith. And so my explicit intention of Mormon stories was to keep people from leaving the church because I thought that was a bad thing. I thought people shouldn't leave the church because I felt like the church was the best way to live, the best way to raise your kids, the best way to be a moral person, the best way to find community and spirituality. I felt no one should leave the church, but everyone should talk openly about the problems. And together as a community, as we confront the problems with the Internet, with podcasts, with blogs, with open discourse, we'll just. The church will improve and we'll all move together towards a Zionic state. Or I would get excommunicated, one of the two. But.

Founding Mormon Stories Podcast

Rick Bennett [01:24:45] So you knew that was a possibility?

John Dehlin [01:24:47] Oh, I mean, I'd lived in the September 6th era before, so yeah, when I bought that first microphone and published that first episode on my mission story, I. I said this could very well end to me being excommunicated. But the church had taught me, do what is right, let the consequence follow. They had taught me, dare to do right, dare to be true. There is no work. There is a work that no other can do. That, that honesty is super important. So, and, and oh, say what is truth? Tis the fairest gem that the riches of men can produce and prices the value of truth will be when the proud monarch's costliest diadem is counted but dross and refused like truth matters.

Rick Bennett [01:25:34] So that's a hymn for those of you who don't know.

John Dehlin [01:25:37] Yeah, I'll say, what is truth? Oh, say what is truth? So. So, yeah, so for me, I had learned too well that honesty and truth mattered. I'd seen the COVID ups on my mission. I'd seen a bunch of scholars be excommunicated unfairly. And I'm like, maybe this time with the Internet, we'll try and experiment. We'll do faithful, thoughtful, honest discourse, transparent. And it was just an act of faith that the church would. Would support that if I worked really hard to not. So I had a couple of rules. Never criticize the Brethren directly. So in the, in the several first years of Mormon stories, probably until 2013, you probably won't hear me criticizing the Brethren a lot. And you know, you can, you can discuss truth claims, but never like, openly express disbelief about truth claims. So even early on, when my friend Paul interviewed me, the guy who introduced me to polyandry, he interviewed me on Mormon stories like episode 30 to 33. Even then, I'm questioning, like, I'm questioning the atonement a little bit. Like, I'm questioning this idea that God had to kill his son, you know, that sort of thing to make everything right, and that we needed a savior at all. But generally speaking, yeah, that was my motive was it was a naive, idealistic attempt at encouraging open, honest, thoughtful, transparent discord within Mormonism. And I knew that either, yeah, either the church would change in very positive ways or I'd be excommunicated. But at that point, truth mattered so much that. And, and I saw, you know, by then I was aware of the LGBT problems. I had learned about Stuart Mattis and his death by suicide on the steps of church, you know, of, of his local Mormon church building. I'd become an LGBT advocate. By 2004, 2005, I had become a feminist. So, and I, and I felt like the priesthood ban was not of God. So I, I just, I just said, I'm going for it, and I don't know if it's going to peter out and die. I don't know if this podcast thing will take off. I don't know if anyone's ever going to listen, but this will be. This is my calling, like, for my whole life. Even at Microsoft. I'd like, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do with my life? Supposed to have a meaningful job, a meaningful career. Being rich and working at Microsoft wasn't fulfilling. Couldn't be a lawyer, couldn't be a politician. Business is empty. And I felt like I had found my calling. So 2005 is when I launched the podcast. And really early on, I. I learned that a couple people had either lost their faith or even had gotten divorced after listening to Mormon stories. And it really freaked me out. I felt like, oh, my gosh, I'm the reason why people are getting. Losing their faith and leaving the church sometimes. I'm the reason why some people got divorced and my parents had been divorced. And so I was really wanting to prevent divorces with Mormon stories that were unnecessary. And so I even took Mormon stories down a few times prior to my PhD program. Once or twice it was. It was out of sadness for seeing that it caused that. Some people would cite Mormon stories when they lost their faith or divorce, but then also it was just getting overwhelmed by the responsibility of it all and wondering about whether I was doing good. So, so that happened. But overwhelmingly, the feedback was, you're helping me stay in the church. Thank you for Mormon stories. Now I see that there's a middle way now, if you can, if you, John, can be accepted in the church. I think maybe there's a place for people like me in the church. And I just. I love this open discussion. It renovates my interest in Mormonism. So I would get. For every one person who left the

Rick Bennett [01:30:14] church

John Dehlin [01:30:16] citing Mormon stories, I'd get a thousand emails from people saying that it helped them stay in the church. And even during those first several years where my bishop might call me in and question me about Mormon stories, I would just go to my listeners and say, hey, there's a blog episode where I'm like, hey, my bishop's giving me a hard time. He's worried that the Mormon stories is causing people to leave the church. And hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people emailed me or sent me letters where they would bear witness that Mormon stories was helping them stay in the church. And then I like, printed them all out and bound them and brought them to my bishop. And I said, hey, bishop, here's several hundred people saying Mormon stories help them stay in the church. And he's like, all right, you got my blessing. You can. You can keep doing Mormon stories. So there were at least two formal inquiries by my bishop into whether or not Mormon stories was an excommunicable offense prior to my ultimate excommunication, where I was exonerated.

Rick Bennett [01:31:17] Where do you think that pressure came from? Was it from. Was it the bishop just really worried, or was it from higher than that?

John Dehlin [01:31:24] Well, I, I, you know, I do think there were members of the ward that might have expressed concern. No one would have ever told me that later. There were definitely ward members that were out to excommunicate me. But I think most ward members didn't know I had a podcast because they just weren't on the Internet and weren't paying attention. Remember, podcasts didn't get big for another seven, eight, nine, 10 years. Like, it's 2022 now. Podcasts have really come on in the past five years. Well, I was doing more a podcast 10 years before that.

Rick Bennett [01:31:57] So you weren't advertising your podcast in your church or.

John Dehlin [01:32:02] No, I was working really hard to stand, you know, be honest and give honest elders quorum lessons that touched on the issues. But I was in the context of faith and not to. Not. Not to proselytize my podcast.

Rick Bennett [01:32:16] Because you were of elders quorum teacher, if I remember.

John Dehlin [01:32:19] Yeah, for the first three years, I think of my ward, and in. In North Logan, I was elders quorum instructor.

Rick Bennett [01:32:25] And so you really weren't a believer, but you were still teaching elders Quorum?

John Dehlin [01:32:29] Well, I thought of myself as a progressive believer, so I wasn't a Believer in the one true church. I wasn't a believer that this is exclusive authority. I didn't believe that. You know, the way I would phrase my belief back then is I don't know what God is. God. I. It's hard to believe that God's anthropomorphic, but there's something. And I'll just call that God. And I don't know if the atonement worked the way that we were taught, but I believe in Jesus's teachings. I'm a better person when I follow them. Something happened. Was there resurrection? I'm not sure. But I'm comfortable saying I'm a Christian because I follow the teachings of Jesus. And I had learned enough nuance about scripture and I'd learned enough about the problems of the Bible to where I knew the Bible had as many historicity problems as the Book of Mormon. So for me, I had redefined scripture to just be wisdom, myths, teachings, moral teachings. And so I could bear testimony that the Book of Mormon was scripture just like the Bible was scripture. But then I would say Eckhart Tolle scripture. You know what I mean? So I had a very nuanced testimony and I even, I even could go through the temple recommend questions and, and feel good about answering them all in the right ways. You know, I, you know, did Thomas S. Monson or Gordon B. Hinckley have the keys to lead the church in the restoration? Yeah, something got restored. I don't know exactly what that was, but the current president of the church is the guy who runs the church and in that sense has the keys. So like I could, I even got to the point where I could justify answering the temple recommend questions. And I even created a website called Stale DS where I wrote like an 80 page manual in 2007 on how to stay in the church as a nuanced, progressive believer. But I still thought of myself as a believer, just, just as a more progressive type, which is, you know, every Patrick Mason, Spencer Flumen, everybody now who's still a faithful Mormon scholar would probably identify as a progressive Mormon. Plates, who knows, you know, one true church. I'm not big on that, but we have something to contribute. Tarell Givens, Richard Bushman, like that seems to be in vogue today. And that, that's how I felt back then.

Early Episodes and Navigating Apologetics

Rick Bennett [01:34:58] So, so, because I know, you know, I used to listen to your podcast all the time. I probably started in about 2006, so I was a pretty early listener. And I remember you would say on your podcast that you got messages from people, emails or Whatever that were. That you were a wolf in sheep's clothing. And I know that really bothered you. Can you talk about that? I mean, was that a fair.

John Dehlin [01:35:31] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [01:35:31] Term. I don't know what to say. So.

John Dehlin [01:35:34] Speaking of fair, one of the first things I did in 2004, 2005, was I joined the Fair More back then. Yeah. I joined the fair board, and I, you know, I learned about Lou Midgley and Daniel Peterson and all the apologists, and I. I thought, oh, these are people defending the faith. Like they're worth engaging with. And I was even on their email list for a while, and. But I also learned about Grant Palmer, and I had read an insider's view of Mormon origins. So I was trying to decide how. How aggressive I wanted to be on the podcast. And I remember interviewing Richard Bushman, and I was so grateful that he let me interview him. That was one of my first, you know, along with Greg Prince, that was one of my first really big gets.

Rick Bennett [01:36:19] Right.

John Dehlin [01:36:21] And it took me six years to get Richard Bushman.

Rick Bennett [01:36:24] I just want you to know.

John Dehlin [01:36:25] Yeah, yeah. He probably didn't love my experience with him and didn't want to do another podcast for a long time. I don't know.

Rick Bennett [01:36:34] But, yes, that's what he told me.

John Dehlin [01:36:35] Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to hear that story. But here's what happened. So I. I wanted to cover, like, the main. Think about the gospel topics essays. Now. I was just really curious how such a believing, intelligent man dealt with polyandry, dealt with polygamy, dealt with the, you know, the book of Abraham, dealt with the martyrdom, dealt with the stone in the hat. You know what I mean? So I said, you know, Richard Bushman, would you come on Mormon stories? We'll cover 10 topics. And he's like, yeah, I'll do it. We'll cover 10 topics. So he agreed. So I was thrilled, brought him on. And we covered, like, three topics. And I haven't ever gone back to really listen to the episode. I know he was sick during part of it, coughed a lot. But I'm sure we covered, like, the first vision and maybe some of the treasure digging stuff. You might remember more than me what we covered on that episode, but I was trying to go kind of chronological, and all I know is, is that after three. Three of the 10 topics, he quit.

Rick Bennett [01:37:40] Well, that was like six hours, though, wasn't it? Was a long interview. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:37:45] But I was. I was trying to go in depth. I was trying to be substantive. Like, we had talking points that were shallow. Like, I wanted to cover his story. But then I also wanted to cover the topics in enough depth that they would be meaningful.

Rick Bennett [01:38:00] My guess is he wasn't expecting a 10 hour interview.

John Dehlin [01:38:04] Yeah, probably, yeah, probably. So I, you know, I don't hate the guy. I, I, I still really respect him. But he quit. You know, he, he didn't keep his word. He quit three of the 10 topics in and I was really disappointed in that. You know, I didn't, I still loved him. I still, you know, brought Claudia Bushman on later to Mormon stories and, and, and had a lot of respect. To this day I have a ton of respect for him, but that was a bummer. And I, I was trying to decide like, do I tell everybody that he quit or do I just kind of awkwardly finesse the ending of, of the series? And I chose the latter. And so I didn't really make a big deal about him quitting, but it was a disappointment because I, I, we

Rick Bennett [01:38:53] can tell you were disappointed. I will say that. I remember that.

John Dehlin [01:38:56] But he, but he told me why he quit. He said, when I interview with you, it feels like I'm being stung by bees and you swat one bee and then another bee stings you. And the way I inter, he didn't say it was too long. He said, I feel like I'm being swatted by bees. And I don't think I was hostile. I had this is before I created stale ds. I was trying to be a faithful member, but I also believed you should talk directly and openly about the hard stuff. And I wasn't a fan of finesse. I wasn't a fan of like soft pedaling the hard stuff. And that's what apologists in my view too often did. And so I wanted to go in depth and really ask, how do you stay a member with these really serious problems without finesse? And I felt like he was uncomfortable with the level of scrutiny that I was putting him under, frankly. And I think that's why he quit. I don't think it was because of the time commitment. Personally. I think he was surprised by the length. I don't think he was probably expecting that length. But I think the reason he quit is because he knew he couldn't really control the message. And I did lose some respect for him at that point, honestly. And you know, later when he gives that fireside in the basement where he says, you know, where he says, you know, the predominant historical narrative isn't sustainable because it isn't true. But then when it's made public that he says that he backpedals again, I don't fault him for managing his political capital within the church. Everybody who's successful has to do that, including Terrell and Fiona Givens and Patrick Mason and Spencer Fluman and others. I get it. I was doing it, but I lost respect because I got this really clear sense that it's like, well, what we say privately is going to be different than what we say publicly. And I feel like that's. That was. That was the problem. The problem was that we weren't being open. And whether it was my parents, divorce and the secrets that led to that divorce or mental illness that I saw in my family, where everything was kept quiet and wasn't talked about, in my view, it was the silence that was the killer. It was the silence that was harming the church, and I was tired of it. So I did lose respect for Richard Bushman, and I lost respect for Terrell and Fiona Givens when I found out that they were doing these private firesides where they would say one thing in private, but then in public they would say different things. And I've just never had. I was never really a big fan of that kind of doublespeak, because I think it's what got us into that problem. So, anyway, back to your question about apologists and. And critics and everything. After I interviewed Bushman, I felt like it wasn't. I knew I couldn't interview Grant Palmer until I had interviewed Bushman. So my memory is that I interviewed Bushman before Palmer.

Rick Bennett [01:42:05] I believe that's right.

