Welcome and Introduction to Bill and Amanda

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 1784

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 29, 2023, and we are super excited to have in studio a legend of Mormon podcasting. None other than Bill Real, host of Mormon discussion podcast and of Mormonism Live podcast with Radio Free Mormon and a network of other Mormon themed podcasts. But. But a friend and someone who has made a huge impact in the lives of so many for so many years. And we are just excited to have him finally in studio to kind of tell his story, maybe with a little more vulnerability than he's even shown in the past, but also with high quality video and audio, which we've never done before. Hey, Bill.

Bill Reel [00:00:50] How are you, my friend?

John Dehlin [00:00:51] Thanks for joining us.

Bill Reel [00:00:52] Yeah, gracious to both of you guys to invite us out to do this. And we're. We're super excited to have this conversation.

John Dehlin [00:00:58] Yeah. And if that weren't enough, we have his wife, Amanda Real, here to provide color. Hey, Amanda, how are you? Thanks for joining us.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:09] Equally legendary Amanda.

Amanda Reel [00:01:12] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:13] Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for joining us, Amanda. And of course, now you know that Margi is here running shotgun today. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:01:20] Hey.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] All right, so, yeah, most of you will know Bill Real very well, but if you don't, just as a very quick recap, Bill Real was a sitting bishop for the Mormon Church. He's a converter of the church. He became a bishop at what age? 29.

Bill Reel [00:01:38] 29.

John Dehlin [00:01:38] And for some reason started listening to Mormon Stories podcast as a sitting bishop and reached out to me while he was a sitting bishop. He was the first sitting bishop that I ever ended up interviewing on Mormon Stories as a sitting bishop. We've interviewed a few since. But eventually when I ran afoul with the church and got excommunicated, Bill kind of started a podcast to kind of maybe take over what Mormon Stories was trying to do, which was to provide a balanced view of Mormonism. He ran that podcast called Mormon Discussion for many years, and then eventually he got in his own trouble with the church and was excommunicated and since has been carrying the podcasting torch in a few other ways. So, anyway, anything you want to say to begin before we jump into your story?

Bill Reel [00:02:27] No, no, I'm just super excited that Amanda and I can be here, that you guys extended an invitation to come out and to do this. And then we've got the event tomorrow night. And so gracious of you to do that. And so we're super excited just to share parts of our story that again, I'VE been on four times. But there are significant parts of the story that maybe at a time when you interviewed me and I was believing that I was less likely to tell, and here we are, and maybe we can share those parts now and help people kind of put other pieces and parts together.

John Dehlin [00:02:57] Beautiful. And we've envisioned for now three parts to the story, so just be prepared. Part one is going to be kind of his early years. What led him to join the church all the way through the end of his time as a sitting Mormon bishop, around age 34. Ish. That's going to be part one. He starts his podcast as a sitting bishop, which is fascinating. Part two is going to be. So that's kind of the rise of or the making of Bishop Bill Real. Part two is going to be his deconstruction. What led him to start really doubting and questioning the church to the point of maybe becoming more of a critic and an activist. That led to his excommunication. That's going to be part two. And then part three is going to be reconstruction. The messiness of life and reconstruction, but also the beauty of reconstruction. Those are the three parts we're envisioning.

Bill Reel [00:03:51] I think everything will fall into that. It sounds good.

John Dehlin [00:03:53] Yeah. So strap in. And then also, we just wanted to note, when we have both members of a couple, sometimes we get mixed feedback. Sometimes the focus we decide is going to be on one of the two, and then other times we really want to hear from both. And they're both valid ways of approaching, I think a podcast. Today, we've all decided together that the focus is going to be on Bill's story, but that Amanda is going to provide important context and input. But for those of you who are like, wait a minute, I want to hear equal sides from both because of our. Just what we decided we want the folks to be for today, it's going to be the former focusing on Bill's story with Amanda providing input than it is trying to.

John Dehlin [00:04:40] To tell both their stories in equal measure. So we just wanted to let people know that up front. And Bill has said that he feels most. His most authentic, if occasionally a swear word or two might sneak out. So just know that there may be a swear word or two here and there. And that's just Bill. Be a Bill.

Bill Reel [00:04:59] Love it.

John Dehlin [00:05:00] Perfect, my friend. Is that all right, Amanda?

Amanda Reel [00:05:02] It's perfectly okay.

John Dehlin [00:05:03] All right. All right. Well, let's begin. So, Bill, I want to hear about. Normally we say, tell us, where does your Mormon story begin? But you're a convert so you don't. Your story doesn't begin as a Mormon story, but let's hear about the most important parts of your upbringing that either lead to your desire to join the Mormon Church or that become really important parts of your Mormon journey later on.

Bill's Family Background and Early Childhood

Bill Reel [00:05:32] Totally. So if I go back in time a little bit, my mother and my father, just to give a little background on who they were, my mom, her dad lived in West Virginia. My grandmother, her mother had three children by three different men, and she was very much in poverty.

Bill Reel [00:05:51] She never learned to drive. My grandmother, that is, she never learned to drive. She got government assistance, and that's how she took care of things and paid the bills. They always lived in a very impoverished home, renting all the time.

Bill Reel [00:06:04] And my grandmother wasn't really emotionally available for her children. She really struggled. She was a great grandmother, but as a parent, she really struggled. And my mother ended up in foster care for a portion of her life. And anytime I would try to go to my mom to get information about what her life was like, especially later on when I joined Mormonism and we're doing genealogy and I want to collect those family stories, my mom always refused to tell me them. She always avoided the question. She always stayed away from it.

Bill Reel [00:06:38] My dad comes from a family where his father was abusive. Whenever the kids were in trouble, they would go run underneath the bed and my grandfather would chase them down with a broomstick and he would reach underneath the bed with a broomstick and whap at them until they came out.

Bill Reel [00:06:53] And so it was sort of an abusive home. And he, he was a great provider, he always worked, but he also wasn't really present for his children. And my dad is one of eight kids, my mom is one of three. But again, they each had different fathers and her father was never present.

Bill Reel [00:07:11] And so both of my parents were sort of destined to fail. But that's not what happened. When my mom and dad had me and my brother, I've got one brother and we're four years apart. My parents somehow magically discarded the most atrocious of the unhealthy behavior that they inherited.

Bill Reel [00:07:31] And they really showed up as parents who not only provided very well for us, but they also cared for us. My mom took us on hikes and did lots of things with us. We were always busy doing something and we felt loved. My brother and I both looked back in our childhood and we both deeply felt loved and cared for.

Bill Reel [00:07:52] Childhood was great. I lived on a dead end street. I had a cousin, actually two cousins, who lived about three Houses down from me. And then I had another cousin and some other kind of extended family that lived about 10 houses down from me. And there were other kids on the street, and they were the same age as me. And so we had a really good friend group. And we played all the time, went out and built forts, and in the winter built igloos and built bridges across. Across streams. And we just had a really fun childhood. And my brother and I both look back and we wouldn't change anything.

Bill Reel [00:08:23] Like, growing up was magical, but one of the things I didn't realize until I was older is that my parents were very emotionally unavailable. There wasn't really the tender love and care that you see in some families that they have.

Bill Reel [00:08:42] But they were always present, they were always supportive in terms of making sure that we had activities and things to go to. As a student, um, I was. This sounds arrogant, but I'm a highly intelligent person. I've got a high iq. And that sort of was my downfall because I remember being in, like, third grade or so whatever grade they first start doing IQ test. And the kid next to me, Andy Walker, he's the smartest kid in our class. We all know it. And he get. He sits right next to me, and he gets his paper back to take home of what his IQ score is.

Bill Reel [00:09:17] And I get mine. I look over at his, and his is like, in the high 130s. And I look at mine and mine says like, 141 or something. And I realized, like, wait a minute, I'm as smart as this kid. And all through school, I didn't apply myself. I always knew I could get by not doing the work, and so I wouldn't do the homework. But then I would ace the midterm, and I would ace the final, and so I'd end up with a C.

Bill Reel [00:09:43] And the teachers were always frustrated because I wouldn't do the assignments. But I was always smart enough to get by without having to do that. And so in school, I was not a great student at all. And I didn't have a good work ethic at all. My parents would go like, hey, we'll give you 500 bucks if you get two A's this. This semester. And I just couldn't do it.

Bill Reel [00:10:04] Didn't. Didn't want to put that much work in, had tons of friends, really enjoyed my childhood. I. I come from a family where my mom's side of the family isn't really present. My uncle and my aunt on that side are sort of have some dysfunction that they weren't really part of our lives, weren't really able to be. And my dad was one of eight children and they were really close knit. All eight members live in the same city. They all hung out all the time and they were really present in our lives, but they were, they were blue collar, working class, drinking heavily on the weekends.

Bill Reel [00:10:45] And as I'm, I love them and they're good people, but there was a part of me that sensed that maybe I wouldn't be able to handle that sort of life without succumbing to the alcohol. As an alcoholic, I should probably back up and say there were times in my life where my dad would go out drinking after work. He wouldn't notify my mother that he was coming home at a certain time. He would just show up at 8 o' clock and my mom every night would cook dinner and we'd sit around the dining room table and eat dinner, the four of us. And my dad sometimes would just go after work and go to the bar and go drinking.

Bill Reel [00:11:19] And he would come home at like 8 or 9 or 10 and he'd be half in the bag. And he was never abusive, he was never harsh. But my mom was very frustrated with him not showing up the way that she, she wanted her husband as a father to be there. And so there were times where my mom would call the police and wouldn't let my dad in the house. And I could see out the big picture window in our, in our living room, the police out there talking to my father and my mom inside being sort of frantic that my dad wasn't living up to his obligations as a, as a father and as a husband.

Bill Reel [00:11:53] And you could see my dad, he'd knock on the window and he'd let me in, let me in. And my mom wouldn't. And eventually the police would talk him into having to go somewhere for the night. And then he would come back in the morning, my mom would let him in, he'd get ready for work.

Bill Reel [00:12:04] But, but my parents were hard working. They, they never missed work, they were never sick, they showed up every day. My dad was worked in the road paving business and my mom was a nurse's aide. And by the time I'm 12 years old, my mom had gone back to nursing school to be an lpn and my dad had worked himself up to be the foreman of the quarry.

Bill Reel [00:12:25] And they got to the point where we sort of moved out of poverty into being sort of middle class. And at that point I'm essentially living on a nicer street I'm my parents again. Their income is kind of jumped up a little bit and life started to change and now I'm in high school and I guess at this point maybe to talk about sort of meeting Amanda. There's some crazy things that happened in my childhood.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] Was there. Was there any religious instruction in your. Also siblings.

Bill Reel [00:13:00] Thank you. So my mom was a Baptist growing up, but her childhood was so rough that she abandoned it sometime around 15, 16 years old. I have a brother, we're four years apart. But we grew up in a home where there's a Bible. My parents had a family Bible. There were Adam and Eve were scantily clad, so there were times just as a 12 year old, I'd open it up just to see pictures of a half naked Eve in the family Bible. But our parents never pulled that book once off the shelf and gave us any sort of religious instruction. That was certainly not part of what was going on in our home.

Bill Reel [00:13:37] We had no religion. I remember going to a funeral for the first time in our family and hearing this religious service celebrating the death of this person. Not the death per se, but their life as they lived. And it was the first time I'd encountered any sort of religion at all.

Bill Reel [00:13:53] Religion just wasn't part of our upbringing. My grandfather on my dad's side was an atheist. My mom had sort of abandoned organized religion, although in her head she had kind of held belief. My dad sort of believes in a supreme being, but neither one of them ever brought that into our home. It was never an outward thing. It was only inside their heads. If that makes sense.

Margi Dehlin [00:14:14] I have a question about. So where did you grow up?

Bill Reel [00:14:18] Sandusky, Ohio. So if you were to take the state of Ohio and put your finger right in the center of it and then go all the way as north as far as you could, right up to Lake Erie. We lived right there and spent a lot of our time on the water. Going on boat rides, swimming in the lake, going to beaches, fishing for perch and walleye.

Bill Reel [00:14:38] The water being so close and such a big body of water was really a fun part of our childhood. We spent a lot of time camping on holidays. We'd go to Mohican Valley every. Every summer and we'd go canoeing down the river with extended family. All my aunts and uncles on my dad's side. We were really close. We family reunions every year, volleyball with the aunts and uncles. It was just. My brother and I both say we wouldn't take anything back about our childhood was essentially flawless and the only complaint was the parents not being emotionally available. We didn't really figure that out till later, when you start to see your own flaws and you start to see how other people are raising their children and what your home was sort of missing.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:22] And then I just have a quick question. Can we go back to the moment that you were describing or the recurring moments of. Of your dad coming home sometimes and being locked out? What age is this that you have memories?

Amanda Reel [00:15:39] Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:15:39] Of that I gotta imagine I'm somewhere in the age of eight or nine and my brother's somewhere in the age of four or five.

Margi Dehlin [00:15:47] Okay. Can I ask you a question about that? Anything. Do you have any memory as a boy looking out and having your dad knocking on the window? Like, do you remember how you processed what was happening in those moments? I'm just curious if you created a story, if you were like, very much thinking along the same lines of your mom, if your mom vocalized what was going on and that you kind of were on, or did you feel split as a child? Feeling very much for both. Like, how did you process it?

Bill Reel [00:16:20] All of those. My mom was explaining to us that she couldn't tolerate my dad's behavior. Me and my brother both clearly understood my dad was a good person. My dad was never abusive. He was never verbally abusive. He was never physically abusive. He was always loving.

Bill Reel [00:16:41] But we also recognized that he wasn't doing what my mom expected of him. You know, she had abandoned so much unhealthiness and really was an incredible mother. And she had partnered up with a good person who sort of fell into the habits of his own family.

Bill Reel [00:17:01] And she just wasn't going to tolerate it. She didn't want her kids to be raised with the same dysfunction that she was raised with. And so in those moments, I wasn't necessarily pitted against my dad. It wasn't mom against dad, and I'm choosing one or the other. It was recognizing that dad's not doing his responsibility and that drinking to the degree was. And not coming home or not even letting her know when he would come home was disruptive to the kind of home my mom was trying to create.

Margi Dehlin [00:17:36] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for that.

John Dehlin [00:17:42] Amanda. Are things coming up for you?

Amanda Reel [00:17:45] Only just that.

Bill Reel [00:17:48] You probably don't even know this, really, do you?

Amanda Reel [00:17:50] You know, just, you know, surface level. But what you said about your mom not gonna put up with the abuse for her children and just getting to love a different part of my mother in law that we won't get to discuss together.

John Dehlin [00:18:14] Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:18:14] Whatever happened to her when she was young, I don't even know it. I know she was in foster care. My mom was born in, I think Cincinnati. No, Columbus, Ohio. Born in Columbus, Ohio, ends up in Sandusky, Ohio. But when she goes into foster care, her foster parents take her to California, away from her mother, and she's in foster care for some amount of time, and we don't get any piece of the story. She absolutely was adamant. Anytime you asked her directly, she refused to give you that information. And she says, you don't want to know those parts of it. Just know that things weren't okay.

John Dehlin [00:18:50] And I

Bill Reel [00:18:53] could only imagine there was a significant amount of abuse that happened, because why else wouldn't you tell the story? But my mom didn't bring any of that. My mom was stern. My mom was an advocate for people within her realm. She worked as, again, a nurse's aide and then became an lpn.

Bill Reel [00:19:12] My mom was an advocate for people who are marginalized in her workspace. She didn't tolerate medical faculty being abusive towards. She worked in a nursing home. I hate nursing homes to this day. I remember going in there to visit my mom with my dad, and there were people towards the end of life who were senile, and they were making animal noises. There was one guy in particular who would moo like a cow or make crows like a rooster. And the place smelled like what nursing homes smell like. And I just remember being a little kid and going, I don't like this place. This place isn't where I want to be.

Bill Reel [00:19:45] But my mom treated those patients with deep respect, by the way, my wife worked with her for a significant amount of time in the same facility. And so my wife can speak to kind of who my mom was and how she. How she operated. But my mom was an advocate for folks who.

Bill Reel [00:20:02] Who couldn't defend themselves. I can only think that that plays a role in kind of how I see the world and how I show up. Anyway, where do you want to go from there?

John Dehlin [00:20:16] Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome, Amanda.

Margi Dehlin [00:20:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:19] Yeah. Okay. Thank you for sharing. That's beautiful. So not a very religious home at all.

Bill Reel [00:20:29] Zero.

John Dehlin [00:20:30] Yeah. And some trauma, probably for both your parents. So let's talk about how that played into your adolescence.

Bill Reel [00:20:39] I guess so. I felt like childhood was great. I played sports. I was really good at baseball. I played in, like, atom league is what they called it. I don't know what they call it around the world, but in Ohio, it was called atom league, and I was really good, but I was lackadaisical. I'm the kid in right field who's just kind of playing in the grass while the balls hit right to him.

Bill Reel [00:21:01] But I had ability. And my dad got tired of coaches kind of favoring their kids, and so he pulled me off the team. And so I didn't play organized baseball for three or four years. And then when I was 12 years old, I went back to playing, and I was immediately put in as the cleanup hitter. Our team won the World Series. I made the all star team, which I thought was kind of a cool thing, that having stepped away and not played the sport to jump right back in, it sort of validated that my dad was right, that the kid had ability and he could play.

Bill Reel [00:21:30] I played football. I was a starting linebacker the first year, and then I was a starting defensive tackle the second. But the last practice before the last game, at 12 years old, I tore my ACL and I had to have knee surgery.

Bill Reel [00:21:45] And then I tore my ACL again when I was 14 years old. Left knee this time instead of the right knee. And then I tore my left knee again when I was 16 years old. And so sports were done. I ended up playing golf. I lettered in golf my senior year, but sports were just something that I deeply loved, but I couldn't quite play and didn't apply myself in schools we talked about.

Bill Reel [00:22:06] I sensed that my family, again, blue collar, a lot of alcohol, that I just wanted to get on a different track. I wanted to be the kind of dad that, again, no offense to my father, but that my mom did that my mom somehow turned around her life and she wanted to show up being a good mom.

Bill Reel [00:22:24] And I knew that I was sort of sensing that I didn't have the tools to be a good dad or a good husband. And so, you know, as we get into kind of Mormonism coming along, it really did offer at least a narrative that felt like would give me the tools that I could jump into being a good husband and a good father. Not that that's what happened, but that I thought it could. So I end up. Please.

Margi Dehlin [00:22:50] So that connection. I'm just hearing. I want to be clear. So are you making the connection then, that in your mind a little bit. You having the experience of your. Of your dad and not having that kind of dad in your life and experiencing that kind of dad that as a teen, you kind of also. You felt a bit of a deficit in your own capacity, maybe, or what you wanted to be, even for a dad?

Bill Reel [00:23:19] Yeah, my. My father was great, but he didn't connect. He didn't sit down and hey, Father, here, son, here's, here's how the world works. There was never any of that. There were, there was never any conversations one on one where he helped me understand how the world works. And I sensed that as I went into life that I sort of was going to have the same lack of ability to connect with my wife and children. And I sensed that I needed something to do that. And I remember, I mean, I look back, I remember early on, again, we'll get to the church, but early on in the church talking about how this gave me the tools to be a good father and a good husband, I saw it as a gateway into being the thing that I somehow never got the training or the, the schooling to be.

John Dehlin [00:24:12] So there's an idea, maybe that comes into play later, that your attraction to the Mormon Church was that it might give you that extra something that you

Bill Reel [00:24:21] lacked, the structure, your lessons. Yeah, it would give me the tools that I could then give my kids something better than what my dad was giving me. And I don't want people to give the wrong idea. He was again, he was kind, he wasn't abusive. It wasn't a matter of him being harmful to us anyway.

Substance Use and Adolescent Struggles

John Dehlin [00:24:42] In your outline you mentioned your use of substances in your early adolescence. Is that something that's worth noting for your Mormon journey?

Bill Reel [00:24:53] Yeah, I wouldn't say I was a bad kid, but we were certainly getting into trouble. When I was 12 years old, I started drinking alcohol. My kids cousin who, his parents had gotten divorced, his mom had remarried and she had remarried a Vietnam veteran and they had moved to a different city and I would go spend the night at my cousin's house. And as I got to be 12 years old, which seems like such a young age, my aunt made it safe for us to drink there. And her line of thinking was that if I drank there, if her son drank there, we wouldn't go out and find trouble elsewhere and we could be have supervision and it was fun. We would go to her house and we would sit and play card games and she would get a case of Bush light and that's what we would drink.

John Dehlin [00:25:42] 12 is kind of young.

Bill Reel [00:25:43] It is 12 years old. And again, I don't look at that negatively. I looked at that as a great moment in my growing up and I wouldn't change it. By the time I'm 14 years old, I start using cannabis with all the kids in our neighborhood.

Bill Reel [00:25:59] The folks started, you know, my cousin started using it, the kid down the street started using it. I felt A lot of pressure to do so. And I started using it, and I really enjoyed the experiences I was having with it.

Bill Reel [00:26:09] And by the time I'm 16 years old, I start selling drugs to kids in my school, and we would buy a large amount from one friend, we'd break it up into smaller amounts, and then we would sell it to other kids in my school system and my cousin's school system. And so I wasn't like a drug dealer, but for a short time, two or three months, kids would reach out, and we'd be the contact to get them marijuana.

John Dehlin [00:26:38] So I'm thinking about my own friend group in high school, and I had some friends who discovered cannabis into high school. And for me, there was this sharp difference between how motivated they were prior to discovering marijuana and then how their grades, their involvement in extracurricular stuff, just totally tanked once they really discovered marijuana and started to be a daily user. You talk about being an underachiever relative to your intellect from your own story. Do you see a correlation there, or am I just interjecting or imposing what I saw with my friend group onto you?

Bill Reel [00:27:19] Yeah, not at all. I was a C student when I started, and I was a C student when I ended.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] Okay.

Bill Reel [00:27:23] You know, we were. We were doing things. I mean, that. Living a life that way. We were shoplifting. There was one time we went into a grocery store. We all wore trench coats, and I took a bottle of alcohol off the shelf and stuck it in my trench coat. And suddenly the. On the. On the loudspeaker, it was like, we have a code 37 and aisle 14 or whatever. So I hurry up and put it back. And the. The whoever. The person representing security for the grocery store stopped us on the way out and said, hey, we know you guys took alcohol. And we were cocky.

Bill Reel [00:27:53] We're like, go ahead and search us. And they searched us, and they didn't find anything. They let us go. We would often go into grocery stores and take, like, little Mike's hard lemonades or something and stuff them down our pants and walk out.

Bill Reel [00:28:05] But we didn't do, like, major crime. It was sort of just the fun of getting away with. Didn't really affect my grades. Again, I never got worse than being a C student, and I never got better than being a C student. I had a 2.5 in high school. I went to Bowling Green State University for three and a half years. I went to be an elementary teacher. My grades, I was cheating on tests at times. In high school, I had a clear pen, and I would Take off the back end of the cap and I would write all the answers really small on a piece of paper and stick them down the clear tube of the pen.

Bill Reel [00:28:40] And then I would go into class and I would have all the answers kind of written around, but I didn't need it for math, but I would use it in chemistry, for instance, where maybe I had a little more trouble catching on, didn't want to remember as many things. I remember going to. I took two years of Spanish. In my second year in Spanish, I had like a D minus going into the final exam.

Bill Reel [00:28:59] And the teacher told me, she goes, you're going to fail. You just, you, you have not applied yourself and you don't have what it takes to pass this class. And I said, I'll show you. And there was a short little break, a four day break or something from school of holiday of some sort to come back and do the final exam. And I, for those four days I went and applied myself and I said, I'll remember all this stuff and end up getting to see in the class. I, you know, ended up doing quite well on the final exam and got my grades up.

Bill Reel [00:29:26] Drugs never affected me on an education level. When I went to college, I had 2.9. I went to Bowling Green State University and to be a teacher you had to have a 3.2 or be in the top 100 of the class.

Bill Reel [00:29:40] And I was not there. And when I sat down with the school counselors to figure out what to do, because now I need to do my student teaching and my methods classes. And they told me, said, your grades aren't high enough, you're gonna have to transfer somewhere. This isn't gonna work here. You can keep taking classes and try to get your 2.9 up to a 3.2, but that's. It takes some real work once you've got most of your education behind you. And so I tried to transfer to another university, Ashland University, and they only required a 2.5. So I might have been the valedictorian there, but when I tried to transfer like 7 or 8 of my classes, 17 credits or something wouldn't transfer over.

Bill Reel [00:30:20] And so now I'm turning a four year education into a six year education, except I'm not walking out a doctor or a lawyer. And Amanda, by that time I'm married. Amanda got pregnant and I just needed to move on. And so I just ended up finding a job and dropped out of college.

Meeting Amanda and Introduction to Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:30:37] Well, let's go back and I'm assuming Amanda is your introduction to Mormonism. So do you want to briefly talk about meeting Amanda and how that led to you joining the church?

Bill Reel [00:30:46] Yep. So I'm working at a restaurant, Perkins Pancake House in Sandusky, Ohio. Minimum wage is 425. 475. I start off as a busboy. I bust my rear end. I become really good at it. I'm again busboy, but whatever. I become the best busboy out of the four or five they've got there. And they promote me over to be the baker. They have two other women who are doing the baking for the company, but they need one more person. And so they offer me the job as the baker. They start paying me like eight bucks an hour when minimum wage is 475 and I'm in high school.

Bill Reel [00:31:19] And I feel like I've showed that I have a work ethic, that I'm always gonna show up, I'm always gonna work hard. And that was a ton of fun. I went to an outlet mall near our home. And when we, me and my best friend came out of that outlet mall, I'm pausing only cause I'm thinking of something else that I'd wanna share. But when I came out of the outlet mall, on our windshield wiper of his car was a paper about getting a second job at a fast food restaurant, McDonald's.

Bill Reel [00:31:48] And so I went and applied. I just wanted to work two jobs. I thought, let's just have more money. Let's work somewhere else and be good at it. I really wanted to start putting some money aside. And so I got a second job at McDonald's. And Amanda worked there. And we got to know each other. And she was a little flirty and I got to talking to her. But all through school, I was constantly rejected by women or perceived that I would be rejected by girls in my school. And so even when I liked a girl, I was scared to death to go ask her to go on a date or anything.

Bill Reel [00:32:21] Because I felt like that's just going to be a chance to feel shame and rejection. And so Amanda, being as brave as she was, she reached out and actually called me. And she her and I got into a conversation and I asked her on a date. The moment she calls, I know she's interested. It makes it easy. I don't have to worry about being rejected.

Bill Reel [00:32:41] And so I asked her on a date. And we went to see Toy Story. We went to a nice restaurant called Buzz's Eating Experience. They had candles and everything there. It was such a good atmosphere. And we talked all through dinner. We went to the movie and I didn't know it, but Amanda is a big fan of Disney and she loves Disney movies and she had been collecting them and so taking her to Toy Story Part one I think was kind of the gateway into her really knowing that I was doing things that she liked. It was around Christmas time and on the way home we were going to drive by all the lights that the city had put downtown and we had passed them all and didn't even realize it because we were engaged in such a good conversation. And it was this first time in my life where a female other than my mother is paying attention to me.

John Dehlin [00:33:34] You're how old?

Bill Reel [00:33:34] I am 16, 17 years old. My birthday's in September, so I started school when I, you know, I'm in kindergarten when I'm 4 instead of 5 like everybody else. My birthday essentially was six months later than everyone else. And so I'm sort of like the youngest kid in my grade at all times. So I'm like a 17 year old in my senior year, started my senior year as a 16 year old. But it was the first time that a female paid attention to me and that I, that this person liked me and spent time with me.

John Dehlin [00:34:09] So Amanda, really quickly give us just a quick overview of your Mormon story background just so that we can make sure and know kind of what you're bringing to this relationship and what background.

Bill Reel [00:34:21] Sure.

Amanda Reel [00:34:22] So no pioneer stock. My mom's parents were the Reorganized church missionaries knocked on their door. So they're like now we're part of your church. And they're like, well no you're not. And so then they got baptized lds and then my father, when he met my mother as seniors as well, that was all for them as well. And so he got converted. And so I was born in the Covenant, but my dad was a convert and my mom's parents were converts.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] Okay. And how would you describe your Mormon upbringing? Pretty traditional? Non traditional?

Amanda Reel [00:34:58] Pretty traditional, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:59] Was the church really important to you?

Amanda Reel [00:35:02] Yeah. So you know, I had the whole princess dreams that everybody did that I had a real castle to go to though and in the Celestial Kingdom. In the Celestial kingdom and the temple and. But having a low self esteem, I had not set my sights there because I didn't think I was ever going to good enough and who was going to marry me and take me to the temple. So I was already thinking I was not going to be married in the temple. I wasn't good enough, nobody was going to take me. And then this handsome fella comes along. And he is just Peter Moorman, and he was my savior. And so.

John Dehlin [00:35:47] What do you mean, Peter Mormon?

Amanda Reel [00:35:49] I don't know. I know there's Molly Mormon, and there

Bill Reel [00:35:51] was Peter, Peter Priesthood, but he wasn't a member yet.

Amanda Reel [00:35:54] Not yet. But as he started, you know, you know, at first I was like, oh, I am. Go get a husband. Okay, this is gonna work. But then, you know, when he started coming to church and he was more Mormon than I ever was, I'm like, oh, okay, this is. This is gonna work out after all.

John Dehlin [00:36:10] Okay. All right. So, Bill, tell us how you go from dating Amanda to joining the church.

Conversion, Temple Marriage, and Early Married Life

Bill Reel [00:36:18] Yeah, so her dad was a good missionary. You know, he recognizes that his responsibility as a good Mormon is to help bring people in. And so he wrapped his arms around me and said, you know, I'd love you to show interest in this church. Is there any chance you'd be willing to go? Is there any chance you'd want to give it a chance and take a look at it and see if it's something that would interest you?

Bill Reel [00:36:41] And so I go to church for the very first time, and I go to the young men's lesson, and in that room, in the young men's room, there's three chalkboards, and they had a lesson on the Godhead, and God the Father was put up on one chalkboard and Jesus Christ on another, Holy Ghost on the third. And as they explained the Godhead, again, I had no religious upbringing. Most of the kids in my school were Catholic or Lutheran that were religious.

Bill Reel [00:37:07] And yet somehow, as the Godhead is being explained as three separate beings, that makes really total sense to me. It felt almost as if I'd already known that. And as you start to dive into Mormonism and the missionaries are teaching you and they're challenging you to have spiritual experiences, I sort of understood that.

Bill Reel [00:37:28] It's such a small jump to go, oh, like, I must have known that from the pre earth life. I must have known that the Godhead were separate. And it just resonated. And so I attributed that kind of early on as a spiritual experience.

Bill Reel [00:37:42] And then the missionaries are coming by and they're teaching me and they're encouraging me to read the Book of Mormon. And I read the whole thing. I read all 531 pages prior to getting baptized, like at 17, 17 years old. I read the whole thing. I was committed. It was my promise to myself that I'm going to read the whole thing, then I'll pray about it, and then I'll know if it's True. And so I read the whole thing, prayed about it, and I can only describe it as a mystical experience.

Bill Reel [00:38:11] I sort of, as Paul says, right. Whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. I looked up, I was sitting on the. Or actually I was laying down on the couch, Amanda was kneeling down on the floor, and we were talking about the Word of Wisdom as I'm taking the discussions.

Bill Reel [00:38:26] And it made sense to me that I'm going to have to give up using cannabis with my friends. But coffee and tea didn't make any sense. And so I'm sort of arguing with Amanda about sweet tea because my dad would make it all the time and I really loved it. And it didn't make any sense that God needs you to not drink coffee and tea. And so as she's sort of telling me, like, that's what the church has to have us do to join it. And I'm sort of pushing back.

Bill Reel [00:38:51] And then I start talking to her about praying about the Book of Mormon. I have this experience where I look up the top of our steps. I'm on the split level home. I'm in the middle level. I'm looking up at the top of the steps, and I sort of sense this idea that God is answering my question about praying about the Book of Mormon. And he's telling me, not in any literal voice, but I sort of understand in my head that the church is true. And the message I get is the church is true, all of it. And I remember. Oops, sorry. I remember as I'm looking at the top of the steps, I kind of sense that this is going to be my wife, these are going to be my children.

Bill Reel [00:39:24] And I sort of, in my head, picture these kids that I'm going to have. And I count this as a deep spiritual experience. I know Mormonism is true now. At the same time, though, I am deeply interested in knowing everything I can about this religion. So I'm at school, going to the school library and looking up things on Mormonism. And as you can imagine, the school library has very little. So I go to the city library and I go up to the second floor and I'm walking around their historical section and I'm looking up things on Joseph Smith. And they don't have a lot, but one of the books they do have is the Fawn Brody book no man Knows My History.

Bill Reel [00:40:05] And I'm not smart enough or informed enough at the moment to understand that it's not an autobiography. My first thought is, this is Joseph Smith's Autobiography, no Man Knows My History. And I grabbed it off the shelf, I filled out the card in the back. Of course, this is before really the Internet is big and the Dewey decimal system. Take the book home. And I read no Man Knows My History by Fawn Brody. And that book was challenging. I read it and I realized that this was written by a critic. There are lots of things being brought up that the missionaries aren't telling me. There's lots of things being brought up that I'm not hearing as I'm going to church for a few weeks, as I'm taking the discussions and I end up going to my in laws, my mother in law, my father in law.

Bill Reel [00:40:49] And I, I say to them, I say, you know, hey, I'm reading this book and this has got a lot of criticisms. And her dad pulls out the Tanner's book, Shadow or Reality? And he says, oh yeah, I've read all this stuff before. Here's the book. I keep this so that I can easily remember the temple ordinances because they're all in there.

Bill Reel [00:41:06] And I asked them some of the questions. I remember posing two or three, I don't remember what the questions were, but I remember posing two or three questions to them and their response was, we don't know the answers to that, but we know the church is true and we ask you to have faith.

Bill Reel [00:41:21] So I went to school the next day and there was a teacher that she didn't respect me, but I respected her. She was a hardliner, but she was a good teacher. You could tell that she, she stood for. Stood up for what, who she was and she represented herself authentically. And I went to her after class and I said, hey, you're not Mormon, but I'm investigating the Mormon Church and I don't know what to do. Like there's problems and yet I feel like maybe it's true. I don't know what to do. And she basically said like, follow your heart. And my heart said, join the church.

Bill Reel [00:41:56] And so I set the problems aside and committed myself to Amanda, to the Mormons, the missionaries, to the leaders of the ward, that I was going to get baptized. And so I did.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] So I guess a common way that converts end up joining the Mormon Church and other high demand religions is they fall in love. So you're reading the Book of Mormon cover to cover and you're reading no Man Knows My History. Like on the one hand, I get it. Well, let me just start by asking, did Amanda basically throw down and say, I'm only going to marry someone who joins the church and I'm only going to get married in the temple. Was there that sort of expectations set or not?

Bill Reel [00:42:41] Not at all. Amanda seems to make it clear that she wasn't expecting to go to the temple anyway. All of her siblings were dating non members. Some of them joined the church, but they were highly inactive. And you know, you can speak for yourself. But I, it feels as though that was not an expectation at all. And maybe me coming around sort of then gave her the expectation that she can finally kind of live in that space and have an active Mormon family.

John Dehlin [00:43:14] So that was driven by you, the level. Because many people join the church not reading the full Book of Mormon, let alone no man knows my history.

