John Hamer

Welcome and Setting the Stage

[00:00:00] Sa. This is amazing just to be up here and to see all of you, this incredible group of post Mormons assembled in this vast space. I've had the delight to been able to work in a lot of different institutions like Sunstone, like the John Whitmer Historical association, the Mormon History association, planning different conferences and things like that. And there's been nothing like this. And this is so out of the box, right? And so congratulations to everyone for being here. It's amazing.

Rethinking Spirituality After Mormonism

[00:01:09] So I want to talk a little bit about rethinking spirituality beyond Mormonism. And that may be, I mean, putting me in a little bit of a different place and wearing a little bit of a different hat than most of the rest of the speakers today. And so I'm actually representing an organized religion, unlike a lot of people. And so I serve as a 70 in community of Christ, the former Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I also serve as pastor or branch president of the downtown Toronto congregation in Canada.

[00:01:48] But there is a little bit difference between our particular organized religion and the one that you're a lot more familiar with. For us, for example, we completely flat out reject the idea that we're the one and only true church or even that such a thing is possible.

[00:02:04] And we also, I might say I also don't believe that there's one and only true religion, that Christianity is not the one and only true religion. But in fact, there are multiple paths that one can take that are spiritual, that are meaningful, that are within traditional faith traditions, but are also completely outside of traditional beliefs. So agnostic, atheists and humanists, all those different traditions allow you to be able to lead a very meaningful path.

[00:02:38] So just a little bit about me. So I was a seventh generation Mormon and raised in the LDS Church. I've got the roadshow slides to prove it. I became a surly doubting teenager. Hi. Oh, thank you. And a week after I got to byu, I decided, okay, this church is not for me. So that's pretty much so I've been an ex Mormon now for post Mormon now for a little over 30 years.

[00:03:16] And I went from then essentially to leaving religion altogether. I went and focused on my academics, I studied as a historian, I became a map maker for museums like this. And that's where I went off into in terms of focusing on a professional career. And so it was a very unexpected path that actually brought me back to religion and indeed to the restoration tradition and membership in a church.

[00:03:43] And so I'm not here to really talk about that or that Church or that path. But I am here because of my support for the mission and vision of Thrive and organizations like this in post Mormonism. This is something that I desperately wanted, you know, 20 years ago, more.

[00:04:05] I have always just, just envied all of my Jewish friends. I know the ones that are. I know many rabbis now because of my position in the church in Toronto, but I also know all kinds of friends who are culturally Jewish and don't have to go to synagogue and all these kind of things. And they have all these different ways that they can share that identity that just always seemed denied me. And what I felt was sort of a Christian growing up in kind of an ethnic identity, but one that a particular institution seemed to wield total control over, as opposed to us being able to take control of our heritage the way an organization like Thrive allows us to.

Challenging the Standard Ex-Mormon Narrative

[00:04:48] So I want to talk a little bit. So one of the things we're doing today is learning and also challenging. And so I am going to hopefully maybe do one little paradigm challenge for you today, and maybe it will be comfortable. Maybe I'll get a little booed. We'll see what happens.

[00:05:04] So I want to talk just a second about the traditional ex Mormon narrative. So it begins, you know, with a Mormon who is really ensconced in church identity callings, family life, everything, activity. In retrospect, when you think about it now, in your ex Mormon narrative, there were all sorts of things that were incongruous. There were things that caused dissonance with that perfect understanding of life and how everything was working in terms of the meaning of life. And he put those on the shelf. And so each one of those, shelf, shelf, shelf, until, boom, something happens. One of them, whichever, whatever, what it was, you know, Paulie Joseph Smith having.

[00:05:49] Marrying guys, Other guys. Wives. Yeah, exactly. Whichever. The thing actually is that that breaks the shelf, right? Then you go into the deep dive. You listen to all the podcasts, you know, you read all the books and everything like that. You do essentially that study, right?

[00:06:08] Okay. So that leads to the triumph of rationality, where you have weighed all of the evidence, you've broken through that you've been able to see that the truth claims are found wanting, and you've now transcended that. And then that frequently, of course, leads to feelings that, okay, well, maybe you've been lied to by church leaders, feelings of hurt, anger. And as you kind of process all of those, and then, boom, another ex Mormon.