John Dehlin [01:42:06] Yeah. But then I interviewed Grant Palmer because I felt like, let's get both sides. Like, we got to do both sides. We got to stop with the apologetics only. We got to hear what critics have to say. So I went to Grant Palmer's house. What a freaking legend. And he was willing to talk about the hard stuff honestly and openly, to the point of getting, you know, disfellowshipped for it. Right. And eventually he was threatened with excommunication. But he talked about the hard stuff in depth. And his book, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, was legendary. But it really pissed off Daniel Peterson and Lewis Midgley and all those apologists that I would even give a platform to Grant Palmer. But that's a commitment I made on Mormon stories that I've tried to live to to this day. I'll bring on faithful people, but I'm also going to bring on apostates and critics. And we'll. It'll be a dialectic where we'll arrive at the truth and at wisdom by interviewing all sides of the spectrum. And I've. I still think to this day maybe, maybe your podcast is up there. It probably is. But I don't think anybody has worked harder to do more interviews from all sides of the spectrum. And I. That's one of the things I really value about gospel tangents is because if anybody were to. If anyone were to kind of challenge Mormon stories in that regard, it would probably be you.

Rick Bennett [01:43:31] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:43:32] Yeah. And I respect that.

Rick Bennett [01:43:33] Turn that into a commercial.

John Dehlin [01:43:34] Yeah, yeah, you can. Yeah. Because you've had. You've had Sandron, right? Yeah, yeah.

Rick Bennett [01:43:39] You've had Will Bagley. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:43:43] And Steven Pineaker is. Is following in that tradition as well. So Mormon book reviews, thumbs up, gospel tangents, thumbs up. And I. That's the way I think it should be. And. But the church does have a strengthening the Church member committee. I learned about that while I was at byu. Eugene England was a part of, like, the discovery of that where the, like the KGB or the CIA. The church keeps files on people, you know, and then when the time is right, church had it. It's often fair Mormon apologist types that were used as. As labor to track the Internet writings and publishings of the members. And then when the time is right, fair Mormon Maxwell Institute people, farms people would contact local bishops and stake presidents, send them the file, inform them about what was being said and done, and then say, well, you know what to do. All while the church would say, we don't get involved in local matters because they found out that was problematic. So it was.

Rick Bennett [01:44:49] It's problematic in their scripture. Right.

John Dehlin [01:44:51] What do you mean?

Rick Bennett [01:44:52] The apostles aren't supposed to get involved in local matters?

John Dehlin [01:44:55] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [01:44:55] I mean, it's in the Doctrine and Covenants.

John Dehlin [01:44:57] Right, but they were. And they do. And they did. And they were, you know, as the Christine Jepsen Clark episode told general, authorities were telling stake presidents to excommunicate members of the September 6, but then trying to claim that they weren't. And that was dishonest. Right.

Ecclesiastical Scrutiny and Membership Pressures

Rick Bennett [01:45:11] Well, that's why I asked you the question, because you said you'd had your bishop call you in twice. Was it. Was it the strengthening the church members?

John Dehlin [01:45:17] Well, he clearly wouldn't tell me that, so I don't know for sure. I know for sure. The third time they were involved, but. But the first couple times with the. With a different bishop, you know, I don't know. I don't know because he wouldn't tell me, but I suspect they might have been.

Rick Bennett [01:45:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:45:36] Yeah. But I got On Fair. Mormons. I don't. They were called Fair at the time. I got on Fair's bad side as soon as I interviewed Grant Palmer. And from then on, eventually they kicked for that and probably for, like, asking hard questions. They kicked me off their email list. And from then on, they viewed me as an enemy. And I kind of viewed them as an enemy to truth and to honest, open discourse. And I've had a. I've kind of had a battle with apologists ever since then. But still, from. From 2005 until 2014, there were two years where I went inactive for a year each. And both times were really bad. Like, I just felt empty. I felt dark. I missed the church. I missed the spirituality. I missed the hymns. I worried about how I would raise my kids. I felt like my family wasn't doing as well. So the. From 2006 to 2007, I went inactive for a year.

Rick Bennett [01:46:41] Just you or the whole family started

John Dehlin [01:46:43] out as me, but then the family followed. And then. And then I had to do the kind of eat my words where I, like, would then start going back and the family be like, what's going on, dad? I'm like, I just miss it. And so when I came back the first time in 2007, that's when I created the Stale DS website. It was like this renewed vigor. Like we get. I'm gonna do it and I'm going to help other people do it and we'll create a website. And then later it happened again, like, right. Right around the. This is my angriest time was after I lost my. Kind of lost my faith in God. At that point, I was working for MIT in. In Cambridge. It was before I started my PhD program. And it was just a really dark time. This is a Mormon expression podcast had started. They interviewed me. I was kind of really angry. And I was inactive for about a year right before 2012. And it was kind of. Yeah. And then my life almost fell apart. Margi and I almost got divorced. Marriage was on the rocks. And that's when I reactivated again. So I was. From2012 to 2014, I was active.

Rick Bennett [01:47:58] Was that to help with your marriage with Margi or for others?

John Dehlin [01:48:01] It was everything. I felt spiritually lost, you know, without any go to details. I had some sins I had to repent for. Margi and I have talked about this. I. Yeah, I went to my stake president and I'm like, I need help. And so I repented with my stake president. He. He's, you know, he. We worked through that. There was no discipline for that because it didn't reach the point of needing discipline. But I fully repented and I just felt like I need the church because like I'm getting lost without it and this anger isn't taking me anywhere. So from 2012 to 2014 we were, we were back in church again. And, and so yeah. So by. But that's when what, what really I think was the beginning of the end was I was completing my LGBT research at I done I'd research Scrupulosity OCD for my PhD in Psychology. I'd started my PhD in Psychology because so many. By that time over 10,000 listeners had reached out to me for support for their marriage, for their mental health, for they're gay, like a million reasons, you know, And I didn't feel capable of helping them in so many ways. So I figured I'll get my PhD in psychology, it'll help me help them when they come to me for support. And if I can end up being a therapist or a coach for people in faith crisis, I can stop working for MIT and just do this full time. I didn't know if I could ever do that, sustain that financially, but it was like this big leap of faith. So I started my PhD in 2009, studied OCD religious scrupulosity for the first two years of my PhD and then switched to the LGBTQ Mormon experience for the last four years of my PhD and was invited to give a TED talk at Utah State in 2013. So I had reconciled with Margi, back in church, faithful but non believing but progressive and gave a TED Talk. This was 2008 with, with Prop 8 really bothered me. And then Mitt Romney is running again in 2012 and the, the church LGBT stuff is really bugging me. Reparative therapy is still a thing. The church is still promoting conversion therapy by 2011, 2012, 2013. So I decided to give a TED talk on the results of my LGBTQ research, saying that you can be an LGBTQ Mormon and an ally. And that was. And that with along with Kate Kelly's ordained women movement and me supporting Kate Kelly and ordained women and writing an essay for the Ordain Women website where I expressed my public support for the ordination of Women. Those two things happened in the fall of 2013 and by that time the church had fired my stake president, put in a stake president, Brian King, who they knew was going to take care of business, replaced my bishop, and the church was ready to take me out.

Rick Bennett [01:51:20] So do you think your first. Was it one or Two bishops advocated on your behalf?

John Dehlin [01:51:26] I do. And the state president. So I think his name is Mark Nelson. I can't believe I'm spacing on his name, but my first president, stake president, I think his name was Mark Nelson. And he. We went through a year of counseling after, you know, this, this 2012, 2013 time period. He. I also wanted to baptize my son Winston. And he's like, I don't think you're worthy because of your beliefs. And so we did like a year of counseling, sometimes weekly. And he worked with me over a year to the point where he allowed me to baptize Winston as a Progressive Believer around 2012, 2013. Ish. And Winston was 9. So I had to wait a year to baptize my son. But then the church got rid of him because I think he just decided he wasn't willing to excommunicate me. So I do.

Rick Bennett [01:52:25] My Ted talked like nine years.

John Dehlin [01:52:27] Because usually it's like nine years. Yeah, that's my, that's my understanding.

Rick Bennett [01:52:31] I mean, that that's about the time they would release him anyway, right?

John Dehlin [01:52:34] Yeah. But I. My understanding is that is that L. Whitney Clayton and Elder Ballard decided that I needed to be excommunicated. So they came, they did two state conferences in my stake within a very short time period. That bubble chart was created where my name was on it as one of the enemies of the church. They showed that to the local ward leadership in training and said, if you have anyone in your stake that meets these criteria or that appears on this bubble chart, you know, you know, there are things that should be done, you know, without, like, I don't know. But they replaced Mark Nelson, who had been a supporter of me. They replaced my bishop. They replaced the stake president after I gave my TED Talk and by. And supported ordained women. And by January ish of 2014, I was called in to my bishop's office by Brian Hunt and said, I'm starting an investigation on you because of your support of progressive movements within the church. And I'm like, what? What? And this is all audio recorded. You can, you can listen to this audio recording. But what I remember is him basically saying it was my support of same sex marriage and my support of the ordination of women, progressive initiatives.

Rick Bennett [01:54:04] So Brian King was your bishop, is that right?

John Dehlin [01:54:07] Brian King was my stake president. This is Brian Hunt, who is my, my bishop. So Brian Hunt said that he started the investigation and that was in January, February, and then it wasn't until the summer that Kate Kelly and by the by, at that point. My daughter Maya was Laurel's president and I think my daughter Clara was beehive president. So we were in, we were still attending. My kids are being raised in the church and I was worthy and faithful, but progressive and angry about the LGBT stuff, all the LGBT suicides, you know, the churches. I was just getting more and more angry and more and more conflicted about the ethics of staying in the church as a non believer, knowing as a semi believer, knowing that the church was harming so many people and unwilling to change. Deborah Snuffer gets excommunicated at like the 20 year anniversary of the, of the September 6th. Was it the 20 or 30 year, 20 year anniversary of the September 6th. Denver snuffers excommunicated. That was the first like shoot a drop. It's like, oh, they're starting to excommunicate for apostasy again. And then in mid-2014, Kate Kelly and

Rick Bennett [01:55:21] I, Denver snuffer is the anti John Deland, right? He's the. Well on the other end of the pole. But just like our too much of a believer.

John Dehlin [01:55:28] Just like Avram Gileadi from the September six was, was on the conservative fundamentalists.

Rick Bennett [01:55:34] They need to have one to balance the other is that, you know, got to get a right leaning or a left leaning person to balance.

John Dehlin [01:55:40] Get them, get them all. And the bubble chart had had some guy by the last name of Norman and, and Denver snuffer on one side of the bubble chart and then me and ordained women, they didn't name Kate Kelly and like support for LGBT stuff and you know, porn, like on the other side of the spectrum, support for porn. Something like that. Something like that. So Kate Kelly and I received our letters summoning us to a disciplinary council within a week of each other. And that happened, I believe in the summer of 2014. And they did Kate Kelly's excommunication pretty quickly. But I had worked with Martin, you know, I, I raised a stink. And you know, I had worked with Marlon Jensen on studying people in faith crisis. We haven't told this story.

Rick Bennett [01:56:33] We need to tell that story. But we'll save that for later.

John Dehlin [01:56:35] I had worked with Marlon Jensen, I had worked with the church. I had, you know, met with Elder Holland twice. Like I had done my part to help the church make progress. And I think the church felt like there was a real risk in excommunicating me. And so it was like the longest drawn out disciplinary council ever. But it wasn't until like February of the following year where they ended up actually holding the disciplinary council.

Rick Bennett [01:57:03] So. So, because I know Kate got excommunicated because you were both gonna get excommunicated about the same time, and yours got delayed for. I don't know why. And then.

John Dehlin [01:57:12] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [01:57:12] Did they excommunicated Kate and then you were like six months later.

John Dehlin [01:57:15] Yeah. Well, with me, one of the reasons why it was ridiculous is I received the letter about the excommunication, having never met with my state president. So Brian. So the new. The new stake president, Brian King, had never actually met me. I didn't even know his name, I don't think. And all of a sudden I'm getting a letter saying he wants to excommunicate me. And I was attending church, so it's not like I was inactive. So I made a big stink about that. And so then he like, okay, well, let's meet then, you know, because I'm like, oh, you're gonna excommunicate me? And we've never met. That's interesting. My former stake president was fine with everything I was doing. What. What changed? So we ended up.

Rick Bennett [01:58:00] So that's what caused the six month.

John Dehlin [01:58:02] I think so. I think so. So the church had to make it look like they were working with me and counseling with me. So I met with him three times. All those recordings I made audio recordings of, they're on Mormon stories. You can. They're ridiculous. And everyone who listens to them gets sick to their stomach because of the way I was treated. I've actually almost had nobody, even believers, say that I would. I misbehaved in those interviews, but they were just going through the motions. We tried to have a dialogue.

Rick Bennett [01:58:34] He.

John Dehlin [01:58:35] He was a man on a mission. He had been told to excommunicate me. He didn't want to have. He didn't really ever want to listen. We never had genuine dialogue. And long story short is they. They pulled the trigger. Like, I think that next February 2015. Yeah.

Rick Bennett [01:58:53] Well, yeah. And so. Want to switch gears a little bit, talk about a couple of other projects. You've already mentioned Stale ds. And I kind of want to mention. Talk about Mormon matters a little bit. Can you talk about why you started those two sites? Specifically?

Mormon Matters and Helping People Stay in the Church

John Dehlin [01:59:11] Stales was started to help keep people in the church. I had left the church for a year, felt dark, lost. And then I saw a lot of people leave the church and mess up their lives. Divorce, infidelity, drug, alcohol addiction. I'm. I. I view things differently now, but at the time, I just felt like people were better off staying if they could stay, but they didn't know how to stay. They didn't think they could stay as a nuanced or non believer. So I'd write the manual for it. So Stale DS was literally. It's still up. I understand it's dot com.

Rick Bennett [01:59:47] You should sell them. Sell me the domain.

John Dehlin [01:59:48] Okay, I'll say the domain. Maybe I don't know, kind of like owning it. How about I lease it? I don't need money, but I'll let you take it over.

Rick Bennett [01:59:57] I. I actually own stale diaz.org okay. And yeah, we'll talk.

John Dehlin [02:00:02] We'll talk. I'd love people to do something better with it. Anyway, started that, put out that ebook on how to stay in the church. Worked with Brian John Johnson. John Johnston.

Rick Bennett [02:00:13] Johnston, yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:14] He. He passed away recently.

Rick Bennett [02:00:16] I know. I'm sad about that.

John Dehlin [02:00:17] Super tragic.

Rick Bennett [02:00:18] He's a friend of mine.