Margi Dehlin [00:43:23] That's what I'm noticing. I'm noticing kind of like the way you were describing yourself as a younger teen, like new teen was kind of like a kind of playfulness, a lot of like some kind of more innocent trouble, but also kind of pushing, pushing some lines there but like kind of just very like peer oriented activities, not in school, kind of doing enough to get by. And then you have this, it feels like a shift. But I'm curious how you would describe it because you read a very serious book. Book of Mormon is a serious kind of. And then you pursue this very serious endeavor of like religion. Right. Taking the, taking the missionary discussions and as a teen. So.

John Dehlin [00:44:13] And without Amanda demanding it.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:14] That's right. And without. So I'm just curious to connect with you during this time. What happened between the time of this, you know, in stores shoving like, you know, those alcohol bottles. Yeah. Lemonades in your pants to like reading the Book of Mormon and really taking this commitment kind of seriously.

Amanda Reel [00:44:36] Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:44:37] So while I wasn't reading school textbooks, I was a voracious reader. One of the things my mom always did was on a weekly or bi weekly basis she would take us to the city library and we would always take out 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 books at a time.

Margi Dehlin [00:44:52] And warms my heart.

Bill Reel [00:44:55] So I read a ton of books growing up. Hatchet by Gary Paulson. Where the Red Fern Grows, the Little Prince.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:05] Wow.

Bill Reel [00:45:06] Roll of thunder, Hear my cry. All Newbery Award winners, right?

John Dehlin [00:45:10] Margi's vibing. She's nodding.

Bill Reel [00:45:14] I was a voracious reader. I loved information, I loved learning. School was just too easy. I really loved Abraham Lincoln. Read tons of books on him and understood some of the complexities of his life with his interest in the woman who was pursuing him and her pursuing his adversary as he's running for office and a deep Lover of history. And when I met Mormonism, I sensed that the history was interesting and I wanted nothing more than to know all of it. And so from the moment I'm investigating the church, I want to know everything about Mormonism. And so I just start grabbing any book I can get my hands on and reading it. My mom instilled that in me.

John Dehlin [00:46:05] My mom.

Bill Reel [00:46:08] My mom sensed that. I think that education, or at least information was a gateway to a better life. And then you go to church, right, and everybody's wearing their suits and ties and their dresses and they're all smiling. That's the blueprint I wanted. I wanted to. It looked like everybody had a happy, productive, healthy family. You don't, you don't know what's hiding behind those masks, but on the surface it looks really beautiful. And when I go to church, I'm walking away from a blue collar

Amanda Reel [00:46:49] world

Bill Reel [00:46:50] where people are often not exactly doing their best because they're. They're engaged with heavy drinking on the weekends and not really invested as much as they could be in the lives of their children. And I go to church and I see all these families sit together and I see the suits and ties and the dresses and the smiles, and I just think, this is, this is it. This is the easy way to transition from the life I was going to have to the one I would like to.

Margi Dehlin [00:47:26] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I am also thinking about how you described your kind of childhood observation of your parents and how effortful, honestly, how effortful it must have been for them to kind of with their upbringings and what they experienced to create this newer blueprint, you know, to kind of offer something a little step up from what they experienced, you know, but also children can notice the effort, how hard, like, you know, the work that it takes to even just make a living, to have put food on the table. And so it also makes sense to me why coming from that and coming from the whole family culture around just that effort of what it takes to kind of.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:20] Right. Emerge from where we start. Why it would be so alluring to walk into a ward, smiling faces, all that, because it looks so easeful in that moment, right. It looks just so accessible. It's right there. You can touch it.

Bill Reel [00:48:37] Yeah. What makes everyone in that congregation look like it's working? And it's the gospel of Jesus Christ. Right. And you're right, like, I sense that my mom and dad had exponentially improved upon what they were given. And here's this chance for me now to improve upon what they had given me. And it feels like it's destiny. It feels, it feels like the Lord intervened and now I'm being picked up and put down on a different track.

John Dehlin [00:49:15] I get it. So. And you've already kind of answered half answered the question I was going to ask because when you. We're going to read later some emails you sent me as a bishop, I'm excited. But you mentioned reading no man knows my history in your emails to me as a Mormon bishop in your late 20s, early, early 30s. And so I get that ultimately what she did is what a lot of people do is they just put their questions on the shelf and they join emotionally and socially instead of intellectually. Primarily, I think primarily, it sounds like you converted. You had a social and an emotional conversion to Mormonism, right?

Bill Reel [00:49:56] Yeah. What I would say to that is that it was both. So while I'm encountering the problems, I'm also actively looking for the answer. So I knew that my mother in law and father in law weren't going to be able to answer the questions. So the Internet is just starting to come online and I start to look for answers there. So I find a site called New Jerusalem and it had a guy named Book of Mormon answer man. I never found out who that guy was, but he always went by the pseudonymous.

Bill Reel [00:50:25] And I would start looking up questions and I would start printing out answers. So I would, when I went to college, for instance, I just joined the church. I'm going to Bowling Green State University. They have a computer lab. You are allowed to be in that computer lab whenever you want to be. And there's no, nobody's limiting how much paper you can print. So rather than doing schoolwork because I know I can wing it and I'll be fine. Didn't end up being that. But I spent all my time in the computer lab looking up problems in Mormonism. And then I would just print. I would walk out every day with 100 sheets of pa it off with answers.

Bill Reel [00:50:57] Then I would go home and I would sit and read this stuff. I would just digest what the apologist or people out there trying to give answers to the questions. We're saying. The other thing that happens is as Mormonism tells you that its critics are picking on certain issues, the apologists pick sometimes, at least early on they did. They pick the simple issues. Oh, the critics want to tell you that the Book of Mormon says that Jesus was born in Jerusalem. Well, that has a simple answer. You know, here, that's a land of Jerusalem, which Bethlehem's Part of. And so there's this constant conversation where Mormonism is redirecting you to think that the real criticisms are nonsense.

Bill Reel [00:51:38] It's this evangelical criticism of Mormonism. And so you start to sense. I had these four books that were Lie in Wait to Deceive written by the Browns, and I read all four of them.

John Dehlin [00:51:52] They lie in wait.

Bill Reel [00:51:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:51:53] Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:51:54] And I read all four of those and all four of those books, take the Wesley Walters, Ed Decker, the Cowdery Gentleman, and they make it sound like the critics are just picking on the little things that there are good answers, like strawman.

John Dehlin [00:52:13] Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:52:13] Think they're not the real criticisms of Mormonism, but you sense that's what it is. And so you build this idea in your head that Mormonism has its critics. They are really unhealthy people who are picking on things that there are good answers for. And they're picking on the naive and the innocent.

John Dehlin [00:52:33] Vulnerable.

Bill Reel [00:52:34] Yeah, yeah. And so I, I sensed that Mormonism had problems, but they weren't real problems and that the apologetics would solve those problems.

John Dehlin [00:52:42] Okay. And I'm glad you covered that. And I, I think that's an important, important piece of the puzzle. Just rewinding for a second to you reading no Man Knows My History. That's really serious because that book, there's a reason why it's feared and hated because it's saying Joseph smith married over 30 women. It's saying he married 14 year olds. It's saying he did polyandry, married other men's wives. It's really deconstructing the Book of Abraham. I mean, she's got it all in there. There's almost nothing Jeremy Runnels mentions in CES Letter or frankly that we've covered on Mormon stories that von Brody in 45 didn't cover to the point where

Bill Reel [00:53:17] Richard Bushman cover to the point where Richard Bushman covers it two decades later, three decades later, and covers the same material. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:53:24] Five decades later, maybe. But. Or six. But. But to, to the point is that's a lot to overcome. Her calling out the Book of Abraham, the Book of Mormon as frauds. Right. Joseph Smith as a charlatan and as a kind of. As a sexual predator.

John Dehlin [00:53:42] So it's one thing to sort of have some questions that you kind of just. Huh. These benign things seem a little bit off, but I'll put them on a shelf like Jerusalem in the Book of Abraham. But like Von Brody takes it to a 10. And so I'm just, I'm just, I, I would understand you Kind of being able to put some of those other tracks on the shelf. But Fon Brody, I guess, I guess I. I mean, I guess one answer would be your love for Amanda, your love for a better life and your experience with your in laws and in the Mormon Chapel.

John Dehlin [00:54:18] Just out. Simply the emotional impact of that outweighed the problems that you read in no Man Knows the History. All I'm saying is that seems like a lot. A really high hurdle to overcome. But maybe I'm underestimating the power of emotion. Yeah. You know, Amanda, can I just.

Amanda Reel [00:54:37] Just really quick. And of course he needs to speak to this. But he loved the church. Like, I don't know how, you know, I didn't read the book, so I don't know how he overcame and put that away or anything. So that might be interesting for you to speak to. But no, it's a hundred percent genuinely him. All him with no outsiders pressuring him. And he was really the best damn Mormon anybody would have wanted to have solely on his own.

John Dehlin [00:55:11] Loved it. Loved it.

Bill Reel [00:55:13] I think that. I think two other things happened. One is that our brains have a way of dismissing. Right. Cognitive dissonance forces you to choose one or the other or live with cognitive dissonance. And so cognitive dissonance had me going, look, I've had spiritual experiences. The second thing is that most of the criticisms I'm encountering are insignificant. It really does feel like Wesley Walters is falsely attacking the church and picking on things that aren't big deals. And so I sensed that maybe Fawn Brody was just more of the same and that I didn't need to take it uber seriously. And so I think the cognitive dissonance, I think the spiritual experiences, and I think noticing other anti Mormon propaganda that the Church wants you to sense while not wanting you to sense the real issues probably led to me being able to sort of just dismiss it out of hand.

John Dehlin [00:56:13] Okay.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:14] And I think it's important to say there is no just in emotion. Like, I'm thinking of the work of Jonathan Haidt. Yeah, like there is. No, no, just about that.

John Dehlin [00:56:24] That's the elephant.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:25] Especially if we look at like what Mormonism promises.

Bill Reel [00:56:30] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:31] I mean, come on. And at stage of life where you are. And I'm. I love that you brought up the reading aspect of you growing up, because I see a seeker in that too. Which goes very well with. With this too.

John Dehlin [00:56:47] So anyway, like, I remember an interview with Gordon B. Hinckley where he calls. He's called on some of the really harder history stuff and he Calls them flex or flicks of history. And I guess regardless of what you read in a book, if you're experiencing the power of Mormonism in a. In a Mormon paradigm, in a Mormon ward, in a Mormon family, I guess everything else kind of pales in comparison, right? Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:57:11] The other thing that happens too is that the moment I joined the church, I am immediately made the assistant ward mission leader. That's my first calling. And I'm working with the missionaries who taught me, and I'm working with an older gentleman who I served with all my time in the church. He was actually a counselor when I was bishop. Later on, he was my first counselor.

Bill Reel [00:57:31] I went from being the assistant ward mission leader to the secretary in the elders quorum, to second counselor in the elders quorum to first counselor in the elders quorum to first counselor in the young men's presidency, to counselor in the bishopric, to bishop with no gap in between, that it was one onto the other, onto the other. Because as Amanda pointed out, I showed up when people moved. I was the one who was there. Obviously others were too. But I didn't miss anything. When there was a storehouse assignment, I'm there, their home teaching. I want to go.

Bill Reel [00:58:05] I'm the guy in the ward who, even as he just joins the church, knows the history as well as anyone else in that building and who wants to be. I. I want to be the best Mormon. I want to knock it out of the park.

John Dehlin [00:58:21] Makes sense. Really quickly. Anything noteworthy about your temple, either your endowment or your marriage that you want to just touch on?

Bill Reel [00:58:31] So, temple marriage. So I'm 19 years old. My father and mother in law take us to the temple. We stay the night before. We're going to get our endowment one day and we're going to get sealed the next. So the day we get our endowment, I go to the temple. I put on the temple garb, as we all did. I've got the hat on, I've got the string tied, I've got the outfit with the sash. I'm slipping the slippers off, putting them back on.

Bill Reel [00:59:00] I looked around the room and I just sensed, first off, I go to the washing and anointing. They put the shield on you. And that didn't bother me highly. But I remembered as they're reaching underneath the shield and they're touching my body with oil and with water, I thought of like, hey, they gave me this temple prep class, and I still could not have guessed that this was the things that were going to happen.

Bill Reel [00:59:30] And then I go into the endowment And I'm in the full garb and I look around and the thought enters my head that I look and these people look like we're at a baker's convention. And it just looks weird.

Bill Reel [00:59:43] And there was something awkward about it. So we get done with the endowment, we go back to the hotel. I sleep in a bed with my father in law, my fiance sleeps in a bed with her mom. We get up the next day, we do the ceiling thing. And the ceiling was fine.

Bill Reel [01:00:00] Looking back, it's. Once you deconstruct and you're out, you sort of get shortchanged on this wedding experience. The other thing that happens is my mom can't go. And at the time I'm trying to explain it to her mom, there's the Levites and there's the, there's the ark of the Covenant. And the Levites can hold it, but no one else can. And if someone tries to steady it, you know, you see what happened because I knew my mom sort of accepted the Bible again, we didn't have religion in her home, but I did know that she, as I'm investigating Mormonism, she's informing me that she had left the Baptist religion when she was a teenager and that she still believed the Bible.

Bill Reel [01:00:40] And so I'm trying to use a Bible story to convince her why she can't go. But this woman had two kids. She had planned her whole life to

John Dehlin [01:00:52] go to their wedding. It hurt.

Bill Reel [01:00:56] It stung. Stung to the point where we had a ring bearing ceremony a few weeks later and she didn't come. My dad stayed for a short minute and as soon as this ring bearing ceremony went to the reception and we started doing like the dollar dance and stuff, my dad got up and left.

Bill Reel [01:01:15] They were hurt. I didn't have a way. There's no way to explain that. You think as a believer you have some good way to explain, like, I'm really sorry, but this is how God works, right? My mom, My mom held a grudge for years. She wouldn't even interact with us until my wife had our first child. And now she realized that she either had to put this grudge behind her or she wasn't going to have a relationship with her grandchildren.

Bill Reel [01:01:43] And so she finally made amends and moved past it. But to this day, my mom, when you join the church and your parents can't go to your temple wedding, when your mother had been planning all her life to be part of that, when she had turned around her life so that she could see her kids succeed and not be able to Be part of this event that she had anticipated her entire adulthood leading up to that moment.

Bill Reel [01:02:13] She was pissed at Mormonism. She was angry. She did not comprehend how this thing could take that from her. And now on this end of things looking back, she was right. That was atrocious. If I could do it over again, there'd be no doubt. I'd get married in a civil marriage. And if the ceiling happened later, so be it.

John Dehlin [01:02:37] I'm sorry that happened. Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:02:38] It's a loss.

Bill Reel [01:02:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:02:41] Yeah, but you were in it, so it's just, you know, that's just unfortunate. Collateral.

Bill Reel [01:02:48] Collateral damage.

John Dehlin [01:02:48] Yeah. To. To follow it. No, that's. That's like sacrifice for seeking the truth. It's like, oh, we do hard things in Mormonism and sorry, Mom, I found the truth.

Bill Reel [01:02:58] You know, when you live the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ, you're going to have challenges, you're going to have things thrown at you, and this is how you prove yourself.

John Dehlin [01:03:06] And the weird thing is, while your mom's being hurt and offended and damaged, it's reinforcing your faith. It's like, I made sacrifices for the Lord, you know?

Bill Reel [01:03:18] Yeah, totally. And it was always that way. Like, I think we were always making sacrifices. We were. We were full tithe payers and we barely got by. Our first house we paid $45,000 for. It was a thousand square foot, three bedroom, one bath, no dining room, living room and kitchen.

Bill Reel [01:03:37] We ate. We ate just cheap meals every night. Like, we. We would. The one thing Amanda and I was. Were communicating over was how to make ends meet. And we would plan on, you know, okay, we'll order a pizza Friday to sort of celebrate having gotten through the week. But we had fried bologna sandwiches the night before and hot dogs the day before that and tuna noodle casserole the day before that. It was always these easy, cheap meals.

Bill Reel [01:04:01] And we were adamant. Let's play our tithing. Let's get our blessings. But what it did was it left us always scratching and clawing, trying to make it work. Every week was a battle to stay in front of being in debt, no credit cards. We did what the church said.

Bill Reel [01:04:20] At the time. You think that's blessings? We're making it. It's working one way or another. We always pay our bills. We always stay just ahead of it.

John Dehlin [01:04:32] I mean, from the church's weirdly social scientists have studied religions, and the more you would think the easier religion was on its people, the more committed they'd be because it. Because the religion wasn't so demanding. But it turns out, the opposite is true. The more demanding a religion is, the more committed the members are. So you're talking about all those sacrifices you're making, paying all this money to the church while you're poor and barely getting the nutrition you need and barely making your payments. But the truth is that's strengthening your

Bill Reel [01:05:04] commitment to the church, and it's added to by other things. The leaders of this church aren't paid.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:10] Right.

Bill Reel [01:05:11] Until later on when you figure out they are.

John Dehlin [01:05:13] Well, just the ones on top of.

Bill Reel [01:05:15] And the money goes to good use. The money is paying for the functions at the local ward. The money is going to humanitarian aid. The money is going to build the kingdom. You don't know that it's not. And so as long as your church looks like it is righteous and building the kingdom of God, then your sacrifice is part of that work.

John Dehlin [01:05:34] It's a great work.

Bill Reel [01:05:35] It's all reinforcing.

Margi Dehlin [01:05:37] Yeah. I was wanting to connect just for a second, if we were going to get just a snapshot of what you believed about marriage, like, what you expected, what you kind of went into marriage smiling, kind of thinking and believing. And you can add if you want, like, sexuality and intimacy. What. Your picture of that and gender roles and. Yeah, all that. Like, just a snapshot of, like, at this stage, you're newly. Yeah. What did that look like?

Bill Reel [01:06:16] I picked up on really quickly this idea that the man presides, that he leads the home, and that there is a degree of obedience expected from everyone behind him. And again, I come from a growing up where I didn't feel important, where I was constantly feeling rejected or the fear of rejection. I didn't feel like I was ever leading anything. And so to join the church and to suddenly go, someone to go, you're the leader. You lead, you be out front, and then you go to the temple. And I remember that she promised to be obedient to me as I was obedient to God.

Bill Reel [01:06:56] And so I went home and I started to expect her to get in line and follow the decisions I was making for our family. And so if I, you know, what do you want to do tonight for dinner? It started with little things, but it soon becomes bigger things. This is what we're going to do. This is how we're going to do it to the point where I'm breaking her heart and she's crying and she's, you know, there were times where she would just go into our room and just cry because I was so hard on her.

Bill Reel [01:07:24] And there was a moment where her dad comes over. She finally said. I said, I'm out of here. I'm leaving. And she went, you know, went down the street to. To go visit her mom and dad. And her dad comes back a short time later and he lays the scriptures out and he reads the dnc. For when men get a little bit of power, they begin to exercise unrighteous dominion. He was trying to put me in my place because he. He. He sensed too, that the way I'm running this home is not appropriate. So I lightened up, but I didn't fix it.

John Dehlin [01:07:54] So, Amanda, were you torn seeing how faithful he was, but then how that maybe didn't always bring out his most kindest self? What. How. How do you want to add to what Bill just shared about how you experience the patriarchy? Basically?

Amanda Reel [01:08:13] Gosh, that's kind of really hard because I was totally in on that messaging that, you know, your husband is faithful and he's not going to lead your household astray, and. And everything's going to be okay. So I was good with giving him that power. You know, he has our best interest at heart, you know, when he's going to lead us the way he's supposed to and all the things. And so.

John Dehlin [01:08:42] And just for those who've never been Mormon, I just want to add, as Bill said, when you covenant back then, when you covenanted in the temple, when you got married in the temple, the woman would covenant to hearken unto her husband, and the husband would covenant to obey God. So the woman's relationship with God in. In a. In a classic Mormon sense, the woman's relationship with. With God literally is through the husband. And so when you talk about you being down for it, that was. That was the contract. Your contract was with your husband, and his contract was with God. Am I correct? Is that right?

Amanda Reel [01:09:21] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:09:22] Okay.

Amanda Reel [01:09:22] So much so.

John Dehlin [01:09:23] Okay.

Amanda Reel [01:09:23] Yeah. And, you know, so, you know, the times he's speaking to, or I'm just crying in our room or whatever, like,

John Dehlin [01:09:33] what are these issues that you guys are having? You know, like, is it always money?

Amanda Reel [01:09:36] Right. When you don't have money, you fight about money.

Bill Reel [01:09:39] The one I remember.

Margi Dehlin [01:09:40] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:09:40] There's this moment we. We couldn't have anything, and I'm always got my thumb down on her. So there's times where she just tries to kind of expand and be herself and do something without having to ask me or get permission. And there's this moment in time where she buys some cookware. And the cookware was, in my mind, super expensive. It was $70 for a high End frying pan or something. And I just remember coming home and being like, are you serious? Like, this is ridiculous. Like, you just went out and spent 70 bucks. When we're scrapping by trying to find food and, and to be able to eat and to get by, and we got to pay our tithing and, you know, collect fast offerings next week.

Bill Reel [01:10:20] And as you point out, John, this whole idea of, like, hearkening to your husband as he hearkens unto God. She could see I was hearkening unto God. I was doing that part. I'm. I'm a damn good Mormon. But I think Mormonism gives you the ability to hide unhealthy behavior behind checked boxes.

Bill Reel [01:10:38] And so you can check boxes and say, I'm a good Mormon. I did my home teaching. I. I show up at every service project. I teach, I teach lessons. I'm happy to give a talk. I accept callings and I magnify them. Meanwhile, your ego is out of control and you are being abusive to your wife and kids, and you don't have. You don't have anybody coming to you really, to say, hey, that's not Christlike. Instead, what you go. You go to church every week for three hours, and it's constantly reinforced that you're the good Mormon. You're the guy in our ward who does all the things you're asked to

Margi Dehlin [01:11:12] do ironically, like, there is no checkbox for, like, respect, no kindness to your spouse, no checkbox for that.

John Dehlin [01:11:20] Do you want to. So keep going, Amanda.

Raising a Family and Rising in the Church

Amanda Reel [01:11:24] Well, I'm kind of bubbling feeling like we need to kind of change gears a little bit to give you just kind of a little bit where I come from, because I find it really funny that he talks about not having emotionally connected parents. And it's really funny because here I am also of eight children, and I'm a Mormon, but we're not this lovey, touchy family.

Amanda Reel [01:11:48] So I can probably guess my dad's love language is touch. My mom's is not. She doesn't like touch. She doesn't like clicky women. She doesn't like cackly women. And so she doesn't do well in church because it's all clicky and, and she doesn't like that.

Amanda Reel [01:12:06] So it's really funny. Like, I can always. I always knew my parents loved each other. And, you know, my dad would. This is how you kiss kids and give her the whole big soap opera kiss and whatever. So the, the lack of touch. There wasn't a lack of affection.

Amanda Reel [01:12:21] But so then when I see, you know, Bill's family, you know, getting to know them, they were always the, the hugs and I love yous before hanging up the phone or leaving.

Bill Reel [01:12:30] Kiss your mom and dad on the face.

John Dehlin [01:12:32] Yeah.

Amanda Reel [01:12:32] Yeah. And so, so they were kissy, lovey, touchy people. And so I always, that was like, oh, I'm going to get this thing that I always wanted. Like, I always felt like I got the attention I ever wanted and needed. Like I was a go getter for those things.

Amanda Reel [01:12:47] So, you know, my mom's not a touch me not, but I'm nine months pregnant with my first child curled up in her lap and things like this. So always, you know, those needs I felt taken care of. But looking at my husband's, you know, family, I'm like, he is of kind connected to his family because my, I didn't have extended family because my mom's brothers are complete jerks. And you know, and then my, my dad's side of the family, you just sat on the couch and you didn't move a muscle and you sat quiet while grownups talked. And you know, so it's really funny you have this dream family and just to hear you talk about the, the disconnect, that's, that's kind of interesting.

Amanda Reel [01:13:25] So anyways, back on topic now. I don't know, it's just the thing for me. And even though we're crying, it's just, you know, it's just normal family things, you know. You know that no marriage or two people can ever come together perfectly in harmony, right? That doesn't exist, you know, so it's just, I don't know, just normal things that we go through as a couple and we always find the other side.

John Dehlin [01:13:50] But, but this idea of you feeling so desperate that you wanted to leave Bill and your father needing to intervene to read Bill, the passages in the Doctrine and Covenants about unrighteous dominion, like it's not Mormon for a wife to leave her husband. So you must have been pushed to a breaking point, I'm guessing.

Amanda Reel [01:14:10] Yeah. That's funny. That just kind of made me realize, I guess that's kind of maybe the first start of how we did life. It seems that when things I feel are too big for me to handle anymore and I don't feel heard, like it's like, okay, I have to go. This isn't going to work. I have to go. And so there's been several times flight through our marriage where I didn't feel heard and I would have to flee. So, you know, it gets so much and you're a volcano. And there. So I guess that was my first episode of knowing how I resolution conflict. But again, like I don't think I do the whole normal Mormon woman thing because I was never good enough for it. So maybe not exactly knowing how a Mormon woman should exactly handle things and, and things like that because I, that wasn't going to be my life.

Margi Dehlin [01:15:14] And so was there an assumption sometimes in the marriage then that you deserved it, that it was your failing, that the default would be. Yeah, so this is how it goes because I'm the one that's not good enough.

Amanda Reel [01:15:28] Yeah, probably like, you know, I'm just, I am just lucky enough to have what I have. So I better find a way to get back in line and, and, and toe the line so I don't lose all the things that I, I have that I never thought I was going to have. So I better get back into, back into line.

Bill Reel [01:15:47] And it took, it took her crying uncontrollably, uncontrollably or it took her leaving the house for me to realize that in that moment I had gone too far. And we weren't good communicators. We weren't, we weren't working out problems. We were ships passing in the night. We were, you know, used the, the term Margi of parallel lives.

Bill Reel [01:16:16] It was that like she took care of the house. I'd go to work, we'd come home, we'd eat dinner, we'd go to bed, we'd get up the next day and we'd do it again. And there wasn't sit down like, hey, these are the conflicts in our life, these are the problems we need to solve. This is what's going on at work, here's what's going on at home. How do you think we should handle? How do you think we should. There was none of that.

Bill Reel [01:16:36] There was almost no communication at all. Our love life was good. You know, you said something about in terms of sexuality, our sexuality, we were having a healthy sexuality, we were intimate, we were enjoying the romantic part of a relationship with each other. We had plenty of intimacy.

Bill Reel [01:16:59] But in the day to day handling of life we just did our own thing and hardly ever connected up. And so when something irritated me and I was off, I was almost always this feeling of resentment inside that even after I joined Mormonism, it didn't quite fill the void of like, I want to be my humanity and I can't. And so on some level I'm resenting like what I left that life and that wasn't fulfilling. And Now I've joined Mormonism. I'm killing it, and I'm still not happy.

Bill Reel [01:17:40] And so if I'm not happy, then. Then, dang it, like, you guys all have to pay the price, too. So I was harder on my kids, and I'm hard on my wife. And it just feels like I am trying to feel safe and secure in my own internal world and trying to control the outer world is exactly how I'm going about accomplishing it. And it would. It would take me going too far and seeing the repercussions of that where Amanda's hurt or my kids are deeply hurt for me to go like, oh, like, you messed up. That was not okay. And at that point, then I would go and fix it.

Bill Reel [01:18:13] So her leaving was. Or crying uncontrollably is the only solution. She had to get. To get something to change or me to back off.

Margi Dehlin [01:18:23] In that instance, it's almost like to be seen to have her humanity kind of show up outside the role. Because I think this is part of the role kind of structure is when it's very transactional, right? It's kind of like, well, these are your responsibilities and here are mine, and it's about the boxes. And so it sounds like that, for whatever reason, was able to kind of penetrate some of the role, I don't know, shielding or whatever, disconnect. And to have you, Bill, be able to kind of feel and see her for a minute.

Bill Reel [01:18:59] The other thing, too, is I'm working at. So I drop out of college because my wife is pregnant. We're living in an apartment. The roof is leaking. The property management company won't fix the property. So here I am, I'm about to be a dad, and the world is dropping the ball, and my kid's going to come into an unhealthy environment. So I. I quit where I was working, I drop out of college, and I take a job that pays a little bit better, that looks like it can sort of be a career. And so I take a job with a floor covering company. And again, the way my brain works, I'm smart, but if the job doesn't require me to be on, on in that moment, I will.

Bill Reel [01:19:40] I will essentially not apply myself. And so I would go to work, and the job I worked at was super easy. I would go out and measure rooms for carpeting, right? 12 by 12 room, come picking a piece of carpet. No big deal. But in that job, one out of every 15, one out of every 20 measures, you had to pick out the details that you don't need to see in every other time. And so I would go out and measure a house and I would miss these things that would be costly to our company. And so I was constantly living in fear of being fired or let go.

Bill Reel [01:20:13] I remember I made a big mistake one time and my boss came to me and he goes, hey, no biggie. Everybody makes mistakes, but don't ever freaking do it again. You know? And I learned, like, oh, if I make a mistake of that magnitude, I don't get to work here anymore. And because I dropped out of college, how am I going to put food on the table?

Margi Dehlin [01:20:30] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:20:30] And then I run into where there's a guy at work, older guy. He. He was in his 50s when I start, and for whatever reason, he just doesn't like me. And so I already feel like I'm inadequate at this job, and it's really close to being fired or not.

Bill Reel [01:20:45] And this guy would. When phone messages would come in for me, he would take them and hide them under things on my desk or he'd bump into my chair on purpose. And I didn't want to go to my boss and complain because I'm the weak link here. Are they going to get rid of the guy who's been here for 30 years, or are they going to get rid of me who's not exactly doing great anyway? And so feeling the shame of being unsuccessful professionally, my home in Mormonism was the only place where I could be in charge and feel good about myself.

Bill Reel [01:21:21] And Mormonism gives you permission to, as a male, to. To be in charge there. There are lots of factors that play into why people bully in some places when they're being bullied in others. And unfortunately, I think as an adult, I was living out what never showed up as a child.

Amanda Reel [01:21:44] I.

Bill Reel [01:21:45] As a kid in school, I just. I got along with most everyone, and I was happy just to be there and to make jokes and to have fun and enjoy my friends.

Becoming a Bishop at a Young Age

John Dehlin [01:21:57] It sounds like to some degree Mormonism worked for you because it had super high expectations. And it sounds like you liked to rise to high expectations, but if you weren't given high expectations, you wouldn't maybe rise as high. Yeah. So in that context, let's talk about how you became a bishop. Like, I never became a bishop, and I felt like I was very committed to the church. I was in the church 45 years, and I never got called as a bishop, so. And that's in my 30s and 40s. How did you become called as a Mormon bishop at age 29?

Bill Reel [01:22:34] Yeah. So the ward I joined when I was 17. As I said before, I just moved right up through leadership. It's a ward in the Midwest, it's Sandusky, Ohio. We would range somewhere between 110 people showing up on Sunday to at real peak moments where everything was going well, maybe 140, but almost always between 110 and 120 folks.

Bill Reel [01:22:57] And so it was award that covered 11 cities in three counties and the stake center was an hour away. And so everybody who showed up for church wanted to be there, but there were various degrees of activity. And I think what happened was there's only so many families in a ward in the Midwest who can carry the load of the ward.

Bill Reel [01:23:21] I think even in Utah you say like there's these 10 families and they kind of run things from year to year and they move around in callings, but it's always those same 10. It was certainly that way in the Midwest.

Bill Reel [01:23:34] There was five or six families that were part of everything. And three of the men had already been the bishop. There's not a lot of options. I was serving in the bishopric and the other thing too. I got to probably tell a story because it connects to it. We had bought our second home. Our fourth child was born, Zachary, and we realized our house was no longer going to be the size we could be comfortable in now that we've added this fourth child.

Bill Reel [01:24:04] And so we started looking for another home. And our real estate agent said, hey, if you actually go ahead and buy the second home and go ahead and empty out your cluttered home that you've stuffed six of you into this thousand square feet, then people coming to see the home would see the home as more likely to fit their needs and to buy it. So I took her advice and we went ahead and bought our second house.

Bill Reel [01:24:28] And it was a three bedroom, two bath. It had a dining room, a little more space and it was going to suit our needs better, bath and a half. But in the meantime our first house didn't sell. And so I ended up going to get a second job at the country club I met. I ran the front desk at the hotel of the country club at night. And so for about four months I would get up at 8:30 in the morning. I had to be at my first job at Young's floor covering. I'd work there until 5:30 or 6.

Bill Reel [01:25:07] I'd go home, catch dinner. My wife would often go to work. She worked a part time job at the nursing home. So she and I would visit for an hour or two. Then she would Go off to work.

Bill Reel [01:25:19] Then I would help the kids get settled into bed. I would go to sleep at say, 9 o'. Clock, then I would get up at 11 and I'd have to be at my second job by midnight. And then I would.

Bill Reel [01:25:37] Work till 8 in the morning. I would drive to McDonald's, I'd grab a breakfast, and then I would go to my 8:30 job. And I did this for months on end and whenever I could get eight hours of sleep, great. But most of the week I was working on two hours sleep a day.

Bill Reel [01:25:56] And it got to the point where I thought I was hiding it well enough from my first job. And I had a really close friend at that job. Her name was Julie. She'd been there about five years longer than I had been there.

Bill Reel [01:26:11] And she came up to me, took me aside and said, I can't talk to you. She goes, I think something's wrong. Is everything okay in your world? I said, why do you say that? She goes, they're talking and they're talking as if your work productivity has dropped off significantly and that things aren't going well in terms of how they feel about what you're doing.

Bill Reel [01:26:34] And I said, to be honest, I'm working a second job and I'm just trying to make ends meet. I'm trying to pay two mortgages while putting myself and my family in a position to be able to have food on the table and have a roof over their heads and not lose the second house we just bought.

Bill Reel [01:26:52] And she says, you might want to tell them that because they're talking about letting you go. And so I went in and told them and they ended up giving me a little raise and I was in the first house sold and I was able to kind of move on from that. But there were months on end where I was trying to just make it work. And so again, I forget the original question, John, but.

John Dehlin [01:27:12] Well, it was about becoming bishop, but that was important part.

Bill Reel [01:27:15] So I think, I think the, the leaders, our bishop that was in place, I was his second counselor. And so I'm serving in the bishopric. I'm missing meetings because I'm also working on Saturday night, Sunday morning. So I come to bishopric late and they can see the sacrifice I'm making. But again, I'm the guy who always shows up to everything.

Bill Reel [01:27:36] So as they're getting ready to let this bishop go because he served his five years the stake and the local leader, the bishop sensed like the sacrifices I'd been making. And again, most of the men in this ward that were active and showed up every week. Several of them had already served as the bishop. And so you had a pool of maybe four or five guys that could be the next bishop. And maybe two or three of them really were folks who were consistent in how they showed up in the church. And so I remember them sitting down after a ward conference and talking to the bishopric after a ward conference and asking the three of us how we felt about things.

Bill Reel [01:28:20] And I don't know what it was, but whatever happened, the way I answered the question or something, I could just see the look in their eye. There was something there. And I remember coming home and telling Amanda that, and I felt like it was a spiritual prompting, that I kind of sensed that I would be the next bishop. And you always hear these stories, and sometimes that person does, and sometimes they have to deal with the feelings of not being picked.

Bill Reel [01:28:41] I didn't tell anybody or do anything. I just told you. And I said, I think I'm going to be the next bishop. And suddenly, about two or three weeks later, the executive secretary for the stake called up and said, hey, would you and your wife mind coming into the stake center? Stake president would like to sit down and talk to you.