[00:06:44] Okay, so Mormon identity is all encompassing. And so then is the deconstruction. Doesn't stop often with the rejection of those leaders in that institution. Right, that's fine. So a lot of times, you know, it's a pretty short trip from once you, you know, put. I was going to say anyone won't say it that way anyway.

[00:07:07] When you put Joseph Smith in the trash, it can be a pretty quick trip to saying, okay, we're deconstructing Christianity in general and, and indeed rejecting the idea of God. Right. And that often follows pretty fast in the ex Mormon narrative.

[00:07:23] And that's fine. By the way, I'm not here at all arguing against atheism or agnosticism or any other path at all. In fact, actually I'm part of my community, my tradition, in my congregation in Toronto. We have very many active members who are atheists who identify as atheist.

[00:07:45] Okay. I do want to say though, okay, so although many of you maybe resonated with that story as I told it, that ex Mormon narrative, and that's a true narrative and that's something that you actually experienced, but I want to also challenge you a little bit that that's also a narrative and that it is in fact also a narrative that was preexisting before you personally experienced it. And so in another sense, one of the things that maybe also has happened is without you being aware of it, is that you maybe have bought into a pre existing narrative.

[00:08:26] It's still a valid experience, it's still a real experience. Okay. But some of the little points of it might be a little suspect and I want to push you on some of them. So for example, you did do all of that deep dive, but not everybody here, for example, is a trained historian. There may not be in some cases the weighing of evidence that you were able to personally conduct, but rather you might have read, you know, you've gone through CS Letter, you've gone through the podcast. You may well have already followed a path that is actually quite well trod. Right. And so as a result, some of those assumptions, I'm gonna say, are inherited as opposed to maybe your own.

[00:09:06] And so whereas I'm gonna just say all of the ones that you've inherited from about Mormon stuff, I mean, you know, Book of Mormon historicity, all that kind of thing, those are pretty spot on probably because in fact, the people who have trod those paths, those trailblazers, are very expert in that particular topic. But I'm also going to suggest that some of the other ones maybe so, for example, about Christianity in general and the deconstruction that may partially rely on kind of Very particular Mormon biases about that and a Mormon lens through which Christianity is seen. So I want to challenge a little bit maybe that immediate rejection that happens sometimes, and even more so because Mormons have such a very peculiar and unusual view of God that that also deserves maybe a little bit more look at before immediately deciding on it.

[00:09:58] And I'll just give an example. So if you know Sunstone's motto is faith seeking understanding. That's a quote from an important theologian in the Middle Ages, Anselm of Canterbury. He's one of the greatest thinkers of his day. And one of the things that he tried to do was make a logical argument using just philosophy and logic to prove the existence of God. It's called the ontological argument. Didn't actually persuade a lot of people. It's not easy to do that particular thing. Another ontological argument that's quite famous is cogito ergo sum. Right? I think, therefore I am. So it's an argument based on being and using that to make anyway how you make a proof.

[00:10:37] The point of it is not whether what his argument was or whether he proved anything. The point that I want to make here is what his definition of God was. So this is a person who is one of the most important thinkers and theologians of medieval Christendom. His definition of God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. And he's quite serious about that when you read through his philosophical tract. And so, in fact, if you take his definition and you read his tract, you could never conclude that what he means by God is some anthropomorphic being who is your literal physical father, who has a bunch of supernatural powers.

[00:11:18] Instead, if we listen to what they're really talking about, what they really are saying is they're talking about maybe something that is an idea or principles that are beyond us, love for love's own sake, wisdom for the sake of knowledge, those sorts of things. And that would give us much closer to what medieval people are actually talking about in Christendom than maybe the inherited ideas that we have.

[00:11:43] So historically, I just want to say God has not been a fixed idea whose existence is in question. Rather, the word God was always a variable in need of definition. So where. And by that sense, what I would rather say is if God is a problematic word, we don't necessarily even have to use it. And same thing with image or picture. I would suggest that what is really being sought and has been sought for 2000 years is meaning. And how do we find meaning? How do we find truth and value? And Love and wisdom.