John Dehlin [02:00:19] Good guy. Yeah. So that's why I didn't say LDS literally to help people stay at the church. And I even like there's a temple recommend guide of how to answer the temple recommend questions. Keeping your integrity but. But also being able to get your recommend, you know, how to nuance tithing, you know, it was all in there. It's still there. It's a fun essay. Look it up. So that's that. That's what was behind Stale ds.

Rick Bennett [02:00:45] So.

John Dehlin [02:00:45] And we also created a forum where people could talk to each other and get to know each other.

Rick Bennett [02:00:49] Yeah, that forum's still pretty popular.

John Dehlin [02:00:51] It is, yeah.

Rick Bennett [02:00:53] So. But my question is, do you really want people to stay LDS anymore?

John Dehlin [02:00:58] Oh, okay. So one thing about Stale DS that's really important is even though I was able to stay with the nuanced progressive testimony, I would have people, person after person tell me that they couldn't do it. They would tell me. I tried. I followed what you said and I just. It wasn't good for my mental health. It wasn't good for my well being. Or it was. It was became a matter of conscience. And I realized that I was propping up a set of recommendations that were only viable for a subset of people. And. But by putting the website up, it would allow other people to say hey husband, you know, all these other people are staying Mormon. Why can't you? You know what I'm saying? Believing wife to non believing husband or believing husband and non believing wife. Look, clds like even bishops were starting to use it. Bishops were using my ebook from Stale DS to help members stay in the church. But. And I was excited about that. I was. I was proud of that. But then There would be the people that, that said it was literally damaging their health and well being to stay. And I started to feel this conflict of like, am I setting people up for false expectations? Am I setting up a standard that, that people could be judged by or pushed towards that wasn't actually healthy or sustainable for many, many people? Because I found that many, many, many people could stay for a while, but then they couldn't do it anymore. And at some point I lost my confidence in being able to really say this is a path that I recommend. It wasn't a path that I even to this day have like denounced, but it's a path I could no longer recommend as being viable for most people. So I actually, you can go read the most recent versions of that E doc that I created with Brian where I like had to put a disclaimer on there. John no longer like advocates for this way because it's not sustainable for many. But I kept the website up and I let other people manage it and I still wanted it to be there as a resource for those who found it useful. And I still feel that way to this day, which is why I've never taken it down and why I still refer people to it occasionally. Do you still do refer people to it? Oh, for sure. I've had, when I, I used to coach. I don't, I don't coach much these days. I've kind of mothballed my coaching practice for now because Mormon Stories is like way busy. But all the time when I was a coach and people would say my wife or husband believe, I don't believe anymore, but like it's going to wreck our family if, if I, if I leave, my spouse isn't ready for me to leave or my job. I'm a church employee. I'm a seminary and institute teacher. I'm a CES director. I'm a bishop. How can I stay to this day? I'll point them to stale ds that, that manual. Absolutely.

Rick Bennett [02:04:19] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:04:19] Yeah, yeah.

Rick Bennett [02:04:20] Well, interesting.

John Dehlin [02:04:21] Yeah.

Rick Bennett [02:04:22] Well. And so the other, the other project that I thought was really interesting that you started was Mormon Matters.

John Dehlin [02:04:30] Did you blog, did you blog for Mormon Manners?

Rick Bennett [02:04:32] A little bit.

John Dehlin [02:04:32] Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like there are all these cool blogs, but none of them would let me blog for them. I blogged for BCC for just a little bit and that just didn't work out because they, they were more neo apologist types and finessing the problems and I just never had a taste for that. I felt like that was a form of dishonesty when you say today, are

Rick Bennett [02:05:00] you referring to by common consent? Yeah. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:05:03] Yeah. And the millennial star crowd and the Times of Seasons crowd. My form of progressive Mormonism was too bold, probably, or too controversial, too sharp elbowed for them. So it was. There's never a fit. And they always suspected I was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Too many of them.

Rick Bennett [02:05:25] So are you going to talk about

John Dehlin [02:05:28] that now, or do you want to finish talking about Mormon Matters?

Rick Bennett [02:05:30] Well, I mean, I think we can come good at both.

John Dehlin [02:05:32] So I. I started Mormon Matters as just a blog to. To do cool blogging, but. But more honest, more open. Talk about the hard stuff, talk about the controversies, talk about the truth claims, talk about nuanced Mormonism explicitly. So it was a. It was a super popular blog, probably one of the most popular blogs in its heyday. And then there was just like. I would just say there was kind of like conflict between me and some of the bloggers. There was some dissent within the perma bloggers. I remember Cheryl Bruno being a part of that. I don't remember the details of the conflict. All I remembered was that it got to a head. I felt overwhelmed and stressed. I. I didn't want to blow up what was happening, but. And maybe a lot of the bloggers weren't comfortable working with me anymore, but it ended up. We ended up basically allowing Wheat and Tares to be created, and we allowed them to kind of like migrate all the content to a new blog, and then they continued as Wheat and Tares. And then I kept the domain and then later allowed Dan Witherspoon to take it over as a podcast. And Dan Witherspoon did Mormon Matters podcast for a long time.

Rick Bennett [02:06:50] Okay. Because as I remember, with Mormon Matters, one of the things. One of your goals was to bring together everybody, ex Mormons, faithful Mormons, and just have everybody talk. But it sounds like, kind of like with stale. Yes. Is that just. Is that. Is that a sustainable model? I mean.

John Dehlin [02:07:13] Well, I mean, you're doing it, and Steven Pinecres doing it.

Rick Bennett [02:07:16] Stephen Pinecrest, not lds, Right?

John Dehlin [02:07:19] Well, yeah. Well, you are. I am, yeah. And, you know, Sunstone does it. It's doable, and I still try and do it. So, yeah, it's. It's sustainable. You just have to be super careful and you have to not cross certain lines. My mistakes were once I started studying the LGBT issues in depth and started and found out about the suicide statistics in Utah for LGBT youth and. And LGBT Mormon adults, and the mixed orientation marriage fiasco that I gathered data about and the High divorce rate, double the average divorce rate sometimes for first marriages with mixed orientation marriages, super low quality of life, the suicidality between the celibacy, mixed orientation marriages, and LGBT suicides and depression. That radicalized me along with, along with my stake president, you know, along with ordained women and then Kate Kelly and then my stake president asking me because. Because when I met back with my stake president, Brian King, he gave me an ultimatum. I said, what do I have to do to stay a member? And he said, take down Mormon stories. Basically. There was a little bit of nuance to that, but it's basically take down every episode that would ever cause anyone to question anything. And I'm like, that's no. Like, I'm not going to take down Mormon stories. Even though I told him how many people. And again, I had everybody reach out to him and email him and tell him how many people were active in the church because of Mormon stories, he didn't care. He was fingered with the job to do. So none of that mattered to him. So if it was, if, if I had to choose being censored about advocating for, for LGBT people, advocating for same sex marriage because it was a matter of voting, advocating for honesty and openness versus censorship, homophobia, you know, misogyny and sexism, I'm not, I'm not going to roll back. So that radicalized me just along with, along with all the pain and suffering of all the people in faith crisis when the church just didn't seem to want to really do anything meaningful. So that radicalized me, which led to me and my refusal to take everything down led to my excommunication, which then made a lot of faithful scholars, apologists, believing people just unwilling to come on the podcast. And a lot of people blame my tone for some of the more liberal or progressive believing people not being willing to come on Mormon stories. But there's, you know, people started declining to come on Mormon stories because of my excommunication before. My tone got got more harsh once people like Bushman refused to come on Fiona and Terrell Givens, who had on twice before, declined to come on Flumen, declined to come on. Like, once the church excommunicated me, they put the scarlet letter on me in Mormon stories, which then made people who were previously willing to come on Mormon stories no longer willing to come on Mormon stories. That's when I started getting angry and my tone got kind of more and more harsh and severe. But to this day, you know, I've had Jim Bennett on, I had, I had Joe Spacing on his name, Joe Tippets. You know, I recently, I, I have believers on whenever they'll come on, whenever they have something interesting to say. A lot of faithful people just won't come on anymore. And it's probably partly me, but it's partly the church. I mean, they know what they're doing when they excommunicate people and then have a temple recommend question that says, do you support any apostate groups? They know what they're doing there. Plus, you know, if you're Pat Mason and rich donors support your endowed chair, are you going to come on Mormon stories? Maybe not. You know, if you're Richard Bushman, you're working, if you're Phil Barlow working at the, if you're Terrell Givens, work at the Maxwell Institute, can you keep your job at the Maxwell Institute and come on Mormon stories? Probably not. So I blame the church as much as my tone for the way Mormon stories is skewed towards more aggressive discourse, along with my just impatience at all the pain and suffering and death and divorce and destructions of families that I've witnessed over the past 20 years. At some point the church becomes complicit in the deaths of, and the divorce and the depression and the anxiety that, the carnage. That is the way the church handles all of these issues. And you know, one year, five years, 10 years, but really, 20 years, 50 years in, the church still can't figure this stuff out. How to be honest, how to handle faith crisis stuff, how to handle LGBT people, how to apologize for its racism, how to incorporate women like 100, 200 years in it can't learn how to be honest and upright about its history and apologize. Like at some point you just, you lose your patience and you feel like the church has blood on their hands. And so back to your original question. Do I believe there could be an open forum of balanced discussion between believers and non believers? Yes, it's super hard and at some point they excommunicate you for it. If you, if you are willing to criticize the leaders who deserve to be criticized honestly. And if you're willing to talk about the truth claims in ways that are honest. But that, that, but that lead people to look at the church with, with intellectual scrutiny. And then the other thing is, you have to get popular. Like someone can say, well, Rick Bennett still does, you know, gospel tangents. But, but as unknown as I am, you're probably less known than me. But if you ever got as popular

Rick Bennett [02:13:41] as, you're the man, the myth and the legend, right?

John Dehlin [02:13:43] No, that's you. Did you hear how I started this episode? But part of it is you have to get popular enough. They're not going to excommunicate you if you're flying under the radar. But once you really get traction and, and start becoming known by, let's just say, 5% of the church membership and you talk about, you know, you're willing to criticize church leaders or talk about the truth claims in a very explicit way that allows people to kind of see a more honest, realistic context for the problems with the church's truth claims, which I'd love to have a conversation with you about. That's when you get put on the radar and that's when you face church discipline. And that's up in Jeremy runnels, you know, September 6th, Grant Palmer, Bill Real. That's what happens.

Rick Bennett [02:14:36] So a bunch of different ways I want to go, all right, this is good stuff.

Critiquing Apologetics and Public Controversies

John Dehlin [02:14:41] Now, now, now we're getting to the good stuff.

Rick Bennett [02:14:43] Big fork in the road with like three choices. Let's go with so you. So after you got excommunicated, you became more harsh, is that a fair word? Towards apologists? And I know you use the term neo apologists. What's the difference between an apologist and a neo apologist?

John Dehlin [02:15:08] So I think of classic Mormon apologetics as Hugh Nibley, Daniel C. Peterson, Lewis Midgley style, where your number one tool is ad hominem, smearing the reputation of the critic or of the honest questioner, calling them gay, accusing them of adultery, calling them a wolf in sheep's clothing or an apostate. That's, you know, ever since Hugh Nibly published no ma', Am, that's Not History, without ever really dealing with any of the merits of Fawn Brody's concerns in her book that he set the tone and in Daniel C. Peterson has been super happy to pick up that baton. Fair Mormon continued with it all the way to kind of kwaku and cardinalis and the this Is the Show videos that were taken down. This whole rich multi decade tradition of smearing critics or smearing honest questioners and then offering disingenuous science, specious invalid science and ridiculous illogical disk, knowingly dishonest answers to the problems with the Church's truth claims. And that's what Hugh Nibley did. That's what farms did, that's what Fair Mormon does and did. And it's an embarrassing blight on the, the church, in my opinion. And I think those people have done way more harm than good, not just to the church, but to People doubting. And I can't tell you how many people I've interacted with over the past two decades who say it was fair Mormon or the Maxwell Institute or farms that caused their faith crisis because their answers were so horrible or they misbehaved so badly in their apologetic ad hominem that the. The church lost additional credibility knowing that the church was bankrolling all of these efforts. Right. So that's. Classic apologists.

Rick Bennett [02:17:16] Classic apologists.

John Dehlin [02:17:16] And then, and then once the Internet really got up to speed, Starting in the 2000s, we started calling out Daniel Peterson and Lewis Midgley and others. In fact, there was a point where I learned from an employee of the Maxwell Institute that Daniel Peterson and Lewis Midgley and who is The Canadian apologist Dr. Guy who wrote the hit piece, the two hit pieces on me. Anyway, I caught wind from within the Maxwell Institute that another part of the Maxwell Institute, Greg Smith was his name, that another member of the Maxwell Institute or group of them were writing two hit pieces on me back in. In 2012, while I was working with Marlon Jensen directly to help solve the church's problem with its faith crisis stuff. So here I am. I conduct a study with my friend Travis Stratford and Greg Prince in response to Hans Mattson, Swedish Mormon area authority who had lost his faith. We collaborate on doing a study of why people are leaving the church. We get like 3,000 people to fill out the survey. We compile the results with the. With a dozen PhDs, compile that into a study and then literally share that with church headquarters. Share it with Marlon Jensen. Travis Stratford goes to church headquarters to present the findings of the study to the Missionary Committee to Church pr, to the Correlation Committee to the priesthood committee, you know, curriculum CEs, all of them, and say, hey, Mormon Church, there's a problem. People are losing their faith. And this is why you need to start being honest with your history and stop deceiving people. I was the, you know, me along with Greg Prince and Travis Stratford, we were the creators of that study. And this is all the history of this has been covered a bit in Matt and Matthew Harris's book on the gospel topics.

Rick Bennett [02:19:30] Yes, the introduction.