Bill Reel [01:29:00] And I told her, I said, they've called. I think this is it. I think I'm the bishop. And we went to the meeting, and they sat down with me and extended the calling, and I was ready. I already knew, like, this is the Lord had. The Lord had brought me into the church and prepared me for this moment to serve as the bishop of the same ward that I had joined these folks who had loved me in the gospel. Now I had a chance to serve them and to love them back in a way that was a leader of them when they had been leaders

Margi Dehlin [01:29:38] of

Bill Reel [01:29:39] me and kind of modeling what. What church service looked like up to that point.

John Dehlin [01:29:44] But as I hear how difficult things were financially for both of you.

Margi Dehlin [01:29:50] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:50] Like it would seem. What would be most normal would be you get called as bishop and you say, I can't. Like, no. I'm working two jobs. We're barely making ends meet. We've got all these kids. I'm not treating my wife as good as I want to. No way in heck am I going to now take on the equivalent of the responsibility that a Catholic priest or a evangelical minister takes unpaid. Like you would think the answer would be no.

Bill Reel [01:30:19] You know, the church was the one thing I was good at.

Margi Dehlin [01:30:22] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:30:23] Why wouldn't I?

Margi Dehlin [01:30:24] I so see that it was like the stable, particularly as you're like talking about all the things that are like out of your control, how much you were trying to just survive. Talk about effortful. You know, it makes sense because it's the sure thing. It's the thing that comes up and continually is telling you, good job. We reward you for that. Here's the reward for that. You're loved. We're going to shine a light on you.

Bill Reel [01:30:49] You know, Mormonism might have been the only thing I was good at. I was not happy with how I was as a father. I had carried my parents emotional unavailability into my own relationships. I didn't know how to be personal with my children. I only saw myself as. I have to be strict and stern because somebody has to set emotion aside and push these kids to be the best they could be, not knowing that that very behavior is almost certainly more detrimental than in any way actually ending to the result you want.

Bill Reel [01:31:30] I was struggling in feeling adequate at my job. I was struggling to feel adequate as a husband. I was struggling to feel adequate as a son or as a. As a father. I was struggling to feel adequate in all the parts of my world. Mormonism was the one thing I knew I was good at. So why wouldn't I be the bishop? I'm going to be good at that.

Bill Reel [01:31:55] And the moment I was called, I immediately went and read the Church Handbook of Instruction from page one to page N, because that's what I do is I read books and I find things other people don't. And so I read that book and I said, I'm going to set all of my assumptions that I've watched over the years about how people lead wards and I'm going to look for loopholes in the book of how to do it different, but better.

Bill Reel [01:32:21] And so I would do things like call a person to be the Young Men's president when they didn't have the Melchizedek priesthood. I would call the single woman to be the Relief Society president. I would call people into positions that hadn't exactly been done that way before. But the handbook didn't say you couldn't.

Bill Reel [01:32:44] I looked at what was necessary and I tried to get rid of things that weren't necessary. And I think again, part of this is arrogant, but part of this is those folks in that ward, even after I've left the church, the folks in the ward have given me feedback that even as you've left and lost your testimony, Bill, you were the best bishop I ever had. I was a good one.

Amanda Reel [01:33:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:33:19] And the fact that you're Getting emotional shows that maybe some of the biggest, most joyful moments in your life were when you were at the top of your Mormon game. Serving as a Mormon bishop.

Bill Reel [01:33:33] Things were already starting to get complicated. I could start to sense that something wasn't right here, and I didn't want to lead my ward in an unhealthy way. So when people came to me with problems, I think I was compassionate where other folks before me had imposed the rigidity of the rules and repentance and don't take the sacrament and where I would just love people and kind of accept them where they were. And I sensed that that was a better way to treat people than the way church leadership had been modeled for me.

Discovering Mormon Stories as a Sitting Bishop

John Dehlin [01:34:32] So, yeah, take us to how you go from becoming a Mormon bishop, really committed to listening to Mormon Stories podcast as a Mormon bishop, because I don't think you're the first Mormon bishop to contact me, but you were certainly the first Mormon bishop to really engage me and to say, I'll come on the show, but. But that shows a journey you had been taking, an intellectual journey that you had been taking that was pretty significant while you're bishop, because almost no bishops. I can probably count on three of the number of active Mormon bishops that have come on Mormon Stories in the past 18 years, and only one has not been aired because they've asked me not to air it.

John Dehlin [01:35:20] And the other was just on recently. But he didn't use his real name. You are the only one to this day who's that I can remember that was willing to use your real name as an actively serving bishop who's ever been aired on Mormon Stories. How did you get to that point?

Margi Dehlin [01:35:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:36] As a bishop.

Bill Reel [01:35:37] So even, you know, I told you earlier about how I read everything. Like that continued all through our marriage. I would go to our library, our city library, and I ran out of books there to read. I'd read them all.

Bill Reel [01:35:50] So then I started requesting books from other libraries. And every book you read gives you some new insight on Mormonism that you didn't have. It's one of the things, too, I think the Internet has done for Mormonism, in terms of being detrimental to it, is that before the Internet, you had to read one dirty fact at a time. You had to go find a book and you'd read it and you'd learn some little problem. But it's one problem, and it's the first one you've learned in a month. So you put it aside and it's no big deal.

Bill Reel [01:36:17] And I would constantly request Books from other libraries. The library would notify me that they had showed up. I'd go and pick them up, I'd bring them home, I'd read them. I wanted to know everything. And so as the Internet is coming online, I, I, I'm looking for ways to engage the church, the his, the history of it, the gospel. And so I take my mp3 player and I start downloading talks, and I start with really safe inside stuff. And the first thing I really got hooked onto was Brad Wilcox and Stephen Robinson and Robert Millett as they framed grace in a way that Bruce R.

Bill Reel [01:37:03] McConkie certainly wasn't doing. And they were framing grace in a way that no leader had really approached. And it was a much softer way of going, like, oh, like, we don't have to be perfect. I don't have to do all I can do. I just have to keep trying. And in the midst of feeling like a failure everywhere other than church,

John Dehlin [01:37:30] that

Bill Reel [01:37:30] message resonated because I finally sensed, like, oh, like the ward doesn't know how flawed I am, but maybe I can make it to heaven. Maybe I actually can get there. And so I would listen to these talks over and over. Little by little, I branch out, and you start to sense, like, oh, maybe there's things out there that I don't even know exist. And so you start doing searches, you know, Mormon MP3. And what comes up is various things, but among them is Mormon stories. And as I go on, and obviously I knew that Mormon expression existed, and as I had given that a shot listening to it, the bad language immediately told my Mormon radar that that was not going to be okay.

John Dehlin [01:38:22] For those who don't know, that's John Larsen's podcast that he started around 2009, 2010, during this little hiatus that I had taken from podcasting while I was applying to grad school. So you'd known about those two podcasts.

Amanda Reel [01:38:37] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:38:38] And as I listened to an episode or two of Mormon Expression and realized kind of the rough language, I'm sort of looking back now as I'm talking to you, and one of those episodes was not Nephi's Transoceanic Voyage, but had it been, I think that might have quickened the pace, because my logical brain would have seen, like, oh, my goodness, how absurd that is.

John Dehlin [01:38:59] That's the how to Build a Transatlantic

Bill Reel [01:39:01] Vessel, how Nephi built his ship, and how complex and absurd it is that he would have been able to do so with all the resources available that would have been required to tackle such a project.

John Dehlin [01:39:11] We'll put a link to the show notes. That's probably the most cited Mormon expression,

Bill Reel [01:39:15] but that wasn't one of them. And then in the episodes I listened to, there wasn't. It didn't significantly grab at me and the bad language was a turn off. So I looked elsewhere and I found Mormon stories. And I don't know what it was, but of the early conversations I listened to, it was Richard Bushman coughing through seven hours of him being sick, but you asking him all the questions I had in my head that no one in the three hour block or otherwise inside the church would ever want to approach.

Bill Reel [01:39:45] I sort of had this naive perspective that everyone in the church was ignorant of these issues because no one talked about them. And whenever the missionaries had an investigator whose minister was throwing out problems or they had an investigator who had a sticky question, the missionaries would always come get me. I was the guy who answered the tough questions.

Bill Reel [01:40:07] And as I'm sitting there listening to your conversation with Bushman, it was the first moment where I'm listening to a conversation and going, those are the questions I want to have asked, and I want to see what someone who's informed how they answer them. And Bushman leaves plenty of room for you to go like, yep, it's messy, but it's true. And then the next one I listened to was Terrell Givens. And in the Terrell Givens conversation, I remember Terrell Givens telling you, john, if you just make some allowances.

Bill Reel [01:40:40] And I thought, yeah, if you just make allowances that this all works out. In fact, that your conversation with Terrell Givens led to me doing an episode with Mormon discussion that was titled something along the lines of the True and Living Church, where I run through that conversation and I take all of Terrell Givens allowances and say, the church can still be true if you make room like this.

John Dehlin [01:41:03] But that's fast forwarding.

Bill Reel [01:41:04] That's fast forwarding. But to show how important that conversation was to me, I had listened to it several times at my job when I went across the ferry, I would take a ferry sometimes and go over to the islands on Lake Erie to measure a new house or to measure a home. And it would give me hours of no one bothering me where I could just listen to podcasts and MP3 files. And so as I listened, as I listened to your podcast, I wanted those conversations to happen.

Bill Reel [01:41:39] And as I listened to the one that really kind of made a difference was when you interviewed Brant Gardner. And you interviewed Brant Gardner. He writes a book. I think it's called the Gift and Power of God. And he writes a book on the translation method of the Book of Mormon. And it's the first time I'm hearing a conversation deal, sort of honestly with the seer stone and the hat and the fact that we got one story on the front end with spectacles, but now it's not really that.

Bill Reel [01:42:06] And as that conversation's taking place, you're. For the first time in my exposure to you, you're being a little harsh with him, as I saw it.

John Dehlin [01:42:19] Challenging him. Challenging him, his apologetic answers.

Bill Reel [01:42:22] And I don't want you to challenge him, because I want to believe. I want the church to be true. That's the most important thing. I want the information, and I value the truth. But I'm really hoping that you'll make room for it to be true, because that's what I want.

Bill Reel [01:42:40] And your challenging him was abrasive to me because I was really enjoying your podcast. I was five episodes in or something, and I picked which ones I wanted to listen to. And as that conversation was happening, I just sensed like I'm going to reach out to this guy and let him know that I would much rather he do this from a neutral position or maybe even a faithful position, rather than give Brandt Gardner a hard time.

Bill Reel [01:43:15] And so I emailed you and shared some thoughts with you. And I think your original question was maybe how I got in. Was it how I got into podcasting myself, or was it.

John Dehlin [01:43:27] No, no. I mean, just how. How does a Mormon bishop end up listening to Mormon stories? Was the question you answered that when

Bill Reel [01:43:34] the Mormon bishop wants to know Mormonism better than everyone else, he finds Mormon stories.

John Dehlin [01:43:41] Yeah. And it's happening, obviously, over the past 18 years, it's become more and more common. To be clear, we have a ton of Mormon active Mormon bishops and stake presidents and high counselors who are listening now.

Bill Reel [01:43:53] Former 70s.

John Dehlin [01:43:54] Yeah. But, yeah, you were unique in that you wanted to engage.

Bill Reel [01:44:01] Because I thought I knew it well enough that I could walk you in circles and end with us having to leave it as a neutral position, essentially, that the evidence for and against Mormonism was equal and hence, John, why can't you make room for it to be neutral?

John Dehlin [01:44:21] Yeah. So I thought it'd be fun. I printed out some of our early exchanges, and so Bill and I both have copies of those early exchanges. So what I thought I'd ask Bill to do is to read some of his early emails to me and maybe read the date and what you wrote. And then if you want to, each time you read one, maybe reflect after. But I thought it'd be fun for you to read your first email to me.

Bill Reel [01:44:47] Yeah December 22, 2011 John Delinquent First, I enjoy your podcast much. I appreciate how you straddle the fence of supporting both those who have lost their testimony and those who have one. I am a believer but have appreciated hearing support for both sides. My favorites have been the interviews with Bushman, Peterson, Givens and McCraney, the ex Mormon evangelical. I read no Man Knows My History by Fawn Brody when I investigated the church at the age of 17, so I knew much of the negative before baptism. I agree with you. If the church was more open about these things that it would keep a large amount of people from leaving as they could deal with these issues one at a time and not feel deceived.

Bill Reel [01:45:37] I think the Church is moving in that direction and will continue to do so. The reason I'm writing is to suggest a podcast episode. I would love to hear an in depth discussion about the difference between mormonism in the 1800s and the Mormonism of today, doctrinally, culturally, daily religious life, etc. Thanks for all you do. I also want to say that whether one is a believer or not, I wish all of us would read the Book of Mormon simply for the good. It contains Bill Rio and read the quote after where love is, there is no disputation. Where love is, there is no contention. Where love is, there, God will be also.

John Dehlin [01:46:21] Okay, so thanks for reading that. Before you maybe reflect in terms of deconstructing it, is there any reflection you have just about where you were at the time that you want to share and now that you read that I don't.

Bill Reel [01:46:37] My recollection with you is I wrote you a message complaining about the Brant Gardner episode and then you and I had an interview where I was interviewed by you as a sitting bishop. This is all. I don't remember any of this. And as I read it, what comes to mind is that I already, I'm already a bridge builder. I'm already there's already empathy there. I'm already making room for both sides. I also the email is clear that like first off, the idea of juxtaposing old Mormonism with today, that wouldn't be interesting to me at all.

John Dehlin [01:47:17] No.

Bill Reel [01:47:17] So interest change, right?

John Dehlin [01:47:19] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:47:20] But also that I think like if I can just push you back, you'll give me the content I want, which is space to think the church is true regardless of what's real or what isn't. Like let's Keep the position being fair on both sides, whether it is or not. Underneath all of this is a person who wants badly for the church to come out on top, who he's hoping with everything inside of him that the information doesn't lead to a different conclusion than that.

Amanda Reel [01:47:58] Mm.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:00] Mm. It's like, protect my world.

Bill Reel [01:48:02] Yeah, please.

John Dehlin [01:48:06] Yeah. And just full disclosure. And you probably know this, like, we had lost our faith back in 2001, so 10 years prior to this email, Margi and I knew the church wasn't true.

Margi Dehlin [01:48:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:18] But we love the church like you, and we wanted to carve away to make it work. So it was an intentional decision on my part to have a strategy of being kind to the church, of being compassionate to the church, and of interviewing all sides, not in a sneaky way to make people ultimately leave, but in a genuine desire to both talk about the real things. Like you had. You wanted to talk about the real things and to get real, but also to find a way to make it work. So you were. You were sort of like, acting as, like, an angel on the one side of my shoulder saying, come on, John, keep up. I need you there. You're like, you're do. You're. You're having the conversations I want to have. You're helping me stay.

Bill Reel [01:49:08] You're the only person having the conversations I want to have.

John Dehlin [01:49:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And so, like, we. You really connected at that point.

Bill Reel [01:49:20] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:21] And this also foreshadows the role you end up playing in Mormonism later when I get excommunicated. Right. But anyway, anything else you want to say about that first email? Or we could jump to the second.

Bill Reel [01:49:34] The negative side, I would say, is how naive that Young Bill Real was.

John Dehlin [01:49:39] Why?

Bill Reel [01:49:41] Because you don't know what you don't know. You don't know how much has been withheld from you. You think you know the messy issues, but until you really dive in, you don't realize that your simple solutions don't work. You don't realize that there is an intentional obfuscation inside the church, that you're not really safe or encouraged to investigate these issues. You don't have any idea what the coming years are going to bring and just how hard it's going to be.

Margi Dehlin [01:50:17] It's so powerfully said.

Bill Reel [01:50:21] Yeah. You ready for the next one?

John Dehlin [01:50:23] Yeah. So the next one's how. How much later? Because I don't think I responded to that first one. So the Second one is February 12, 2012. So this would be a couple. Two months later. Two months later, right?

Bill Reel [01:50:42] Yeah. Two months later February 12, 2012 John I read no man knows my history as well. You know, you must have written me back.

John Dehlin [01:50:53] Maybe. I mean, it's probably not everything, but

Bill Reel [01:50:56] you must have written me back. But I wrote John I read no man knows my history as well. I read it before I was baptized. I joined what I joined when 17. Now I'm 33. I knew 90% of the difficult issues most of my time in the church, but have recently become troubled not by the issues but by the church's lack of openness to them.

Bill Reel [01:51:18] My question is, while you take the position that the Church is not the true church, you also have interviewed folks like Bushman and Givens who still hold their testimony of the Church being the true church and that it is in fact true. Do you see room that flawed though it may be and not always living up to expectation that the Church is or can still be what it proclaims to be on at least three points, the Book of Mormon is a literal record translated from metal plates. Joseph did really see God and angels. This church, while full of deeply flawed humans as leaders, does have authority from God.

Bill Reel [01:51:57] Thank you Bill Real PS I'm a bishop in the Church. I love your program. If you are ever interested in talking to a regular Joe Moorman who is aware of the issues and still holds to his testimony, I would love to do that. I think many see Bushman and Givens and see that they have a higher vested interest in staying.

Bill Reel [01:52:19] I have often struggled with my faith and yet with my quote, in my view, evidence on both sides, I still find myself deciding to believe. Anyway, thanks for caring about Mormons who don't fit the mold. Mormons like me. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:52:38] And at this point you're telling me you're a bishop. Right.

Bill Reel [01:52:41] So now it gets interesting. I'm not just one of a lot of people who are reaching out to you. I'm in a position that you haven't had a chance to interact with yet.

John Dehlin [01:52:53] This is my third year of grad school now, so I'm in my third year of a PhD. I'm trying to balance and there's a lot going on in my life in 2012 independently of grad school and Mormon stories. And so I'm super busy. But you know, you caught my attention when you said you're a bishop who's kind of on the fence.

Bill Reel [01:53:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:53:13] Any reflections you want to have of this this email?

Bill Reel [01:53:19] I never saw you as the enemy and reading this is sort of touching because I can sense my sort of love and appreciation of you that you're doing the thing that no one else is willing to do, which is ask the questions no one else wants to say. And you get people on who are willing to answer the questions that no one else is willing to say. I note that I try to reduce the church down to. If I can just hang on to these three things, then all the other stuff can completely fall on its face. And as I'm reading those three things, I'm realizing on the back end how problematic those three are, too.

John Dehlin [01:54:01] And they are.

Bill Reel [01:54:02] The Book of Mormon is the literal record, translated from metal plates, that Joseph Smith really did see God in angels, and that this church, while full of deeply flawed humans as its leaders, does have authority from God, authority.

John Dehlin [01:54:15] So Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith and authority, priesthood authority.

Bill Reel [01:54:20] Because we all realize if we can just hang on to those three, maybe, you know, but we don't know.

John Dehlin [01:54:29] And you had a special attachment to Bushman and Gibbons. Yeah, kind of. Who? I call them neo apologists. They're not like Peterson and Midgley, you know, bashing critics who are asking sincere questions. They're thoughtful scholars who find nuanced ways to remain believers. Knowing the full history. You clearly had an affinity for me and Mormon stories at the time and

Bill Reel [01:54:56] for them, them, because they were the first voices on the inside telling me I wasn't crazy, that the issues really are messy, admitting that the basic facts that you've stated are true and giving me a place to still believe.

John Dehlin [01:55:17] Was it hard to be a bishop where you're questioning your faith? Do you remember it being difficult?

Bill Reel [01:55:23] Yeah, I remember hiding it from everyone. I remember hiding it from Amanda. I remember hiding it from my bishopric. I remember hiding it from the members of the ward. I remember hiding it even from my parents who were non members, that I always. Because my job is to present the gospel as attractive and to be a good member missionary. And so even telling my parents any of that was not even thinkable.

Bill Reel [01:55:50] And so I can clearly remember not telling anyone. It was my deep, dark secret that I was struggling, you know, when it said in here that I was troubled, and not troubled by the issues themselves, but troubled by the leader's unwillingness to acknowledge the basic facts.

Bill Reel [01:56:10] I try to pinpoint the moment in time where I was no longer exactly believing. And I thought it had happened later on as I look back, because memory is tricky. But it becomes clear in my messages to you that I was experiencing significant cognitive dissonance much earlier than I remembered.

John Dehlin [01:56:31] Hmm. Yeah. And I. I just wonder, how hard is it? How hard is it to serve as a bishop, to be having all this stuff at home, financial struggles, young kids, your relationship with your wife, bouncing, all that and being a bishop and all that that entails. And then starting a question. Do you just remember what that was like for you?

Bill Reel [01:56:58] The church keeps you so busy. How do you really have time to sit with your thoughts and to process what you're thinking? So as long as I could hear you asking them and them answering in ways that I go like, oh, yeah, like if I just make some extra allowances, then I was able to somehow keep it together. And part of it is I love being Mormon. I showed up every Sunday excited.

Bill Reel [01:57:28] There comes a point later on where Chris Bloxham asked me what I thought of church on Sunday. And I tell him that I think of Sunday like Christmas. And his response on the back end was, you need better Christmases.

Bill Reel [01:57:44] But for me, Sunday was the pinnacle of my week. I looked forward to it. I couldn't wait to get in early to bishopric meeting. And as long as it wasn't Cleveland Brown season, I didn't mind staying after these people. I loved them.

Bill Reel [01:57:59] These are the folks that they had loved me into the church and now I had a chance to return the favor. And I wanted nothing more than to be the best bishop they'd ever had. So while I obviously was struggling with doubts, the church being not true wasn't an option at the time.

Margi Dehlin [01:58:19] Can I ask you a follow up question? Once you became bishop and you're kind of talking about how compassionate, you know, you were as a bishop and really wanting that, wanting to show softness and compassion to people in the office that came to you and in general, did that translate to your relationships at home at all? Did that soften your like, did it extend to your family at home during that time or were they kind of very different worlds? So compassion for people at church, but still not showing up in your personal relationships,

Bill Reel [01:59:08] I'm going to give an answer, but I'd actually like Amanda to comment on this as well, because it was two different worlds. So I'm going to. I think you'd agree that I really was so good to those people, But I didn't bring that to our home. Part of it was we had one daughter who received significant trauma and experiences outside of our home that we were dealing with. What looked like from our point of view in the beginning was schizophrenia, hallucinations, self harm. And she was dealing with things that no human being should have to deal with. But at the same time, she was having what I would Call as panic attacks or nervous breakdowns that were threatening the continuity of our home. So there were times that I would have to hold her down

Margi Dehlin [02:00:23] so she

Bill Reel [02:00:23] wouldn't hurt somebody, or so she would excuse me so she wouldn't leave and do harm to herself or others. There was one moment in time where she had a knife and she just literally cut herself multiple times with me like five feet away. And I had to kind of rush towards her and take it out of her hand.

Bill Reel [02:00:42] I felt like I had to be this stoic, unemotional person. And because Amanda leans towards emotion, she leans into that. I've always at home tried to say, like, emotion is my enemy. I gotta set that aside. I'm gonna be logical. I'm gonna handle these issues with being stoic and being stern.

Bill Reel [02:01:09] Who I was to the outside world and who I was to my, to the people I loved most in my home was night and day. And I don't even, I can't even explain why or how or it just like my empathetic capacity, my compassionate capacity outside of my home I thought was where a good healthy human being should be. And yet somehow in my home I had no ability to access that and I don't even have words to explain why.

Amanda Reel [02:01:52] Yeah, so an answer to your question, Margi. No, that didn't translate that way. But also I just. So many times during this interview I just so badly want to shout out, but I don't have a bad life. I don't have a bad life. We have a good life. We have, you know, fun. We have good moments. We.

Amanda Reel [02:02:16] Loud laughter. Always had loud laughter. I didn't listen to that one. And that means for those of. Not in Mormons, Mormons tell you how loud you can laugh. And you know, so there was lots of love and lots of, of those things in our home. I did not have a bad household at all.

Amanda Reel [02:02:38] And so yeah, I saw the compassion and giving that he gave to them, but I just, but I never, I think in the moments I didn't have any negative tag ons onto that. But I think in the, in the background though it kind of came up later of the not choosing me and just things that were kind of detrimental to me personal with the whole self loathing, whatever. But no, in the times of you being bishop and just, you know, because I also love these people. They, we, we wanted each other desperately. And so I also wanted and needed these people. And so the sisters were also my support group.

Amanda Reel [02:03:27] So even though I wasn't getting some of those things from my Husband, you did get some of those things from your dear friends. Right. And so my cup was still being filled.

Bill Reel [02:03:38] And so I think part of that, too, for you, you and I were aware, as we had friendships with lots of other couples in the ward in the same sort of age group, we were aware of dysfunction elsewhere. And some of that dysfunction looked much worse than what we had in our home. And so maybe there's a degree of kind of counting yourself grateful and thinking that things that aren't great are good because you sense that it could be much worse as patriarchy and arrogance and pride maybe played an even greater part in other homes in our ward.

Amanda Reel [02:04:19] And another thing that you've always done well, too, is you are a doting person. Love being your love language. You know, you were always very much into giving me that love and touch. And you verbally would say it as well. And, you know, to the tune of, I almost felt guilty. Like, you know, I would say analogy of I almost felt like I had to peel you off of me sometimes. But almost hated saying that out loud because of, I know women that would just die for that affection and attention, you know, so. So there was a lot of that. A lot of love at home. And. And I just. I just don't want this picture to be painted like life was terrible and things were just always hard. They were very lovely. Very lovely.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:10] Yeah. Yep.

John Dehlin [02:05:12] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:13] The nuance, things are oftentimes more complicated. Right. More varied, more so. I get that. What I think is interesting in this, for me, Bill, at this point of where you are in your journey is just that, you know, you've been vulnerable about sharing about your parents.

Bill Reel [02:05:38] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:39] And talking about the emotional disconnect, sometimes you felt right. In retrospect. Right. And then growing up as a teen and actually verbalizing a fear for yourself or a sense of lack around will I be an emotionally connected parent? And what's so relatable is when, you know, we experience things as children and we can kind of identify, you know, and say, I don't want that. I don't want to do that. I want something different.

Margi Dehlin [02:06:14] And. And also not wanting that sometimes does not, you know, help us. It doesn't mean we have the tools to create something different. It doesn't mean that. And that we find ourselves oftentimes in life, you know, in that place where you're like, and here I am. And, you know, that grappling of, I didn't want it. I feared or maybe even created a belief that I didn't have it, or I don't know how to give that because I didn't receive it or whatever the case may be. But that. That's so relatable is what I'm saying is to have this sense of awareness hit you of like, and yet here I am, you know.

John Dehlin [02:06:55] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:06:57] That I was in some real true way, doing the best I could. My parents, whenever the conflict would arise, generally my dad would not be doing something my mom was expecting him to do. She would then get really snarky with him, yell at him. He would just go quiet, go to the other section of the house. She would burn off some steam. He'd make a few snide remarks, and they would just move on. They never had any conflict resolution. And I go to church, and it's all pretending and masks. And while they are teaching you the gospel of Jesus Christ, they're not really teaching you how to be a healthy, productive human either. And so I don't really have anyone showing me any tools to do any of it.

Amanda Reel [02:07:54] And, you know, and the same. And my parents, they didn't argue. I never saw my parents argue. You know, I've heard my dad go. And it was usually at his kids, like, oh, things make me so mad I can eat a bologna sandwich. Or he would say, horse manure. You know, so that kind of became a game of my friends to see if they could have my dad say, you know. But my parents didn't argue. So, yeah, we had zero conflict resolution tools.

Bill Reel [02:08:22] Yeah.

Amanda Reel [02:08:23] Modeled for us. And so I would get full. I would leave things would be better for a minute and.

Margi Dehlin [02:08:30] Yep.

Bill Reel [02:08:31] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:08:34] All right, well, this is a really important background. So then going back to our email exchange. It's 2012. I'm in my third year of grad school, seven years into Mormon stories. I'm imagining I was so busy, I. I didn't have time to exchange you through email earlier because I'm a slow writer. But then once you mentioned you're a bishop, my response, this was February 13, 2012. It says, Bill, would you be willing to come on the podcast and tell your story? So it's basically like, I don't have time to engage you in email, but, man, if you want to come on the podcast, I'm game. Do you want to read your response?

Bill Reel [02:09:16] And this is the June 29th, 2012.

John Dehlin [02:09:19] No, this is February 13th. This is.

Bill Reel [02:09:22] Oh, yeah, right here. Yeah, John, I would. I live in Ohio, though. I'm also. I also am hopeful you might answer the questions I sent, as it interests me if those who have lost faith see it as reasonable that there still might be room again in their soul for it to be true. Or they have 100% absolutely made up their mind. By the way, I listened to the entire Denver Snuffer interview and I find myself finding agreement with many of his stances. Great interview in all caps. Let me know if I can be of any use to you, Phil. Real.

John Dehlin [02:09:58] So do you remember, like vibing with Denver Snuffer?

Bill Reel [02:10:02] I don't.

Margi Dehlin [02:10:03] I don't.

John Dehlin [02:10:05] And for those who don't know who that is, Denver Snuffer at the time was a Mormon in as a stake high counselor who had written these books about having personal visitations from Jesus. And he was becoming really popular within Mormonism for teaching a fundamentalist type of Mormonism, basically saying Joseph and Brigham got it right or maybe Joseph got it right. And then the church started falling into apostasy. So you can cut out the middleman of the church and just have a direct relationship with Jesus. That's who I interviewed. And by 2012, Denver Snuffer was starting to get on the radar of his stake presidency. And by 2013, Denver Snuffer was excommunicated, which became the first in a wave of excommunications that would extend to your own you years later.

John Dehlin [02:10:57] But Grant Palm. But Denver Snuffer was kind of the first domino. So it's weird that as a bishop in 2012, you're not just vibing with John Dehlin and Mormon stories, you're vibing with Denver Snuffer. Two eventual apostates from the church's perspective.

Bill Reel [02:11:12] Yeah. And I don't remember much of that. I remember, you know, the idea of the book Passing the Heavenly Gift, knowing that he was making a claim of seeing Christ. I didn't believe him. Like if the church isn't true, there isn't some other guy out there seeing Jesus instead. I sort of intuitively didn't believe that. But some of the. It seems apparent again reading it now that some of the arguments he made must have felt influential, felt like they had some weight to them, essentially opened up the idea that he had thoughts on the things the church was getting wrong that I also resonated with.

John Dehlin [02:11:49] Yeah, yeah. Okay. So that's taken us to February of 2012. And then at some point, but I still. Even though you offered to come on Mormon Stories, I still didn't. Didn't take you up on it for whatever reason. And so then I pulled up just some exchanges mid year, kind of in June, where I had done a podcast called what Mormon Stories is trying to do and how to keep it alive. And I'm not sure if I put the podcast up and took it down. That wouldn't. That wouldn't surprise me if I. If I did or it didn't do that. But I don't know if you want to go ahead and. And read the exchange that I think led to us actually doing the interview.

Bill Reel [02:12:36] Yeah. And I think when I mentioned this first line, because I start off this email saying, you removed it again. Why? And I think it's. I put a comment somewhere and the comment didn't show up and I thought you had deleted it.

John Dehlin [02:12:47] Okay. Okay.

Bill Reel [02:12:47] And maybe you had. I'm assuming again, I don't know this for sure, but I'm assuming maybe you reached out and said, hey, post it again. And I did. And somehow it didn't show up again. And so I say, john, you removed it again. Why? I realize you can't control what direction you personally go in, as you have to follow your mind and heart, but why not allow the podcast to still walk the line?

Bill Reel [02:13:10] I don't see your podcast being very successful if it is completely negative, as Mormon expression is already doing that. I was a listener and I still check in each week hoping for something I like, but not since. Brent Gardner. Just wish you could find a way to reach both sides. That is when you are at your best. I'm a bishop in Ohio. I'm the bishop in Ohio that you asked if I would do an interview with you and I replied yes, but I never heard back. I see the issues in Mormonism the way many who like your podcast do, except I also see room to allow the brethren to be human and to make mistakes and to see that God in the end is asking for faith.

Bill Reel [02:13:53] And he does that best by giving you two relatively equal decisions to go. Sorry, two relatively equal directions to go in. Anyway, look forward to your reply.

Margi Dehlin [02:14:03] Bill.

John Dehlin [02:14:05] So by mid June of 2012, you're basically kind of saying, I'm unhappy with the direction you've taken Mormon stories. Yeah, you're saying, what happened to the old John?

Bill Reel [02:14:16] And if you keep it up, this is going to fall into space. You're going to fail.

John Dehlin [02:14:20] Yeah. And also, like, I miss the old Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens, Brad Gardner, Denver snuffer types interviews.

Bill Reel [02:14:28] It's like a good scene suspense movie where four or five people in the background could have committed the crime. And the movie is best when you are led to believe it could be any of the folks. And then only in the end does the surprising moment Happen where it's revealed who committed the murder or the robbery or whatever. And so in my mind, it was, if. John, if you can just be neutral and let both positions have weight, that's when your podcast is at its best.

John Dehlin [02:14:53] Yeah. And then within a week, I think we did our first interview. So anything you want to say about, you know, that what you were preaching to me or our eventual interview, whether there was blowback, you know, what it was like to do that interview, whether there was blowback for doing the interview, anything you want to share about any of that?

Bill Reel [02:15:13] Let me start off something people don't know about me. I don't do well on the telephone. There are certain kinds of communication that are internally severely uncomfortable. RFM will tell you. I hardly ever pick up. I always pick if I have anything that I can justify as, like, hey, I'm busy doing this thing, I will put off answering his call, and then I'll call him a few hours later, hey, I'll reach out to you in a little bit. And I reach out when I can kind of get my own internal discomfort under control. And now I control the moment that I can handle the conversation.

Bill Reel [02:15:47] This has always been the way. Whenever I talk to my mom on the telephone, I would get severely anxious and really uncomfortable. Whenever Amanda wanted to talk to me on the phone, I would get really uncomfortable. To go on a podcast with you didn't bother me at all.

Bill Reel [02:16:07] I remember my mindset at the time. I was begging inside my head that you would sit down and talk to me. And I really thought I could. And to some degree, I think I did present, like Givens and Bushman, a view of Mormonism where people who wanted to believe could hang on, that could acknowledge the issues were messy. So when we finally did the interview, I was excited, wasn't nervous at all. I tell people if you call me on the phone, that is way more uncomfortable for me than if you told me that. I got to speak in front of the Pontiac Silver Dome, and I've got 10 minutes to prepare something.

John Dehlin [02:16:43] Why are you picking the Pontiac Silver?

Bill Reel [02:16:45] I lived in Cleveland. It's a little ways away from Detroit. Sorry.

John Dehlin [02:16:49] Where the Browns play.

Bill Reel [02:16:50] What's that?

John Dehlin [02:16:51] Where the Brown.

Bill Reel [02:16:52] They change the name all the time. I think right now it's called Cleveland Brown Stadium.

John Dehlin [02:16:55] Okay.

Bill Reel [02:16:56] It was First Energy Stadium, and then it was something else. The conversation that you and I had, I was proud of. I felt like I handled myself well. When I got done, there wasn't any blowback at all. There were a few people in my Stake who had heard it. And they were.

Bill Reel [02:17:17] They were. They commented positively. They heard it. They were grateful that I tackled that. They thought I handled myself well. There was no negative from that. In fact, it reinforced to me that the church was true because nobody gave me any flack about even having the conversation.

Bill Reel [02:17:36] What also happened was that in having that conversation with you, I sort of sensed that I could hold my own. And so I rushed out to Walmart and bought a logitech microphone headset. And within not too long after this, I think About September of 2012, I started my podcast. And my goal was I want to have the same conversations that John is having, but I want to leave more room that the church is true.

Bill Reel [02:18:07] And so having having the conversation with you was the moment where I thought maybe I could do a podcast. And maybe this isn't as hard as I sort of think it is.