[00:12:17] So everybody has beliefs. I'm going to suggest some of those are the professed beliefs and some of these, though are deep seated and sometimes those are different from each other. And that happens a lot, for example, in the Mormon tradition, where we have like a testimony that's very rote and there's doctrine and you have professed beliefs and that may be very different from what you actually value internally. And you can tell that when you say the difference between what a person says and then what a person actually does, right? And so a lot of times, if you really believe that, you would do that, right?

[00:12:49] And that can happen all kinds of different ways. So a person could think they're very charitable, but their actions kind of show actually they're pretty self focused, right? Or conversely, a person could think they're a nihilist. They think that they don't believe in anything, they're a determinist, they think there's nothing they do matters.

[00:13:06] But you might find out that their actions don't show that. Right? Their actions show that they love their children. Their actions show that they love their friends. They want to make this world a better place. And so what I'm going to suggest is that there's something inside there, a deep seated belief that deserves some introspection. And all I want to suggest is that when we are coming out of a tradition that insisted so strongly that it had the sole truth and that has been totally discredited, then that argument that it makes, you know, we might say, okay, once bitten, twice shy, we are not ready to do this kind of exploration.

[00:13:49] We don't allow ourselves it. But what I think that we should do or what would be healthy for us to do is to just give ourselves permission to do a little exploring, to do that introspection, to say we, why do I value these things? What is it in me to go and look at what other thinkers and philosophers and readers, other traditions have said and look at them and see this is valuable for my path. Just giving ourselves permission to be open to do that.

[00:14:18] And so just very quickly, I want to say I love these kind of institutions. I love building communities like this. We are doing something very, very similar in Canada. And in some ways what we're doing is a model, I think, for you guys to build on and already are building on it with your small groups. And so I serve as the pastor, as I say, of this congregation. It's a congregation that is over 100 years old and yet it's very, very new. At the same time, as we have tried to experiment with something very different. So when we pulled out the blueprints, we wanted to build an inclusive church and a truly inclusive church.

[00:14:55] So not just LGBTQIA affirming, but inclusive of people from all faith traditions, backgrounds, atheists, every perspective. Right. And so this is a formula that Thrive is working on. This is a formula that lots of people are working on.

[00:15:09] And so I just wanted to show how we've done it. So we started with a mission. Invite everyone into community, continually learn and grow. Abolish poverty and needless suffering. Promote peace and justice, and live life meaningfully together. It's a mission that I think is pretty universal and that people here in Thrive could also have. And we essentially have used four types of community building activities. So learning together, just like we're doing right now, lectures, workshops, sharing spiritual practices. So we've already talked about some of these. Mindfulness meditation, yoga, other things like that, meaningful conversation.

[00:15:46] So on the one hand, we have conversations that are after lectures and workshops, so you're already thinking on those topics. But we also have what we call deep listening, which is special ways of essentially getting deeper conversation to form and then doing activism together. We all want to make the world a better place, and so we don't want to only talk about it. Right. And so one of the ways we do that in Toronto is we're focusing on homelessness. So I'm building a. Our charity is building a brand new tower where we're going to be able to house another 180 people who otherwise might be homeless.

[00:16:27] Every Tuesday, we have mindfulness meditation. And you can see kind of the diversity already that is in our group. There are women there from Africa who are Muslim, who are wearing, you know, the head coverings. There are people who are trans, Hindu, trans, man, you know, anyway, all of those kinds of different diversity that we have.

Community and What Comes Next

[00:16:45] And likewise, we cover a wide variety of topics that are just like happen here at Thrive. And we just have a wonderful group that has developed as a result of that. So it always is followed by meaningful conversations. Sometimes after we are finishing our lectures, people stay until midnight because we're so excited about it. It's the same thing you'll experience in a Thrive group.

[00:17:06] So we've expanded on that. We have made a network in Ontario and a little bit beyond the same way that you're doing with Thrive. And so I can just say from our experience, we know that this is a model that works. We know what you're doing works. We. I just call upon you to, you know, go to the website to.

[00:17:25] To become a volunteer to host a Thrive group or where it doesn't exist, or go to one where it does. And so I'm very excited for what's going on with Thrive. We are doing something very, very similar. And so I consider this to be just an amazing alliance. And I. So thank you for having me here and welcoming me here, so 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.