John Dehlin [02:19:31] Yeah. But there are other places where we've talked about this, but, you know, that's me. I met with Elder Holland twice personally to try and counsel him on how to deal with people in faith crisis. And the church is doing nothing. And with Mormon stories that sale the s, that's literally how I'm spending all my time is trying to keep people in the church. So the Fact that, so that's what I was doing. And then, and then you've got the Maxwell Institute writing hit piece against me, 100 page hit piece, trying to smear me and call me a wolf in sheep's clothing while I'm helping the church for free. Right. It was ridiculous. So, so I, as soon as I found out about that hit piece from a Maxwell Institute employee, I notify Marlon Jensen and Elder Holland and everyone that I knew, like, can you help me understand why I'm helping you and your, your funding hit pieces being written about me? And that was when Daniel Peterson was removed from the Maxwell Institute. He's removed from his position as the leader of the Maxwell Institute. And I have it on good authority that Marlon Jensen and Elder Holland were both involved in the removal of Daniel Peterson from the Maxwell Institute directly for his unwillingness to back down. So, you know, that's my side of the story. You know, other people may have their sides of the story, but I was again, I had a source from within the Maxwell Institute that was, that was, you know, telling me what was going on behind the scenes. So, but again, that was a classic instance of, of, of classic ad hominem Mormon apologetics. Once Daniel Peterson was dethroned from the Maxwell Maxwell Institute and, and Jerry Bradford, you know, dethroned him from direction from the BYU president and Elder Holland. Eventually Spencer Fluman was put in. And then, and this is, you know, a lot of people contributed to this, but the, the decision was that's not an effective way to deal with doubters, to deal with critics, to deal with people who question. So they migrated their apologetic approach with Spencer Flumin and the Maxwell Institute towards what's called pastoral apologetics, which is not, not to engage in ad hominem anymore, not to engage in specious, ridiculous pseudoscience, non peer reviewed pseudoscience with ridiculous answers. Like maybe when Joseph Smith wrote horse in the Book of Mormon he meant taper. Maybe there's two hill cumorahs instead of one. Instead of all that garbage, you know, we're going to show support to people who are doubting. We're going to love people who question and we're going to just try and pray, provide a more nuanced and progressive path for staying in the church. A la Terrell and Fiona Givens. Allah. Patrick Mason in his book Planted, we're going to show a more loving pastoral approach. Stop trying to address the, the scientific criticisms of the church's truth claims because we know we have nothing there. We know that science wins every time we Try and argue with science on any of the problems with the church's truth claims. So we're going to stop trying to provide those types of answers, love people and stop with the ad hominem. So I, I named that Neo Apologetics. They hate it. So like none of them like that term. I don't even know how well it's, it's known, but that's what I mean when I say a neo apologist. And that's Richard Bushman, that's Terrell and Fiona Givens, that's Patrick Mason, that's Spencer Fluman, that's, that's Adam. What's the guy? Adam Miller. Good people, smart people, lovely people. Trying to do institutionally within the church, frankly, what I was trying to do with Mormon matters, with Dan Witherspoon, with Stale ds, you know, trying to create a progressive, faithful Mormonism that's more liberal and non literal within Mormonism.

Rick Bennett [02:23:47] And so okay, so apologetics are ad hominems and neohal apologetics are nicer but still lacking. Is that, is that what I'm hearing?

John Dehlin [02:23:59] Well, okay, I think it's, I think it's unchrist like to engage in ad hominem attacks. So that's definitely improvement. Neo. Apologies. Neo. Neo Apologetics. Mormon Neo apologetics for me is an improvement on pretty much every level. There's no way, I don't, I'm not aware of any way where it's not an improvement. So getting rid of ad hominem improvement, getting rid of stupid, pseudoscientific, non peer reviewed garbage responses to challenges to the church's truth claims improvement, showing love and empathy improvement, all that's an improvement. Are you asking why I've been critical of neo apologists?

Rick Bennett [02:24:42] That's where I was going.

John Dehlin [02:24:43] Yeah. Do you want to ask the question or however you want to ask it?

Rick Bennett [02:24:46] I mean. Well, I wanted to make sure I understood the difference first.

John Dehlin [02:24:50] Does that make sense? Do you want to push back on that in any way?

Rick Bennett [02:24:54] No. Well, I mean it does lead into the question of if it's such an improvement because I know it seems like last year you were really going after Patrick Mason really hard and because he'd given a fireside and you put kind of a rebuttal video out there and you know, I know you're frustrated with Patrick won't come on your show, Richard Bushman won't come on Terrell Givens, et cetera, et cetera.

John Dehlin [02:25:23] Before my tone changed, that was true. I just want to make that clear. Part of what people want to do is revisionist history that it's because my tone changed. But they stopped being willing to come on my show before my tone changed.

Rick Bennett [02:25:36] And so because they quit coming on, was the beast unleashed. Were you like, I'm not gonna hold back. I'm gonna hold, you know, Patrick Mason to account for bad apologetics or whatever you want to say. I'm just asking.

John Dehlin [02:25:52] So first of all, I like, I love and respect every single person that I mentioned in that group. I love and respect Phil Barlo Terell and Fiona Givens, Richard Bushman, Patrick Mason, Spencer Fluman. They're bright. Adam Miller, brilliant, good hearted, honest, bright people. I felt really conflicted in how I've talked about them. And I regret whenever I've been harsh or unfair or mean spirited, I regret that. So I'm happy to apologize to all of them and say I'm sorry for all the ways I've hurt any of you, if I've ever hurt any of you. So there's that. Patrick and I wrote a column together once after I was excommunicated where we were trying to dialogue back and forth about truth claims and stuff. And Patrick quit the column because he didn't like my expression of anger and frustration and concern. And that was first. In some sense I felt relieved, but in some sense I felt frustrated by that. But we, we, we stayed on good terms. But like, when it comes to. So why, why have I been critical of neopologists? There's a couple reasons why. One is the private versus the public dichotomy. I started hearing about Terrell and Fiona Givens traveling around the world doing these special private firesides where rich Mormons would pay for them to travel around the world and give these firesides. Only people who are questioning were invited. And then they would give their best apologetic responses, but it could never be recorded and they would never publish what was said. And, and it was all just kind of like their spin, but never, never shared publicly and never adopted by the church. And that's sort of like private, secret, elite treatment is a, is kind of a thing of privilege. It's kind of a, it's, it's kind of back to the double speak, it's back to the the two face kind of approach. And when I started Mormon stories, it was always about transparency. And so number one, are these people spokespeople, Are they prophet seers and revelators? Are they apostles? Are there, are they even sanctioned by the church to be giving these? Maybe the, maybe the Book of Mormon isn't historical. Maybe the Book of Abraham wasn't a translation. Maybe it was, you know, inspired through, what's it called?

Rick Bennett [02:28:50] Revelation.

John Dehlin [02:28:51] Revelation or whatever. Like maybe polygamy wasn't, you know, maybe Joseph Smith went off the hinge a little bit and polygamy was never, you know, they're giving all these answers to kind of pacify people privately. That is not endorsed by the church, is not shared church wide. And it felt two faced and it felt elitist and it felt disingenuous because number one, it's, it's only shared in private. They would never say those things in public that they would share in private. Like when Richard Bushman backtracks on the. The historical narrative is unsustainable and people say that I mischaracterized him. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't. But he was uncomfortable that what he shared in private was made public. And I think that's duplicitous. I do, I think it's duplicitous. When they say things in public that they won't say, when they say things in private that they won't say in public. That's dishonesty to me. So it's dishonest is my first concern. It's elitist. That's my second concern. It's unofficial. That's my third concern. Which leads to my fourth concern, which is that the brethren are never held to account and the broader church never has. If as long as apologists, neo apologists can be carted out to sort of like deal with people in these super secret private elitist engagements, the brethren never have to apologize, they never have to say they're sorry, they never have to actually correct the record. And it, it is, it is reminiscent of how the Church handled the Gospel topics essays, which is, which were primarily likely legally motivated and not motivated from a sense of true desire for openness and honesty and transparency. And the way you know that is when Snow acknowledges that they were buried on the website meant to be offered, not known by the church public at large. But they were off. They were published on the website for plausible deniability. Those weren't his words, but they were mine. And then they weren't advertised broadly. To this day, most bishops and stake presidents don't know about them, let alone have read them. Most members of the church don't know about them, let alone have read them. They're buried in many ways and then they're only brought out when somebody's having a faith crisis. So, so the church can say, they can point to the buried Gospel topics essays and say, see we're transparent. We've resolved not to mention that the substance of the essays themselves are highly incomplete or disingenuous or misleading. That's a problem in and of itself. But aside from that, they're hidden, they're not advertised. There's never been, as far as I know, a general conference talk where the members are encouraged to read them and to get to know them and become familiar with them. There might be a talk here and there at a BYU thing or some random fireside that Ballard gave. But to this day, my understanding is that the church general public has never been made aware of the Gospel topics essays. And, and to me, that's not the type of full honesty that the church taught me to emulate and to show. And to me, neo apologists enable that duplicity. And they enable the church never having to actually be accountable for not just deceiving a couple hundred years worth of members on its history, knowingly deceiving a couple hundred years worth of members on its history, but also punishing its truth tellers like the September Six, like Maxwell Hanks, like Eugene England, silencing him like Lil Binion, like, you know, so many. Right. So the, the apologists are, the neo apologists are enablers of duplicity and they're enablers of the, of the church leadership not having to be fully accountable and fully transparent. And I'm torn. You know, I talked to David Bacavoy about this once. David Bacavoy, and this, this is not a new thought. I knew this before, but, you know, David Bacavo said they're, they're a bridge, they're a way station. Like all of this stuff, neo apologetics, the Gospel topics essays, they're like a soft landing ramp. When people are in faith crisis, even if they're going to leave the church, they provide people this soft landing in a faith crisis to then let them get their bearings, not blow up their lives, and then in a more peaceful way decide whether they're going to stay or leave. And he's right. And so I've been too harsh with, with neo apologists and I regret that. And it's. It takes all kinds. It took Malcolm X and it took Martin Luther King and Richard Bushman has contributed more to historical transparency than almost anyone. And I know Patrick Mason and Spencer Fluman, and the Givens are good people trying to do good, trying to move the church in progressive and healthy directions. So long story short is I regret how hard I've been on them. But when I've been hard on them, that's why. And, but, but I, I, I will also say I, part of why I was hard on them was just like sour grapes that they used to support Mormon Stories and then stopped. And that forces Mormon stories to shift to the less faithful, when faithful people will no longer come on. And it feels like rejection because I helped. When Terrell and Fiona Givens first came on Mormon Stories, many of their books weren't even offered a Deseret book. I helped, I think I helped resuscitate. I, I think I helped make Darryl Terrell and Fiona Givens prominent, as prominent as they are within Mormonism. My first Mormon Stories interview did. And that led to their book deal with the Crucible of Doubt, as I understand it. And they came on the second time and I promoted the Crucible of Doubt. So, like, you would think if, if we had had that relationship, if we had had that good faith, even if I had been excommunicated, even if I was a little bit salty, that they would say, hey, John's been good to us. We still support the mission of what John's trying to do. Yeah, we'll come back on Mormon Stories to promote our new book. But no, they wouldn't. And Patrick Mason, you know, part of what made me super angry at him was that he agreed that we would cover one of his new books on Mormon stories, and then he backed out. And, and that's childish and petty of me to be angry at them for that, but I was childish and petty, and I, I struggle with that. And I'm just going to keep trying to work on it, but I do regret it. I love you, Patrick. You know, I never really met Spencer. I mean, I met Spencer, but we've never hung out. You know, Terryland, Givens, Terrell and Field. And I respect you, Richard Bushman. I doubt you care, but I respect you. And if I've ever caused you grief, I'm sorry.

Relationship with Elder Holland and a Broken Confidence

Rick Bennett [02:36:31] Another issue I wanted to talk about was you. You had a good relationship with Elder Holland, and you had mentioned that you, you had broken a confidence. And can you tell us a little bit about that story?

John Dehlin [02:36:47] Well, my memory's gonna be fuzzy on this, but here's what I know. On the one hand, when I met with him twice, he literally said to me, you can, I don't like you can tell anybody anything that I said here. And there was a point where he even encouraged me to make a particular statement to people unattributed to him. But he certainly never said to me, never tell anyone what we talked about. And It'd be stupid for him to say that because that would, that would be an apostle of Jesus basically saying, don't quote me. You know, I mean, they're supposed to be bolding and test. So I hope that makes sense to people. Um, but I think there's a code where if you meet with an apostle, you don't talk about it, you know, you know, people that have met with apostles and like, I'm not going to say who, you know what I mean? Like, there's that code within Mormonism where when you meet with a high level church leader, you don't say who it was and you don't really give any specificity because they get in trouble. Like even within the monks themselves, when Jeffrey Holland speaks out or Boy K. Packer says something dumb, the others clearly behind the scenes express concern and they get in trouble. And so they don't want dissent in the quorum. They certainly don't want public dissent. And they're all managing their political capital just like Richard Bushman or Patrick Mason are. So they don't want to be if they're more progressive, they don't want to be quoted in a way to more where the more hardliners who have more seniority might call them out or punish them in some way. Just like when Marlon Jensen apologized to the Saints of Oakland about the LGBT stuff. And then Packer found out, you know, Marlon Jensen told me the story of how he was called onto the carpet by Boyd K. Packer for apologizing to the Saints in Oakland. I've got that on audio tape, by the way. But. But there's an unwritten understanding that you just don't talk about what was shared. So after, after all this stuff at the Maxwell Institute went down, when Daniel Peterson was coming at me and the hit piece was being written, that was

Rick Bennett [02:38:59] when he was at the Interpreter. Now, is that right?