John Dehlin [02:18:19] Yeah, okay. So you become a podcasting Mormon bishop, and the reason people might be going, why are you going down memory lane? Why are we digging up this old stuff? Like, for me, there's a really important theme that I want to end up exploring with you before you guys go home Tuesday or Wednesday, because we.

Launching the Mormon Discussion Podcast

John Dehlin [02:18:48] Me first. And then you were trying to fill a really important role before I just. Three years into Mormon stories, two years into Mormon stories, I created a website called Stale DS.com, which I've read. And I wrote a manual how to stay in the church after a crisis of faith. Like, I really. And I got a lot of flack in those early years by ex Mormons. They were like, john, the church is a cult. The church is unethical. You know, it's not true. How in the world can you stay? But I loved it so much. I wanted to carve that middle way in the church.

Bill Reel [02:19:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:19:22] And. But that got harder and harder for me over time. By 2012, 2013, I'm doing my LGBT research. I'm starting to see all the suicides, the. The untenable position of the celibacy, mixed orientation marriage, or leave the church, all the suicide epidemics. I'm seeing all these mixed faith marriages that are horrific within Mormonism. I'm seeing all these divorces, and I'm just carrying all this carnage that the Mormon Church is wreaking, you know, in people's lives. So I love the church. I want to see it succeed. I feel like it had been good in my life. You probably related to that. And I'm carrying something you're probably not seeing.

John Dehlin [02:20:06] Although as a bishop, you might be seeing it. I'M carrying just all the carnage, too. And it's starting to break me where I'm starting to get angry, and it's starting to come out on my podcast, which you, as a bishop, are detecting. Right. So I, you know, I'm. I'm kind of repeating a little bit, but you're sort of seeing that crack open where it's like, come on, John, you're not giving me the. And us the podcast we need. And if you're not going to do it, then maybe I'm going to need to. To step in and just carry that torch. Right?

Amanda Reel [02:20:40] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:20:42] There's another moment in that podcast which is crucial to moving forward. There's a moment where you push back on me, and I'm trying to hold the church's view, which I sort of intuitively grasp isn't coherent in terms of LGBT folks.

Bill Reel [02:21:02] And you posed the question to me, which was the first time I had to put my own kind of boots on the ground. Rubber meets the road. How am I going to confront this issue personally? Because I didn't have this issue in my ward at all as a bishop.

Bill Reel [02:21:17] I really wasn't aware up to this point of anyone having a faith crisis in our stake. We had one guy in our ward who left over historical issues, and as far as I knew, I didn't know of anyone else in the stake who had had that.

Bill Reel [02:21:32] So for me, no one is leaving. No one really discovers the church isn't true and takes off. We all know of investigators who get baptized, and three weeks later, they don't attend anymore because it just wasn't interesting. But I didn't know anybody who had encountered the problems. And so I thought in some way, like, I'm the only person. Like, there's this other guy, but he left a few years ago, and I'm the only person who seems to recognize that something here isn't right.

Bill Reel [02:21:58] And so as you and I were having that conversation, you said, bill, if. If everything was reversed, let's say heterosexuality was the thing that's not allowed and gay was normal. Bill, could you. Could you be. Could you not act on your inclinations?

Bill Reel [02:22:17] And I haven't gone back and listened to that, but I remember in my head knowing clearly, no, like, I'm a sexual being. I'm a human who has feelings. I'm going. There's no way I could live a life where even if I thought my religion was true, that I could abstain from intimate relationships with someone I care about.

Bill Reel [02:22:43] And so in that moment, I recognize that something is wrong about what we ask of people to do, because I was clear that I couldn't do it myself. And I don't remember how I answered you, but internally, you, in one question had moved me.

Bill Reel [02:23:01] Often whenever we change our mind or we make adjustments, it's often after layers and layers of things happening. But I could, in that very moment, sense that I had gone from thinking one thing to thinking something else. Like that.

John Dehlin [02:23:21] Yeah. And I'm going back. This is episodes 363 and 364 of Mormon Stories. And I wrote in the description, we discuss in depth his calling as bishop, including his job to counsel youth and women on sexual matters, masturbation and homosexuality. You know, and I. I don't think I tried to really.

Bill Reel [02:23:45] No.

John Dehlin [02:23:45] Push you too hard, but I did try and talk about the. The important.

Bill Reel [02:23:49] I enjoyed the conversation thoroughly.

John Dehlin [02:23:51] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And you also discussed the future direction of Mormon stories, because I. You probably. I. We should go back and listen to that, maybe react to it at some point. Wouldn't that be fun?

Bill Reel [02:24:03] It would be a great time.

John Dehlin [02:24:04] Time. It'd be fun. Maybe. Let's plan a Mormon Discussions where we.

Bill Reel [02:24:07] Let's do it.

John Dehlin [02:24:08] Or Mormonism Live where we respond to that.

Bill Reel [02:24:11] It would be fun.

John Dehlin [02:24:12] Anyway, so what happened after you bought the microphone? And then what?

Bill Reel [02:24:16] So I started. I went on to podbean as a platform because it was such a low cost to get started. It was really cheap and, you know, Mormon expression, kind of the word Mormon with some verb around dialog. And I knew there was the discussion board called Mormon Dialog. So he had Mormon dialog, Mormon expression, Mormon stories. I knew I had to use the word Mormon, and I knew I had to get a word that conveyed the gist of what was going on.

Bill Reel [02:24:51] And so I said, let's go with Mormon discussion. So I created the podcast. Mormon discussion started with the cheap microphone. And the first four or five episodes were me just talking about Brad Wilcox and Robert Millet and Stephen Robinson and the doctrine of Christ and how grace works and how the church doesn't emphasize it, but there's a way to be softer to people.

Bill Reel [02:25:17] And by episode maybe three or four, this person named Britt Hartley reaches out to me and says, hey, I found your podcast and I'm really enjoying it. And another guy by the name of. I won't say his last name, but a guy by the name of John, lives here in Salt Lake City, reached out and said he was really enjoying the podcast early on.

Bill Reel [02:25:42] He ended up doing some advertising with us when we were really early, before we were a non profit Costa Rica travel pass. And it didn't take long before I started reaching out. And in those early days, part of me was in awe of you getting all of these incredible guests, these authors and scholars and intellectuals in Mormonism. And so I thought, oh, I'll just start reaching out to them.

John Dehlin [02:26:07] And what was your goal? Like, we've already kind of talked around it. What was your goal? What was your vision? What was your mission? Maybe I wasn't doing a perfect job, but I was still trying to do the same job I had always done. Why did you feel like there was a need and what was your vision for how it could be and how it could play out for you and for the podcast and for the church? Frankly, the

Bill Reel [02:26:32] overlaying goal of the podcast was to help people not feel crazy that these were real issues and to offer people a conversation around them when no one else was having it besides you, and to do so in a way that came off more faithful because I really did want people to stay in the church on the front end of the podcast. Now, there's also an underlying motive that doesn't show through unless you kind of follow episode to episode. But there are moments where you can sense. For instance, I did an episode on how the church proclaims that Jesus was born on April 2nd 6th, and Elder Bednar had just recently in conference reiterated that teaching. And I wrote Elder Holland telling him that because, I mean, let me back up. At some point we need to have a conversation about my conversations with Elder Holland and Elder Jensen.

John Dehlin [02:27:27] That'll be in part two.

Bill Reel [02:27:29] But in my. In my reaching out to Elder Holland, I told him, because we had already built some rapport, I told him that Elder Bednar was off base. I shared with him the URL links of scholars within the church who were saying that the teaching that Jesus Christ was born on April 6 was nonsense and giving the historical context for how that rumor got started. And I can remember my mindset of that episode. The underlying motive was to force these leaders to confront their own history and to start being honest about it.

John Dehlin [02:28:06] So you were wanting to hold the Brethren's feet to the fire a little bit.

Bill Reel [02:28:09] Yeah. And I don't remember. But now reading the emails, you can see that's also something that's bothering me as I'm reaching out to you is not the issues themselves aren't making me want to. I'm not feeling cognitive dissonance by the issues. I'm feeling cognitive dissonance because everyone's ignoring the issues.

John Dehlin [02:28:26] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:28:27] And it feels intentional.

John Dehlin [02:28:28] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:28:29] And I'm going to press these guys to start being honest about this.

John Dehlin [02:28:34] Yeah. Okay. And. But your ultimate goal was to see the church become more open and transparent, talk about the problems, make it.

Bill Reel [02:28:47] Make it all softer on those of us who were discovering this mess and to allow people, without feeling deceived by their leaders, to be able to stay in belief.

John Dehlin [02:28:57] Okay. All right. So as you start having these interviews and you start. Did you immediately start having interviews or did you. Was it monologues for a while?

Bill Reel [02:29:06] It was monologues for probably the first 15 episodes or so.

John Dehlin [02:29:10] Okay.

Bill Reel [02:29:11] Maybe a little less. And I really enjoyed that because I felt like I knew things about the church that were beyond kind of the standard of what the average Mormon knows. And so I could talk about things that were new and refreshing to some people anyway. But before long, I think. I don't know who my first interview was with, but I know Brad Wilcox was pretty early on and I had a great time.

John Dehlin [02:29:33] The Brad Wilcox?

Bill Reel [02:29:34] The Brad Wilcox. What?

John Dehlin [02:29:36] You were Brad Wilcox on mornings?

Bill Reel [02:29:37] I interviewed him for a two or three part series. Yeah. And we talked about grace and playing the piano and how it's all practice. And I remember asking him, like, why don't the church leaders frame grace they this way. I don't remember what his response was, but just noting that here's this guy in the church who seems to have more love and a more inclusive understanding of the gospel than the very leaders themselves have.

John Dehlin [02:30:10] If somebody wants to go, just see your Mormon discussion episodes in chronological order. Is there a way to do that?

Bill Reel [02:30:17] Yep. So if you go to Mormon discussion podcast, on the header there's a button that says archive. And if you hit archive and then scroll all the way to the bottom because the most recent are at the top.

John Dehlin [02:30:31] But are all the other podcasts in your network interwoven into those as well?

Bill Reel [02:30:36] Yeah. So you can also go to MD standing for Mormon discussion. MD podcast.org.

John Dehlin [02:30:41] no, it's okay. All right. So I'm looking through those early and like, people are rediscovering Mormon Expression podcast. I want them to rediscover, by the

Bill Reel [02:30:50] way, if you're a believer. I think my early episodes on the doctrine of Christ and Grace and the interviews with Brad and my interviews with other scholars and intellectuals and authors early on, like you, I think leaves plenty of room for people to be. To recognize they're not alone while still having room to kind of believe in the church.

John Dehlin [02:31:13] Okay, so I'm looking through and you've Got. Yeah, these Doctrine of Christ episodes early on. The Holy Ghost. You got Brian Whitney. I know Brian. You got Brian Whitney really early on. He was a kind of a historian that was working for the Church history department.

Bill Reel [02:31:26] Yeah. And I went to the church history department and spent an afternoon with John, with Amanda. We met Stephen Harper and Mark Ashurst McGee and shook hands and rubbed shoulders.

John Dehlin [02:31:34] That's. That's stuff I never got to really do. So that's. That's innovation on your part very early on.

Margi Dehlin [02:31:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:31:41] That's cool. So you have Richard Bushman, episode 19.

Bill Reel [02:31:45] I think I'm talking about something Bushman said, but I'm not interviewing him that early. But I did interview him twice.

John Dehlin [02:31:51] Yeah. Yeah. Eventually. Yeah. Okay. So there's Brad Wilcox. You got Michael Ash, Shaken Faith Syndrome. He's a. He's a character.

Bill Reel [02:32:00] The other thing, too, is not too long after I start the podcast, a few months in, Steve Densley from Fair Mormon reaches out to me and says that Fair Mormon folks are really liking what I'm putting out.

John Dehlin [02:32:11] Yeah. Because by episode 37, you've got Brian Hales in there. Yeah, yeah, keep going.

Bill Reel [02:32:17] Just that fairmormon reached out and asked if I would duplicate my work with them. And I don't know that they maybe expressed it that way, but I said, hey, I'm happy to put things out on your platform. I don't have the time in the day to do both platforms uniquely, so I'm happy to produce things for Mormon discussion and then also publish them with a different intro and outro and a different introduction as part of Fair Mormon,

John Dehlin [02:32:45] and that must have felt super validating. And for those who don't know, Fair Mormon to this day is the church's apologetic, unofficial, but official apologetic organization.

Bill Reel [02:32:55] Strangely, at every year at their conference, a general authority speaks.

John Dehlin [02:32:59] Yeah. But it must have felt incredibly validating to have them reach out to you and want to collaborate.

Bill Reel [02:33:05] Yeah, and I think we did.

Amanda Reel [02:33:07] A.

Bill Reel [02:33:07] So there's two problems, or at least two points that need to be made. One is that in 2013, it's the last year they won the podcast awards. And if you watch the award ceremony in Las Vegas in 2013, the representative for Fair Mormon steps up to the microphone and starts off his thankful speech for accepting the reward and thanks. First and foremost, Bill Real. And then names Ned Scarsbrick and other members of the podcast. But because 90% of what they put out that year was my work, the other thing people don't know is the reason they won. So I like saying I won. It feels Good.

John Dehlin [02:33:44] Right.

Bill Reel [02:33:44] But I also know it's not legitimate because FairMormon is a large organization of volunteers, and behind the scenes, when the voting happened, they would encourage their volunteers to vote as many times as they possibly could. So every member of Fair Mormon is going to the site and voting for Fair Mormon, their podcast, fifty times, hundred times, two hundred times. And that is something that no other podcast in that. In that category would have had. In other words, every other podcast has its listeners, but it doesn't have a staff of hundreds. And so Fair Mormon had sort of a. A loophole that allowed them to cheat the system and have their podcast win.

John Dehlin [02:34:30] Yeah. And so what was that important to you? Like, what. What are your reflections on that?

Bill Reel [02:34:36] Just that they really didn't win.

John Dehlin [02:34:38] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:34:39] There. There were other podcasts there that were better.

John Dehlin [02:34:42] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:34:42] Even as I'm the one that's really creating the work, there were other podcasts that were better.

John Dehlin [02:34:46] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:34:47] That had a larger following.

John Dehlin [02:34:49] They kind of stack the deck.

Bill Reel [02:34:50] They stack the deck.

John Dehlin [02:34:51] Yeah. So as I'm scrolling through those early episodes, I mean, you've got all. A lot of these people are still the big names in Mormon apologetics. You've got Patrick Mason, Tero Gibbons, Jennifer Finlayson, Fife.

Bill Reel [02:35:06] And you probably noticed this, but you would interview these folks, and then I would grab them next because I didn't even know they existed until you interviewed them.

John Dehlin [02:35:12] Yeah. Yeah. So what was that like? Mormon Stories was still going. I was still in the church, and then your podcast really starts to come on the scene. How did you think about your relationship to Mormon Stories? To me, to Fair Mormon? I was. I was critical of Fair Mormon during that time. I never really liked the apologists ever.

Margi Dehlin [02:35:32] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:35:33] So as you start to, like, not only have your podcast gain popularity, Fair Mormon embraces you, and then you start interviewing the big names and even interviewing more big names that I was able to get, because by this point in

Bill Reel [02:35:45] Mormon Stories, they won't say yes to you.

John Dehlin [02:35:47] They won't. They won't come on anymore. Because I was willing to interview Grant Palmer. I was willing to interview, you know, real critics of the church.

Bill Reel [02:35:54] They'll talk to you as long as you play nice.

John Dehlin [02:35:56] Yeah. Yeah. Like, I like. That was. The thing is, Fair Mormon liked me, too, until I interviewed Grant Palmer, which was. But. But for me, I only was interested in doing it Mormon Stories, if I could interview both sides. To this day, I only want to do it if I can interview both sides.

John Dehlin [02:36:14] So, you know, so you kind of were able to get in there in that middle ground that I. I just wasn't able to walk honestly, partly for just a matter of conscience, I wasn't gonna, you know, they would come to me and say, don't. If you want to keep in our good graces, don't interview Grant Palmer, don't interview Michael Quinn because you're giving a platform or a voice to apostates.

John Dehlin [02:36:36] So you were able to get in there, which, you know, I don't think I ever was upset or unhappy that you were doing what you're doing. In fact, I think there's a part of me that's. That felt relieved. It's like I can't fully do what is needed to keep that middle ground. I'll keep trying, but I can't fully do it in a way that's going to keep people happy. So I think in my mind I was like, well, this feels a little bit competitive, but I'm still glad Bill's able to do it. You know what I mean?

Amanda Reel [02:37:03] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [02:37:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:37:03] How did you feel?

Bill Reel [02:37:05] So you can tell by the early emails to you that I am. I respect you and I'm appreciative of what you're doing. As I began to work with Fair Mormon, there was a moment, I don't remember what it was, but there was something that you said in a discussion board or somewhere that at the time I thought the point that you made was faulty. And I pushed back and immediately 10 guys from fair Mormon write me and go, man, way to give it to him, way to give it to that John Dehlin.

Bill Reel [02:37:37] And so I was like, oh, thanks, you know, whatever. But it wasn't about you personally. It was about something you said in regards to, like a truth claim or a historical point. And I pushed back and Fair Mormon saw me as standing up for them and knocking you down.

Bill Reel [02:37:51] What they didn't know was that I also don't have any tolerance for ad hominem and making it personal and tearing people down when it's unnecessary.

John Dehlin [02:38:01] Right.

Bill Reel [02:38:02] So immediately in the coming weeks, they are attacking you on a personal level behind the scenes in their volunteer forum, their emails that go back and forth. And I think this is right around the time that Greg Smith is beginning to kind of plan this rebuttal to you that's going to be very much attacking you personally. And so behind the scenes, Fair Mormon is having these conversations where they are hitting you at a personal level.

Bill Reel [02:38:31] But what they don't know is even though they saw me as pushing back against you on a data point that I wasn't okay with the way they were doing that. And so me and a few other folks, John Westover was another one that was in fairmormon at the time who had a, what I would call a higher degree of ethics than what most of Fair Mormon has.

Bill Reel [02:38:54] And so John and I, and I think maybe one other person reached out to all of these folks as this conversation was happening and said, we don't get this. We totally get you disputing with Mormon stories or John Dolan on the data if he's getting a historical fact wrong. Let's give a counter argument. But we don't get why you're beginning to articulate going after him on a personal level.

Bill Reel [02:39:24] And so when I did that is kind of the beginning of the end because now the folks at fairmormon are writing me off to the side, having a one on one email exchange and going, yeah, some of our volunteers don't really like that you're standing up for John Dehlin. Well, they don't really like that you're telling them that they're wrong. And their excuse would be John Dehlin's work has hurt these people.

Bill Reel [02:39:48] They've lost siblings who have left the church. They've lost a kid or a parent who's left the church. And so you have to understand how angry they are. And so they should be allowed to be personal and attack John de Lynn. And that didn't make any sense to me.

Bill Reel [02:40:05] And so at that point I'm starting to sense that apologetics, they don't really care about the means as long as we get to the end and I don't work that way. And so it essentially was now on the road out in terms of Fair Mormon sensing that maybe I'm also the enemy.

John Dehlin [02:40:27] Yeah. So my sister at some point was involved in Fair Mormon, my sister Julianne and.

Bill Reel [02:40:34] Yeah. At the same time. Yeah, by the way, I was aware of that.

John Dehlin [02:40:37] Right.

Bill Reel [02:40:37] I saw her in that as well. Nothing negative, just I was aware that she was in Fair Mormon at the same time I'm in Fair Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:40:43] Yeah. So I, I knew that you and FairMormon had a falling out and at some point it kind of even spilled over into the public. But I never really understood what that falling out was. It sounds like some of that was your objection to the ad hominem. Anything else you want to say about your Falling out with FairMormon?

Bill Reel [02:41:02] Yep. So it was also that when someone would write to FairMormon and say, I have a question, there would then be this discussion behind the scenes of all the volunteers on how that question gets answered. And no matter who answered it and no matter how weak that answer was, like, like us as volunteers knew that there was a better argument made by the critic that would then water down this answer, given that salt solves the problem.

Bill Reel [02:41:29] And as I would go like, hey, you guys, these answers aren't that great. This isn't the right answer. We know this or we know that they didn't want that in their world, no matter how weak the faithful resolution, the faithful resolution is the only answer it's allowed to be given.

Bill Reel [02:41:47] So if you tried to take the conversation to acknowledging that the critic has on any level a valid argument and that maybe the apologetics don't actually resolve the problem, they saw that as that's a no, no, you can't do that.

Bill Reel [02:42:05] And so as I and John Westover and maybe another person or two would kind of put some resistance to that and say, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like you guys are saying this solves that, but shouldn't you share with them this that, you know, President Kimball said or that also acknowledges that this problem is more complicated. And at that point, when you suggest that again, you get reached out to individually off to the side by Steve Densley and John lynch by, to a lesser extent, President Scott Gordon, and you get told, that's not how we do things here.

John Dehlin [02:42:38] So no concessions. Basically.

Bill Reel [02:42:40] No. No concessions. And there's this really neat moment that happens where John Westover I. And again, another person or two, perhaps we suggest to them that they ought to create a discussion board where people can come with their questions and we will answer them with empathy, sort of like Givens or Bushman does. And they took our kind of the

John Dehlin [02:43:01] pastoral, what ends up becoming called neo apologetics. Yeah. You start advocating for pastoral non ad hominem.

Bill Reel [02:43:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:10] Not give bad answers, but give empathetic.

Bill Reel [02:43:13] Acknowledging, validating this is a better way to treat people. And fair Mormon actually takes the idea and does it. And so they created a discussion board where we were allowed in the conversation to validate the concerns and to some degree honor that the critic has a real question and that there's a real problem here and we need to speak to it more honestly. And that discussion board lasted like two months. And they pulled it because immediately they sensed that doing that actually worked counter to what their goal is, which really isn't to help faith crises at all, but is to protect the good name

John Dehlin [02:43:50] of the church, which kind of goes back to some of your early emails to me because you're like, if we could just have these conversations, everything will be great. It'll protect faith. You were experimenting on that, and they were saying, that's not the way. But you were still optimistic. I don't know if naive's the right word, but you were still optimistic that candid conversations could do more good things for active LDS members. Faith than take faith away and maybe even unsaid.

Bill Reel [02:44:25] But it would relieve the hurt and harm that people were experiencing as their concerns were being dismissed.

John Dehlin [02:44:33] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the way I kind of want to end part one is with you. Kind of what ends your time as bishop.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:44:45] And you know, what's what. What is the end. That kind of marks maybe the sneak peek into part two where your faith starts to unravel. So maybe take us to. You're being released as bishop and to that moment where you start to realize you. You've. You've reached the apex of your optimism of what sort of progressive, faithful Mormonism is. What's the very first moment where you're like, ooh, I don't know whether all this is. Can be reconciled. Like, I thought maybe there's a man behind the curtain. You know, that kind of moment.

Margi Dehlin [02:45:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:45:24] Can you take us to that point?

Margi Dehlin [02:45:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:45:26] And then we'll break and then come back for part two.

Faith Crisis While Serving as Bishop

Bill Reel [02:45:28] Sweet. So I'm. I am a sitting bishop. The gospel topic essays, the first two had come out. Race and Priesthood, I think is one of them. Maybe Are youe Christian? Is one of the others. And then I think there was a third one sometime around 2013 that comes out.

Bill Reel [02:45:47] I'm a sitting bishop, and I've got four years in, four and a half years in somewhere in that range. I've begun collecting quotes by Bushman and Givens that talk about how we need to deal with people in faith crisis. More softly. I'm telling my stake presidency that this is a significant issue, that there are lots of folks right now who are discovering that the church wasn't honest or truthful or forthright about its problems. I'm asking them if I can have conversations with them about the problem on the front end. They're eager to have the conversation. I would present in a stake meeting or at times one on one with the stake presidency.

Bill Reel [02:46:28] I would present to them the problem, what scholars are saying, what this means about how we have to shift, about how we handle it. And you could just feel it being dismissed, like, hey, thanks for your time. We won't do anything with that. And there was even meetings where the state clerk, his name was Roger. I forget the last name, but Roger where? Roger as the state clerk, would even go to the state presidency while I'm sitting there explaining it and go, bill's right, Bill's right. These are real issues. Like he was smart enough and informed enough, still believing, but knew that there was messiness that the rest of the people in the room didn't know.

Bill Reel [02:47:07] And so on the front end, it felt like they really sincerely wanted to at least be aware, but as soon as the information's presented, they wanted to distance themselves from it entirely and they would do nothing with it.

John Dehlin [02:47:19] Yeah. It's one thing to have this subculture removed from active church discourse where we can all try and help each other and make things work for the people on the fringes, but bringing that discourse into church conversations, ward and stake leadership, and is a totally another level that until Givens and Bushman are forced to and Mason are forced to do the tours, you know what I mean? It's still very early for activists to try and be promoting open, honest, genuine discourse about problematic history. And it sounds like you ran into that.

Margi Dehlin [02:48:01] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:48:02] And then there was a second thing that happened that in some ways was completely unrelated. And it's this idea that as I'm sitting, as a sitting bishop, I'm getting experience with leaders higher up. And there is one guy in particular, he was our bishop in our ward and he just had this arrogance to him. Whenever we would clean up after an activity, he would stand around while everybody else carried chairs every time.

Bill Reel [02:48:32] He never did his home teaching in 10 year period, but he's in the Stake Presidency and he is shaming everyone else in a priesthood meeting about how they need to do their home teaching. And I'm starting to sense there's a disconnect between what we claim is happening in terms of callings and who's called and righteousness and how easy it is for people to put on the facade of saying the right things to get into leadership, but clearly not having the qualities of a human being who can be compassionate and empathetic towards people.

Bill Reel [02:49:14] And you can see how manipulation can get you into leadership. And then there's a third data point, which is as I'm going out and doing my own home teaching, I have members that I home teach who are sharing with me their patriarchal blessing.

Bill Reel [02:49:33] And two in particular. As they read their blessing to me, I want to read my blessing to you, Bishop. I want to read it to you. Okay, Please. They read it and I notice that it sounds identical to mine.

Bill Reel [02:49:46] And I go home and get mine out. And I'm right. And so I go to the stake presidency. I actually talk to the current patriarch first, who used to be our stake president, nicest guy in the world. And he validates me and goes, hey, just so you know, that patriarch who was before him, that patriarch had dementia the last few years of his life.

Bill Reel [02:50:15] And, bishop, it seems reasonable that you should be able to ask to have your patriarchal blessing re given. So I took this former stake president, this loving man who's kind, who gave me what felt like empathetic, validating perspective, and I go to the current stake presidency, which is the guy who's in the stake president, who used to be our bishop, who's unhealthy, and I pose the problem to him and I tell him what the former stake president, current patriarch, said. And he looked at me and said, no way. I won't even. I won't even go ask.

John Dehlin [02:50:59] And you were a bishop?

Bill Reel [02:51:00] I was a bishop, and I sensed that doing the right thing isn't always a motivating factor. And those three things sort of came to a head at the same time. And I no longer. I no longer was going to automatically give the benefit of the doubt to the church.

John Dehlin [02:51:27] And were you released soon thereafter?

Bill Reel [02:51:30] I had asked the stake president. I told the stake president that I was burned out. They knew I had doubts because I was sharing all this information with them and saying, hey, like me, other people are having doubts. We ought to handle these better.

Bill Reel [02:51:44] I said, I can't hand. I can't manage my own faith crisis and help all of these ward members. I don't have enough time to sit and process what I'm going through. Please find the next guy. He said, okay, I hear you. I'll do it. Give me some time.

Bill Reel [02:52:01] Obviously, that process takes a while, right? They have to send a name to Salt Lake, and they got to pray about all that stuff. Several months goes by, three months, six months, something. And I'm realizing nobody's. I'm just still the bishop. I'm having a faith crisis. They know it.

Bill Reel [02:52:17] I've told them I'm burned out. And it's almost like, he'll be fine. And so I reach back out to him and I say, I came to you months ago. I told you I'm burned out. You asked me for some time, but how much time? Like, let's figure this out.

Bill Reel [02:52:33] And then it was about two to three months later. So I must have been three and a half years in or something at that point, but two to three months later, finally, they had extended a call to the new bishop and I was told that in a couple of weeks I would be released.

John Dehlin [02:52:48] And around what month and year was that where you were no longer Bishop?

Bill Reel [02:52:52] 2014 somewhere.

John Dehlin [02:52:55] Okay, okay.

Bill Reel [02:52:57] Late 2013, early 2014.

John Dehlin [02:53:00] And you would say you were in full blown faith crisis by. By the time you were released as bishop.

Bill Reel [02:53:06] By 2013, when the first two or three gospel topic essays come out, I was a sitting bishop and I was intentionally trying to have members of my ward give their sacrament talks on the gospel topic essay because I wanted everyone in that ward to confront the fact that there is a mess here and we're going to have to deal with it.

John Dehlin [02:53:32] It's like, hey, I left Fowler stage three into stage four and you're all coming with me.

Bill Reel [02:53:36] You're all coming with me.

Amanda Reel [02:53:37] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:53:38] Yeah, totally. That's not good.

Bill Reel [02:53:42] It doesn't work anyway.

John Dehlin [02:53:43] Yeah, it does. Yeah. Okay, so you were released. And I'll just ask, what was it like for both of you to be released? What was it like for both of you to have Bill be released? Bill, what was it like for you?

Bill Reel [02:53:58] I felt like I had been a really good bishop and I think the members of the ward would have agreed and I was happy with how I had served and I was aware

John Dehlin [02:54:16] that

Bill Reel [02:54:17] my beliefs having shifted, that I needed to move on anyway.

John Dehlin [02:54:26] But it's a position of power and notoriety. Yeah, that didn't bother me. Validating. Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:54:31] But I don't think that part of it ever bothered me at all.

John Dehlin [02:54:34] Okay.

Bill Reel [02:54:35] My next calling was I was the ward mission leader. And we can pick up in the next episode with that because that'll be interesting. But I was grateful to no longer be the bishop.

John Dehlin [02:54:46] And Amanda, did you know by the end of his time as bishop, he was in full blown faith crisis mode. And how did you feel about him being released?

Amanda Reel [02:54:56] Yeah, I think by this time he told me because it was probably going into the Mormon stories interview, you know, that this is now starting to, like, he has to talk to wife now. Right. Like, he cannot contain this, you know.

Amanda Reel [02:55:09] But yeah, being released, it, it just, it was just the next, the next part in the journey. And although, yes, it was an esteemed, powerful, you know, position. And even though, like, he aspired to be that, but also, I don't think he did, like, yes, the power is nice, but also I don't think you dealt in that.

Amanda Reel [02:55:32] So like, to us it was never like a demotion or, you know, any of those things. I just think it was just naturally the next stepping Stone and you know, and I can now visibly see the stress of being a father to the ward and trying to do that well while also trying to figure himself out and be true to himself, you know, and seeing all that tension, it was just, it was just a tension release at that point.

John Dehlin [02:56:02] What about just getting your husband back?

Amanda Reel [02:56:05] You know, a funny, a little, a little funny side note about that is the kids, like, you know, being the bishop's wife, four young children. Like I have got this strategically now where who's going to go to be quiet. The bishop's kids are not going to be the problem during sacrament meeting. Right. And my children that have only known their dad to be on the stand. Right. Because you got a couple years as the counselor, three years in the bishopric

Bill Reel [02:56:31] and then four and a half years as the bishop.

Amanda Reel [02:56:33] Like that's all they know is dad on the stand. So now dad's back here with us and they can't go anywhere. And like it was, they were not

Bill Reel [02:56:42] happy to have their kids here with

Amanda Reel [02:56:43] any reverend with them because it kind of interrupted our whole churchgoing routine. But so that was just kind of a funny side note with the kids.

John Dehlin [02:56:54] All right, well, I think this concludes part one of our. Of our. Part one of our interview with Bill and Amanda Real, the making of Bishop Bill Real. And that's kind of a cliffhanger for part two, which is going to be the unmaking of Bishop Bill Real. And where your Mormon discussion journey took you that ultimately led in your excommunication. And that's going to be part two. Margi's favorite part of Mormon stories interviews where I'm just being silly with you, where we talk about your full deconstruction and unraveling. Yeah. And. And what, what took you from Mormon bishop to no longer believing maybe some of your interactions with Jeffrey Holland and. And other apostles.

Bill Reel [02:57:44] Marlon Jensen, Church historian.

John Dehlin [02:57:47] We'll be talking about that maybe.

Amanda Reel [02:57:48] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:57:48] And then your ultimate excommunication, which I attended. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bill Reel [02:57:54] And played a vital role.

John Dehlin [02:57:56] And then, then part three will be rebuilding kind of after your excommunication.

Bill Reel [02:58:02] Love it.

John Dehlin [02:58:03] That sound right?

Bill Reel [02:58:04] I'm excited.

John Dehlin [02:58:04] All right.

Bill Reel [02:58:05] Can't wait to see where it goes.

John Dehlin [02:58:06] Well, thanks for doing a three hour part one, Bill.

Bill Reel [02:58:09] Awesome. Thank you, my friend.

John Dehlin [02:58:10] And Amanda, thanks for being here.

Amanda Reel [02:58:11] Thank you so much.

John Dehlin [02:58:12] And Margi, so great to have you.

Margi Dehlin [02:58:15] So great to be here.

John Dehlin [02:58:16] And don't go away. Come right back for part two of our interview with Bill and Amanda Real, where we'll talk about what, what led to Bill leaving the church. Take care, everyone, and thanks for your support on Mormon Stories podcast. Also, check out our radio free Mormon podcast, Mormonism Live Podcast, and Mormon Discussion Podcast. Go back into the archives. Especially if you're a faithful, believing Mormon, there's a lot there that might keep you in the church.

Bill Reel [02:58:43] Yeah, it's a fun journey to watch.

John Dehlin [02:58:46] All right, see you guys soon, everybody. Thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories.

Part Two Begins: The Unraveling of Faith

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 1785

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 29, 2023 and we are here in part two of an epic what we think is going to be three part series with former Mormon Bishop Bill Real, podcaster Bill Real and generally good guy and Mormon influencer. He's now a YouTuber and you can find Bill Real on Mormonism Live at present every Wednesday night at 6:20pm Utah or Mountain Time on YouTube. But you can also check out Mormon Discussion podcast and a rich archive there, especially if you're a believing Mormon Mormon discussion podcast, at least the first half to two thirds are all going to be super helpful.

John Dehlin [00:00:46] But Bill, Bill also has a network of podcasts on a podcast on the Mormon Discussion Network which we could talk about a little bit later. But we're now in part two. In part one, we had Margi and Amanda Real, Bill's wife, here with us to talk about the making of Bishop Bill Real. And we encourage you, if you haven't watched that yet, to consider pausing, going back and watching part one, because today part two, we're going to build on part one. But we left off last episode with Bill requesting to be released as a Mormon bishop. He was called at age, the fresh young age of 29 to be a Mormon Bishop.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] He came on Mormon Stories as an active believing bishop. He started a podcast called Mormon Discussion as a Believing Mormon Bishop. But he started to have some concerns about the sincerity and or ethics of top Mormon church leadership and leadership at the stake level and started to feel a lot of empathy for people who were struggling in the church and most importantly wanted the church to be honest and open and create an environment in the church where people doubting and questioning could feel safe and comfortable. And so we left off at the end of part one with Bill requesting to be released as a bishop and with I don't know exactly when Fairmormon and you, Bill, sort of parted ways. Was that while you were still a bishop or was that after your release?

Bill Reel [00:02:22] Yeah, that would have been back in Ohio. So that would have been sometime in 2014. And I don't move to southern Utah until the end of 14.

John Dehlin [00:02:34] Okay, so. And also the gospel topics essays came into your time as bishop, etc. So for part two of this episode, it's going to be, I think we're kind of titling it the Unraveling of Bishop Bill Real or the Deconstruction of Bishop Bill Real. But we're basically going to be talking about how Bill Riehl goes from faithful, active, devout Mormon bishop, having been a convert, having been a Mormon for the ages in Sandusky, Ohio, for at least 10 to 15 years.

John Dehlin [00:03:09] And then what happened? How does someone who's a faithful, devout bishop and who's a podcaster with the intent of keeping people in the Mormon Church, of helping them find that middle way, what went wrong? And how did he end up not only losing his orthodox faith, but actually get excommunicated? So this part two, we're going to pick up with you no longer being bishop, and we're going to end this part 2 with your excommunication and talk about, would you say your decline or your rise? Which one?

Bill Reel [00:03:45] I think it's all been an incredibly fun journey, and I know certain people would like to put some of those labels on it, but it's been just a fun time to kind of learn who I was.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] Yeah. All right, well, let's, let's pick up where we left off. You get released as bishop. Yeah, you are, you're podcasting, you're interviewing a lot of the big names in Faithful Mormonism, Patrick Mason, Thomas McConkey, Richard Bushman, Terrell Givens, all those big names that you started to become introduced to on Mormon stories podcast by 2014. Kate Kelly and I, you know, well, actually you mentioned in your, our email correspondence how much you love Denver Snuffer and enjoyed my interview with him. Denver Snuffer gets excommunicated in 2013.

Reaching Out to Church Leaders and Excommunication

John Dehlin [00:04:43] Then in 2014, Kate Kelly's excommunicated. And then in 2015, February of 2015, I'm excommunicated. Talk about, like, as you had already started your podcast, as we discussed last episode, to kind of take over the place that I had somewhat abdicated, not necessarily intentionally, but just the way it happened. Tell me how you're processing that 2014, 2015 time period where you're. You've kind of taken over as the faithful but honest Mormon themed podcaster.

Bill Reel [00:05:21] Yeah, we probably need to back up just a little bit because while I was serving as a bishop, we talked last episode about there being kind of a time period where I'm having doubts, but I'm not really telling anybody. I'm not telling my wife, I'm not telling the counselors in the bishopric. I'm not really informing anybody. And two things happened. One is that there was a member of our ward who saw me being honest to the data as the bishop and came to me privately and said, I don't believe this thing. And you appear to be safe to talk to.

Bill Reel [00:05:58] And so he said, my marriage is at risk because my wife is all in. And as we sit and have a conversation around me not believing the church is true, I fear that she'll end up leaving me. And so he saw me as being very nuanced and helpful to him. But at the same time, while I'm not really sharing with anybody that I'm struggling, I end up writing Elder Holland

John Dehlin [00:06:24] and tell our never Mormon viewers and listeners who Elder Holland is.

Bill Reel [00:06:28] Yeah, so Jeffrey R. Holland is a member of the Quorum of the twelve Apostles. He's been there for a long time. He's a very charismatic speaker in the church. People tend to look to him as being one of the folks who gives the better talks in the church. Elder Holland for a while was giving talks that seemed to be very soft and sensitive to people who had questions. And while I was a sitting bishop, I thought, well, if I'm beginning to have doubts, I guess I could reach out to these guys and maybe they'll help and maybe they won't, but that'll tell me something about who they are. And so I wrote Elder Holland telling him that I was having a faith crisis.

John Dehlin [00:07:09] Okay, now, you were still a bishop at this time. Yeah. And how did you get his email address? And what made you think he would respond? Because traditionally, Mormons can't just talk to apostles. Right?

Bill Reel [00:07:22] Right. But as a sitting bishop, you sort of can.

John Dehlin [00:07:25] You had leverage, you think? Because maybe he was worried if a bishop goes rogue and tells the world he doesn't believe anymore. I'm just making this up.

Bill Reel [00:07:34] I'd only be guessing. I have no. Yeah, I wrote him. I figured out that all of the general authorities, if you put. I think it's their last name, first letter of first name, first letter of middle name at whatever it was, ldschurch.org, whatever it was, that the email would go through. And so I wrote him an email, and he ended up giving a card to Marlon K. Jensen, who was the church historian, and asked, Marlon Jensen, I have that card in my possession. It was a card that said, brother Jensen, please contact. Dear Bishop Reel. He seems to be having some questions and difficulties, and I think you're the best one to reach out to him and address that. Sincerely, Jeff Holland. And so Marlon Jensen ended up reaching out to me, called me on my drive home one day from work.

John Dehlin [00:08:30] How does that feel?

Bill Reel [00:08:32] It. It felt like they were taking this bishop who's having a faith crisis seriously. And so Marlon and I talked for probably 45 minutes, and I ran him through two, three, four of the problems.

John Dehlin [00:08:47] What do you guess those were at the time, if you just had to

Bill Reel [00:08:50] guess of Abraham, Why? We were taught a certain view of the translation method, hence that being connected to Joseph Smith's treasure digging. Polygamy, for sure. And as I brought up two or

John Dehlin [00:09:02] three Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, polygamy might have been your top three.

Bill Reel [00:09:06] Yeah. And maybe race in the priesthood, because each of those can be used to kind of COVID a higher point. Right. Like, race in the priesthood has to do with the prophetic mantle, and polygamy has to do with Joseph Smith's integrity. And the Book of Mormon has to do with whether the restoration even starts off on the right foot or not. And Joseph Smith's treasure digging has to do with whether guardian spirits with gold treasures buried in hills found by rocks is the same story as a guardian spirit named Moroni who has a buried set of plates in a hill that still involves a seer stone. And that overlap seems coincidentally too close, doesn't it? And so Marlon talked to me, but what brother Jensen essentially said is, I don't have any good answers to your questions. Your questions.

John Dehlin [00:09:54] Wait, he didn't even try?

Bill Reel [00:09:55] Yeah, no, just that we need to have faith. Wait till the other side. We'll figure it out then. And I began to sense that answers like just have faith and wait till we get to the other side is what Jonathan Streeter would call a wood tool. They're meant to appease you as you have questions, keep you in the faith that you're in, but they work within any faith. In other words, if you give the same sorts of response to a Jehovah's Witness or a Scientologist, it helps them to stay in Scientology and stay in the Jehovah's Witness faith. So they're not real tools to figure out whether the church is true or not.

John Dehlin [00:10:34] I'm kind of surprised, because, you know, by the time you're talking to Jensen, this is in his final years as church historian, he's a general authority. He would have been the one who led the gospel topics essays in their creation. He would know. He would have access to all the vaults. Like, if anybody had in the world had answers, it would be Marlon Jensen. So for him to just kind of say, you know, have faith, I don't know. I think I would have experienced that as being quite disappointing.

Bill Reel [00:11:04] It was. But the other side of the coin was it was also validating. Right. The church historian is telling you over the phone that your concerns are valid. That these are real questions, that lots of people are struggling with them right now. And so that sort of part of the conversation was felt like empathy, felt like taking my concerns seriously.

John Dehlin [00:11:26] And they're also reaching out to the one. Right. By reaching out to you.

Bill Reel [00:11:29] Right, right. And the conversation was fine when it ended. I was grateful to have had it. But I also realized if he doesn't have answers, then probably nobody does. And then maybe a month or two later, Elder Holland called me while I was at work.

Bill Reel [00:11:46] It was his secretary, actually, I think her name was Lisa. And Lisa said, hey, I've got Jeff Holland on the line. He would like to talk to you. I'm over at the Blue. Yeah, I pick up the phone and yeah, that's the situation. So I said, while I'm at work, can you give me just two minutes? I need to let my boss know and I'm gonna go off to a side room and I'll take this call. And so I did that, went off to the side room. She patched me through to Elder Holland and him and I talked for probably about 45 minutes.

Bill Reel [00:12:12] And it was again validating. Here's an apostle talking to me on the phone and acknowledging that my questions are real, that these are valid questions, that this thing. A statement he made that I remember is that the church is true, warts and all.

Bill Reel [00:12:30] And what Elder Holland communicated to me was that they were in the middle of working on these gospel topic essays. And the way he under. And he didn't say the essays, but what he said was like, we're gonna. We're working on some papers, we're working on some online documents. And the way it's going to work is that it's going to give a brief answer, it's going to go over the data, give a brief answer to the problem. And if you want to know more, you can click a button and it'll take you to an expanded version of the. Of the issue. And if that still isn't satisfying, you can click again and it can take you to a very comprehensive.

Bill Reel [00:13:01] Which makes sense because we hear about, for instance, Paul Reeve with the race and priesthood, how he wrote this big long thing and the church ended up kind of making it comprise a much smaller document that became the gospel topic essay on race and Priesthood. But the way Elder Holland explained it was that it would start with a very short answer, kind of a medium sized answer, and then a long documented article.

Bill Reel [00:13:27] So I looked forward to those essays coming out, but Elder Holland said essentially the same thing, that he didn't have any good answers to my questions that they were working on, those that if we were just patient, they would come forward. But I was already aware of, like, the Swedish rescue and Hans Matzson and, you know, the whole idea of El Tom Perry saying he had a book in the briefcase and what seems like nothing ever existing. And so when the gospel topic essays came out, I was, to say the least, disappointed. Disappointed in how carefully worded they are, disappointed in the whitewashing they contain, disappointed in how they really give the benefit to the church in a way that just doesn't make rational sense if you're going to present the issue fairly and transparently.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] So were you genuinely open to answers that Holland might have given you, or had you already concluded the church wasn't true?

Bill Reel [00:14:26] No, to this day, I'm going to be honest. To this day, if somebody could come forward with really good answers, I'd be willing to reconsider my position. The trouble is, the more I read and the more I delve into it, the more problems I find and the problems that I already know of became worse and worse.

John Dehlin [00:14:42] And we talked about the disappointment when Jensen didn't have the answers, but with an apostle. Mormons are taught they're prophets, seers and revelators and special witnesses of Christ. We're taught they kind of talk to Jesus and God. And if Holland doesn't have the answers, what was that like for you?

Bill Reel [00:15:00] You. You realize that the problems are real and that no matter how much apologists try to pretend like, oh, we've been addressing this issue for 200 years, it should just be able to be dismissed as something unimportant. The reality is, just because a problem sat around for 200 years, if you haven't offered a solid answer that is the most rational answer, then you shouldn't expect the question to go away.

Bill Reel [00:15:30] So that set up sort of a awareness that there really was never going to be a great answer to these problems. Sure, apologists have answers, missing scrolls and catalyst theories, but if you're going to be a rational thinker and pick the thing that is the most likely conclusion, and on 200 issues, the critic has the most likely conclusion, then giving allowances and the benefit of the doubt over 200 times to a plethora of issues doesn't make much sense. It's irrational to do that. And so I kind of sensed they didn't have good answers. So I come to a place in my head that as I'm exiting my time as a bishop, that the church maybe isn't True.

Bill Reel [00:16:13] But that it still could be good. And it's at this time that good friends of mine now, but at the time, just listeners, the Chris Bloxham and his wife Dawn, Clay Bloxam and his wife Heather, they reached out to me as listeners to the podcast and invited me to go to Henderson, Nevada, to put on a Fireside. And so I went down there.

John Dehlin [00:16:40] My wife were believers at the time,

Bill Reel [00:16:42] I would say they were in a comparable position to where I was. Where they were understood that there were issues. They understood that they were serious issues, that there weren't great answers, that they had hope that they could figure it out. And in the meantime, they were going to choose to believe and be active, participating Latter Day Saints.

John Dehlin [00:17:02] Okay.

Bill Reel [00:17:03] And when I went to Henderson, they flew me down there, put me up and manned up in the Aria, which was the nicest hotel we'd ever been in our entire lives. And it was just an incredible night. You know, open up the curtain, there's downtown Las Vegas, and you're up on the 30th floor or whatever. Just.

John Dehlin [00:17:22] I mean, they must have really, really appreciated your podcast. Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:17:27] And they had made it into a big event. They were going to have a meal catered, put chairs in the backyard, have, you know, 40, 50 of people they knew, and then people that those people knew who had doubts and questions come and sit down.

Bill Reel [00:17:41] And then my job was to stand up and resolve everybody's faith concerns. And the Fireside happened. Six o' clock was the dinner. Seven o' clock was the. Brought me out. I said a few words. We had a Q and a. So at 7 o', clock, I start addressing 50 people or so who had questions.

Bill Reel [00:17:59] And they're asking everything. All the things that you would get asked. I would get asked by a room full of people who had doubts, how do you make this work? How do you make that work? And I tried my best to give a soft, apologetic answer while also validating that their concerns were real, that the things they were thinking about were legitimate, that these questions don't always have great answers, that some of it looks really icky in terms of Joseph Smith's integrity or his behavior towards other people, especially, you know, girls.

Bill Reel [00:18:35] And we ended up going to, like, midnight. So 10 o' clock, it was supposed to end. And people are like, no, no, I'm not leaving. Like, some people left, but the majority of people like, no, I'm staying. And people kept asking questions and wanting to talk. And that doesn't. What about this? And what about the apologists say that and when it got all done, Chris and Dawn approached me and said, what do you think about, what do you think about living in Utah? Is there any chance you might consider moving?

Bill Reel [00:19:03] And I said, what are you guys thinking? And they said, we just really like you. As we had spent time together, you know, they put us up in the Aria. When we got done at the Aria, Chris and Dawn and Amanda and I were hanging out and I was telling math is one of my favorite subjects. And I was telling Chris about the Martingale method and how it's used in roulette and how if you bet on black and if you double down, if you lose, you double down again and you keep doubling down. And there's a small risk that you'll lose a ton, but there's actually a pretty high risk that you'll win some.

Bill Reel [00:19:33] And so Chris, and you know, the Blossoms, Chris is so much looking like, let's have a fun time, let's do something fun. And he said, let's go play, let's go try this. And so I was like, whoa, wait a minute, I don't want to, I don't have any money. I'm like, don't worry about, don't worry about that. And these, they, they owned the four family pawn stores in southern Utah.

Bill Reel [00:19:52] And obviously owning a business, he's got a little bit of spending money. So he pulls a few hundred bucks out and we sit at the roulette table and we make them money. We're doing this thing. I said, hey, let's try this. And he does it and I'm scared to death. I don't know this guy that well. I just met him, but he's like, let's throw a few hundred bucks on the roulette table and let's see what happens then. I think I won them three or four hundred bucks that day. They made some money.

Bill Reel [00:20:14] And from that moment forward we just hit it off. That night we had spent time out on the strip, just walking around. They got us, me and my wife, frozen hot chocolates and we just talked Mormonism for hours and we just hit it off. And so after this fireside had happened, he's like, I really like you. We're really connecting with you. Is there any chance you'd move to Utah? And so my wife went to bed that night, we talked and said, hey, what would it take? We'd always been looking for an opportunity. I worked at essentially a dead end job. I'd been in a floor covering store for 16 years and I was still the Lowest seniority salesman on staff.

Bill Reel [00:20:49] And I could sense it was never going to be something that could provide a living for my family where we could get out from under this living day to day kind of as we were. So we threw out some numbers, gave those to the Bloxhams, and they said, hey, I think we can work with these.

Bill Reel [00:21:05] And so they reached out maybe a month later or something and set up a chance for me and Amanda to go down and kind of do a three day trial, kind of get to know them a little better, spend some time in the pawn shop. Amanda got a chance to go out with dawn and Heather, who was Clay, Chris's brother Clay wife. And they started looking at houses that were for sale and getting an idea of what it would cost for us to rent or to buy.

Bill Reel [00:21:28] And the three days I was out there, pawn shop was great. On the way, drive back to the airport to go back to Ohio. They offered me a position. And then in April of I think 2000, was it February, April of 2000, somewhere in there, I moved 2015, early in the year 2015, I moved my family to southern Utah. And I went down a month early, drove the drive, took a little nap at a truck stop and then drove the rest to Utah and went to Family Pond the next day to start working. And the idea was that I would manage one of the stores, but it would take about a year of training.

Bill Reel [00:22:07] And my family came down about a month later and after about six months of training, they threw me into their hurricane location to manage the store. And I tell go ahead.

John Dehlin [00:22:15] Well, and you know, normally I don't, I try to avoid being self referential, but there's something really interesting to me here that I think is kind of historical that I also want to connect with you about because I don't know any other people that can really relate to the things that I've experienced. And also by the end of this present, by the end of this interview series, I want to talk about the void that might still exist to this day. But there's two things that I'm noting from this part of the story for you. One is that you're this convert who works, you know, selling carpeting or whatever, and yet you're being flown out to Nevada, Utah to be an authority or an expert to a, you know, six or eight generation pioneer based Mormon faith tradition.

John Dehlin [00:23:11] Like, and I can also just so like how crazy that must have been for you as like a Sandusky, Ohio carpet salesman to be in such demand by really smart and Wealthy people. Yeah, that must have been really mind blowing for you. And you kind of already referenced that when you're put up in the hotel. But the other thing that I think is just really worth noting, and this is something I experienced, let's just say 2007, 2008, all the way back to 2005, is how hungry, questioning Mormons are for someone to step in and solve the faith and doubt problem. They like, they will pay money and they will give their time and attention and loyalty and devotion on almost at a worshiping, almost at a level of worship to someone who can like stand up and say, I've got the answers.

John Dehlin [00:24:09] You can still have faith and believe because Mormons are just so thirsty for someone to solve the problem. And I, by 2015, I had kind of fallen out of graces and disappointed everyone because I had those people reaching out to me and 2005 and 6 and 7 and 8 and 9. But then I just couldn't keep it together. It just got too overwhelming and I, I got overloaded by all the LGBT deaths and all the divorces and all, you know what I mean?

John Dehlin [00:24:41] So it's, it's, it's almost like a baton was handed off because I'm excommunicated in 15. And the bloxoms are bringing you out to Nevada, Utah to kind of take over the mantle of the thoughtful, faithful Mormon podcaster. So I mean, it's. And, and part of why I'm mentioning all that again isn't to be self referential. By the end, we're going to ask where is that person now? But you took over the mantle then?

Bill Reel [00:25:11] Yeah, I'd done a little bit of that. I'd went to Sarnia, Canada, did a presentation there. I was invited to Indiana, near Purdue University to be a featured speaker at a youth conference for the stake or multi stake youth conference they did there. But this going to Henderson was just, I was enamored that somebody thought that my voice was important enough to be helpful. The folks questions were deeply sincere and it was an incredible night. And the reason I told the story was because going to southern Utah gave me a chance to get away from my Midwest ward where I had converted to.

Bill Reel [00:25:51] And it allowed me, as I came here to Utah, it allowed me to kind of begin to maybe think about the world a different way. And so being, you know, of course doing Mormon podcast in Ohio is sort of counterproductive. You can't really be in touch with anyone other than, you know, a Skype call or something.

Bill Reel [00:26:12] And so that was, I think a big part of it being in Southern Utah allowed me to really kind of take a break from feeling the loyalty to my ward family and just showing up for the sake of these are the people I love and gave me the chance to kind of lean into figuring out what was Mormonism.

Bill Reel [00:26:36] And of course, 2015 is also the year that the November policy happened. And that was big because I was at a point where I thought, maybe the church isn't true. Probably it isn't. There was even a moment where I tell myself, I'm going to tackle the CES letter and I print it off and I'm going to read it and highlight it, make markings. I'm going to. I'm going to go find.

Bill Reel [00:26:58] Find all the answers to this, and I'm just going to do a podcast, maybe five of them, maybe 10 of them, where I just solve all these problems. And as you well know, the problems themselves can't be easily solved. And knowing that I couldn't solve that, being away from the ward, having a chance to.

John Dehlin [00:27:16] Okay, wait, so you tried to resolve the csi?

Bill Reel [00:27:19] I read through and I got, like, halfway through, and I thought I would have to make so much conjecture to solve these that it. That I just am not going to do it. And so I took the thing and I set it on top of our piano at the time and said, like, no, I'm not going to be able to do that. And again, being away from the ward, I'm in this Utah ward, and things are different here. I don't have the street cred. I wasn't baptized in this ward. Like, the one I'd come from and the one I'd come from, everybody trusted me. If I raised my hand in class and said, hey, that historical point is inaccurate. Everybody knew that Bill Rhe did his research and we ought to trust him. Like, he knows the history better than we do.

John Dehlin [00:28:01] And that you'd been bishop.

Bill Reel [00:28:02] Yeah. And now I go to Utah, where everybody's like, yeah, that's just the guy who moved in, and he's just the one who's always poking at things, always pushing back at stuff. And the ward got really uncomfortable with any correction that I would offer if I sat in Sunday school. And they're doing. The one in particular was they did the lesson on Thomas Marsh and Simon's writer. And I remember telling the bishop, like, hey, just so you know, that that material for that lesson isn't true.

Bill Reel [00:28:30] Like, these guys, their lives are complicated. These might be part of a list of reasons they left for. But Thomas Marsh didn't leave simply because of some milk strippings. And it's also made more complex by the fact that Joseph Smith gets to decide that case. Meanwhile, his plural wife. One of his plural wives is the woman that's in the dispute with Marsh and his wife over the milk strippings.

Bill Reel [00:28:56] So once you know the context, you understand that of course Joseph Smith's gonna side with his plural wife. Simon's writer left for multiple reasons. There's lots of things that were going on in his life that were complex. And the bishop looked at me and said, how do you know you're right?

Bill Reel [00:29:12] And I said, I know. Cause I've read more. Like, I've read the history, I've read the context. I've went and searched up what Thomas Marsh's biography is. Essentially, if we read about his life, we understand the historical context.

Bill Reel [00:29:26] It got to the point where in Sunday school, if I raised my hand, the Sunday school teacher would say, we're not taking answers from you in front of the whole class. And so what used to be Christmas? I mentioned in the last part that going to church was like Christmas. What used to be Christmas ended up being me leaving church with my hand shaking as I'm going to church up in Santa Clara and feeling like it was emotionally harmful to me to be going every Sunday.

Bill Reel [00:29:57] And so the November 2015 policy comes out where the children of LGBT folks aren't permitted to participate in these saving ordinances of the Gospel. And that made no sense to me. Agency. And how do you punish someone else when we're all punished for our own sins and not Adam's transgression? And when you have all this doctrine that says that everyone has to be accountable for themself, and then you come up with a policy that says because your parents are this thing, you're somehow not able to be part of it. And even if you go through the mental gymnastics of going like, well, they can still go to church, you're like, well, they can go to church, but they can't exactly participate.

Bill Reel [00:30:40] And how much shame do we feel when our peers get to do things and we're not allowed, it ends up just hurting somebody. And so when that policy came out, it was a moment where I said, oh, the church is not only probably not true, it's also not good. And let me ask.

John Dehlin [00:31:03] Prior to that, though, as I mentioned, Deborah snuffers excommunicated in 13, K, Kelly in 14, and me in 15. When I got excommunicated, I wondered how that and the other excommunications even impacted you. There was a part of me that thought, why aren't more people. Why aren't more people outraged? You know what I'm saying? So how did you process the excommunication of us three?

Bill Reel [00:31:29] Yeah, I was well aware that there's a line and you can't cross that line. And I saw what you guys were doing in trying to shine a light on the truth, trying to make sure the history in its full scope is available, that people understand both sides of the issue. Excuse me, but you crossed what the church implicitly or explicitly set as its line. It's made it clear you can only go so far.

John Dehlin [00:32:00] What's the line?

Bill Reel [00:32:01] The line is that you can't criticize church leaders. The line is not that you believe figuratively in the Book of Mormon. The line is not that you have questions about Jesus Christ being the literal Messiah. The line is that you deem these prophets, seers, and revelators to either be dishonest or some other form of lack of ethics or integrity.

Bill Reel [00:32:27] And I remember along the way recording the episode but not publishing it of the Elder Holland, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire. Because I knew it crossed the line, and I left it in my drafts for months and months and months. In the meantime, as this is all going down in Santa Clara, Utah, I'm meeting with the stake president on a regular basis. I've got those conversations recorded. I've never released them, but there's three or four of them where I sit down every few months with him, and he says, like, hey, the Brethren are asking me to sit down with you. How are things going? Of course, you know this process well.

John Dehlin [00:33:01] Is this because your podcast started to become more strident or not?

Bill Reel [00:33:07] I would in part be guessing, but I know, at least in part it was because I wrote the 15 leaders of the church telling them what I saw as a moment in time where there were multiple problems at their feet. And I offered my suggestions on how they could best handle it. I don't have the let email with me, but I did post that on Facebook a few months ago. And I think it comes across as very kind, like, hey, like, you may have some blind spots, which you can't tell them again, but you may have some blind spots. These are some of the problems.

Bill Reel [00:33:41] LGBT issue, church history, so on and so forth. And I laid out the email, and immediately my stake president's reaching out and saying, hey, you sent a letter to the Brethren. You shouldn't have done that. I don't want to see you get in trouble. He was trying to work with me. He's like, I don't want to see you get in trouble, so let's do this. We're going to need to write them a letter and apologize. So I had. I wrote them a letter, wrote them a letter back and saying, I'm really sorry. I shouldn't have done that.

Bill Reel [00:34:06] Because for some reason, because they're prophets, seers and revelators, you're not allowed to suggest they might have a blind spot, even though they acknowledge they're fallible. And you would think anybody fallible would be willing to hear other points of view. But that seems also off limits to these men.

John Dehlin [00:34:25] Yeah, it's weird because the party line is the church doesn't even make the claim that its top leaders are infallible. In other words, the party line is the church acknowledges the fallibility of their top leaders. Right. But you are not allowed to ever say that.

Bill Reel [00:34:42] No.

John Dehlin [00:34:43] In church or to other members.

Bill Reel [00:34:45] No.

John Dehlin [00:34:45] Ever?

Bill Reel [00:34:46] No.

John Dehlin [00:34:46] Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:34:47] And so we met with that stake president several times. Once or twice with my wife, once or twice on my own, but it was every few months for him to check up on me. And I would always articulate things slightly softer than what I actually felt in my head. And I was telling you guys off the air, I think, before we started recording the first episode, that when a Latter Day Saint says they have questions, they already have doubts. And when they say they have doubts, they already have disbelief. Because it's not safe in a Mormon space to acknowledge where you're really at inside your head.

Bill Reel [00:35:23] And so it's only after you're at the very breaking point of being able to be honest about what's going on that you come forward and you're often articulating your questions and doubts as something less severe than where they're actually at.

Bill Reel [00:35:39] So I gave the stake President all my questions. He wasn't able to resolve them either. I don't know. He doesn't know the history. He doesn't know how any of these things add up. And he sort of dismisses it. Super kind, great stake President, I think, great human being, but really just downplays it. You know, these aren't the things we should worry about. As one of the general authorities said, these aren't the primary questions.

Bill Reel [00:36:04] And it got to the point where leaving church with my hands shaking and I would have headaches all day on Sunday, I decided just to step away from activity. So it was on a Sunday morning. I'm laying in bed, my wife has to teach a lesson that day in primary. And I look over at my wife and I say, I don't think I want to go anymore.

Bill Reel [00:36:23] And she says, are you serious? And not in any negative way. She was ready to go before I was. My kids were all ready to go before I was. I was the last one hanging on. And so as my wife is going, are you serious? I said, yeah, I don't want to do it anymore.

Bill Reel [00:36:39] And so in Santa Clara, she says, well, let me make a phone call. She calls the primary president, says, hey, I'm going to turn in my books today. We're not going to be coming back. You're going to have to find a new teacher.

Bill Reel [00:36:51] I was serving as the financial clerk in that ward. And as you well know, too, there are certain callings that once you indicate you're going to shine a light on things, they tend to take away your ability to influence others, and they tend to put you in callings where you are close to the leadership so they can keep an eye on you.

Bill Reel [00:37:14] And I could kind of sense that, like, I was there to be sort of watched over and babysat and not allowed to have any impact on the rest of the members of the ward. And if I wasn't going to be able to nudge the ward members towards a much more realistic, actual, factual history of the church and all the repercussions that come from that, then there really wasn't much good in me being there. And so I stepped away. And then we shortly after bought a home in. In Washington, Utah.

Life and Identity After Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [00:37:50] So let me ask about that. So one of the things I've noticed, whether it was, you know, I didn't leave the church, the church had to kick me out. Once I was in that role of being viewed as the person, the public face who could help people stay, I didn't. There was a part of me that never wanted to let that go.

John Dehlin [00:38:12] And I thought about Dan Witherspoon, who for many, many years had Mormon Matters podcast, who was in this public role where you talk to him privately and you'd say, whoa, your beliefs are barely recognizable as Mormon. But his public face, he had assumed the identity as being the guy that helped people stay. And I could just see how you almost didn't want to disappoint people and let them down, and you had come to have it be your identity as the guy that would help people stay. Katie Mount has also filled this role. She's on marriage, on a tightrope podcast. She holds down the believing point of view.

John Dehlin [00:38:49] And I thought, wow, whatever Katie's beliefs have been or are. Like, it's probably not going to not easy for Katie, if she were ever to really have serious doubts or questions, to step away because it's become her identity. So many people looked to her and Dan and others as like, their hope for staying in.

John Dehlin [00:39:10] So I guess I'm asking you, how did you reconcile the decision to step away with knowing that, like, people loved you and your position so much, holding on the believing perspective that they would fly you out or move you to Utah to be that guy that defended faith?

Bill Reel [00:39:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:39:36] Most people just can't walk away from that identity. But you, you started to walk away from that identity. How did you do that?

Bill Reel [00:39:45] Yeah, much. Earlier in the podcast at Mormon discussion, I did an episode where I compartmentalize my beliefs in my head in that there were parts of my brain that clearly concluded the church wasn't what it claimed to be, and there were parts of my head that wanted it to be true and chose to believe.

Bill Reel [00:40:06] And I was always sort of withholding, being fully honest with my audience because I felt like if I told my audience there's parts of me that really think the church isn't what it claims to be, that people are going to walk away. And so I did an episode where I finally said, I'm just going to tell them. I'm just going to tell my audience that I've got doubts and that this isn't as easy as I put off that it is, and that these questions are real and maybe there aren't any good answers. And the possibility is the church isn't true. And the title of the episode was Our Bad Days.

Bill Reel [00:40:38] And when I did the episode, I was scared. After it's over, I'm waiting for the responses to come in, and I'm expecting blowback. And what I end up getting is numerous people who said, I'm so grateful for your vulnerability.

Bill Reel [00:40:51] That early moment taught me that if you just be yourself, generally, things work out fine in that arena of, like, how people perceive you. So when the moment comes that I am stepping away from Mormonism, I didn't feel any of that. The only thing I felt was that the apologists who are critical of me said things like, hey, in three years, Bill Real will be out of the church. And I didn't want them to be right.

Bill Reel [00:41:18] So any resistance to stepping away would have had just some little tangling to that kind of a story of apologists placing bets that I was going to be no longer active in the church. But once I stepped away, like, I.

Bill Reel [00:41:35] I don't Know how to explain it and you'll understand this. But the weight of doing it and trying your best to believe when your rational brain is telling you that that's the least likely answer actually comes with you feeling a lot more contentment and peace. And so Mormons are always talking about the Holy Ghost and the peace of the spirit.

Bill Reel [00:41:58] But when you step away from the expectations and burden that Mormon orthopraxy is, I think it's a much lighter burden to care. It's just a much lighter life.

John Dehlin [00:42:09] So you talked about, like, your handshaking when you would leave your Sunday ward experience, but what about that decision to go on the podcast, by the way? You're earning money. You've got a bunch of followers there that probably mean a lot more to you than your ward members by this point.

Bill Reel [00:42:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:29] Like that decision to inform your audience that you no longer believe and are stepping away on the podcast. That's a much bigger decision than stepping away from your local ward.

Bill Reel [00:42:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:44] So how. How do you describe the burden of on the podcast holding down the defender? What was that burden like?

Bill Reel [00:42:56] It wasn't present. I just chose to be honest about what my journey was and to not pull any punches.

John Dehlin [00:43:02] So it didn't get hard for you, defend the believing point of view?

Bill Reel [00:43:05] It didn't. When the November 2015 policy came out, I put out two or three episodes about it where I said this was an emotional gut punch that I could no longer choose to believe in a church that was deeply hurting people in this moment. And so when the time came for that, we stepped away from activity. I was just putting out episodes, admitting that my hands were shaking and that I was receiving trauma and that I've stepped away from going to church.

Bill Reel [00:43:34] And the response was never any significant degree of criticism. It was people going, hey, take care of yourself. Do self care. And the podcast kept growing. I never felt like when I went from being in being portrayed as an active, outward believer to acknowledging that the church traumatizing me and that I'm going to step away from activity and take care of myself, the podcast kept growing, so I never felt any evidence that was coming back to me that said that I was risking something. It seemed like being authentic and transparent continued to work.

John Dehlin [00:44:14] Interesting. Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:44:15] And I also had friends. I was in southern Utah.

John Dehlin [00:44:17] And were the Bloxoms bummed to see you leave the church?

Bill Reel [00:44:21] No, I think they were wrestling with the same problems at the same time. Their ward was beginning to silence them. Their bishop told them they couldn't give talks anymore. They couldn't give lessons, they couldn't participate. And they were much softer than me. They were constantly trying to help people stay in and. And I was to the point where I was probably not doing that as much. And they were still being silenced in their ward too. So I think, I think they felt very much of the same sort of feelings and thoughts.

John Dehlin [00:44:48] Okay, yeah. All right. So you make that decision to come out as a non believer. I guess this is the point where we kind of referenced the joke that developed as Bill Real is John Dillon once was, and as John Dehlin is

Bill Reel [00:45:02] Bill R. May become.

John Dehlin [00:45:04] So you say you didn't like, you probably heard that before. And did you're saying, did you resist that of ending up like John De Linda?

Bill Reel [00:45:13] When the first time I heard it, I thought that's silly. How can you ever assume that someone will be just like someone else? And the reality is that deconstructing one's belief inside a high demand fundamentalist religion has the same trajectory as hundreds of thousands, if not millions and millions of people deconstructing their beliefs inside high demand fundamentalist religions. And so if you're willing to dive into the history and if you're willing to be a critical thinker and if you understand what it means to choose the conclusion that is the most rational, then the majority of people in those faiths where they are demonstrably untrue are going to sooner or later figure it out and they're going to find themselves on the same trajectory whereas five years earlier they thought they could hang in there and continue to believe forever.

John Dehlin [00:46:01] Yeah, but for you, what?

Bill Reel [00:46:06] For me, I lost belief. And once we moved to Washington, Utah, we never attended church there. I still don't know to this day where the ward building is. The only building I know of is the Stake center where I was excommunicated because I never went to church there. And when we got there to Washington, again, I'm not active anymore, but I did take the time to email the bishop and I did take the time to email the stake President. And I said, just so you know, I'm Bill Real, I do a podcast. You ought to know that I've moved into your ward. I'm sure the top leadership of the church is going to reach out to you.

Bill Reel [00:46:38] They're going to want you to talk to me. Just so you know, I'm more than happy to talk. Let me know. I don't go to church anymore, but I'm more than happy to have a conversation. And at that point the Stake President said, hey, I just got called.

Bill Reel [00:46:53] I'm really overwhelmed with what all the things I got to kind of figure out to be the stake president. If you just give me some time, I'll reach out to you. And some time went by and he never did. It was about a year after we moved there that he finally reached out and he said, you know, the Brethren have been constantly telling me to reach out to you. And I keep putting them off. Oops, sorry. I keep putting them off so that I can get used to being a stake president and figure all these things out. But I guess I can't put them off anymore.