John Dehlin [02:39:01] This is before the Interpreter was created. He created the Interpreter immediately after getting booted from his position that he was in at the Maxwell Institute. He stayed at the Maxwell Institute, but was just with Arab stuff. It was no longer like head of Apologetics. And he committed, he, he created the Interpreter right after. And the hit pieces that he published about me were going to go in like the Journal of Book of Mormon or whatever studies, whatever it was. And those were some of the first articles in the Interpreter. That's how they were published. But prior to that, while he was still in, and all the stuff with Gerald Bradford and the Maxwell Institute and the president of byu, was it Merrill Bateman? I forget who it was at the time. And Holland and, you know, and Marlon Jensen, when all that was going on. I'm sure that I said somewhere that either I had met with Elder Holland or Elder Holland had my, you know, you supported me or whatever. And. And it may have been related to other issues, but, yeah, at some point, I. I made it known that Elder Holland and I had corresponded and, you know, that. That we had favorable correspondence, and he didn't. I think he didn't like that. And it was from then on that he would never return my emails or be willing, you know, to meet with me again. Oh, and I know. I know that I told my stake president at some point that I had met with Elder Holland and maybe during the second anointing. When I had interviewed Tom Phillips about the second anointing, I went to my previous stake president, Mark Jensen, and I had asked him if I could release. I knew that someone who received the second anointing was sworn not to talk about it. What I wasn't sure is, is that if I published someone talking about their second anointing experience, if I could face church discipline for that. Because by this point, I was back active again and wanted to stay in the church. So I did mention to my stake president that I had had interactions with other Holland, and I was like, can you please find out from somebody whether I'm gonna get in trouble for publishing the Tom Phillips interview about the second anointing? And at some point, the message came back through my stake president. Elder Holland doesn't like being quoted in any of this context, and he doesn't want you to ever mention his name again. And that's when I kind of got the sense.

Rick Bennett [02:41:42] Is that because Tom Phillips had mentioned Elder Holland in the interview?

John Dehlin [02:41:46] Yeah, that. That might have been part of it because, yeah, that's a good connection. I'm fuzzy on what pissed Elder Holland off. And of course, he would have never told me. So I'm left to guess I had

Rick Bennett [02:41:57] something to do with Daniel Peterson. It maybe not.

John Dehlin [02:42:00] It's all a jumble in my mind. And all of this may have happened around a similar time period. So it's fuzzy. But what's. What I'm sure of is I did either let my stake president or, like Daniel Peterson or, you know, in that dialogue, I mentioned interactions with Elder Holland and Elder Holland, I got the sense he didn't appreciate it, and he sent a message to me not to mention his name again. And from then on, he wouldn't respond to any of my correspondence. And I Don't blame him. I think a certain amount of confidentiality is just required to operate at that level. So, yeah, around then we never communicated again.

Rick Bennett [02:42:41] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:42:43] But, but, but Tom Phillips did talk in depth about his attempts to reconcile his faith crisis with Elder Holland. And I'm sure that wasn't fun for Elder Holland because there was some writings about Tom Phillips in the second morning before my Mormon Stories episode. But once I released that Mormon Stories episode about Tom Phillips second anointing, that really blew up. That's one of my top, most important and most listened to episodes of all time.

The Swedish Rescue and Church History Research

Rick Bennett [02:43:14] Okay. One thing that we've kind of danced around a little bit and I want to do a little bit more depth on is your study at Utah State that you did on why people leave the church. I know Matthew Harris cited that in Gospel Topics Essays. And can you talk about more details about how you started that study and the results of that?

John Dehlin [02:43:38] Yeah. So early on in my Mormon Stories career, I started seeing a lot of Swedish listeners and commenters and I even made friends with a few of them. And so I'm like, wow, we've got a Swedish contingency that's kind of significant. I wonder what's going on in Sweden then? Then I started getting word that, that there was like a group of Swedish, you know, doubters that was starting to like meet and, and communicate. I'm like, whoa, this is getting serious. Then I found out that a former area authority named Hans Mattsson had lost his faith possibly and was a part of this Swedish group that was having doubts and questions. And I part of that was from him, like commenting on my Mormon Stories blog or signing up to follow me or something. And then part of it was just back channel communications I got from some of my Swedish listeners. But it started to boil. Swedish stuff started to boil. And then I don't remember exactly when. My friend Travis, Travis Stratford, who designed the Mormon Stories logo, he's a top notch graphic designer, brand manager in New York City, owns a firm with a couple other friends, done a lot of consulting with the church. Travis served a mission in Sweden and he's like, hey man, I've been in touch with Hans Matson, who's a former area authority and he's, he's lost his faith and he's really upset about it. And at some point during this time the Swedish rescue happened and this is one of the things I'm most fun about the history is that all these Swedish people and Han Hans Matson raised a big enough ruckus to where Marlon Jensen, while he's church historian, and Turley, Richard Turley, go to Sweden and hold one of these private firesides and try and resolve the doubts and questions of all these Swedish members. And this was recorded. And you can find the audio recording on Mormon Stories. And it's just a pathetic attempt at giving lame answers to doubts about people's questions around the truth claims. And then like all these barrage of questions from the Swedish members showing that they weren't satisfied with the dumb answers that were being given by Jensen and Turley. And it was called the Swedish Rescue. It was recorded. We ended up releasing the audio of the recording, and it was a real watershed moment for the church. In addition, Hans Mattson sort of reached out to me and Patrick, Travis Stratford and Greg Prince and others and said, I want to hold a meeting. It was almost like kind of a high Noon kind of thing. And. And basically what they said is, is. And my recording's still going. So basically what they said is, is Marlon Jensen, this is Hans Mattson, you know, your church historian. Meet me in New York City with John de Lynn and Travis Stratford and Greg Prince. And we are going to maybe go to the. Maybe go to your left just a little bit because you're blocking the camera a tiny bit. Yeah, they said, meet me in New York City and we're going to talk to you about the problems with, you know, the church and its truth claims and its history. And we're going to have kind of like a high noon showdown. So that meeting gets scheduled in New York City, and Greg Prince convinced Travis to. To disinvite me from that meeting for diplomatic, kind of political reasons. And so Greg Prince, Hans Matson, Marlon Jensen and probably Turley and. And Travis Stratford met in New York City.

Rick Bennett [02:47:55] And why do you think you were disinvited, Greg?

John Dehlin [02:47:58] I get the sense that Greg convinced Travis to disinvite me because the. Because I had a public platform, I had the podcast. And they were worried that maybe Marlon Jensen, maybe Marlon didn't want me to be there, or maybe they were worried that I might disclose on the podcast things that were discussed in the private meeting. Maybe they didn't like me. I don't know.

Rick Bennett [02:48:18] This is like 2009 time period, roughly,

John Dehlin [02:48:21] maybe 10, maybe 11 kind of thing, definitely before the Gospel Topics Yesterday's were released. And I'll tell you why I remember it that way. So we all meet what they meet. But we wanted to prepare data so that wouldn't just be anecdotal. We had data. So I designed a survey for that Meeting where I, I, and I designed it. Travis reviewed it, but I put up a bunch of questions about why I thought people were leaving and I put them into a survey. We used Lime Survey, which was some open source PHP based software to run the survey and we, I threw it out to all my followers and listeners and like 3,000 people filled out the survey and they, they checked all the boxes for why they lost their faith and whether they were still active and that sort of thing.

Rick Bennett [02:49:10] This is what's called a snowball.

John Dehlin [02:49:13] Random sample, not random sample. And I didn't do this as a part of Utah State University. They wished I had. My advisor is like, why didn't we do an IRB with this? And then we could have use the data. But I didn't. It was an individual initiative with, with these other people. Not, not supported by Utah State. It was just I did on the side while I was getting my Ph.D. and yeah, so we did it. 3,000 plus people filled it out and then I got a, like a dozen PhDs to all help me crunch and analyze the data. Morgan McCune and, and my friend Scott. I like blanking on names, but lots of really brilliant social scientists and scholars were involved. And yeah, we crunched the numbers and put together a presentation and put some PowerPoint slides together, some graphics and some visual stuff and, and that was used in that New York meeting with Travis and Hans and, and Marlon Jensen. And my understanding from the meeting was that Marlon Jensen was shook by the data, especially the demographic data. The education level of the people in faith crisis was higher than the average education level for people in the church. And the, the income levels of the people losing their faith was higher on average than the average member. And the appearance of like former bishops, former stake presidents, former mission presidents was like former stake high councilman was off the charts. And Marlon Jensen's response to that was, we're losing our best and brightest. He was shocked. And so he said, can you not publish these data? Can you not publish this report? Can I take them back to church headquarters and argue for some sort of program or initiative that would help the church become more transparent in its history to avoid this hemorrhaging of members, of our best and brightest, of some of the top members. So we didn't release the data at the time and we sat on it and we waited and we waited and we waited and it just felt like nothing was happening. So I got impatient and at some point I reached out and I just said, hey, talk to Marlon. You know, you know, please like let him know, either either release the data or tell us what's going on, or I'm gonna. I'm gonna release the data. And at some point, Marlon Jensen reached out to me and through Phil Barlow, and we had a private meeting, lunch at Phil Barlow's house. I recorded the audio from that meeting, and it was just kind of just like, I get to know you. I explained Marlon what I did and why, and he thanked me for my research. He asked me what I would do to kind of fix the problems in the church, is when he told me the story about Boyd K. Packer, calling him under the carpet for, you know, for apologizing to the Oakland Saints about the LGBT fiasco. It was a lovely meeting. He's a brilliant.

Rick Bennett [02:52:32] He.

John Dehlin [02:52:32] It's. He cried. He told me he wondered what he had done to be passed over as an apostle. He felt sad about that. He. He blamed himself, but didn't know why he was passed over. And, yeah, he expressed real regret and sadness for all the pain and suffering that not only LGBT members, but also people in faith crisis were having. And at some point in the whole process, he said, before you release the data, can I have one more chance to kind of make my case? And my sense was, was that he was trying to convince the Apostles to do the Gospel Topics essays or some sort of transparency initiative. And at some point, they flew Travis to church headquarters, where he presented to the Correlation Committee, ces, Missionary Department, pr, probably others, priesthood committee. And he. He presented to them a refined version of the study that Marlon Jensen had received in New York with Hans Mattson. And apparently Marlon Jensen, that was his attempt to persuade the Brethren to support the Gospel Topics Essays initiative. And apparently that was instrumental in Marlon Jensen convincing the Brethren to approve the Gospel Topics essays, which, as I hear, they begrudgingly approved. I think Uchtdorf was a big part of that. I think Quentin Cook was a big part of that.

Rick Bennett [02:54:06] Wasn't the New York Times article a big part of that?

John Dehlin [02:54:08] And then, yeah, eventually Hans Mattson spilled his tea with the New York Times. And also a big part of that was when Marlon Jensen came to BYU to give a private speech. I asked a student to record the audio from that presentation, where in that audio recording, Marlon Jensen was quoted as saying, this is the biggest apostasy we've seen in the church since Kirtland. And of course, once that got published, he backtracked and said he was misquoted, and the church wheeled out its apologists, because I think the UPI or one of the press, you know, One of the press, you can still find that, that story, it got picked up in the press that Marlon Jensen, church historian and general authority, was acknowledging the defections and the hemorrhaging. That was a disaster. I, I was the one that commissioned the recording, audio recording of that, which I'm proud of. And yeah, all of that led to Hans Mattson speaking, the Lori Goodstein of the New York Times, a whole profile on Hans Matson coming out in the New York Times about the faith crisis problem. And I interviewed Hans, Hans and Burgitta Matson on Mormon stories. And all of that was just a really mind blowing, explosive time. And eventually I released the findings of that report at a Mormon studies academic conference at Utah Valley University. This is around the 2011, 2012 timeframe. I debated Scott Gordon, a fair Mormon, on stage. It was kind of a, I don't know, a poop show, a crap show. I'll say to not swear on your. On your show. And it led to a lot of tension between me and, and the apologists that led to the hit piece that was released. But it also led to my anger at the headpiece, the that I'd spent a couple years of my life trying to help the church help Marlon Jensen, help get the gospel topics essays released, help the church solve the faith crisis problem, to then have the church pay people to malign me. And that's again led to the falling out with Holland and eventually my excommunication. So that's that story. Any questions about that?

Rick Bennett [02:56:31] I'm trying to remember if there's anything else. Was there a second study or did you just do the one study? I thought there were.

John Dehlin [02:56:37] Well, okay. Yeah. What? What? Yeah, there was a second and maybe a third study where Travis wanted to get more qualitative, anecdotal kind of stories to supplement the data from the, from the original study. So he did that. I probably helped him advertise it.

Rick Bennett [02:57:00] Okay.

John Dehlin [02:57:01] I wasn't involved in the processing of the crunching of the numbers. And then he compiled all of that with the data into this massive, incredible Madison Avenue presentation slash book that he put together into a bound book and personally delivered to Elder President Uchtdorf. By then, I think, I think he was in the first Presidency by that point. And delivery. President was supposed to meet him in person. For some reason President Uchtdorf had a thing and couldn't meet Travis in person. But Travis had that book personally delivered to Uchtdorf and it was the very next fall from that summer, as I recall, that Uchtdorf gave his Famous first talk expressing empathy for people who doubt. And we believe that the study not only was instrumental in the Gospel topics essays being released, and we've been told that by numerous people on the inside, but that that's what led to Uchtdorf giving more public addresses, showing empathy for people in faith crisis in General Conference, which then he got punished for and kicked out of the First Presidency for according to people as well. So that's all stuff that along with a lot of other really smart good people like Travis Stratford, Hans Matson, Marlon Jensen, that was an effort that I spent multiple years trying to positively and constructively engage the church from within, only to be excommunicated as a thank you and to have the church pay people to write hit pieces to smear me as a thank you. So yeah, when I get angry and salty, maybe those are some of the things that led to me feeling a little bit betrayed by the church I loved and tried to be a constructive force for good from within.

Gospel Topics Essays and Advice for the Church

Rick Bennett [02:59:03] Well, not that they'll listen, but do you have any advice for the church now if they're, if they are listening?

John Dehlin [02:59:14] When I met with Elder Holland, I almost declined to meet with him because my brother was working for church headquarters at the time. He, he was head of IT for all the church. He had a, he's on a first name basis with the first presidency, the quorum of the 12. Joel ushered in the Internet, ushered the church into the modern Internet age. All the social media stuff that the church started doing, whether it's Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or YouTube, my brother would have either built the foundation for that, made the arguments to the church leaders, or literally managed that migration. And I'm really proud of my brother for all the efforts that he did there. He did that in the church while I'm doing Mormon stories. And you know, there was a real firewall between us. He was faithful, progressive, believing I was where I was. He was trying to help from within. I was working from without, still within a little bit. And then he would never ever disclose any, violate any confidentialities or disclose anything. But he, and he didn't like. I sense that he always wished I wasn't doing what he was, what I was doing because I think it was embarrassing for him because we shared a last name and you know, his family didn't like it and I'm sure he got questions from the brethren, but he was literally the head of IT and computers for the Mormon Church. While I'm the most prominent, you could say, critic of the church. That was all Happening. And we paralleled, you know, five, seven years in that sort of strained but loving, connected relationship. So because he was friends with. With Bednar and Holland and everybody, and because I had a relationship with Holland from, you know, we had played tennis, I dated his daughter. You know, at some point, Holland's like, let me meet with John, you know. And so Joel set up two lunches with Elder Holland. It was at a private restaurant. You know how, like, at the top of the Joseph Smith building, there's those two restaurants, one outdoors and one indoors. It was at the indoors one. And it was lunch on the.