Bill Reel [00:47:18] I'll sit down and have a conversation. And so he sat down with me again multiple times and we talked and I gave him the problems and he couldn't resolve them either. And it was to the point where I knew, like, let me articulate this the right way. So I ended up forming a written list of like eight questions and I picked the eight most damaging things in my mind to the truth claims of the church and I articulated them in what I thought was a very respectful, but you couldn't argue with it. And I said, do me a favor, President, I said, take this to the Brethren and see if they can answer these.

Bill Reel [00:47:58] And he said, oh, I'm sure they can. And then he went off and then he came back, whatever, three weeks later, whatever it was. And he said, they told me that they're not going to answer these. They're refusing to do that.

Bill Reel [00:48:11] And I said, sure, because they can't. In the meantime. I finally was at a point where I'm ready, I'm okay with whatever happens. Let the chips fall where they may. So I finally published the Elder Holland Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire, where I showed that on four or five occasions, Elder Holland seems to be intentionally obfuscating or telling flat out a lie. And the easiest one to point to is when he says that we have, you know, I've been in meetings, we have double digit state creation every week of our lives, you know, mas amanos as he added some Spanish in.

Bill Reel [00:48:46] And we could show that they had only created 1.6 stakes a week or something. And the difference in what he was claiming versus what it actually was. And he's in the meetings and he's listening in the meetings and he's one of the deciding voices of how the Church will shift and move in these policies and these issues.

Bill Reel [00:49:09] It just didn't make sense. The other one was when he talked to the British broadcasting guy about Mitt Romney and you know, the Temple Oaths that he'd made the death oaths and talking about the scmc, there was dishonesty

John Dehlin [00:49:26] there, strikes in the church membership committee.

Bill Reel [00:49:29] When he said that There was not one red cent used in Prop 8 and it was of tithing. And then it was apparent that the church had funded hundreds of thousands of dollars either in goods, in kind or in cash.

John Dehlin [00:49:42] I think it was like 40 million. They estimated the church.

Bill Reel [00:49:45] But there was a demons. There was a data point document that showed that the church had donated on this instance $200,000. And so in that instance, when you say not one Red Sea and here's the piece of paper that says you at least gave 200 grand, you know that something's not right. And so the moment I published that episode, it was two weeks later, two guys in a suit and white shirts and a tie knock on my door. I open the door and are you brother real? Yep. Here you go. And it's an envelope. You open it up and you're called to a disciplinary court.

John Dehlin [00:50:17] Well, you had mentioned you knew with what happened to me and others, I

Bill Reel [00:50:21] knew what the line was, what the

John Dehlin [00:50:22] line was and you decided to cross it knowingly.

Bill Reel [00:50:25] Yeah, I wasn't going anymore. I didn't believe my effectiveness of being a truth teller on the inside was done. And so now being an inactive critic of the church, it was to the point where it didn't really, it didn't really feel threatening anymore to my well being then to publish that and just let it happen. And so I sort of knew the moment I published that that that was going to go down a track that was going to end with me not being in the church anymore.

John Dehlin [00:50:53] Yeah. So what was that like? Well, first of all, Holland had been like, I had, you probably know this. I had two conversations with Holland and I had one conversation with Marlon Jensen, all before I was excommunicated. So they reached out to me before they reached out to you.

John Dehlin [00:51:12] Similarly. I know, I remember feeling like, oh, I don't want to totally throw them under the bus because they're doing the best they can and, and you know, they've got a hard job and the church means a lot to a lot of people. And so I remember feeling conflicted that they knew where the bodies are buried. They weren't being fully honest, they weren't coming clean about the problems. But yet they had shown kindness to me. They had reached out and I felt some loyalty to them to not totally throw them under the bus.

John Dehlin [00:51:46] What made you decide that? And there's also just the Idea of like. And many do this. It's like, well, okay, for me, the church isn't true anymore, but it means a lot to a lot of people. So I'm just going to kind of go away, quietly disappear and let those who find value in it keep finding value in it.

Bill Reel [00:52:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:06] What made you, number one, betray Holland's confidences and number two, become a whistleblower instead of just letting orthodox believers live in blissful ignorance.

Bill Reel [00:52:18] Yeah. When you understand the unhealthiness that a high demand fundamentalist religion entails, you recognize that people, whether they know it or not, are being hurt. Often they know it. Folks on the margins, LGBT folks in Mormonism, for instance, women in Mormonism, people with doubts in Mormonism, people of color in Mormonism, being a truth teller and letting the chips fall where they may. People invest their lives in this thing, and they're only given a very narrow view and narrative of what that is. And if those people were given a complete, transparent view of that, of it, with data on both sides, lots of those people would make different decisions.

Bill Reel [00:53:08] And people have a right to make informed decisions. People have a right to consent to when things are hurtful. People don't deserve unintentional harm or unnecessary trauma. And so being an 8 on the enneagram, a sort of justice warrior, I just. The truth matters and you just tell the truth. And I wanted to nudge these guys to tell the truth.

John Dehlin [00:53:29] But there is also the, the counterpoint or even the irony or the paradox that regardless of the church being true, it means a lot to a lot of people and a lot of people find value in it.

Bill Reel [00:53:45] And those people, those people are welcome to ignore me. Those people don't have to listen.

John Dehlin [00:53:49] Yeah, but if you like, you know, becoming a news story and if you are the hope for all these people who want to be believers and all of a sudden you're publicly saying it's not true, you're kind of starting to threaten, spoil a lot of people's positive experiences. Why not just quietly fade away?

Bill Reel [00:54:11] Why should the truth teller be punished? Why should the truth teller hide the truth? Why does the church get the benefit of the doubt? If people believe, people are welcome to continue to believe. If somebody standing up and going, hey, I'm just going to tell the truth, you're welcome to do whatever you want with that information. If you want to disbelieve it, go for it. People who are shining a light and compelling dishonest systems into starting to tell more of their truth, that certainly shouldn't

John Dehlin [00:54:45] be a bad Thing Cam pushing back a tiny bit. But you joined the church when you were 17, and it really gave you focus and direction and confidence and an opportunity to serve. It's kind of like that, that Buddhist metaphor. There's this raft that gets you across the river. Once you cross the river, you can destroy the raft or you can leave it for other people to get across the river. In a way, by speaking out publicly and becoming a whistleblower, you're kind of destroying the raft or trying to destroy the raft that got you across the river. Like some would say, that's ungrateful.

Bill Reel [00:55:28] Yeah. There is real harm being done. There are kids who take their lives. There are people whose marriages end. There are folks whose children don't talk to their parents anymore. At the end of the day, I think there's a right and a responsibility to lay all the information out and let people make informed decisions. And if they choose not to read the books or listen to the podcast or consider the logic of where the argument goes, then they're more than welcome to do that. But every person who is.

Bill Reel [00:56:03] Who would make a different decision if they had the information and would be better for it has a right to the truth. You can't make everybody happy. Telling the truth is it avoids having to worry about which people you hurt and which people you help. You just tell the truth.

Bill Reel [00:56:19] Truth matters. None of do. Do you want to be lied to? Like, sometimes we think we do. Maybe some people do, but I don't think anybody should ever be punished for going, like, hey, if you want to be lied to, that's fine. But here's the truth.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] Well, there's kind of the validity and the utility sort of dynamic where, okay, we. We wanted it to be true. It wasn't, but it's still valuable. It's still good. So, like, keep going. Let it stay good for the people who find value in it. Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:56:51] Then keep going. My message isn't for you. My message is for the folks who are wondering what this mess is. They feel all alone. They're diving into the history. They can't make it add up. They're feeling the stress that if they come to their wife and reveal that, that they're going to end up in a divorce. They're worried that their kids won't talk to them, and they sense that they're all by themselves.

Bill Reel [00:57:11] They deserve to have the truth situation on a table. And for them to know that they're not alone and this isn't some crazy thing. When you look at folks like Terrell, givens or Patrick Mason. And as they acknowledge, like, hey, you're right, this is messy.

Bill Reel [00:57:36] I got to imagine that folks who are already discovering that things don't quite add up get some sort of relief from that. Like, hey, there are other people in the church. And so then the believer who is strident, you know, they want to believe, there's also the opportunity for them to go, like, oh, like there are these other voices who say that this is really messy. Maybe I'll have more compassion towards my doubting member. I'm curious, by the way, if I can maybe ask you.

Bill Reel [00:58:05] We did an interview before where you asked the same question. And my hunch is that you've got a way in which you frame that that answers that question without having to argue about utility. And I'm curious what your thoughts are about the truth and whether it has a right to sit at the table with all the bs, Right. Like, we get to say Thomas Marsh left over this. We get to say Joseph Smith used spectacles. We get to say Joseph Smith's treasure digging, he only made $14 a month and he got away from it quickly. We get to say there's probably a missing long scroll.

John Dehlin [00:58:46] We, meaning the apologists say that we,

Bill Reel [00:58:49] meaning that there's one side of the story that is safe to be told and the other side that wants to tell the truth gets to feel shame for coming forward in the first place. And so I'm curious what you see as the response to people who would pose the question you just did, because I know you don't think that that's not the way you frame it. What is it that makes the lies be allowed to sit at the table? But the truth teller gets shamed into seeing that he should value utility or he should value some other cause, and meanwhile, the whitewashing, the dishonesty, the obfuscation somehow gets to get a free pass. Because the only way you can counter the dishonesty, the lack of transparency, is to put the truth on the table next to it.

John Dehlin [00:59:44] Yeah, well, honestly, I think our views are virtually identical. I frame it in terms of informed consent, that if you know the used car you're selling people is a lemon, they deserve to know that. And it's dishonest to withhold that information.

Bill Reel [01:00:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:01] Now, if they choose to buy a lemon and they pay a price that has adjusted into it, the fact that it's a lemon and they buy it with full consent and knowledge, full informed consent, then more power to them.

John Dehlin [01:00:17] So, yeah, it's a combination of the informed consent and all the harm, like the church, the Mormon Church does a material amount of harm. It does significant good in kind of that first half of life where it gives people who are lost meaning and purpose or people who are young and growing up, it gives them a sense of identity and structure, meaning and purpose. And that's what's always difficult, is I had a good experience growing up. You had a good experience in your late teens, early 20s.

John Dehlin [01:00:44] But once you realize that Scientology is the same way and Jehovah's Witnesses are the same way, and the People's Temple of Jim Jones was the same way, and then on the other hand, you see people literally dying, divorce is happening, depression and anxiety and families being torn apart. You get enough exposure to the problems and you say, this is. I don't care how much good's being done on. On the first half. The. The pain and. And carnage in the second half is completely unacceptable.

Bill Reel [01:01:16] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:01:17] So I just like to hear other people. Maybe it's validating for me to hear you say the same things I believe. I don't know.

Bill Reel [01:01:24] The nonsense always gets a seat at the table in Mormonism. The carefully worded denials, the obfuscation, the whitewashed stories and narratives like the gospel topic essays. I'm not asking that those be thrown in the trash and that only my point of view sit at the table. I'm saying there's plenty of seats at the table. Let's put all the information there, all sides. Because when you allow the truth to sit there, it also compels the dishonest narratives to become more accurate. And you're watching Mormonism have to become more accurate. And you have this idea like, oh, if Mormonism were here, then all that good it does would be gone. No, I mean, to some degree, there'd be some other good that would replace it.

John Dehlin [01:02:08] Right.

Bill Reel [01:02:09] As you've left Mormonism and you've moved on to your life as you know it, does your life still have good in it? Is there still good things happening? So leave. There's this idea that when you're in the church that if you leave, everything's going to go south and it scares you so that you don't step away when you really feel like you should.

Bill Reel [01:02:27] And when folks actually do step away, sure, there's the dark night of the soul. It's a hard moment, but most people report that once they've gotten through that cognitive dissonance and that dark night of the soul, that. That their lives are actually better.

Bill Reel [01:02:42] And so, as you're pointing out, I don't need Bill Real's Mormon discussion or his ideas around polygamy or the Book of Abraham to be the only option at the table. Let's put all the data there. Let's put all sides there. Let's encourage people to know where to find the information and encourage people to get informed and to make decisions. I don't think the truth teller should be seen as doing harm and the dishonest person be allowed to get a free pass. That doesn't make any sense to me.

John Dehlin [01:03:14] Yeah. And most of the time I try and conduct these interviews for the benefit of others. Right now, this topic at this point in this part two of our episode. Yeah, this is for me. And I'm just going to say this, that I tried to do it. And I think that what I tried to do with Mormon stories early on, I had never seen done before. I guess. Let me take that back. Sunstone, as a magazine and as a forum, tried in Dialogue magazine to some extent they tried to offer this middle ground of balancing faith with doubt. And by the early 1990s, they were dashed to bits in terms of the mainstream believing Mormon church.

John Dehlin [01:04:01] The general authorities had denounced both Dialogue and Sunstone. BYU professors were scared away from participating in them. And that almost forced Sunstone in Dialogue really to become more and more critical. And they were marginalized, especially after the church started excommunicating people who participated in Dialogue in Sunstone, which sent a chill into Mormon discourse for at least a decade, if not more. When the Internet came about, let's say The Mormon Internet 2.0, 2004, like, I was inspired by Dialogue in Sunstone, but I was also discouraged by the September 6th. But Mormon Stories by 2005 was like this.

John Dehlin [01:04:48] It's like this naive optimism. No, let's try again. And with the Internet this time, they'll be able to be this place in believing Mormonism where you can talk openly about the hard stuff and have faith and doubt coexisting and somehow we're all going to be good. Right. And it got dashed for me.

John Dehlin [01:05:06] Mormon stories got dashed and then you tried to pick it up and it got dashed. But between, between your demise in faithful Mormonism, which was what, 2016, when was your excommunication?

Bill Reel [01:05:21] Was 2018, 2018.

John Dehlin [01:05:23] So between 2018 and today, which is 2023, there is no place anywhere where a faithful Mormon will entertain both believing progressive Mormons and ex Mormons and doubters. Nowhere.

Bill Reel [01:05:46] Right.

John Dehlin [01:05:46] Like Terell Givens still gives public facing faithful firesides, but speaks in a coded language off the Record in a very doubt compatible way. But he won't voice it publicly.

Bill Reel [01:06:02] Same with Richard Bushman where he privately says the church is a thoroughly corrupt bureaucracy, that I sat at a table and heard him listen, heard him say, in a group of like seven people,

John Dehlin [01:06:11] yeah, or Richard Bushman will give a private fireside where he doesn't really think it's going to go on the Internet.

Bill Reel [01:06:16] Dominant narrative isn't true.

John Dehlin [01:06:18] The dominant narrative isn't true. But then as soon as he's called out on it, he tries to re spin it in a different way. And everybody gets mad at the person that publishes that private recording. Somehow we're the enemy if we publish what he actually said because you don't say the quiet things out loud. But even if it's the Faith Matters podcast, even if it's the Restore conference, even Patrick Mason, who I love, he'll, he'll do. And I love you, Patrick. And this isn't me disparaging Patrick in any way. These people are all just operating in the best way that they can within a difficult system.

John Dehlin [01:06:57] Yeah, but they'll, they'll answer tough questions. But where in Mormonism to this day is there someone trying to do what we did, which is like, hey, yeah, let's bring in Grant Palmer or the equivalent today. Let's bring in John de Lynn, but let's also bring in Richard Bushman and let's talk about all the hard stuff. It doesn't exist to this day. Like after it failed with you, can you think of a place where faith and doubt really coexist? Yeah, in an unfiltered, honest way.

Bill Reel [01:07:28] These men, when the names you mentioned, Givens, Bushman, Patrick Mason, you can just. Again, we've been in enough conversations with those folks that to some degree what they believe privately is different than what they believe publicly. And when Patrick sat down with you in your most recent long conversation with him, he said, John, you and I think he sort of accused you, but it wasn't you that did it, it was me. Actually. He accused you of saying that he isn't allowed or won't permit himself to be, to talk with believing places where he can be asked follow up questions.

Bill Reel [01:08:10] And you said, that wasn't me. And it wasn't you. It was me and I sort of stand by it. Like he did sit down with you, but what recently happened, he agrees to do something where he's going to sit down with you and Jana Reese and you're going to talk about messy issues. And the next thing you know, he

John Dehlin [01:08:25] can't and it's not because he didn't want to, he genuinely did.

Bill Reel [01:08:29] But there was the pushback.

John Dehlin [01:08:30] There's so much outrage.

Bill Reel [01:08:31] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:08:32] And it wasn't just outrage by orthodox believers, although he got a ton of pushback there. My understanding is it was progressive Mormons who just said this is a bridge too far, talking openly about the difficult issues, especially with non believers in 2023. We're not any better off than we were in 1993. Like literally was that 20 years later, 30 years later. We're not 30 years later. Oh, wow. I never thought of that. 2023 is 30 years after 1993, which is the September 6th. We're not any better off 30 years after the September 6th than we were 30 years ago. There's still no place in Mormonism to talk openly about doubts or to have a bridge between believers and non believers. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?

Bill Reel [01:09:23] What does it say about a system where the folks on the inside who understand the issues would all sort of self admit that they know they can't exactly say what they actually think? And you and I both understand that those scholars, historians, the intellectuals who are on the inside edge, they're more than happy to put themselves in places where they answer tough questions. They're much more hesitant to put themselves in places where they'll be asked the logical follow up question to their answer.

John Dehlin [01:10:02] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:10:03] And so folks like Terrell Givens will no longer sit in spaces with you or me. Because it's not just that we'll ask the hard question. They've got no problem with that. They've got a nice fluffy answer for that. The trouble is, you and I know what the next logical question is that now walks them into the corner. That shows that their position is less rational than the critics. Conclusion. And in that regard, they don't want to be pushed.

John Dehlin [01:10:25] And not because they're cowards, but because they're trying to, number one, manage their social capital and number two, they're trying to make the biggest difference that they can from within.

Bill Reel [01:10:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:36] And so they just, they basically say, John crossed the line, Kate Kelly crossed the line, Jeremy Runnels crossed the line, Bill Real crossed the line. We know where the line is and we're not going to cross it. And it's not just criticizing the brethren, it's talking openly about certain third rail truth claims issues. They just have to stay away from it. From them.

Bill Reel [01:11:00] Yeah. I have one caveat to push back to what you just said, which is that those folks have set themselves up as the helpers of people in faith crisis. Patrick Mason's written books, planted, for instance, Terrell Givens written books, right?

Bill Reel [01:11:20] They set themselves up as truth tellers. So when moments come up, such as the SEC report that happened recently, when the SEC report says that, that the top leadership of the church intentionally unethically manipulated things so that they could make more money and less people would know in ways that violated US Law, then if you set yourself up as a truth teller, you have a responsibility to. When the moments get hard, when the rubber meets the road and it becomes quite obvious that your church is being deceptive, that you speak up, like, you don't always get to go like, oh, that issue would push me out.

Bill Reel [01:12:02] So on this issue, I'll be a truth teller and I'll help you resolve your faith crisis. And you should trust me over people like John de Lynn or Bill Real. But then when the moment comes that your commentary is going to put you across the edge, that you go like, oh, now, now I'm just going to be quiet because then you shouldn't have been a truth teller in the first place.

Bill Reel [01:12:23] Like, if you're going to be honest, be honest. If we're only going to tell the truth when it's easy, what does that say about who we are telling the truth? We only know the integrity of a person when they do things, when it's difficult.

Bill Reel [01:12:37] And what I've learned about those voices on the inside edge is that when it's time to call a spade a spade and it's obvious to everyone paying attention, those voices tend to be silent.

John Dehlin [01:12:48] And if you talk to them about why, again, it's not because they disagree with us, it's not because they're cowards.

Bill Reel [01:12:55] They privately told me they agree with me.

John Dehlin [01:12:56] Yeah, some of those voices, but it's, it's just they're basically saying we want to maintain influence. Like Patrick has said, I, my, I feel called to influence left of center, moderate and right of center, moderates within the Mormon Church. And he found out that, announcing that he was going to do a podcast with me called Mormon News Weekly and Generic, that he would jeopardize his ability to influence moderates in the church. And so it's not cowardice, it's simply pragmatism. What do you think is that for you? Is that A, respectable or B, unethical or cowardly or somewhere in the middle?

Bill Reel [01:13:40] As long as everybody who's looking to those voices to solve the problems for them recognize that they're self admitting that sometimes they're going to tell you the truth. And sometimes they're not to go ahead and cover their ass.

John Dehlin [01:13:52] Okay. They're not. Not telling the truth. They're remaining silent. When the topic becomes too.

Bill Reel [01:13:59] Yeah. Radioactive, then when do I know when to trust them and when not?

John Dehlin [01:14:04] Well, you can always trust them. They just won't always offer commentary on all the problems. They'll stay silent when it's when they're preserving their capital or their. Yeah. Memberships.

Bill Reel [01:14:17] Basically, man this. Whether you believe Mormonism is true or not, there are souls at stake. And if you are only going to tell the truth when it's convenient for you.

John Dehlin [01:14:31] But say framing it as telling the truth implies they're being dishonest.

Bill Reel [01:14:35] But doesn't the church teach that dishonesty is also the withholding of truth? Isn't that in its gospel principles manual? Doesn't the church tell you that one form of dishonesty is not telling the truth? But saying nothing when you know the truth is something else, doesn't it? Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:14:58] I mean, we are taught. I was taught by the Mormon Church what complete honesty is. Yeah. And it's not withholding the full truth.

Bill Reel [01:15:06] So why are the. Why is the truth teller me or the truth teller you being punished? Like, I understand wanting to stay and have influence. They're welcome to do that. They're going to continue to do it tomorrow. It's fine. But all I'm saying is that everyone who's listening to those voices needs to understand that they selectively choose when to help you and when to protect themselves. And that those aren't the same thing. And that you. If you're going to go to them for answers, you need to understand that sometimes you're getting a good answer and sometimes you're getting something else that is meant to keep them protected but not really give you the full information so you can make an informed decision.

John Dehlin [01:15:44] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:15:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:15:45] And I want to be careful with this part because I see them as honorable, good people.

Bill Reel [01:15:51] Me too, by the way.

John Dehlin [01:15:52] Yeah. Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:15:55] And I really respect there's multiple facets and components to this complex conversation. Somebody protecting themself doesn't make someone bad. It's just that the people who are taking their advice need to know what it is up front. Let's not call it apples when it's oranges.

John Dehlin [01:16:12] You're saying more informed consent.

Bill Reel [01:16:14] Yeah. So if I'm. If I'm. And I won't necessarily name a specific one of them, but if I'm that group of individuals, then my obligation is to tell you up front I can't tell you everything I would like to. The things I do tell you. I will try to be helpful and honest, but there are going to be moments where I'm silent because the church isn't what I thought it would be on this particular issue and I can't frame my thing, my view, outwardly in a way that's going to allow me to stay safely in the church. Then tell people that.

John Dehlin [01:16:42] So just like cigarettes have a warning label that says cigarette smoking can cause cancer, you're almost saying faithful Mormon apologists should have a disclaimer at the beginning of their book or at the beginning of their fireside. You believers need to know that if any issue comes up during this book or this fireside or this discourse or this podcast that is truly deeply problematic, that the brethren aren't going to, like these faithful apologists are going to remain silent and not speak out sometimes about the most important issues.

Bill Reel [01:17:17] I'm saying it is dishonest on one end to write books claiming you have answers to the problems and that you're here to be the safe guide to help people through their faith crisis. And on the other end, when it's uncomfortable or there's risk to your profession or career or influence, that you suddenly don't tell the truth so that people can make informed decisions.

John Dehlin [01:17:43] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, they kind of are carrying water

Bill Reel [01:17:47] for the institutional church and which allows the church to perpetuate harm and to make healthy changes much more slowly. In other words, if when the SEC report had came out and we all had a chance to read it and we all saw that our top leadership, the first presidency, group after group. Right. Hinckley, Monson, Nelson, Faust, Eyring, Uchtdorf, Ochs at the very minimum. And probably the other 12 too. Right. But at least those top guys. What would have happened if Terrell Givens and Patrick Mason and Jim Bennett and all the other folks that are these voices in the space came out and said what they really thought, would it have compelled the church to behave differently and be more accountable to what it did? It might have. And when.

John Dehlin [01:18:39] No, I think what it. What would have happened is there would have been another round of excommunications. They all would have been cut off.

Bill Reel [01:18:45] Which also would have been eye opening and risky to the church.

John Dehlin [01:18:47] Yeah, they would have all been cut off. Their influence. And by the way, I think I take Patrick Mason at his word.

Bill Reel [01:18:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:54] That he's a sincere believer. So it's not like he's hiding and lying to cover up something he knows to be untrue.

Bill Reel [01:19:02] Right. But when you withhold information that would allow somebody to make an informed conclusion, whether it's a conclusion you agree with or not, when they are given the information that allows them to make an informed conclusion about how they're going to make important decisions in their life, and you hold that back, you have a right and a responsibility to acknowledge to that person that I'm not giving you everything here. I would like you to stay. I'd like you to believe. Again, I do also think these men are good. They're trying to fix things in a different way than I am. But a whole load of people are being deceived into thinking they're being told the truth all the time and that it's John Dillon and Bill Real who are being dishonest.

John Dehlin [01:19:46] The full truth. Right. I think they're not. They're telling the truth. They're not telling the full truth.

Bill Reel [01:19:52] And when you have an opportunity to tell the full truth and you don't, and people get hurt in the process, we have to own that there is some level of deceptiveness in that. And you can argue with me, but I would simply point back to the Gospel Principles Manual, which says that it is church doctrine and theology that when you withhold the truth, when you could have shared it and someone got hurt, you were being deceptive.

John Dehlin [01:20:22] Yeah. I mean, I think that's at least a fair argument.

Bill Reel [01:20:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:20:26] And. But I don't think they're even able to engage in the argument. Honestly.

Bill Reel [01:20:30] They can't.

John Dehlin [01:20:31] Yeah. Yeah. And what's also complicated by this is, at least when it comes to Bushman, Givens, Mason, Flumen, there are financial entanglements. And I'm not saying that they're consciously dishonest or sellouts. I'm not saying that. But there are financial and reputational and occupational entanglements for Givens, for Bushman, for Mason, for Flumen, for others. You know, even. Even Robin. What is it? Robin Jensen. Robin Jensen and. And. And works of the Church History Department. Marlon Jensen and others.

Bill Reel [01:21:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:15] The pensions. Yeah. Like.

Bill Reel [01:21:17] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:21:18] There's really serious implications for them. That. That just. It takes a real. I mean, I think that's why Grant Palmer's kind of a hero is because, like, it's really rare the person that's going to put their career or their pension or their reputation at risk. You know, most people are going to stop short of putting their career, their reputation, their social influence, and their. Their salaries and eventually their retirement's at risk.

Bill Reel [01:21:52] I might make the same decision they do in the position that they're in. The difference would be it doesn't get you excommunicated and it doesn't get you fired. If you just look at the folks and say, hey, I'm not able to tell you everything that I think, I'm not going to be able to give you the information that's running through my head on both sides. You're gonna have to make your own decision, and you're gonna have to know that I'm only being partially helpful.

John Dehlin [01:22:20] But that's like. That's like pooping in the middle of the cake. You know what I mean? If you're like. If a bunch of people are coming thirsting for answers that they want cake, and you're like, I'm gonna take a dump right in the middle of the cake. Forgive my graphics. I'm gonna take a big dump right in the middle of the cake. But feel free to eat around the peasant.

Bill Reel [01:22:39] Doesn't inform consent mean you know that there's in the cake? Informed consent means I know that before I eat the cake, there's some in it. That's informed consent. Informed consent requires all the information on the table.

John Dehlin [01:22:54] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:22:54] So it's okay to protect yourself. I might do the same. But then you owe it to people that you acknowledge that you're protecting yourself.

John Dehlin [01:23:03] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:23:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:23:07] Well. And. And I just want to say, still, there's influence that Bushman, Givens, Mason, Flumen, and all the others. There's positive change they're going to be able to make from within.

Bill Reel [01:23:24] They're part of the good you and

John Dehlin [01:23:25] I are never going to be able to make. So you're. Say it again.

Bill Reel [01:23:28] They're. They're some of the good guys. They're on the right team.

John Dehlin [01:23:30] Yeah. There.

Bill Reel [01:23:31] I'm not. I'm not. People will confuse me because of how directly I'm saying it, that what I'm doing is saying they're bad guys and they're doing something wrong in terms of protecting themselves. I'm not. I'm saying that by protecting yourself and pretending you're not, you're being deceptive to the audience you claim to be helping. But what you're doing is you're actually having that audience make decisions that are not based on informed consent.

John Dehlin [01:24:01] Yeah. And so, like, I guess one way to think about it is life is messy, and there's no one. There's no one who kind of fully has their hands clean, including you and me.

Bill Reel [01:24:11] No. And, in fact, if I were to ask you what you regret most. One of the things I regret most is the moments that I said things to soften it and I wasn't more honest and truthful about what I actually thought inside my head.

John Dehlin [01:24:25] So you did this.

Bill Reel [01:24:26] I did the. I did the same thing.

John Dehlin [01:24:28] These critiques you have, didn't you? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I still do, but we.

Bill Reel [01:24:33] But let's own it. Yeah, that's the thing. Let's just own it. Yeah, I shouldn't have done that. People deserve to make informed decisions. I do think it's good to slow people down. I think it's great to have fair Mormon and the church and Terrell Givens and John de Lynn, because what happens is when someone once knows it, they sort of know it's not true. But there's too much relationship risk with their spouse or their children. They get to create this mental gymnastic path in their head, this Rube Goldberg machine. That's a kudos to Patrick Mason, too, I think. Oh, that's.

John Dehlin [01:25:06] Yeah, Adam Miller.

Bill Reel [01:25:08] Thank you, Adam Miller. Rube Goldberg machine. So that they can slow down and preserve the relationships in their life. I'm all for all of these perspectives existing. The trouble is, when you take on the critic as if you are the truth teller, and in reality, you are also obfuscating the truth.

Bill Reel [01:25:31] You are deceiving the very people you're attempting to help, regardless of what choices. You can't base what you do on whether it means good for Jerry and bad for Susie. Because what kind of world are we in if we try to gauge that all the time?

Bill Reel [01:25:47] Just tell the truth. Or if you need to protect yourself, acknowledge that you're doing that, which is also the truth. It seems completely honest to go, I'm just not going to be able to tell you everything. And if you want to look to me for answers, that's great. I'm going to be as helpful as I can. But my views are such that I can't exactly tell you what runs in my head.

John Dehlin [01:26:13] Can you imagine? It's one thing, like, I'm in awe.

Bill Reel [01:26:16] They would no longer do firesides, would they?

John Dehlin [01:26:18] When I see Patrick Mason. Yeah. Standing up in a fireside and saying, let's talk about polygamy, I'm like, like, who in the world would have ever thought in 1993 that, like, the top faithful scholar for the church would be holding firesides, addressing polygamy head on. Like, Patrick came on my podcast and said Joseph Smith's polygamy looked a lot like sin to him, and he's still a faithful member in good standing. Like on the one hand, I think who in the world would have ever envisioned that day ever coming in Mormonism? But yeah, if he were to stand up and start the fireside by saying, I'm not going to be able to tell you everything I really think and feel, but let's talk about what I can tell you. It's almost like he's dead in the water at that point.

Bill Reel [01:27:07] If a clock's only right twice a day or a calculator's only right half the time, you don't trust either one.

John Dehlin [01:27:13] So there's no, I mean honestly, there's no way for anybody to really win here because you either end up like you and me, out, marginalized, cut off and defamed, or you have to stay in and not be fully honest.

Bill Reel [01:27:27] And can I acknowledge again, I am billed a certain way. I'm an 8 on the Enneagram justice warrior sort of type. I have certain values. My values aren't going to be the same values that you have. They're not going to be the same values that Terrell Givens has or Patrick Mason.

Bill Reel [01:27:42] Those values are going to influence how I perceive as the right decision to make in a complex, non binary, not black and white world. But we're from my seat and acknowledging that other perspectives exist such as you pushing back and me also going like, hey, John's got a valid point. It's just not how I see the world. These, these men do a disservice when on one hand they say I'm going to answer questions, give me anything on polygamy and then somebody says something about 14 year old girls and the next response is the past is a foreign country. We do things differently there because that answer isn't sufficient.

Bill Reel [01:28:16] And here's why. Whether the past is different or not, we teach that we have a heavenly father who's consistent. And if you're going to try to sell me on a God who makes it perfectly appropriate for a grown man to enter a father daughter relationship with a woman such as Lucy Walker, a girl like lucy walker who's 15 or 16 years old and Joseph Smith goes out into public and says, this is my daughter, because her dad's been set on a mission and her mother's died and so Joseph's taken her into his home. And now Joseph a month later is reaching out to her and saying, hey, you're supposed to be a police plural wife of mine.

Bill Reel [01:28:55] What kind of eternal father in heaven allows his prophet to form a father daughter relationship with a girl who's staying in his home and then ask that prophet to then change that relationship to an intimate romantic one. And so it's not about whether the past is different and when these guys answer questions, and it's worse with the apologists, as you well know. But when these guys answer questions, they're often catering to the level at which the audience is at.

Bill Reel [01:29:26] And a frank discussion requires us to say it makes zero sense that God would ask his prophet to change his father daughter relationship with Lucy Walker into an intimate romantic one. That's nonsensical and any conjecture to make it fit or work is absurd.

John Dehlin [01:29:50] That was beautiful. Let me ask you a follow up question then about Mormon apologists. I was talking, you know, it turns out David Bachavoy, who I've had a Mormon stories, Old Testament scholar, CES instructor at Harvard, you know, mit, brilliant guy, love him.

John Dehlin [01:30:07] He's out of the church now. He used to be friends with Tero Givens, really close friends apparently. And at some point, once Dave left the church, he doesn't have a relationship with Tara Givens anymore. But I expected him to say, well, I hate Tara Givens now. He, he blew me off as a friend, blah, blah, blah. What he does is evil and bad. Bachavoy said to me that he thinks these neo apologists, these Givens, Masons, Flumans, they play an important role of giving people a soft landing because, you know, you're in this sort of Fowler Stage 3 Mormon Orthodoxy, literalistic, and your life is totally wound around orthodox Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:30:52] If you just go immediately to like, churches, false, I was betrayed, it's all over. Maybe that's just too much of a shock to your system.

Bill Reel [01:31:01] And I agree with it.

John Dehlin [01:31:04] So then there's this middle ground of Mormon nuanced progressive Mormonism that gives people that pathway ultimately to leaving the church, but it gives them kind of a soft landing and a bit of a transition time. So frankly though, they don't blow up their own lives and they don't blow up the lives of all their friendships and relationships around them. It's, it's basically the role I played. It's the role you played. And now it's the role that they're playing. Bushman and Givens and Mason and Flumen, they're all playing that role. So in that sense, are you in favor of that role even though you, you say it's not fully honest, is it still good even if it's not fully honest?

Bill Reel [01:31:46] I'm in favor of all the way stations existing. And I, I think if somebody reads the CES letter as a full in believing Mormon and leaves the next day that they there's a possibility they might be worse off than somebody who took the time to try to wrestle with it, tried to make it work, leaned on apologetics, leaned on the neo apologist, and tried to give it a go for a year or two.

Bill Reel [01:32:10] But it's not up to me to choose for other people what's best for them. My job is to be an advocate for putting all the information on the table and let your brain figure out what you need in order to make the healthiest, wisest decisions for your life. So if you decide you want to take your time, you can go spend your time in fairmormon, you can spend your time in Terrell Givens books, and if you want the full truth and you want to make a decision more quickly, then you can go read the CES letter. And if you don't want to buy into any of that problems at all, you can go read Fair Mormon's Mental Gymnastics and make it solved that way.

Bill Reel [01:32:51] But by putting all the information on the table, you respect people's individual choice and you let people make the best decisions for themselves, which you never knew the best for anyone else anyway.

Influence, Legacy, and the Next Generation of Podcasters

John Dehlin [01:33:02] What's it like to see this new generation following you? The Faith Matters podcast, the Restore Conference, the Faith again. Like, what's it like to see this emergence of a progressive, faithful Mormonism that failed for me and failed for you. Now others are carrying the banner. Do you have a sense for whether they're going to meet a different fate or have things changed so much in Mormonism that like, the genie's out of the bottle and it's now safe to be to kind of do what you were trying to do or not?

Bill Reel [01:33:46] I am more than happy to have all the variations of belief out there. I don't have a problem with Faith Matters. I don't have a problem with no,

John Dehlin [01:33:54] but I'm more asking about what you predict their fate will be.

Bill Reel [01:33:59] I think the people that cross the line will be gone and the people that don't will keep it going. And I think there are certain people in the church who are continually willing to keep it going. So I don't anticipate that Scott Gordon, Steve Densley or John lynch will ever lose their testimony enough that they would outwardly say the thing that would have them crossing the line. And there are other folks within Fair Mormon who come and go all the time because they get into Fair Mormon and they realize it isn't true and they deconstruct things and out they go. And so I think every person's going to have their own journey and their own path.

Bill Reel [01:34:28] And some people again, read the CES letter and they throw in the towel tomorrow. And other people spend years and years slowly moving through all of it, trying to make it work because they want nothing more than Mormonism to be true.

John Dehlin [01:34:39] And I mean, I think that's exactly what happened with Patrick and me is Patrick started to cross the line and a bunch of people said, don't cross the line. And so he said, you're right, I better not cross the line.

Bill Reel [01:34:51] Which reinforces the thing I started off saying, which is these guys are not safe to have conversations where the logical follow up question is going to be asked.

John Dehlin [01:34:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's just boundary maintenance, right? I mean, every organization does boundary maintenance. Yes.

Bill Reel [01:35:05] So be careful about putting yourself out as a truth teller and be careful about suggesting that you have, that you're the trusted source for people to resolve their faith crisis, because that's not exactly honest.

John Dehlin [01:35:23] And don't tell too much truth as a Mormon or you get in trouble. Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:35:26] And what does it say? Like there's that quote, right? Like, you know what you, you know what can't be questioned by the things you can't ask questions about.

John Dehlin [01:35:33] Right.

Bill Reel [01:35:34] Like there's this idea that you can't exactly poke at certain things. It's not allowed. And what kind of system is it where you can't raise a hand and go, something's not right here.

John Dehlin [01:35:44] Yeah. And, and there are challenges being out of the church that we will be talking about in your part three, but there's also attacks that I know Bushman and Givens and Mason and others are likely carrying, which is, you know, you're

Bill Reel [01:36:04] not being fully honest when you're not authentic. You're not being fully, you're not authentic. There's a burden now, that burden. There's another burden when you are authentic and you risk things. I'm not going to sit here and pretend it's beautiful one direction and it's ugly the other. No matter which way you choose to live, if you choose to fit in and compromise yourself in some way, that comes with a burden too. If you're authentic, you also risk things.

John Dehlin [01:36:33] And one ungenerous way to look at that is, oh, well, they're just, they're sellouts or they're dishonest. Another way is to say they're heroic because they're staying in the fight, preserving their capital, preserving their influence to make a Positive difference in ways you and I both think are heroic. And they're carrying that tax or burden or cognitive dissonance of inauthenticity and conscious. I almost want to say ethical dishonesty. Right. Of like, yeah, it's ethical dishonesty.

Bill Reel [01:37:06] Yeah. And by the way, thank you for saying that. I also think they're heroic. I do. I think they're heroic. What I'm speaking to, though, is the people on the ground who are looking because they realize something doesn't add up here. They're asking questions, they're reading books, they're listening to the Faith Matters podcast.

Bill Reel [01:37:29] And what they perceive is that, oh, there's not any real problems here. Like, oh, yeah, prophets are fallible, and the past is different. And you're setting people up to see you, and I mean you. By the voices that are doing that, to see those folks as having kept them from learning the thing that they might have been better off learning.

Bill Reel [01:37:56] So, yeah, they're heroic. And we're all hurting and helping people at any given moment. Right. Like, you and I both know that most people are happier out, but we also know that's not everyone. I've had people sit five feet from me and go, bill, I really do wish the church was true. And I wish I could go back. And if I could go back right now and flip a switch and forget the last three years and go right back to believing exactly as it was, I would do it. Because it's been nothing but harm to me.

Bill Reel [01:38:23] Me leaving has hurt so many things. I lost my wife. I had this happen. I lost my job. I'm miserable. Those stories are true, too. I don't think they are the majority. I think it is. I would guess 90 or more percent of people are grateful to you when they left the church and go, you were a part of that journey. Thank you for helping me get out. But there's no doubt that there is a small segment of people who are hurt.

John Dehlin [01:38:53] Okay. And this is just me playing, please Inquisitor. If. If Patrick Mason and Spencer Fluman and Richard Bushman and Terry Gibbons are all heroic for not crossing the line and staying in to maximize their influence, does that mean we kind of blew it? That we kind of became less heroic because we couldn't. We couldn't keep within the right boundaries to maximize our influence, and we kind of washed out. It's kind of like a Navy SEAL that, you know, his head keeps getting shoved underwater. Some can deal with the. With the harassing and the distress, and they make it, and then Others can't and they wash out. What about the perspective that you and I just washed out because we couldn't, we couldn't maintain that boundary to maximize our influence.

Bill Reel [01:39:47] Is your influence bigger today or then? Is my influence bigger today or then?

John Dehlin [01:39:52] I mean, it depends on. With who. Right. With believing Mormons, my influence has decreased significantly. Yeah. With church leadership, actually, I think my influence is bigger.

Bill Reel [01:40:01] Yeah. I would, I would suggest that by having all kinds of perspectives, including those who just state straightforwardly that not any one of these truth claims is in the church's favor, that people are benefiting significantly from that conversation. If we, okay, let's say we take you and me out, do we go one step back and take those people out too? Like, how far back do we go? And at some point you've gone all the way back to the church just being allowed to say whatever it wants without being questioned. The only thing that allows folks like Terrell Givens or Patrick Mason to even exist is the Eugene Englands and the sterling McMurrans.

Bill Reel [01:40:43] And so having people stand up and question, having people who get excommunicated as a September 6, having folks who are adamant that I'm just going to tell the truth in its fullness, I'm just going to be complete. That's what creates the space for anybody to have been questioned, to have questioned anything at all. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:04] So it's kind of a paradox. We're. We're holding down an essential place.

Bill Reel [01:41:10] Sam Young. Sam Young gets excommunicated for telling the brethren they need to have two adults in the room. Sam Young is excommunicated. And a month later, President Nelson makes it so the parents can request that two adults be in the room. That makes zero sense to me and probably to you too. In other words, you acknowledge that the person brought an actual sincere grievance to you, that you are the one being unhealthy, and then you punish them and fix the problem. In part, you get rid of Kate Kelly and then you decide that women can go ahead and attend priesthood session of conference if they want to.

John Dehlin [01:41:48] And they get rid of the. They kind of got rid of the men's, you know, afternoon session of general conference eventually. That's directly a result of ordained women, right?

Bill Reel [01:41:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:59] Or like sister missionaries on missions having a more leadership based role. Like there's so much that came out of ordained women.

Bill Reel [01:42:06] You know, how healthy is the church if nobody crosses a line?

John Dehlin [01:42:09] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:42:11] Do you want to live in 1850s Mormonism? Go out to Colorado City?

John Dehlin [01:42:18] Touche. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about your excommunication and how you experienced it.

Bill Reel [01:42:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:42:27] And what you want to say about that whole story. And we have a whole episode or two on Mormon.

Bill Reel [01:42:34] I'll be really quick.

John Dehlin [01:42:35] No, no. I'm just letting my viewers and listeners know we're not going to have time to go into detail.

Bill Reel [01:42:39] Sweet.

John Dehlin [01:42:39] If you want to go into detail. Not only did Bill and I do an entire, at least episode or two on it, I think we shared the whole recording from your excommunication on Mormon stories. I think at some point. So you can go back and go into detail. But just for those who are new to this whole conversation, what do you want to. What do you want to say about the excommunication?

Bill Reel [01:43:00] Yeah. As that was unfolding, there's a process that the local leadership has to play by to work it from the brethren at the top. Want you to sit down with this person. They want you to try to get them to repent, to go silent. They want to try to scare you into not doing this anymore. So I was given chances to pull my podcast down. I was given chances to stop doing things.

Bill Reel [01:43:25] So they give you that first. And then there's all this, like, pseudo legal stuff. Here's how the process works. We have to do this, we have to do that. Every step along the way, I tried to have it be in a way that I could get as much exposure to the data as possible.

Bill Reel [01:43:43] And when the time came to actually have the disciplinary court a couple days before, Sam Young reached out to me, by the way, thank you, Sam. Sam reached out and said, hey, Bill, I just want you to know, I hear what's going on. I was excommunicated recently.

Bill Reel [01:43:57] Here's what it felt like to me. It was really hard. I wasn't expecting certain emotional things to come up, and you will likely experience things that you weren't anticipating. But if I'm honest, that's not the case at all.

Bill Reel [01:44:12] My excommunication, I felt like. And I keep bumping the mic. Sorry about that. I felt like I got the chance to walk in that room to tell my truth for an hour, and I went through all of it. I started with Joseph Smith's youth, and I ended with the modern prophets, seers, and revelators not being what they claim to be.

Bill Reel [01:44:37] And I got to tell all of it. And not only that, got to record it. And not only that, on the recording, I get my stake president saying, hey, folks, this isn't about Bill's integrity. Bill's integrity is intact. This is the fact that you cannot call church leaders liars. And my statement is, even when they lie, and his statement is, yes, even when they lie, I win.

Bill Reel [01:45:04] So when I walked out of there, I was actually fine. It was a long process. It was exhausting. The number of people who showed up was amazing. You being there, amazing media being there, amazing. The media did, I thought, a hell of a job in the local newspapers in southern Utah covering it every step along the way.

Bill Reel [01:45:23] I couldn't be more proud of how I conducted myself and my attempt to get the story out about what LDS history actually is. I wasn't. I had no emotional trauma from that night.

John Dehlin [01:45:40] Yeah. I'll just say that between my excommunication and the hordes of people that came to support me, I tried to carry that forward to Jeremy and to Sam and to you and to others. We kind of did our best to turn Mormon disciplinary councils and excommunications into like a celebration of heroicism and an opportunity to shine a spotlight back on the church and what it really is. And that's one of the things I'm most proud of collectively with everyone who helped out. Because what ended up happening is the church got rid of the word excommunication, got rid of the term disciplinary council, and I think has reduce the frequency of disciplinary councils and excommunications to only really extreme settings. So in some sense, we kind of slayed that practice to a large extent,

Bill Reel [01:46:40] to the point where Radio Free Mormon is still not. Is still not threatened at all when he clearly does a podcast that exposes the dishonesty, deception and false narrative.

John Dehlin [01:46:56] Also, Nemo the Mormon is still a member in good standing in spite of

Bill Reel [01:47:00] going to conference after conference, raising his hand, abstaining, and egging these guys on by writing the letter to Elder Oaks, the back and forth and that whole process, how it's unfolded.

John Dehlin [01:47:11] How did Nemo do anything different than you calling Oakes out as a liar?

Bill Reel [01:47:17] I would argue that he was more abrasive.

John Dehlin [01:47:19] And he's still a member of good standing.

Bill Reel [01:47:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:47:22] Things have changed.

Bill Reel [01:47:23] Yeah, completely.

John Dehlin [01:47:27] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:47:30] It's a strange thing, isn't it?

John Dehlin [01:47:31] Well, I mean, in some sense it's a beautiful thing. Like I had. I don't know if you ever had this moment where, you know, I'm doing activism in the space for 10, 15 years and then I start seeing changes happening, whether it's with disciplinary councils being renamed or like the church being better about one on one interviews, or the church treating women better, or the church changing its policies. With LGBT people or the gospel topics essays come out, I start realizing, whoa, we're actually improving the Mormon Church. Like, our work, the net result of our work is twofold. We're getting kicked out, and our families are all experiencing what it's like to be rejected and kicked out and labeled as apostates. That's one effect. But the other effect is we're eliciting positive change within the Mormon Church. Like, we're working full time to improve the Mormon Church. That's what we do.

Bill Reel [01:48:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:48:33] People think that we hate the church and want to destroy it. When in reality, the net effect of our work is improving the Mormon Church, making it healthier and safer and more honest for its members. Have you ever had that realization?

Bill Reel [01:48:47] You and I both have friends or people that we've sat at a dinner with who have said, I just want to see this thing burned down. And my response every time is that if you make the effort that your only goal here is to see it burn down, you're going to waste a lot of your life's energy and you're gonna die. And this thing is still gonna be here with its $300 billion in another 10 year. Right. It's going to go forever. So if your goal is that it burned down, you're gonna waste your life trying to get there.

John Dehlin [01:49:22] It's like banging your head against the wall.

Bill Reel [01:49:23] The real goal should be to help people make informed decisions. And for those who stay, more power to you, and for those who leave, more power to you. Like, let people make their own decisions about what they do with their life.

John Dehlin [01:49:37] Yeah. It's about promoting informed consent. And then for those who need to change or leave, helping them have the best experience. And believe it or not, a third is making the church healthier for those who stay within it.

Bill Reel [01:49:51] And you can see on one hand you have the idea that not all the changes it makes are good. I'll give an example. Doctrine and Covenants is crystal clear that when a disciplinary court is held at the stake level, that the person in the disciplinary court has a right to those 12 high councilmen being in the room. One of the changes the Church made, based on, I think, Jeremy Runels and Bill Riel, is that they now no longer require that those 12 men be in the room. It's just the Stake Presidency if he wants it to be. But that's a violation of the Doctrine and Covenants, which says that person has a right.

Bill Reel [01:50:21] So the brethren, in their fear of having people sit down and record themselves talking to everyone in that room and the possibility of disrupting those 12 men. The church now has violated its own revelations, changed the rules so that you and I, if we were having a disciplinary court today, the stake president would insist that it would only be him and his two counselors.

John Dehlin [01:50:44] Well, that's the benefit of modern revelation, Bill. Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:50:47] Changing the dnc. But there was no new section, was there?

John Dehlin [01:50:49] No.

Bill Reel [01:50:50] There was no announcement of a revelation, was there? And that DNC section still sits there. Yeah, but you're right. When we, when we make the church softer, by we, I mean us shining a light on the unhealthiness and they remove, say, the sexism out of the temple.

John Dehlin [01:51:06] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:51:06] They, they reduce the shame and fear over whether you should wear garments night and day. When they make it easier for people to not be as rigid, what they do is they reduce everyone's investment and they reduce everyone's loyalty. And so what they're doing, they may be able to hang onto the money forever. Nothing we can do to stop that. But what we can do is create a church where people don't feel as allegiant to the system and there's so much less emotional capital that has to be spent in simply walking away. And it's happening.

John Dehlin [01:51:42] Yeah. So you think the fabric of the church is weakening?

Bill Reel [01:51:47] I think high demand, fundamentalist religions work because they use shame and fear as a tactic. And any religion in that group, group that's forced to water itself down to

John Dehlin [01:51:56] become more palatable, safe, healthy to the

Bill Reel [01:52:00] general public and to its members, ends up weaking itself anyway. Yeah, I think we're winning one way or the other.

John Dehlin [01:52:10] Is, Is the world a better place if the Mormon Church is weaker?

Bill Reel [01:52:14] Is the world a better place if Scientology doesn't exist? I think it's. Of course. So what you're basically saying is, does the church's good outweigh its bad? First off, it is so small, even if we count the inactive members of the church and the people who don't report themselves as a Mormon, but the Mormon Church still calls Mormon, it's 0.2% of the human population. And then you say like, what good do they do and what bad do they do? And now you're into a subjective argument where both sides are going to go, no, no, no, the good outweighs the bad. No, no, no, the bad outweighs the good. Well, fine, let's call it a wash. In that instance, Mormonism still doesn't matter,

John Dehlin [01:53:01] but it was good to 17 year old bill Real. Yeah. How about instead of it being good or bad it's good for the first half of life. It's good for people who are lost. It's good for people who need this formative years and community and identity. And then when they're in their 20s or 30s or 40s, they can leave it behind. Like the raft.

Bill Reel [01:53:22] Yeah. You could go to any extreme and you could use anything. You could go to the the end all, be all of arguments and you could go, nazism was great for these few people. Like that's true. That doesn't make it good. That doesn't make it worthwhile.

Bill Reel [01:53:36] We should not allow systems to be deeply deceptive and to marginalize people on invisible beliefs that can be proven to be untrue. If you make claims and your claims are demonstrably false and some people are helped and some people are hurt, then we ought to just own that your claims are demonstrably false, give the information and let people make their own decisions. There's nothing we can do. Mormonism is going to be here forever. It will literally be here for all time and eternity.

Bill Reel [01:54:07] It has too much money not to be. But it might be okay if there were a lot less members being traumatized. And you and I both know this too. People in the believing perspective often don't even know the harm that's being incurred on them until they're on the other side. And you take a hundred post Mormons who understand both perspectives because at one time they believed and now they don't.

Bill Reel [01:54:33] They can, with much more context and perspective, speak to the fact that they did not know the amount of harm that was happening on the front end. You can't just pretend that doesn't exist because the believer doesn't see it. It's still real.

John Dehlin [01:54:54] Which is also your last name.

Bill Reel [01:54:56] Yeah.

Walking Through the Key Reasons for Losing Faith

John Dehlin [01:54:58] Okay, really quickly, please. And I know we're almost at two hours now and you know, we've been going all day, but I would like. One of the main goals I had was to get you in studio with high quality audio and video, spending five to 10 minutes giving your best summary of what, what were the main factors that led to your loss of faith. So if you even want to go chronologically, I want to have a good 5 to 10 minute video chunk of Bishop Bill Real, former Bishop Bill Real, former Mormon apologist Bill Real, explaining to someone who's just curious, like you said. Let's just say you were asked to give a fireside now, but you believe in informed consent.

Bill Reel [01:55:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:55:55] And you're going to give that full honest summary to that questioning Mormon who just wants to Know, give me your best reasons, your best evidences that the Church isn't what it claims to be. In five to 10 minutes, I want to say, go and take five to 10 minutes. If you want to do it chronologically, fine. Will you give that summary and start from. If you want to start with the Old Testament, like, do whatever you want. Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:56:25] So I wouldn't do it the way you just suggested it all. Here's what I would do. If I was standing in front of a group of people, I would start off by talking about rational thinking. Rational thinking is that in any time where there is a disagreement of what occurred in history on a political issue, what you have to do is you have to come up with whatever the.

Bill Reel [01:56:48] Whatever ideas each side has, whichever side comes to the conclusion without requiring more conjecture or allowances or inference, that is the most rational conclusion. So in other words, if I'm in Scientology, or I'm in Jehovah's Witnesses, or I'm. Or I'm a Seventh Day Adventist, or I'm in Jim Jones's group, or I'm in Heaven's Gate, those people are having spiritual experiences.

Bill Reel [01:57:15] Those people are. They believe with all their heart that their system is true. They have confidence. That is very similar to a Mormon having confidence to the extent where even the FLDS people bear testimony and get their testimony in the same way that we Latter Day Saints did. So having spiritual experiences doesn't solve the problem. Believing confidently doesn't solve the problem. The only way you can solve.

John Dehlin [01:57:41] Also, having scriptures and prophets doesn't solve the problem because they've all got prophets and scripture.

Bill Reel [01:57:47] Right?

John Dehlin [01:57:47] Yep. Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:57:48] And so critical thinking requires that when you. You have to ignore your bias. Which we all can't do. Exactly. Right. But as we listen to an argument on both sides, there was a moon landing, there wasn't. There's a flat Earth, there isn't. Aliens are real. They're not. None of us can exactly be sure we're getting it right. But the best we can do is to hear the arguments on all sides and to choose the conclusion that our brain tells us requires the least amount of allowances and conjecture. So now we go into the Mormon Church and we look at it, and there are things that I think are, for me, the three biggest facets of that that I think are easy to show are demonstrably probable.

John Dehlin [01:58:30] Wait, can I give you some prompts? And you respond, please. Okay, so Old Testament, specifically, Noah's flood, age of the earth, Adam and Eve

Bill Reel [01:58:39] and all that, the Tower of Babel, Based on language development is absurd. And the Book of Mormon perpetuates the story on a completely different timeline from a completely different set of people. The idea that millions of people died on the hill, Rama, that 230,000 people died on the hill, Cumorah, that. Again, we're talking about those stories because they're also. I'm actually mixing things up. So let me say it again. You're pointing at the Old Testament. Old Testament, Tower of Babel. It's absurd.

John Dehlin [01:59:11] That's not how language is developed.

Bill Reel [01:59:12] Not at all. When we look at stories like David is told by Saul if he wants to marry the daughter, that he go fight the Philistines and bring back 100 foreskins. And so David goes and cuts off 200 and brings back a bag of 200 foreskins, laying them at the feet of Saul. It's absurd. Global Flood. If you go onto Google and you type in Global Flood, Problems with, you'll come up with, there's a website that says it's like the third edition of Problems with a Global Flood. And you look through that page and the problems are enormous to the point where the intelligent, informed apologists now fight for a local flood.

Bill Reel [01:59:52] Because apologists are always backing up the argument to wherever it is sort of arguable, like right there is plausible deniability. You can sort of say like, well, maybe anytime someone changes their belief in the church, it's because the data pushed him there. The only reason Mike Ash believes that the Book of Mormon created embellished stories about the numbers that died on the hill Ramah is because he had to confront the fact that the number that is reported to have died is absurd. So then he adds extra allowances by saying like, oh, don't take them literally.

Bill Reel [02:00:35] They're overestimating intentionally. They're embellishing the number. But see what you've done? You've added conjecture. Why can't I just take it as it is and go, that didn't happen. So Old Testament is just so full of stories that are absurd.

John Dehlin [02:00:49] What about Adam and Eve as the first humans and the Earth being 6,000 years old?

Bill Reel [02:00:55] Well, the 6,000 year old Earth. Again, I would go to Fair Mormon. What would they tell me? They would tell me that that actually isn't an official teaching of the church, that it's a misrepresentation of Joseph Smith's words, that even though he said 6,000 years, every year in the life of God is, you know, every day in the life of God is a thousand years. Again, we add Conjecture, instead of taking things as they are. These are the principal ancestors of the Native Americans. These are the writings of Abraham, written by his own hand. It's the fact that nothing adds up that we create fluffier answers like the Catalyst Theory. And as RFM has pointed out, the Catalyst theory sounds just like an intentional fraud. It's the exact same evidence, except now you've created a way to go like, oh, I know it looks like a fraud, but it's the Catalyst theory.

John Dehlin [02:01:44] So for Adam and Eve in the age of the Earth, your conclusion is what?

Bill Reel [02:01:47] Adam and Eve, you read book Sapiens and you try to come up with a way that there is this moment in time where there's this fully human Adam and this fully human Eve. It's absurd.

John Dehlin [02:01:56] And there's no humans before.

Bill Reel [02:01:57] You have to disregard science entirely and lean entirely on faith, but accept the fact that your apologists don't exactly agree with it as a literal story either.

John Dehlin [02:02:07] So for you, Billy, Earth is billions of years old.

Bill Reel [02:02:10] 13.7 billion years ago, something happened. None of us know exactly what it is. Science does its best to pinpoint it. And since that moment, everything else can be explained from a naturalist perspective.

John Dehlin [02:02:20] An organic evolution.

Bill Reel [02:02:22] Easy, easy. Spencer Wright, just the other day was talking to me about this. Where you have the original life forms on Earth, whatever they were, they are obviously going to move towards safety and food or they're going to die. So every organism that moves towards safety and food has a better chance of living. Whatever time your environment changes, whatever adaptations that occur, if that adaptation helps you to survive, you're better off than the previous generation. And those things are going to be supported. And any adaptation that hurts your chances is going to be whittled away and that species is going to die. And it's happened over and over again. That seems absolutely explained by science in a way that's completely credible.

John Dehlin [02:03:10] Okay, so the Old Testament's got problems, but the New Testament and Jesus, that's a different deal.

Bill Reel [02:03:15] This will be a lot easier. So you look at Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. First off, Mark is the earliest gospel written, I think, 40 to 70 years after the life of Christ. And it ends not actually speculating on the resurrection at all.

Bill Reel [02:03:32] Somebody later on, based on biblical scholarship, came in and added the finishing verses and lines to Mark. Matthew and Luke were written significantly later, 80 to, I think, 110 A.D. and then you've got John, who's written even later than that. And there's no way to take those four gospels and actually have them collaborate. If you go Online and you try to be a rational thinker and again, choose the conclusion that has the least amount of allowances. Try to make the four gospels mesh. It can't be done without you making lots of loopholes and mental gymnastic answers to do it.

Bill Reel [02:04:10] Jesus. First off, the church teaches that Jesus set up his church just like today's church is restored in the exact same manner that Christ's church was established. Except that BYU's own scholars at the Maxwell Institute recently released a book called Ancient Christians where they argue that the church actually was wrong. Christ never did set up a church and he was a Jew the entire time. And even the first generation and second generation of believers were Jews as well. And guess what? Biblical scholars agree.

Bill Reel [02:04:38] And then you try to say, well, okay, well, you've got Paul. And some people don't even believe parts of Paul were written by Paul. The story is not cohesive. And the most rational explanation is that we took a religious zealot who pushed back against the Jewish system and we turned him into an embellished myth story. And there's plenty of evidence for that. And it's the more rational argument than trying to make it all be coherent.

John Dehlin [02:05:08] What do you do with Joseph Smith's folk magic and treasure digging stuff and peep stones?

Bill Reel [02:05:13] Yeah. Isn't it strange I said this earlier, Isn't it strange that Joseph Smith is a treasure digger, used his seer stone to locate precious treasure, gold and silver buried in hills protected by guardian spirits. And we all know again, if we're sitting with an apologist, we would push and go, were there actual buried treasures? Were there Spanish silver mines? And they would have to acknowledge, if pushed, they would have to acknowledge no. So we go, Joseph Smith was doing something, whether he believed it or not, he's doing something fictional. And now you're saying God comes along and takes a guy who believes in buried treasures in hills garden by angels and the same guy gets to find an actual treasure buried in a hill by a guardian angel.

John Dehlin [02:06:08] Well, they might say, well, he was open to the idea that like conjecture. So Bob would say he was prepared.

Bill Reel [02:06:16] Conjecture. See, to be a rational thinker, you have to choose the conclusion that requires the least amount of allowances. And the conclusion that requires the least amount of allowances is that it's all made up. Once you try this, and I don't mean you, obviously for anybody who's listening, who's a believer, try to take the mindset of it's just not true and see how many problems that solves it. Solves all of them.

John Dehlin [02:06:39] Well, no, it doesn't solve the problem of what happens when I die. It doesn't solve the problem of, like, why is there suffering on the earth?

Bill Reel [02:06:46] But there's a bazillion myth stories that answer those questions, and Mormonism is just one of them. So why do you place your trust in Mormonism over all the rest? And it's because you've been inoculated and programmed to do so.

John Dehlin [02:06:57] Yeah, okay.

Bill Reel [02:06:58] Book of Mormon, going back to where you started. Book of Mormon perpetuates the flood story. Jesus mentions it in Third Nephi, and also the Book of Mormon mentions the Tower of Babel. But again, that story comes through a different people in a different timeline, and we already know the story is absurd. It promotes a narrative where if you try to hold the numbers of people who died on the hill Cumorah or Hill Rama, same hill. It doesn't make sense to the point where the Church itself and its apologists acknowledge that they no longer want to push a narrative that the hill Cumorah was in New York.

Bill Reel [02:07:31] We had to create the some second hill conjecture, by the way, to try to figure out, like, hey, we can't really explain Hill Cumorah in New York because there's nothing there. So there's some other hill that we don't know where it's exactly at. And that hill's never been explored. And so it's possible that someday we'll find the thing that proves the Church is true. But notice how many allowances I need to do to get there.

Bill Reel [02:07:51] On top of that, you have the Jaredites and the Nephites coming over from ancient Israel, and the scriptures say that they brought their seeds with them to plant crops, and we're also told that they flourished, and yet none of those crops exist today.

Bill Reel [02:08:11] We have anachronisms of animals that we don't have explanations for. To the point where apologists say that in some places in the Book of Mormon, it must have been a tight translation, and in other places in the Book of Mormon, it must have been a loose translation.

John Dehlin [02:08:23] Which animals?

Bill Reel [02:08:25] Horses, elephants being. Or woolly mammoths being pertinent to the time period that the Church insists that it has to be for that scripture

John Dehlin [02:08:34] to hold up cattle, goats, sheep.

Bill Reel [02:08:38] And the apologists come along and go, well, we've solved some of those, so it's reasonable to expect that we'll solve all of them.

John Dehlin [02:08:44] The number of anachronisms are shrinking over time.

Bill Reel [02:08:46] Yeah, yeah. And then they point at things like chiastic structures.

John Dehlin [02:08:51] You didn't Answer that defense.

Bill Reel [02:08:53] Say that again.

John Dehlin [02:08:54] The number of anachronisms. Jim Bennett and other apologists would say over time the number of anachronisms is shrinking. Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:09:03] I also think that there are anachronisms that we haven't even considered yet. For instance, what I just said, which is that certain crops that were brought over should have made it. There's also anachronism such as how did Nephi and his small family build a ship to go across the ocean? And John Larsen puts out all the flaws with that. And what the argument is is that Joseph Smith or not Joseph Smith, but Nephi and the prophets must have been able to do it. There's one other example somewhere in history where somebody built a ship and they did that similar thing.

Bill Reel [02:09:36] But it also kind of relates to the story of where Brigham Young said that Moroni went all the way out to Manti to bless the temple site. Consider that the Church wants the Book of Mormon to have taken place in Central America. So you have Moroni in Central America and he needs to, at a minimum, walk to the hill, Cumorah in New York, through different climates, different terrains, heavy, dense forestry, trying to find food every day, taking the plates with them, carrying

John Dehlin [02:10:10] hundred and whatever pound plates.

Bill Reel [02:10:11] Yeah. Even if they're 70 pound plates. Good luck. And then what they do is they say there's one other time in history where some person traveled a similar distance under similar conditions. As if giving you one anomaly in a thousand cases makes it plausible that the Church is still true, but your brain has to leap in so many occasions that it becomes statistically absurd. You always used to mention Occam's Razor. It becomes statistically absurd to give the benefit of the Church to in extremes on every issue, time after time, over hundreds of occasions. That's irrational. It makes much more sense that I not give the allowances on these issues and on every issue, it's in favor of the critic.

John Dehlin [02:10:56] What about the racism in the Book of Mormon?

Bill Reel [02:10:59] Yeah. The Church has done a phenomenal job of pretending like it's disavowed its racism and still it exists within that book. Right. Racism is a big deal when it comes to church theology because it points to whether the prophetic mantle is real or not. In other words, Brigham Young in 1852 implements the policy that people of color can't have priesthood. Whatever reason he does that Brigham Young's successors and their counselors and the rest of the quorum of the 12 over the course of 100 and whatever 25 years, knew by the power and gift of God by the Spirit, that they were right and the world was wrong.

Bill Reel [02:11:51] And so you have to accept that God allowed 15 men, generation after generation to be clueless at discerning God's word. But somehow they know that coffee is bad. Like that makes no sense. And if I ask a believing Mormon, I say come up with tell me all the great things. Like you believe that prophets, seers and revelators are what they claim they are. George Albert Smith, David O. McKay, Harold B. Lee, Tell me what any of those guys did that was so special.

Bill Reel [02:12:22] And if the church wasn't true, what would that look like? Like, if you're sure the church is true, if it wasn't true, what would it look like? If the church is true, it seems like it would have something to show that it is different than what the world could bring about if it was under the same sort of condition. In other words, if five were old corporate men were running an entity, could it not come up with the same sorts of things? Don't other churches come up with ideas and plans and people think that's inspired too?

Bill Reel [02:12:59] If we have prophet seers and revelators, they ought to be better at discerning ethics, at discerning morality, at discerning truth, at discerning error, at discerning God's mind and will better than other folks. And they seem to always be 40 years behind.

Bill Reel [02:13:18] And that's acknowledged by them because they're the ones that 40 years later admit that their past position was wrong. So going back to what I was originally saying, there are certain things that are absurd in the church, certain things that you have to go like, that doesn't seem rational again, a million people dying on the hill, Rama in battle, and there are hundreds of those.

Bill Reel [02:13:39] There's also hundreds of instances of prophets having to completely change the position when in the former position they were sure that that was God's position anyway. Adam God, for instance. And then you also have hundreds of instances of church leaders, prophet seers and revelators being deceptive and dishonest and obfuscating the truth.

Bill Reel [02:14:01] And what you end up with then is that the integrity and ability of prophets, seers and revelators doesn't add up. And the truth claims of the church, every single one of them, is problematic against the historical context and data.

Bill Reel [02:14:19] And so you can choose to believe in spite of that, but you have to self acknowledge if you're aware that you're simply needing to create loopholes to get there. You have to create a Rube Goldberg machine To get there. It's. It's not real.

John Dehlin [02:14:35] We could talk about DNA in the Book of Mormon and other things. Do you want to talk about 19 19th century?

Bill Reel [02:14:40] Here's a good one on DNA. Go, go back. Let's exhume. Let's exhume Brigham Young and let's do a 23andMe test on him and see how much African American DNA. African American, how much African DNA he has in his genome. In other words, the very men who said that people of color couldn't hold the priesthood almost certainly had the very blood of people of color that they forbid from having the priesthood. David O. McKay would have had African DNA in his blood. That's who he was. He was also part black. Because all of us are. It becomes absurd.

John Dehlin [02:15:24] Part African at least.

Bill Reel [02:15:25] Yeah. And the whole idea that, you know, you have Lamanites and the Book of Mormon was written to the Lamanites. There are these folks who came here from ancient Israel. They are the Lamanites, they're the Jaredites, they're the Nephites. The Nephites get killed, Jaredites are gone. But the Lamanites become the Native Americans. And today the church goes. We know the Book of Mormon was written to them, but we're just not going to talk about that anymore because it actually doesn't work. We now self admit if we lined up 100 Native Americans, we don't have the ability to pinpoint which ones are Lamanites and which ones aren't. Some of them are, but we can't prove that any particular one is. And hence the church itself, who has the Book of Mormon written to Lamanites, can't pinpoint a Lamanite to give the Book of Mormon too.

John Dehlin [02:16:13] It's a slight bit more nefarious than that because they won't talk in general conference or in official publications publicly anymore to broad general audiences about Lamanites. But when they go visit Guatemala or Peru, they still call them Lamanites or Polynesia.

Bill Reel [02:16:31] Amen.

John Dehlin [02:16:31] They will refer to them as Lamanites there. So there's a double speak kind of conscious dishonesty that's going on.

Bill Reel [02:16:38] It's all double speak. Since 1820, it's been double speak. Yeah, you were told a story about spectacles and now it's a seer stone. But now we admit it's a seer stone and now the spectacles are slowly drifting away.

John Dehlin [02:16:52] Yeah, really quickly. Book of Abraham, what's your synopsis?

Bill Reel [02:16:57] Yeah, we have the very facsimiles that Joseph Smith imposed were part of The Book of Abraham. We have the very symbols on the Egyptian Book of Grammar that Joseph Smith claimed he was translating into the Book of Abraham.