Rick Bennett [03:01:19] On the top of the, like the 10th floor or whatever it is.

John Dehlin [03:01:21] Yeah, it was for lunch. So. And he had, like, the whole. The whole restaurant was empty. It's almost like a Godfather moment. The whole restaurant was empty except for me and my brother and Elder Holland with a private server. Right. Both. Both times we met, it was there. And. But when Joel reached out to me at first about meeting with Elder Holland, I was like, oh, I was excited. I'm like, wow, this is a dream come true. Like, I can actually be meet with a prophet, Syrian revelator, express my needs, give him some ideas and help him. But there was one huge problem. I didn't want to embarrass my brother. Two huge problems. I didn't want to embarrass my brother by being too hard on Holland, you know, And I only wanted to meet with him if I had good ideas, because I didn't want to just be a complainer, right? So I spent weeks and weeks and weeks thinking about, I know Holland's going to say, what should I do? I'm pretty sure Holland's not going to know what to do because I don't even know how much he knows about the problems with the church, because at that point, there were big questions about whether the brethren even knew about the challenges to the truth claims or the historical problems. The general consensus was they're as old and dumb and as clueless as anybody in the church, other than maybe a few exceptions. So, like, I didn't even know if he knew the problems. So the. The challenge I set for myself was I only want to go if I can provide constructive suggestions that wouldn't harm the church, because that would be dumb for me to go apologize for your past racism, Elder Holland, and give women the priesthood and come clean with all your historical problems and be honest about it. Like, no, they're never going to do that. And they're going to think you're dumb and maybe even Question your integrity or your loyalty if you were to make recommendations like that. So I'm sitting there thinking, well, what's a recommendation that I can make that won't reduce tithing and won't reduce the butts and seats? And that is in any way feasible? And to this day, Rick Bennett, I don't know that I ever have been able to come up with a good recommendation. How to fix the racism problem, how to fix the sexism misogyny problem, how to fix the LGBT problem, how to fix the transparency and the truth claims problem without meaningfully harming the church. Because all of those things. All of those things, the bedrock and the foundation of all those problems

Rick Bennett [03:04:10] was

John Dehlin [03:04:10] laid by prophet seers and revelators who claim to speak to God. Whether it's the priesthood ban or the women not having the priesthood or homosexuality, according to Spencer Kimball, being an abomination, or all the, you know, the September six excommunications or, you know, the disbanding of the Leonard Arrington administration, All that was done by prophet seers and revelators. So as soon as they apologize for or backtrack on any of that stuff, they're undermining their own prophetic authority as being led by God. So how do they walk any of that back without the church members saying, you're in a. Either a. You're an apostasy, which is the whole Denver snuffer crowd, right? Either if you make changes, you're an apostasy, and we're gonna. We're gonna go fundamentalist and start the flds. Like, start FD flds branches or, you know, oh, you're just making all this up. You're not really. This is not really the one true church. You're not really speaking for God. You're making this up. We're going to leave like, they. It's a lose, lose. They lose in every direction if they make any of these meaningful changes. So I was paralyzed not knowing what recommendations I would give to Elder Holland. And I'd been somewhat stunned trying to talk to Marlon Jensen. He kept asking me, what should we do? What should we do? And I, like, stuttered because I. I wanted to give a recommendation in good faith. And I could not think of a solution that would not lead to a mass defection of membership and a mass decrease of tithing, which I knew was going to be. Those are going to be the three, four things that are most sacred to the church. Tithing, right? Membership, attendance, priesthood authority, and pr. For sure. Those are the most sacred things to the church. And you know, so I did meet with Elder Holland and I had, I all I all I said all I asked him in that first meeting, listen him talk about the problems in Chile with the missionary program. I, we talked about evolution and he said, you can believe in evolution and still be a faithful member. You didn't have to choose. We talked about conversion therapy and how he wasn't sure what Dean Byrd was doing was very good. But you know, but at the very, very end, he talked about how hard it was to be an apostle, how hard it was to lead the church, how hard it was with the mid level management bureaucracy to keep them all in line. You know, he talked about how when you're a junior apostle, how limited you are and how everything's run by unanimity anyway and so it takes forever to make a change. He acknowledged all that stuff.

Rick Bennett [03:07:02] President Nelson's making changes.

John Dehlin [03:07:04] Yeah, pretty quickly by fiat. But I think he, he broke, he broke tradition by acting without consensus. I mean that, that whole November 15th policy by all accounts was a move without unanimity in the quorum. That caused a lot of problems. So you were kidding. But now I get serious way too quick. So anyway, so like all I said, all I asked Elder Holland in that first meeting was, do you want people like us in the church? That's the best I could offer. Didn't even give a suggestion. I just said, do you want people like me in the church? And he was just so emphatic, it's almost like he was lifted out of his chair and he like pounded on the table. We want people like you in the church. We need people like you in this church. And he actually said, I want a hundred thousand John and Joel Delins in this, this church. That's what he said. And that made me feel great, you know, made me feel amazing. Like, whoa, he listened to me and he cares and he's going to do something about this. And, and then like the very next General Conference, he gives his Book of Mormon, famous Book of Mormon talk by my memory, which was you, you, you know, to leave this church, you have to crawl under, over, around the Book of Mormon. And I'm just like, were you just punking me? Were you just like glad handing me? Like, how can you give that talk after telling me you want people in this church? Because he was basically mocking and trivializing people's concerns about the Book of Mormon and his historicity. I still met with them a second time. The only recommendation I had was to make a statement in General Conference telling Not telling believing spouses not to divorce their believing spouses when they lost their faith. And long story short, when I asked him to make a statement like that in General Conference, he said, we can't tell people what to do in their marriage, is what he said. And then I said, well, so, like, marriages are blowing up, families are blowing up. Can you do something? And he was like, here's what. Here's what I'll tell you. Tell people. I give you permission to tell people that you've traversed the headquarters of the church, and from the many conversations you've had from people with people, unnamed people, I've gleaned that. And then you can tell them that, that within church headquarters, there's support for not divorcing your spouse, just for leaving, losing their faith.

Rick Bennett [03:09:35] But don't use my name.

John Dehlin [03:09:36] Yeah, don't use my name. And I was like, But Elder Holland, like, nobody's gonna listen to me. Just a podcaster. Like, they need. They need like an apostle to say that over the pulpit. And that's when he said to me, and this makes my mixed, mixed faith marriage friends really angry. He said, maybe when the church is a little more mature, we'll be able to make statements like that over the pulpit, but not now. And that was the last time I met with him. And of course, I left really disappointed because I'm like, you're a prophet of God. You know, marriages are blowing up, and you're saying that you have to wait until the time is right to give a talk that, you know, needs to be given. But. And Boy K. Packer was still alive at that point, so I get why he would have been afraid to give a talk like that. I don't even. You know, they've tried to make amends since then, but I was just not impressed with his lack of courage. Like, it just seemed like another. It seemed like Congress. Like, you remember how I, like, got disillusioned with Congress. When I worked for Congress, it felt like a. Just a religious version of. Of the Senate, where you, like, are really working with humans in a secular way. Backroom deals, coalition building. Not led by God, not led by courageous people who follow the spirit and their conviction, just more managing your capital. And it was then that I knew that, no, no one's going to save us. Uch Door is not going to save us. Holland's not going to save us. None of them are going to save us. Remember when we thought, when Boy K. Packer dies, the church is going to have a renaissance. And then freaking Oaks became The bad guy. And Holland became the bad guy and Bednar became the bad guy. You know, and of course, Holland with his muskets talk at byu. And they're. They're. They've all been a massive disappointment. And. Yeah. And so that was a real moment of disillusionment. It was really a Dorothy going to Oz, seeing behind the curtain, meeting the wizard kind of moment where you just realize these dudes are just saying whatever they can say to make you feel good. They don't have a real integrity. They don't have real honesty. And they're not led by. If there's a God, they're not led by him because they're kind of cowards. And they're a lot. They have blood on their hands. Allowing the deaths and the marital destructions and the family disillusions and the. Just the deception of generations of members. They know. They know. And they're just choosing not to really act in a way that shows integrity and the character that, frankly, the Church taught me. Sorry, Elder Holland. I'm sure you mean well.

Possible Return to the Church and Personal Reflection

Rick Bennett [03:12:34] All right, well, I think I'm running out of questions. Last one. I kind of wanted to run by you. Do you ever see yourself, you know, I know Maxine Hanks has come back. Abraham G. Gileadi's come back. Do you ever see yourself ever coming back and into the LDS Church?

John Dehlin [03:13:02] There's the theoretical answer and the practical answer. The practical answer is probably no. It's definitely no. Only because I don't think what I'm about to say is ever possible. Right. But the truth is, people think that, you know, I've been called a wolf in sheep's clothing from the very beginning. Right.

Rick Bennett [03:13:22] We never did answer that question, by the way.

John Dehlin [03:13:24] Okay. Just ask it. Ask it.

Rick Bennett [03:13:25] Are you a wolf in sheep's clothing?

John Dehlin [03:13:27] Okay.

Rick Bennett [03:13:27] So were you, Especially in the early days of Mormon stories? No.

John Dehlin [03:13:31] Thanks for asking. So there was an ethical dilemma that I was navigating because I had concluded by 2001 that the church was not what it claimed to be, that it was not the one true church with exclusive authority, that the Book of Mormon wasn't historical, that the Book of Abraham wasn't historical. I've already told you and I've. People know I've been public about my faith crisis in 2001 from the start. Right. So I don't think I've been deceiving anybody about how I felt about the Church's truth claims. I think you'd have a hard time ever finding me saying, I know the Book of Mormon is script, you know, is like a historical document. I know God lives. I know that Jesus. You'll, you'll never hear me say that from Mormon Stories inception until now. You'll never hear me say it's the one true church with exclusive authority. So I would be deceptive if I were saying those things and trying to, but not believing them and then trying to take people out of the church. That would be a, unethical, that would be dishonest. But I've never done that. Now what I did do is I started Mormon stories as a leap of faith with a, inspired by Lowell Bennion, Eugene England, T. Edgar Lyon, Phil Barlow, Richard Bushman, the thoughtful faith. I felt like and frankly inspired by progressive Judaism, Reform Judaism, where you could have a form of Judaism where you didn't have to believe that the founder of your church, Moses necessarily even existed. You could still have the ritual, still have the tradition, still have the spirituality, but take the scriptures more as myth. That's how most world religions are these days in the developed world. So I just, I just thought maybe we could help Mormonism move in that direction without a schism. But I didn't see that as deceptive to try and build a progressive like Elder Holland that told me we want a big tent, we want a big umbrella. He had told me that, he told me that. So I didn't think it was deceptive to start a podcast to try and build a big tent within Mormonism that was tolerant of all shades of belief and non belief and, and all shades of orthodoxy. It had been done in other churches. I had been inspired by all the, all the progressive Mormons from Sunset Dialogue that meant well. And that was my intention and absolutely my intention for many, many years was to keep people in the church. And that's why I started stale ds.com and that's why I supported it and that's why I still support it to this day. Because I do believe to this day I don't think you will ever be able to find anyone I've ever counseled. And by now I've counseled over 20,000 people for sure. Interacted with over 20,000 people, whether through chats, comments, email, phone calls, coaching, conferences, retreats. Well, over 20,000 people, I don't think you'll ever be able to find anyone who's ever said that I've told them to leave the church or even recommended that they leave the church. I don't think you'll ever find it. If you can find it, I, I, I welcome, I welcome you finding anyone, you can find anyone to say anything these days, but I literally don't think I've ever told anyone to leave the church. I don't think I've ever recommended it, and I don't think I've ever desired it for people. With maybe one big exception. Once I realized that people were killing them, gay and lesbian and transgender people were killing themselves in the church once they saw the data, I realized that for many people, being LGBT just wasn't safe. So I would never outright tell an LGBTQ person to leave the church. But, like, I would show my research that, like, it was deadly for a lot of people. And I would say, you know what? Leaving the church is a viable option for many. Two thirds of the LGBT people I surveyed had left the church trying to stay celibate, trying to be in a mixed, mixed orientation marriage, trying to stay faithful in the church was literally deadly to many, many people. So I would certainly explore that as an option with people when I knew that their lives were on the line. Right? But even then, I wouldn't say leave the church because that's unethical. It's unethical and it's counterproductive to tell someone to leave the church. That's what, again, like Neil, like apologists and critics of mine will say, well, John's a wolf and sheep clothing wanted. Taking people, wanting to take people out of the church. I don't believe that's ethical or possible. So. Ethical. Why do I not think it's ethical to intentionally try and force people to leave the church? Because you don't know what's going to happen in their lives when they do. Right. Sometimes their marriage explodes, sometimes they get addicted to alcohol. Sometimes their life is worse leaving the church than when they're in it. And I, I experienced that the two times I left before I was kicked out. And I've seen friends develop alcoholism or drug addiction or get divorced or experiment in ways that were unhealthy. And to this day, I don't think secular, secularism has figured out how to create community and identity and meaning and purpose and spirituality in a secular way, in a way that religion has been so successful. So I'm not, I don't want people to ruin their lives. And, and, and so in that sense, I think it's unethical to, like, actively try and persuade people to leave the church. And also it, you know, for my psychology training as a psychologist, you don't tell people what to do ever. Psychologists are trained to never tell people what to do. You're trained to ask questions, to develop insight, and to help people figure out what's right for them. But it's literally unethical to impose your values on other people as a psychologist. So for all those reasons, I've never been motivated to take people out of the church. And to this day, I think that's true, and I stand by that. And I invite you or anyone to claim, make a substantive claim, provide an email, provide a text where I've like, said, you should leave the church. Now, having said that, I have become angry and frustrated with the way the church leaders have, have harmed vulnerable minorities and have been dishonest about its history and has punished truth tellers. So you will find many instances where I express that frustration or anger or, you know, I'm. Yeah, so you'll find stuff like that. Although I've tried to moderate my tone as much as possible. But, yeah, I've lost my patience with the church and its leadership sometimes. And, and maybe you've even been. I, I'm never, like, happy when the church makes mistakes or causes problems or harms people. But, like, at some point I'm like, you laugh instead of cry, and you, you kind of just say, yeah, this is what they do. And at some point you come to expect it, and then you just kind of make a joke out of it because, like, what else are you going to do but just get depressed and cry all the time? And so sometimes, you know, I had Cara Burrell on for a while, and her tone, her comedic tone was of sarcasm was off putting. I've strayed in my tone and gone back and forth. And I have John Larsen on now that swears and, you know, but, but generally speaking, I don't think it's moral or ethical to intentionally try and take people out of the church. But the second thing is, I don't think it's effective. There's something called the backfire effect, which is that when you, when you try and persuade someone with evidence against their closely held religious or political beliefs or identity, you actually literally created them. The opposite effect, like a ricochet effect, where they actually hold tighter to their beliefs once you're challenging them directly. So in that sense, I don't think it's even effective to say, your church is dumb, your beliefs are dumb, you're evil, your church is evil, get out of it now. I think that actually strengthens beliefs, not weakens them. So, so what has been my motivation in Mormon stories? The best way to summarize it is in two words. Well forwards, informed, Consent and social justice. Social justice, Church. Stop hurting LGBT people. I'm going to do whatever I can to show you that you're killing LGBT people, harming LGBT people and the straight spouses that marry LGBT people and kids, all the suicides. That's what my dissertation was about. That's why for so many years I interviewed LGBT people on Mormon stories and still do. Racism. Church has got to fix that. Fix the Book of Mormon. And it's racist teachings about black skin being a curse for wickedness to make Lamanites loathsome so that the Nephites who are white won't be enticed to intermarry with them. Racism. Stop it. Get rid of that Book of Abraham, Book of Moses, dark skin curse going back to Adam Cain. Get rid of that. Denounce it. That's evil, right? Misogyny, sexism. Give women the priesthood, Let them be full members. Yeah, that's obviously wrong by all standards. So like, and. And people who doubt and question, stop stigmatizing them. Stop the false judgments. Stop the false stereotypes. Let's get rid of the destruction of families and of marriages just because someone lose their faith. So like social justice, all that stuff has been really important to me. And I think you can see that from 2005 on. And everything I've ever done is stop the harm and the bigotry. That's been a big motivation. Is that a wolf in sheep's clothing? Yes and no. No, because none of that has anything to do with me trying to take people out of the church. I can see why people would call me a wolf in sheep's clothing, because if the church gave women the priesthood, apologized for its racism, changed the change the scriptures to take out the racism, gave LGBT people the priesthood, let them marry in the temple, accepted same sex love, supported same sex marriage, apologized for its lies with its history and, and openly taught the church's history to all members in an overt way, the church will become community of christ and lose 2/3 2/3 of their members. So yes, the things I've been advocating for would harm the church. Probably not financially because the church has more money than God at this point and can live off the interest, doesn't need tithing anymore like Scientology, but it would certainly harm the church. So yes, all the things I've been advocating for would harm the church. And in that way, if someone wanted to claim I was a wolf in sheep's clothing, they could. It's true that the things I've been advocating for would be harmful for the church in that way they could say I was trying to destroy the Church. But that's not on me. I didn't marry 14 year olds. I didn't, I didn't lie about Joseph Smith's history. I didn't lie about the translation of the Book of Mormon or the Book of, of the Book of Abraham. I didn't, I wasn't, I didn't say the racist things Brigham Young said. I didn't, I didn't propose that women not receive the priesthood. I didn't create a Masonic ceremony that stole Masonic rituals and then change it later. I didn't excommunicate all the dissidents. That's all on Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and the church. So any of people leaving over any of the recommendations that I've made to change or any changes that the Church makes in response to the things I and others have done, that's on Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham and the Journal of Discourses and Brigham Young and all the church leaders from then to now that have lied consciously and hidden things and punished the truth tellers. That's not on me. Okay? So no, I don't think I qualify for wolf and sheep's clothing for that. The other is, is, you know, do I, did I know that people's exposure to the history and the social justice stuff did I know that that would probably cause some to lose their faith? And I had to confront that really early on because as I told you, the two times I stopped Mormon stories, it was because I realized that exposure to the truth, truthful history and the social justice issues did lead to people leaving. And for a long time after I quit, people were like, John, that's not on you. If people learn about polyandry or peep stones or the stone in the hat or the Mason stuff and the, in the pele l, you know, and the throat slitting in the temple ceremony. If people learn about that through you, that's the church being dishonest. That's not your fault for just speaking openly about the facts. It's the Church's fault for not being transparent and punishing the truth tellers. And it's not your fault for the consequences of people learning the truth about the church and thinking more critically about it. And so, and so the, in addition to social justice, the other two words that have always driven my work is informed consent, which is the people deserve to know what they're joining or giving their lives to. And it's fun. And because of the stakes of a high Demand religion like Mormonism, you give, you give 10% of your income for life. You give two year mission service, you get indoctrinated. You pledge eternal devotion to the church. The church determines when you get married, how you get married, who you married to, how many children you have, what careers you pursue or don't pursue. And this is way more severe for women than for men in the church. Given the massive stakes of active, devout, orthodox Mormonism, you deserve to know the accurate church history and the way the church has harmed people and it's fundamentally unethical and deceptive and dishonest and harmful to hide that information from people. Given the stakes of membership, the claims of absolute truth and of exclusive authority and the, the, and the, the stakes and the cost of full, orthodox, active, devout membership, people deserve to know. So, yes, I'm, I have always been and am about informed consent, but does that make me a wolf in sheep's clothing? No. If I had a magic wand, and I've told people this since the beginning, if I had a magic wand, what I would do is I would wave it. And for everyone who wanted to know the truth about the church or would be irreparably harmed from membership, they would learn about Mormon stories. They would learn rough stone rolling. Read rough stone rolling. They would find out about the CES letter. And for those who wanted to know who would be benefited from either becoming more progressive or liberal or from leaving, I would want them to know, right? But if I could wave a magic wand and anyone who wouldn't want to know because it would harm them to know, right? Or if I even knew that they would have an inferior life by losing their faith and leaving, why would I want them to leave? Yes, I'd rather people have a life built on a false understanding of the world and of truth. I'd rather them have a happier, healthier life living within a false belief system than have an inferior life outside of it. The problem is I can't control who listens to my podcast, who stumbles on it. I can't do that. So the best I could do is speak the truth on the podcast, interview believers and non believers, try and discuss the issues as fair as possible, and then let people use their free agency to figure stuff out. So I don't know. I don't think that makes me a wolf in sheep's clothing, but I can see why people would claim that. Because simply learning the truth about the church, or becoming gay or becoming a feminist or becoming sensitive to racial issues or becoming super educated, just exposure to those things, in my view, is highly correlated with disaffection. And the church continues to resist change in those areas. So I don't think I'm a wolf in sheep's clothing. It's never been my desire to take people out of the church, but I've known from the beginning that there was that risk. And in effect, that's what's happened for hundreds of thousands at this point. But I don't think that's on me. I think that's on Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and all the leaders from then to now that have encouraged and supported the bigotry and have deceived the members knowingly and openly about the church's history and about the church's truth claims. I think it's on them. I think they're the wolves in sheep's clothing for people's health and for the truth. I think I've been a thousand times more honest and open about the church's history than the church has been. And I think for the social justice causes I care about, I think I've helped move the needle much more than the church has. And honestly, I think me, along with Sunstone Dialogue, the Mormon History Association, Journal of Mormon History, all the other podcasts, Bill Real, Radio Free Mormon, John Larsen, Mormon Expression, Gospel Tangents, you know, Mormon Book Reviews, Year of Polygamy, I think all of us together have really helped change the church over time. And you wouldn't see the progress that the church has made without the Tanners and. And Eugene England in Dialogue, and Leonard Arrington and Lowell Bennion and the September Six and. And, you know, feminist Mormon Housewives and, you know, so I'm proud to stand with all those heroes, including Juanita Brooks and Fawn Brody and the Tanners and others. I'm proud to stand with them as people who have helped the church improve. And there was some point where I'm like, oh, my gosh. I just realized that the main thing that I do is help the church realize where it's in error and help the church change. As I've watched the church change in response to the efforts of me and many other people. I mean, whether Sam Young stuff or the gospel topics essays or the church's progression on LGBT issues, or even supportive people in faith crisis, it's all happened in the past 15, 17 years. Church knew all these things before. What's different? The Internet. You know what I mean? So I've had to come to terms with the fact that, in effect, what I'm doing is helping the church Change as they punish me and malign me and smear me and in some sense, try and harm me and my family. But I still love the Mormon people, and ironically, I still love the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I'm grateful for the influence that it's had in my life. I think it's a net positive influence. I feel fortunate to have been born into this church and to have been raised in the church. I feel like it's been good for me. I feel like it's helped a lot of people. I may even believe that it's done more good than harm in the world. I want it to be happy and healthy and successful, and I want it to just get better and do better. So I still love Mormons. I still love the church. I just want to see it improve and harm less people. And that is my heavenly Father's honest truth, I say, raising my right hand to the square forever and ever. Amen.

Is Mormon Stories a Fair Representation?

Rick Bennett [03:35:18] Do you think, especially since 2015, that Mormon stories is. Is a fair representation of Mormonism? Is it neutral?

John Dehlin [03:35:34] No, no, not neutral. I. I think you and Steve Pinegar do a better job at neutrality than I do. I worked really hard to be neutral for a long time. Yeah. And I've already told you that I think the skewing of Mormon stories is more at the hands of the church. Excommunicating me and the church with Proposition 8, harming and. And spiking, you know, tripling the suicide rates of LGBT youth in Utah and punish, punishing the ordained women movement and excommunicating me and others and, you know, know, refusing to be honest and open and then excommunicating me, which then made more faithful people afraid or unwilling to come on the podcast. I lay the skewing of Mormon stories primarily to that and to the uncourageous neo apologists who stopped being willing to be courageous and stopped being willing to come on Mormon stories out of fear, out of a desire to manage their capital, or out of a fear of what might happen if they do come on Mormon Stories. I lay the skewing of Mormon stories primarily on those two groups of people. But, yeah, when you see so much divorce, so much destroyed families, so much LGBT suicide, so many people's lives be controlled with undue influence under false pretenses, you get angry after a while, and it's hard to bite your tongue forever unless you're just truly unempathetic. Like, if you lack empathy, then you can just be calloused and never get angry and upset. Or if you have extraordinarily character and discipline and maybe that's you, or maybe you just haven't been doing this long enough, or maybe you just haven't talked to enough. Maybe you just haven't seen enough suffering. Maybe you, Rick Bennett, have cocooned yourself from the suffering that I've seen or people don't reach out to you like they did to me. But I don't know how anybody can face the carnage that the Mormon Church has wreaked in the lives of its members in addition to the good stuff, how they can face that for 10 or 20 years and not get angry. I think angry is the healthy, mature, rational response. So I appreciate how academics has to remain neutral and that that's an important part of the discipline. So I respect you and the Bushman's and Thomas Murphy and, you know, all the academics who are able to remain neutral. I have, I have deep respect for the discipline and the character that sometimes is required to do that. But even them, I don't know how they can see the deception and, and see the carnage and remain neutral emotionally. So no Mormon story, well, Mormon stories pre 2015 I think, has been one of the most neutral outlets ever. I will agree for, for discussing these sorts of issues. I think Dialogue and Sunstone have done some amazing work in that area. I think Journal Mormon History has done some good work. John Whitmer like, you know, there are others that I, I look to as, as inspirations. But as far as podcasts go, I'm really proud even to this day of the neutrality because I'll still have believers on and I'll, I'll interview people from all. I would love to sit down with you for four hours and ask you how you still believe and help provide you as a model for belief. But I still have Christians on, believers on, nonbelievers on. I try to be as neutral and as balanced as I can and I still have many, many, many, many, many people tell me thank you for your neutrality, John De Lynn, for your balanced approach with Mormon stories in 2022, because that neutrality helped me. You know, I still have bishops and stake presidents and CES employees who listen to Mormon stories regularly and faithfully. So I must be doing something right in terms of my tone to have believing members still tuning in. But no, it's not, it's not, it's not. What did you say neutral?

Rick Bennett [03:39:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:39:58] And I, I don't know how anyone can be neutral in face of all the dishonesty and suffering that has been out there, but I Still try my best. I've fallen a lot. I admire you. Gospel Tangents. So everyone should. Should watch everything Rick Bennett has ever produced and donate to him. By the way, how do people donate to you? I don't want to sidetrack us, but how do they donate?

Rick Bennett [03:40:21] Just go to my website. I've upgraded my website.

John Dehlin [03:40:24] Gospel Tangents. What.

Rick Bennett [03:40:25] Com.

John Dehlin [03:40:26] Okay, I don't want to end the interview yet, but go to gospeltanges.com and donate. Also, support Stephen Piner and Mormon Book Review. But. And I admire your neutrality. I strive for neutrality and I fail often. So that's a long, long way of saying no. But I'm still proud of what I've done and I'm still trying.

Rick Bennett [03:40:46] Well, I just. I hate to bring this up because it brings up the stereotype, but I would like you to address the stereotype. You know, there's the stereotype of the bitter, angry ex Mormon. I'm trying to break down those walls. But, you know, there was a discussion recently on Facebook, I know you saw, about whether the Mormon Stories Facebook group is accepting of believers. And I know there are many believers that feel it is not. And I know you took issue with that. Can you address that issue? Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:41:35] So the Mormon Stories podcast Facebook group, does that have like 17,000 people in it? Like, it's massive. And, you know, just ask Jerry Renshaw of the Thoughtful faith group, which is now Waters of Mormon, which I started. You know, it is impossible, it is nearly impossible to create an Internet forum where believers and non believers all feel welcome and respected. I mean, it's literally like, up there with, like, harder than kind of what

Rick Bennett [03:42:05] you did with Mormon Matters. And it seems like that kind of blew up too.

John Dehlin [03:42:09] And yeah, it's. It's literally harder than landing on the moon to create an Internet forum where believers and non believers all feel welcome. And so for a gazillion years, I tried to moderate the Mormon Stories Podcast Facebook book community to be safe for all. And you couldn't do it either. You made. Because when people are in faith crisis, they're angry, they're emotional, and they need a place to vent. So if you just do that, then believers are uncomfortable. Or sometimes just talking about the truth claims in a balanced way causes believers to feel uncomfortable. But then if you tell all the people in trauma, all the people that are in faith crisis, chill out, be careful, be. Be, you know, be kind, be nice, they feel shut up, they feel muzzled, they're triggered. That's how the church treated me. And so they want to leave or feel silenced and uncomfortable. So you can't tone police the disaffected. But then when believers come on and, and they're preachy and try and bear their testimonies, or they advance the stereotypes and, and, and launch criticisms of the people, oh, you just wanted to sin. Or you're, you're just bitter and angry. You're, you know, you, you just leave the church, but you can't leave it alone, you know, or they bear their testimony, just have more faith. Like that's super triggering and offensive to the non believers. And you know, so like, but if you try and tone police them, then they say, well, you're not, you're not safe and hospitable to believe. So I gave up on that a long, long time ago. I created both Stale DS and a Thoughtful Faith, which is Apostle Podcast. I supported with, with Micah Nicolaison and Colvin. Before Gina Colvin, there was another person that helped with that. But I created Thoughtful Faith and said, okay, I've lost the battle of trying to tone police Mormon Stories podcast community. So I'll create a thoughtful faith podcast, Stalets.com and the thoughtful faith Facebook group, which is more for faithful. And then if like, you couldn't do Mormon Stories, go to Thoughtful Faith. When you lost your faith after being in a Thoughtful Faith, you come to Mormon Stories. And I did that for many, many years until Jerry Lee Rensaw kicked me out basically and kicked me out of that group that I helped start, which made me sad. But I get why I was excommunicated. By that point. People didn't feel comfortable being there in there with me in there. But so it's just impossible. So, so I have a bunch of volunteer moderators who moderate the Mormon Stories podcast community. They don't get paid and they just do the best job that they can. We've put up a bunch of guidelines I banned. I banned way more angry ex Mormons from that Facebook group than I have, you know, insufferable believers. But it's just impossible and I've given up and I just try and support my mods and we just do the best that we can. But you know, I've had parents and other people say, man, John, Mormon Stories is fine, but your, your Facebook commenters or your Facebook group is like, is awful. It's toxic. And all I can say is it's, it's, it's traumatic to be raised in a high demand religion and it's traumatic to leave it. And the church has made that worse. And so that causes trauma Responses that. That are just very difficult to manage and that are understandable and probably healthy on some level. So we just need to have lots of spaces. That's why I'm glad you're doing what you're doing.

Rick Bennett [03:45:44] Well. Thanks. All right, well, we started this and say, would John ever come back to the church? And then we got onto the Wolfenstein schools. So let's go back to that question. Okay. Would you ever come back?

John Dehlin [03:45:57] So I. I'm sorry, I ramble.

Rick Bennett [03:45:58] And that's fine with this Gospel tangents. And we do tangents, so it's fine.

John Dehlin [03:46:02] Okay, so probably not. Because I don't think the church would ever change in the ways that I don't think the church is capable of changing in the ways I would want it or needed to change. Do you want me to list all the things the church would need to change?

Rick Bennett [03:46:15] Well, you already did.

John Dehlin [03:46:16] Okay.

Rick Bennett [03:46:17] We went through that.

John Dehlin [03:46:17] So short of like that, that. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't feel like the church would be like, I have several LGBT children. Margi identifies as non, you know, non heteronormative in some ways, like just that alone. As long as the church is homophobic, I would be betraying my own spouse and children to be a part of a church that. That's homophobic. And I know people may not like me saying that, but, like, if you, if you, if you can't. If the church is like, excommunicating people for getting legally same sex married, what do you call that? If the church teaches that who you love is evil and wrong or sinful, I don't know what else to call that than homophobic. So just that alone. Transgender issues, like being opposed to social, you know, gender transitions and discriminating against people for transitioning in ways where the medical community is in full support of those transitions. Just that alone. So that. That's going to make it so I can't be a member. But I miss it. I love it.

Rick Bennett [03:47:29] Really?

John Dehlin [03:47:29] I. Oh, yeah. I mean, I miss a lot about

Rick Bennett [03:47:31] it because I've seen you post about, oh, how, you know, there's life after excommunication. It's great. I love my life.

John Dehlin [03:47:38] Yeah, let me explain that. So. So first of all, a lot of my unwillingness to leave the church turned out to be learned helplessness or conditioning. Why did I believe? Why was I fearful that I couldn't raise healthy kids outside of Mormonism? Because I was taught by the Mormon Church that you can't raise healthy, happy kids outside of Mormonism. I was taught that I was taught that non Mormons are inferior spiritually and righteously compared to orthodox believing Mormons. We always look down on non members, always. And we always looked at it as a, as a, as a Mormon. It was always the wrong decision to leave the church and you most likely would fall prey to sin. So, so that's how Mormons are conditioned. That's how I was conditioned. And that's why for so long I was afraid to ever leave. And that's why I was, you know, afraid both for myself and for my kids, that I couldn't be immoral, that I couldn't be faithful to my spouse without leaving the church, without staying with, leaving the church. And ironically, I feel like I'm more honest and faithful to Margi now than I was when I was in. And I feel like my kids are healthier now than they were when they were in. But it's been a struggle and, and most importantly for people who have been taught to fear leaving and that they will only trade down and, and experience misery when they leave, they need reasons to believe that they can find healing and growth afterwards. So a big part of Thrive, the Thrive Initiative, and a big part of what I've tried to do with all the faith crisis interviews that I do is to show people through stories that you can have a healthier marriage, better mental health, be a better parent, be happier and healthier than when you were in the church. And I do believe that, I do believe that for many, their happiness and health, their de. Their depression decreases, their anxiety decreases, their marriage improves and their parenting improves after they leave the church. Sometimes their integrity improves after they leave the church. They, that's not everybody, but that's the majority of the people that I have interacted with. And by this point, it's tens of thousands. That's the majority of the people that I've interacted with after, after they've left. Almost no one has ever said, I wish I hadn't left. Almost no one. In tens of thousands of people that I've interacted with now, do they sometimes become alcoholic or addicted to drugs or cheat on their spouse or have kids die by suicide or themselves die by suicide or no, leaving the church is not a magic bullet, right? They're suffering. Buddhism teaches us that they're suffering everywhere. But guess what? There's divorce in the church, there's suicide in the church, there's depression and anxiety and eating disorders in the church. So you can't really judge by, by an unfair standard. And we all know that Utah, by many Reports leads in many national indicators and things like depression, anxiety, suicidality, prescription drug abuse, and even drug abuse and pornography abuse. So like, what I want people to know is they aren't trapped, they aren't helpless, and there is hope. That's why I created the podcast the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. There is hope after Mormon orthodoxy. There is healing and growth. And the majority of people who leave the Mormon church, particularly over issues of, of truth claims or social justice, the vast majority of them report being healthier and happier afterwards. But before me, who said that?

Rick Bennett [03:51:34] What, Sandra?

John Dehlin [03:51:35] No, no, no, no. Like, maybe, but like even Sandra and Gerald Tanner, they focused on the truth claims. They weren't talking about faith crisis. They weren't talking about how hard it is to go through a faith crisis. They weren't trying to provide support for marriages and faith crisis or for, you know what I mean, like that before 2005, I don't know that that was really a thing talking about faith crisis, talking about the difficulties of a faith crisis, and trying to be a solution to, to people in faith crisis. Frankly, that's why I started doing what I was doing, because I found nothing out there that was really trying to address that. Sunstone. You don't see a ton of articles about prior to 2015. You wouldn't see a bunch of dialogue or Sunstone articles about, man, man, I'm having a hard time on my faith. Man, my marriage is hard. Oh, I'm, I'm gay, celibate in a mixed orientation marriage. How do we fix this marriage? Like, I don't think there wasn't much in the Mormon discourse, academic or not, about that sort of stuff. That's literally why I left Microsoft and $200,000 a year with stock options to try and help solve that problem. And so, yeah, why do I try and help Mormons know that there's healing and growth after Mormon orthodoxy? Well, one, because there is, and two, because they've been conditioned to believe that they should fear leaving, but that, you know, you know, what causes. I had a, I had a psychiatry, psychiatry friend. I won't re reveal his name, but you know what he said to me once? He said, you know what leads to suicide, John? And I'm like, I don't know. I have a PhD in psychology, but tell me what you know. And he said something to me that I had never really fully grasped before. He said, you know what causes suicide? Do you know, Rick? He no, do you know, do you know what causes suicide?

Mental Health, Grief, and Closing Thoughts

Rick Bennett [03:53:23] Depression.

John Dehlin [03:53:23] Huh?

Rick Bennett [03:53:24] Depression.

John Dehlin [03:53:24] But, but, but lots of people are depressed. What causes people to kill themselves?

Rick Bennett [03:53:31] I'm not a psychologist. I have no idea.

John Dehlin [03:53:33] The answer is feeling trapped. Feeling like there's no way out. You're sandwiched between two things, you know, like your marriage and your kids and your wife or being authentically gay, right? Your belief in the, you know, your, your membership in the church and your standing in the community and your marriage and your kids and your reputation or your integrity where you've discovered that it isn't true, right? Your job that provides an income for everyone. Your kids, your wife, everyone. And your integrity that no longer is the church is true. And you're dying because the church is killing you and you can't be honest about it. It's being trapped with no options that makes people want to die. My parents. I want my parents to love and respect me, but I've lost my faith or I'm gay. And if I, if I come out, if I leave the church, say I don't believe, quit my mission, leave the church, my parents won't love me anymore, they'll disinherit me and I'll be socially ostracized. It's being trapped that makes you want to die. So why do I, why do I advocate for healing and growth outside of Mormon orthodoxy or Mormonism? So that people know they have a choice.

Rick Bennett [03:54:56] But you still miss it.

John Dehlin [03:54:58] I miss parts of it. I don't miss the temple ceremony, I don't miss the patriarchy. I don't miss how boring and tedious it can be. And I don't miss the closed mindedness of the exclusivity of it all. But I miss a community. I miss for all the stuff we've done with Thrive and Oasis, we haven't figured out secular community in a way that feels as good as freaking. Ex Mormonism can be toxic, where it's just like crabs pulling each other into a boiling vat of water, just, just like cannibalizing each other. Ex Mormonism can be beautiful and amazing and super toxic and, and awful. We've never been able to create anything to approximate the type of loving, supportive, affirming community. I mean, there's small instances of that. You know, I went and helped a friend move last weekend, you know, and I, I love that we've delivered casseroles or raised money for people who are sick, but not in an organized way that religion and particularly Mormonism has been able to do. And yeah, I miss knowing everyone in my community where I live and being able to like, go to once a week, meet with them and serve them and have them serve me and that fellowship of getting to know people in your neighborhood and loving them and having them love you and suffering through things with them. So, yeah, I miss. I miss that.

Rick Bennett [03:56:19] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:56:20] And. And we haven't figured out. And that's another reason I don't want the try. I'm not trying to destroy the church or explicitly take people out of it because I don't know that we as ex Mormons or secular people have figured out for sure a better way. Is there healing and growth and happiness? Yes. Is there a system that's as packaged to provide people with identity, meaning, purpose, spirituality, community, friendships, resolution about the afterlife? Is there a package that you could just drop into, live it, raise your kids in it, and like, have a community and blossom from it? No. And that's why I'm not eager for the church to die. And I'm just so. I'm not like, eager to pull people out of it because I don't know of, like, a sure bet better way yet other than I know hundreds of thousands of people now who are happier. But that doesn't mean that the people who are in it now would be happier if they left. Maybe the people who are at it now are know what would make them healthiest and happiness happiest, and they stay in because they know themselves. And none of us have any job at telling them what's best for them. If somebody feels like staying in is best for them or their family, they should stay. And I tell people that every day. Stay. Why don't you stay? If you can stay and make it work, why would you leave? And I feel that way to this day. And I counsel people every day to stay in the church if they can. If they can do it in a way that isn't toxic to their own mental health or to their situation, that doesn't betray their integrity like you.

Rick Bennett [03:58:12] Well, thanks. Well, we've been four hours. Is there anything we missed? John, that's it.

John Dehlin [03:58:18] We got it all. You want to talk about I could die now. I said it all. This will be the definitive interview that I point people to for everything about me. Really, they want to know about me, but I may share it on Mormon stories too.

Rick Bennett [03:58:31] That's fine.

John Dehlin [03:58:32] Yeah. But freaking support gospel tangents. Donate to Rick. Support his work.

Rick Bennett [03:58:40] All right, well, thanks, John Delano.

John Dehlin [03:58:42] Oh, and support Steven Pinecker and more Mormon book reviews.

Rick Bennett [03:58:44] And of course, yeah, so Steve's a really good friend of mine, so we talk all the time. So Mormon book reviews is awesome. So all Right. All right. Well, Dr. John Dehlin, I thank you for this wonderful time you spent here on gospel tangents. I really appreciate it.

Wrap-Up and Future Interview Plans

John Dehlin [03:59:00] And I would love to have you back and let me grill you about how you stay in the church and know all this stuff and still be a believer.

Rick Bennett [03:59:07] I'm not an open book like you, John.

John Dehlin [03:59:08] I don't know.

Rick Bennett [03:59:09] This was. This is going to be a lot harder for, like, asking questions I don't like answering.

John Dehlin [03:59:13] Again, Rick is smarter. Again, Rick is smarter than John Dehlin, basically, is what you just said. You're smarter than me because you know that full disclosure is problematic.

Rick Bennett [03:59:23] It sure is.

John Dehlin [03:59:26] All right. Thanks, Rick.

Rick Bennett [03:59:27] Thank you.

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