Bill Reel [02:17:18] And yet we want to go ignore that there's some other scroll somewhere on the. Somewhere else hidden away, that if we had that scroll, then we'd know that we have the actual Book of Abraham. From there, again, conjecture. All I have to do is go. Joseph said it's these facsimiles which don't mean what he said they mean. It's these symbols which don't mean what he said they mean. He says Mormon literally means more good because mon is an Egyptian word that means good and somehow has an English piece on the front end as a contraction on the reformed Egyptian on the metal plates. And hence Mormon literally means more good.

Bill Reel [02:17:58] And even Gordon B. Hinckley himself said that's nonsense. Joseph Smith has five translation productions. Actually six when you count the Greek psalter. He's got the Book of Mormon, Book of Abraham, Book of Moses, the inspired Bible translation, and the Kinderhook plates. And every one of those is translated a different way. Like the apologists go. Like, this one is a literal ancient text translated by the gift and power of God. This one's a Catalyst theory. This one's a secular translation. This one's a plagiarism from Madame Clark's commentary. Like every one of them. Like, we have to accept that not only is Joseph Smith a translator, he's a translator in four or five different ways. That's absurd.

John Dehlin [02:18:40] What about the recent apologetic? That translation wasn't quite the right word. Yeah, it's more revelation, less.

Bill Reel [02:18:50] We only need that because the facts don't add up. The only reason you need to change the narrative to create. Create another explanation that is softer and allows the evidence to look more like a fraud and still be a believing theory is because the original theory didn't work.

John Dehlin [02:19:04] Wasn't a theory, by the way. The original assertions. Yeah. Don't work.

Bill Reel [02:19:08] That the book is written by the hand of Abraham, written by his own hands, writing his own writings, and we already know it's not true. Joseph said it's the writings of Abraham written by his own hand. It's not true. The only reason we create a Catalyst Theory is because a Catalyst theory explains all the same evidence that the critic saying it's a fraud explains, but gives it a faithful ending. We wouldn't need a Catalyst Theory if the Egyptian papyri and the facsimiles equaled what Joseph Smith said they did. We only invent a Catalyst theory, because what was said it was turned out to be not what it was.

Bill Reel [02:19:47] That's what I mean by adding conjecture. You create new plausible theories where the critic actually has a more solid explanation, but for which you can explain the exact same evidence and outcome, but you now have a faithful way of doing it. But you needed to give allowances to get there.

Bill Reel [02:20:05] It's irrational. How many times do you want to be irrational to make Mormonism work? Once, Maybe five times, Maybe hundreds, if not thousands? That's irrational.

John Dehlin [02:20:19] Okay, what about. Forget all the literalism. Scripture's metaphorical, but the Church, the true church, has been restored. And we've got the priesthood, We've got the authority of God, you know, John the Baptist, Aaronic priesthood, Peter James and John Melchizedek priesthood, ordinances and authority saving ordinances. What about that?

Bill Reel [02:20:40] So I've already been able to explain away all the parts where we have actual historical context that demonstrably shows that the critic has a better argument. And now you want me to still accept the fact that the magical unseen things are still true in some way.

Bill Reel [02:20:55] Why? Why do I need to believe in the invisible when what's visible already demonstrates that the Church isn't true? By moving things from objective data to subjective data, it's a moving of the goalpost. It allows the apologist to pretend like there's some other argument that needs to be made. The primary questions are based on invisible data points.

Bill Reel [02:21:24] Did Joseph Smith see God the Father? Can't know that. What I can know is that the Book of Abraham papyri and facsimiles don't match what Joseph Smith said they did. So if we dismiss all the secondary questions, which are the things that we can actually show in the historical context, and shift the goalpost to the primary questions, which are based on invisible subjective thinking that makes zero sense to somebody who already knows on all the objective things that we can debate that it's already demonstrably in favor of the criticism. It's absurd. And I wanted Mormonism nothing more than to be true. But I also want the truth, regardless if it hurts. More importantly.

John Dehlin [02:22:15] Okay, any other. You were going to mention like four big ones. Did we hit them all or were there other big ones?

Bill Reel [02:22:22] I was essentially saying that there are absurdities that you have to acknowledge. You're creating some sort of less than most rational answer for, for instance, Moroni going from South America to Palmyra. And if you believe Brigham Young going from South America to Manti to Palmyra, that's a long journey for a guy carrying 70 pounds of plates on his back.

John Dehlin [02:22:45] No roads, no cars, no.

Bill Reel [02:22:47] No different animals, different climates, different types of food. Water? No water. Dry, humid.

John Dehlin [02:22:55] No trading posts. Right.

Bill Reel [02:22:57] Nothing.

John Dehlin [02:22:57] Yeah, nothing but no tents.

Bill Reel [02:22:59] Nothing but different terrain, every step.

John Dehlin [02:23:02] Absurd. Yeah. Really quickly. What about polygamy and Joseph Smith? It just is polygamy, but also Joseph Smith's character.

Bill Reel [02:23:15] So my favorite story to tell is Lucy Walker. Lucy Walker is 15 years old and her mother dies of some illness, tuberculosis or something. And the dad is really heartbroken and Joseph Smith comes along and he tells the family, by the way, this is her own writings and her journals. This isn't anti Mormons making up a story. You're welcome to go ask Brian Hales if this story's true and he'll tell you.

John Dehlin [02:23:41] Yes.

Bill Reel [02:23:44] Joseph Smith comes to Lucy Walker's dad and says, oh, you're going to end up just like your wife. Let me send you on a mission and get you out of here and let you kind of reset yourself. Isn't that convenient?

Bill Reel [02:23:55] He then tells the dad that he'll take the children into his home. Some of them he'll take three, four of the children into his home and the rest of them he'll place in other Latter Day Saint homes. So he takes Lucy Walker and her sister and he takes them into his home and takes care of them as if he is their father. He introduces them to his friends as these are my daughters.

Bill Reel [02:24:20] Then he says that God told him to then change the relationship and to proposition Lucy to enter an intimate relationship with him and become a plural wife of his. And gives Lucy 24 hours to decide. She's 16 years old at the time.

Bill Reel [02:24:41] She's given 24 hours to decide if she will enter that relationship and take the prophet's work word at value. She is 16 years old. She goes home, she thinks about it all night, doesn't make a decision. She hasn't slept.

Bill Reel [02:24:58] She comes back to the prophet and says, I can't, I don't, I, I, I don't, I don't know what to do. He says, I'll give you 24 more hours and if you don't choose to do what I ask, then the gates of heaven shall be closed against you.

Bill Reel [02:25:12] 24 more hours goes by. How much do you think she slept that night? Not at all. Would you have slept? I wouldn't have. She comes back the next day having gotten her answer. Sure she got her answer. She went 48 hours with no sleep, with tons of pressure on her to make the right decision to a man that she Considered to be her priesthood authority, who was prophet, seer and revelator, who used abusive predatory tactics to manipulate her and for which as her foster

John Dehlin [02:25:47] father or her adopted father. Right. I mean, her guardian.

Bill Reel [02:25:51] Yeah. So you're changing a parental relationship to an intimate relationship. And you have to accept that God was perfectly okay with that. You have to accept that God is perfectly okay with 14 year olds and 15 year olds in any age, any time of the earth making decisions to be married to somebody and that God senses that they're perfectly capable to make such a decision. And you and I both know as fathers, there's no 14 year old girl on anywhere who knows all the repercussions and understands what she's getting into and has a developed frontal cortex where she can make a decision, a lifelong decision, to entangle herself to an older man

John Dehlin [02:26:32] and being coerced into it by someone claiming to be the mouthpiece of God with predatory tactics. Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:26:38] If you go and look at what a predator does to convince a child to have sex with them, how they groom them, strangely, coincidentally, with no allowances, it seems like the exact same behaviors that Joseph Smith the prophet practiced. What's more likely? That he's a predator or that God told him to be abusive and to do that? That God was okay with changing the dynamic of the relationship from parental to romantic. That makes no sense. It's absurd.

John Dehlin [02:27:11] Yeah. So many allowances you have to make to make all of this make sense. And like you said earlier, like I concluded back in 2001, there's one answer

Bill Reel [02:27:23] solves it all and any anomaly to that, like you go like, yeah, but what about these things? I can't explain every single one of those. The concept behind it is also in every other high demand fundamentalist religion, they're also having spiritual experiences. They also know by some knowledge inside of themselves as they've communed with God, that their system is true.

Bill Reel [02:27:47] It's also strange. Mormonism does this thing where it corrupts truth and renames, repurposes things. So it takes Jonathan Haidt, who did the recent scholarship on elevation Emotion, Elevation of motion. If you go to Wikipedia and look it up, Elevation emotion says it's a burning in the chest, AKA burning in the bosom. As Mormonism would say, it's peaceful feelings. It's feeling like the thing you're involved in is some sort of blessing and that humanity is enlightened.

Bill Reel [02:28:17] Everything about elevation emotion is how Mormons for 200 years have described the Holy Ghost. Except that elevation of motion happens to all humans. Across the globe. And you could be manipulated into feeling it when the actual events taking place are not good or productive. You also have Boyd K. Packer saying that a testimony is gained in the bearing of it, which is just the illusory truth effect. Anytime you repeat something over and over again, you're more likely to believe in it. Also, whoever gets to you first, you're more likely to believe. Hence the church gets to you. When you're a little kid telling you to sing come follow the prophet, right.

Bill Reel [02:28:53] And you grow older and you believe the church is true. And when someone else comes with evidence contrary, you've already rooted yourself in your belief. It is almost impossible to get you to question that. But it's not just for Mormons. It's also difficult to get Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists or Islam extremists to question their beliefs when it was rooted in them when they were young as well. Yeah,

John Dehlin [02:29:23] All right. Any other matters of. I mean, you could always talk about women and. And racism, all of it lgbt.

Bill Reel [02:29:31] There's not one single truth claim upon which the churches being true rest that isn't problematic. And more than that, that the Evidence act isn't in more favor of the critic than the believer. Every single one. Name one truth claim that is the evidence supports the believer more.

Bill Reel [02:29:58] Not one. And everybody's free to believe in absurdity. I can't stop someone from believing in a flat earth or not a moon landing, or Bigfoot's in their backyard, or aliens come down their chimney. People get to believe whatever they want. But this idea that you can choose to believe.

Bill Reel [02:30:16] When I wrote those emails to you early on, I wrote it to you as if the proposition was neutral. There was just as much evidence on one side as the other. What fell apart was that I realized that was the narrative the church gave me and that when I actually examined the issues, the scale was so lopsided that I had no choice but to disbelieve. To the point where if I asked you to believe in leprechauns or unicorns, you intuitively acknowledge, you intuitively understand that your brain can't get there. You can't believe leprechauns and unicorns because your brain recognizes it's too absurd for me. Mormonism is the same.

Bill Reel [02:30:55] It is so absurd, my brain can't make room that it's true. It's so lopsided. It's not close. They let you think it's close. It's not close.

John Dehlin [02:31:09] I used to say there's just 15 years ago, 10 years ago, I would have said, there's no smoking gun.

Bill Reel [02:31:14] Yeah. And there really is.

John Dehlin [02:31:15] What do you say to that? There's no.

Bill Reel [02:31:17] There is a hundred of them and none of them are accepted as the smoking gun.

John Dehlin [02:31:24] Yeah. What there is is there's massive social pressure against concluding and or vocaliz that a smoking gun exists.

Bill Reel [02:31:32] Try to convince a flat Earther that there's a smoking gun, that the Earth isn't flat. Good luck. Try to convince somebody that thinks the moon landing was fake that the moon landing wasn't faked. Good luck. Anytime. There's a crazy idea that some people believe There's a certain psychological benefit to believing the thing that everyone else doesn't believe. You're in the elite group. Well, guess what? In Mormonism, you're also in the elite group. You're in the true and living church with which the Lord is well pleased. It's going to be really hard to talk somebody who came to that belief in some other way than logic to use logic and reason to talk them out of it. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:32:15] So Bishop Bill Rio lost his faith and got excommunicated for saying the quiet things out loud.

Bill Reel [02:32:21] I'll use RFM's language. Bishop Bill Rio graduated from Mormonism and moved on to a more sure form of reality.

John Dehlin [02:32:35] Is that the final word for this episode?

Bill Reel [02:32:39] We said a lot today in this one, huh?

John Dehlin [02:32:42] Anything else you want to say before we end part two and, of course, part three?

Bill Reel [02:32:45] Deconstruction is terribly hard. It's painful. There were nights that I cried. There were nights I didn't sleep. I stayed up all night reading stuff, trying to find the answers. Deconstructing one's faith is extremely difficult, and it requires that you risk losing relationships, you risk losing your identity.

Bill Reel [02:33:08] I don't think we should take lightly any person who's going through that process. We ought to be. Whether you're a believer or whether you're out of the church, you ought to have compassion for people who do the hard thing and put all of that at risk by deconstructing this thing because truth mattered more to them. Even if you disagree with them, you're a believer and you're sure the church is true.

Bill Reel [02:33:35] Rather than call them lazy learners, rather than say they're the chaff among the wheat, rather, rather than say their tears, rather than say that they wanted to sin. Do me a favor. Acknowledge that they did the hard thing, even if you disagree with them, that they believed what they were doing was right and they deconstructed it because they valued truth even at the expense of losing the entire world around them. You talk about heroes, there's your heroes.

John Dehlin [02:34:10] All right, beautiful. Thank you for parts one and two today. I think it's going to help a lot of people what's in store for part three?

Bill Reel [02:34:20] So in part three, we're going to talk about secular Buddhism. I'm hoping we can talk about drugs a little bit. I'm hoping we. Yeah, I'm hoping we can talk about.

John Dehlin [02:34:30] The theme is reconstruction. Right, Reconstruction. Building a new, happy, healthy life after the deconstruction. I don't mean to interrupt you keep going.

Bill Reel [02:34:37] No, no, no. I think there are a lot of things that go into reconstructing something after you've deconstructed harmful myths in your life. And I think there are significant tools that help that. And my hope is that in that conversation we can talk about what's been beneficial to me in hopes of modeling, at least on some extent, things that are useful to folks who are in the dark night of the soul to sense that there's hope on the other side and that they can build a healthy, happy life of well being and contentment if they're willing to lean in.

John Dehlin [02:35:14] So we're going to end by giving them hope? Is that what you're saying?

Bill Reel [02:35:16] Amen.

John Dehlin [02:35:17] We're not just going to deconstruct and leave them reeling.

Bill Reel [02:35:21] I remember sitting in my living room thinking if I go this next step and leave the church, they might be right. I might drift away into some abyss and lose myself. And what I found in this experience is I figured out and found who I was.

John Dehlin [02:35:41] So that's part three.

Bill Reel [02:35:43] Can't wait.

John Dehlin [02:35:44] All right, thanks, Bill. Real thanks for a great two episodes. We'll come back tomorrow for part three. Thank you, John de Lynn and everyone. Please check out Mormon Discussion podcast, check out Mormonism Live podcast, check out Radio Free Mormon podcast and lots of other cool things.

Bill Reel [02:36:03] And I'll add, if you go to mormondiscussionpodcast.org, go up to the very top header on the very far right, it says helpful resources. If you click that, there are three links and they are to the three projects that I was talking about, showing the absurdity of Mormonism, showing the deception of Mormon leaders, and showing the reversals and denouncements of past teachings. And I think that those three lists alone make Mormonism statistically impossible to be true in the way that it claims.

John Dehlin [02:36:36] This is a list. Three lists on your website?

Bill Reel [02:36:39] Yeah, I asked. I crowd shared a project on all three of those, I put out the problem and added some of my own answers and then asked folks to contribute other examples of things that would fit into those lists. And what you find is Every list is 50, 70 or 130 long of the issues that you run into in Mormonism that run counter to the church's truth claims.

John Dehlin [02:37:07] All right, yeah, we'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Bill Reel [02:37:09] Sweet.

John Dehlin [02:37:09] If people want to donate to your organization, to your podcast to support what you do, how to.

Bill Reel [02:37:16] So you can donate to the entity by going to mormondiscussionpodcast.org or mormondiscussions.org and then at the very top header there will be a donate button. Click the donate button and then that donate screen will have a spot where there's a dropdown window. You can donate to the nonprofit generally or you can pick your favorite podcast. So if you're a huge fan of Radio Free Mormon, and that's where you want your donation to go, you can send 10 bucks or 20 bucks, or you can make it a recurring donation of 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month and you can pay more. And we certainly appreciate that.

Bill Reel [02:37:49] But you can donate there, pick which podcast you give to or just donate to Mormon discussion generally. And what that money does is it allows again, donations to. You do the same thing. It allow you to put the time and energy into creating content that continues to help people deconstruct.

John Dehlin [02:38:06] And you're doing this full time now. Ready for free Mormons doing this full time. The more full time people we have

Bill Reel [02:38:11] doing this work, the more content you

John Dehlin [02:38:12] get and, and the more people get the truth. Right? Get informed consent.

Bill Reel [02:38:19] Yeah, right, totally.

John Dehlin [02:38:21] And tips and tricks to, to reconstruct.

Bill Reel [02:38:23] This thing has hundreds of billions of dollars and the church, all the, and all the land that it owns, all the businesses it owns, all the media stations it owns. It's done its fair share to try to control the narrative. Here's your chance to fight back. Here's your chance to have the truth be told.

John Dehlin [02:38:44] I like to frame it as to take control of your life and to live the life, the exact life you want to live.

Bill Reel [02:38:51] But that's done by sharing the truth people don't know. To deconstruct things, to take it apart, to examine the myths in their world until somebody comes along and goes, hey, just FYI, there's a possibility you weren't exactly told the truth. And if you want the truth, here it is, do what you want with it. But that's the only way that people wake up and go from being believing in a myth to not believing in a myth. Something has to not make sense to them.

John Dehlin [02:39:20] There you have it. Support Bill, support Mormon discussion, Mormon discussions, Mormonism live radio free Mormon and all the good works done by Bill and his organization.

Bill Reel [02:39:29] Love it.

John Dehlin [02:39:30] Thanks everybody. Don't go away. Come right back for part three. We promise you'll we don't want to just take people's faith away from them, take away their hope, take away their identity. We want to help people become their healthiest, happiest, most enlightened selves.

Bill Reel [02:39:47] And there are clear ways to do

John Dehlin [02:39:48] that and that's what part three is going to be about. So come on back. Thanks, Bill.

Bill Reel [02:39:52] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:39:53] All right. See you soon. Thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. Thanks for your support as well. We'll see you all again soon on another episode. Take care.

Part Three Begins: Reconstruction After Mormonism

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 1786

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John Dehlin. It's May 30, 2023, and we are here for part three of our epic interview with podcaster Bill Real.

Bill Reel [00:00:13] Hey, Bill, how are you?

John Dehlin [00:00:14] And Amanda Real.

Amanda Reel [00:00:16] Hi, good morning.

John Dehlin [00:00:16] And I'm here joined by my lovely and brilliant partner in truth and righteousness, Margi. Hey, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [00:00:23] Hey there.

John Dehlin [00:00:24] For those who didn't join us for parts one and two, part one was about Bill's upbringing as a convert to Mormonism at age 17 and his rapid ascent to becoming a Mormon bishop by age 29. We talked a bit about Amanda's Mormon upbringing as well, and her meeting Bill and their early marriage together. And then we talked about how a Mormon bishop could end up listening to Mormon Stories podcast as a Mormon bishop, which led to Bill becoming a Mormon themed podcaster himself. And that's kind of how part one ended with Bill asking to be released as a bishop and wanting to become a Mormon podcaster.

John Dehlin [00:01:08] Part two took it from there from his ending as a Mormon bishop and kind of him carrying the torch as a faithful, progressive Mormon podcaster, carrying that torch until the wheel started to come off the wagon for him a bit faith wise.

John Dehlin [00:01:28] And he started to question the sincerity and the ethics of the top Mormon church leadership, which led to him crossing the line that I crossed at some point and criticizing top Mormon church leadership, specifically Jeffrey R. Holland, which led to his disciplinary council and eventually an excommunication, which was how we ended part two of our interview. So part three, the theme for today, we're going to do about a two and a half hour discussion. Today. It's going to be part stories, but part discussion. Today we're going to be covering Bill and Amanda's reconstruction after Mormonism and what all that has meant. We're going to be talking about death, we're going to be talking about relationships, we're going to be talking potentially about drugs, because that's a topic that Bill, Bill and Amanda both feel very passionately about.

John Dehlin [00:02:23] So content warning, we may be talking about sensitive topics that for some are concerning and for others, they're very passionate about. I don't know if we're going to be talking about sexuality or not, but we're going to be talking about many of the topics that post Mormons end up exploring or thinking about. And we're going to be talking about religion and the role of religion and what you do post religion, and maybe even we'll be talking about humanity and the human species. And, and the role religion plays. But then is there something that can be created post religion that maybe helps to meet all the needs that churches and religions played, but in a way that doesn't come with as much baggage? We can do all that in two and a half hours, Bill.

Bill Reel [00:03:11] I hope we can cover all of that. That all sounds beautiful.

John Dehlin [00:03:15] Amanda, thanks for joining us. Hope you're feeling all right.

Amanda Reel [00:03:17] I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:03:19] Yeah. And tonight we're going to be hosting a special event where we're going to have a bunch of friends and fans of Bill and Amanda come and honor. Honor them. So we're excited about that and we'll hopefully record that as well and maybe share that. Love it at some point. Margi, you ready for this?

Margi Dehlin [00:03:35] I'm ready, yeah. Excited? Yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:37] All right, Bill, it's your time. Where should we begin?

Bill Reel [00:03:40] So let's set a little bit of groundwork inside religion. Assuming that folks are either beginning to deconstruct or have reconstructed some life outside, is if we're going to talk about that, we need to talk about religion as a form of tribalism.

Bill Reel [00:03:56] And so religion in my mind does a few things that I consider to be unhealthy to individual well being, but for which, if I'm honest, religion is a tool that passed along technology and other tools that we may be tampering with by kind of pulling people out of that. Right. Like by helping people deconstruct religion and them discarding it, they are losing things. And Brit Hartley has been a huge help to me to lean into owning that religion does have value. That while it might do a lot of unhealthy things, it also in ways causes us to pause and. And stare out at the universe at a macro level as well as a micro level.

Bill Reel [00:04:47] It calls on us to come together, to serve others in hard moments, even if that service sometimes seems superficial or a form of sympathy rather than empathy. And so the things that I see that religion does that are unhealthy. Religion, others, people. So religion is always an insider, outsider club, and the insiders are good and the outsiders are bad. And what that does is it allows you to label people who are different than you as less than as the bad guys.

Bill Reel [00:05:22] It justifies crimes like genocide within religion. It justifies any unfair treatment of others who are outside the tribe. Two other things that I think religion does inside is that religion values the tribe's perpetuation over the well being and contentment and happiness of the individual.

Bill Reel [00:05:50] And religion also values the ego of the authoritative voices within the tribe rather than the well being of the individual. And I think it's important to establish that because we, you know, we in this arena of putting out content to help people in this process are often criticized as taking people out of religion and not giving them something else. And I, and I think it's, I think it's not fair because even if we don't give them a new system, we've given them the ability to step away from those unhealthy facets that religion was doing.

Bill Reel [00:06:29] And so setting that as groundwork, I guess I would ask if there's any thoughts from you guys, but setting that as groundwork. Now we can go into talking about what reconstruction starts to look like and what tools I found or Amanda found that helped us to do that.

Margi Dehlin [00:06:44] One thing that's standing out to me about what you're saying is, you know, also as we're shifting, moving away from religion during this transition period is this idea of the structure around which religion kind of was the content and that is like scarcity. It's sort of this idea of like innately you're not enough, the world is not enough. Human beings are not enough. Without this thing that we're going to give you. We're going to give you the answer. Right. For all. And a big part for me was to actually question that not so that would play into my worthiness. Do I believe I'm innately unworthy?

Margi Dehlin [00:07:26] Do I believe I'm. But also collectively in humanism, do I believe human is like human beings actually fundamentally won't come up with something better? Is it possible that religion actually gave these, let's just say complicated. I don't want to become simplistic about it, but like very complicated answers that played out in ways that were harmful and maybe in the short term offered some, some value to. So the tools that you're talking about, is it possible that without it we'd come up with better ones?

John Dehlin [00:08:02] So can I jump in there, Margi, and just lay a bit of groundwork if it's okay?

Margi Dehlin [00:08:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] So I've done like, I spent like five or six years doing retreats and workshops about this. And the way that Natasha and I would always start our retreats is to sort of lay out the value proposition that religions provide. And you've mentioned the book Sapiens as being really crucial to you.

John Dehlin [00:08:24] That book was important to me, but I was, I've been thinking about this for more than 20 years and I'll just. We talked about this in the car. So When I was questioning Mormonism, but also loving it, I stumbled upon, well, actually at byu, I had a professor introduce me to this author named Keim Potok. And Keim Potok was a Jewish author of the mid 20th century, and he wrote a book called the Chosen the Promise. My name is Asher Lev Davita's Harp. These are four of his most well known books.

John Dehlin [00:08:59] And his focus was on Judaism meets modernity. And he would write fiction, but it was realistic fiction about, like, the Jewish people. And on the one hand, you know, millennial, millennia's old religion. In some ways, religion has been the source of their survival, but in another sense, it's been the source of their persecution. So by the late 19th century, Jews are, you know, they've been chased, but pre Holocaust, they've been chased out of Russia. They've been, you know, programs and genocide is just their history, right? And then they start, you know, because they're also a skeptical tradition, a questioning tradition, a learning tradition.

John Dehlin [00:09:46] They start learning about biblical criticism. Way before David Bacavoy, right? Way before, way before. Who's the new Daniel McLaughlin, Daniel McClellan. Jews were thinking about biblical criticism in the 1800s, right? And they discover that maybe the founder of their religion never existed. Maybe the, the founding myths of their Old Testament never happened. And so this branch of Judaism emerges called Reformed Judaism, which, you know, we talked about this, where they're like, well, we can't get rid of our identity.

John Dehlin [00:10:21] So like religion, what does it provide? Identity, meaning, purpose, community, spirituality, a sense of morals, a whole structure to base society upon the basis of civilization. Kind of like a structure for tribalism. And what are we if we're not tribal? Right? We're monkeys that grouped up into tribes. And the myths were like the cohesive glue that these tribes kind of were based on. And that's kind of religion. So Judaism, there's this branch of Judaism called Reformed Judaism that, that says consciously we need this religion, and it's not true. What do we do? And it's harmful. So Reformed Judaism emerges, which basically says, doesn't matter if you believe in God, doesn't matter if you believe in the founder of our religion, Moses.

John Dehlin [00:11:13] Doesn't matter. Like, but we need ritual, we need community, we need spirituality, meaning, purpose, identity, you know, so let's keep being Jews, but beliefs don't matter. Instead of it's belief first, then behavior, then community, or then belonging. Let's flip it. Joanna Brooks taught me this. It starts out with belonging. First you just belong. And then if you want to do some of the Behavior, great.

John Dehlin [00:11:41] Do kosher if you want to, but don't do kosher if you don't. Observe Shabbat if you want to, but if you don't want to, you don't have to. And then beliefs are last. They don't matter. That's Reform Judaism. Guess what the large. I said this to you in the car. Guess what the largest branch of Judaism in the United States is today.

Bill Reel [00:11:57] Yeah. And it's Reformed Judaism.

John Dehlin [00:11:58] Reform Judaism. So I. When I started before Mormon stories, I'm starting to think maybe we need. Okay, Mormonism isn't true. I realized that in 2001. But I love my people, I love my tribe. So maybe we can start a Reform Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:12:15] So, like, when I started the podcast, I had that in my brain. 2005, like, maybe we can start a Reform Mormonism, but I don't want to. Schism. Maybe we can build a Reform Mormonism within the church, but it only takes a year or two to realize nobody wants to build on a foundation of Joseph Smith. For some reason, Jews were okay building on a foundation of Moses and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Nobody, once they learn about Joseph Smith's history, want to build a foundation on Joseph Smith. John Hamer left our people joined Reorganized Church because he's like, you know, you can still build a foundation on Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:12:51] And that's what Community of Christ is saying. It's like, let's be Christian vaguely generically. But it's okay to base, you know, on the tradition of Joseph Smith. Again, because we need community, spirituality, identity, ritual, all the things. So.

John Dehlin [00:13:08] But that's. That's kind of. But that. That's fraught with that. That's fraught within Mormonism. So. So here we have done this work of helping people get informed consent, learn about the problems if they aren't with the church now that they feel misled and they're not cool with the history they deconstruct.

John Dehlin [00:13:34] But then they're left what These are holes. They're left without identity, without meaning, without community, without purpose, without a resolution for the afterlife. Right. Without a clear sense of morality. And I've seen that be a real struggle for people. And in 2023, I don't know that we've really figured it out. So with that context, let's start with your journey and how you're thinking about all this.

Bill Reel [00:14:02] Yeah. So sapiens did play a major role. First off, let me start by saying I accept science, and so I can't push back against it. That is the most rational way to see the world. Not that it's 100% right, it's always making shifts and changes too. But in any given moment, the collective scientific agreement is where the scientists have all, again, the majority of them collectively arrived at what is the most rational point of view in that moment.

Bill Reel [00:14:32] But I still had some blind spots and I went back and I read Sapiens. And the first half of the book, most importantly, was just. It filled in a lot of those voids that I still had. So I accept that 13 point something billion years ago, something happened that's a conversation on its own, because we have this idea of, of matters neither created nor destroyed. And scientists agree it came from this small thing and then turned into everything around us. And it's an expanding universe, and none of that makes any sense at all. But from that moment forward, there was a creative energy that was expanding in the universe and everything came from it.

Bill Reel [00:15:13] And if I go to the point where something close to human arrives on the planet, we have to recognize that humans acting as individuals will die. If a human being or whatever was less than human, but on the way to being human, tried to survive on its own, it almost certainly wouldn't. And so the human species is not fast enough or strong enough to survive on its own against ferocious, faster animals. Hence, the only way humans survive is by banding together, collaborating.

Bill Reel [00:15:48] And in order to collaborate, we talked in the car about how you have to have trust with each other. And Sapiens taught me that in really small groups, intimacy worked. If there was 12 of us, we would all know each other well enough to know who the good hunter was, who the good gatherer was, who the really flawed hunter was that you didn't want to take on the hunting trip, who the really bad gatherer was that would pick the wrong berries or mushrooms, and we'd all just pass away or

John Dehlin [00:16:13] steal the food, you know, or stab you in the back or whatever, right?

Bill Reel [00:16:16] And so in the effort to work together and to perpetuate, obviously bigger tribes slaughter smaller tribes. And so any mechanism or adaptation that allows a bigger tribe to collaborate in a way that is just as successful as the smaller tribe would then allow that tribe to then dominate over a smaller group of people. Once you get over the number of about 25 people. Yuval Harari suggested that humans invented this technology called language.

Bill Reel [00:16:45] And earlier primates. And still in the primate world today, bonobos and gibbons and gorillas and all of that, chimpanzees, they do this act of grooming, so they'll get together every day with each other and pick gnats out of each other's hair and be able to work together, because that signals to each other that I care about you and I'm here for you. And it's how we kind of. They learn. It's how they learn to trust each other and understand their roles within the primate family or the primate tribe that they're in. But again, bigger tribes slaughter smaller tribes. And human beings don't do the grooming thing, at least not anymore.

Bill Reel [00:17:23] What we do is with language as a tool. We also then created another adaptation from language called gossip. And we think of gossip today as like speaking bad about somebody. But gossip 200,000 years ago would have been the way that I tell you about other members of the tribe and their gifts and flaws.

Bill Reel [00:17:43] So it's how when you're in a tribe larger than 25, where you can't possibly know intimately each other, and this works up to about 150 people, where gossip serves as the tool that we all kind of collaborate together because we all know our strengths and weaknesses. And even though I know Amanda, but Amanda doesn't know John, but I do, I can now inform Amanda about John and tell Amanda what his gifts and flaws are.

Bill Reel [00:18:10] But again, bigger tribes slaughter smaller tribes. And so once you get to 150 and more, the. The mechanism that we created as human beings as a technology is myth. And one only has to read Joseph Campbell or other folks who have written on that topic to understand that myth is so powerful that somebody can be a complete stranger to you, but because you both hold the same belief and not always religious nationality. So if I'm in a war and there are two people on the battlefield and one is wearing the same uniform as me, and somebody else is wearing a different uniform, I know who the good guys are and I know who the bad guys are.

Bill Reel [00:18:52] For tribes to survive, it depends on the tribe essentially being one life form and individual. Well, being isn't important. And you have to get human beings to be brave enough that they will put their life on the line with all of their investment, with all of their intention and energy.

Bill Reel [00:19:22] Otherwise, the other tribe that is doing that will kill you. So your responsibility as a tribe is to create a belief system that people go, I've got a resolution for death. I don't have to worry about dying. I know that I will live beyond that, because that's really a core component of how you get someone to sacrifice their life on the battlefield. It's the whole idea that there's no atheist in the foxhole because if you think that your life will end the moment you are shot, there is something within you that's going to want to bail on being on the front lines of that battle.

Bill Reel [00:19:57] And so believers in a religion, even if the religion is to most people absurd, is still going to get the believer to sacrifice themselves in the name of the tribe and hence myth is so powerful in doing that.

Bill Reel [00:20:15] I guess maybe I want to stop for a moment and just check in and see if there's a spot you want to go from there because I don't know that I addressed Margi and maybe not even addressed per se you but I think people need to understand what religion solves. Religion again, it has a morality but it's not an individual morality. It's not like we go what is really ethical in terms of treating people good and bad. It's really more of a code of conduct so we don't disrupt each other too much as a community and lose trust in each other. And so some of the rules aren't really fair. They're really more about the tribe working together rather than the individual being safe and secure. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:20:54] Yeah, it's about arranging order to the benefit of the group. Sometimes for the and it's. There's a tension there because it's to the benefit of the individual in the sense that hopefully the individual survives when they otherwise would be killed by other tribes. But in the other sense the individualistic needs of the individual are always going to ultimately be subservient or relegated as less important to the needs of the group. So there's always going to be, as Bonner Richie said once, there's always going to be violence done to the individual because at the end of the day the group needs to survive over the individual. Yeah.

Bill Reel [00:21:41] And to the extent that if we back up in time and still today in countries with unrest, to the degree where folks are really in danger on a daily basis and don't really have the freedom to express themselves, it is crucial that the system be set up in that way to perpetuate the tribe. If we're going to start gearing towards individual well being, it can only happen in environments where everyone already to a certain degree feels safe and secure.

Bill Reel [00:22:17] So as we're talking about reconstructing and setting tribalism off to the side and trying to create something where individuals matter most, we need to honor that. That is a privilege like you only can do that in places where there's a certain amount of privilege that already exists and that even in places where that exists it could crumble at any moment and we might have to resort back to tribalism.

Bill Reel [00:22:52] Thomas McConkey once told me, I did an interview with him where we talked about the stages of cognitive development, and he made this remark. He said, whatever we were in the past, there was a moment in time where we were all collectively egocentric. We only cared about ourselves. And then we became family centric, and then we became ethnocentric or tribal. And as much as all of us on the other side of religion see ethnocentricity as unhealthy, his comment was, but pause for a moment. Recognize that when ethnocentricity came on the stage, it likely saved the human race.

Bill Reel [00:23:30] And so it kind of plants in us that idea that one stage isn't better than another. There is a hierarchy, there is a progression from lower stages into higher stages, but there isn't a good or bad. Some of these stages that we look at as being bad were the best thing that could have happened to the human species at the time they did.

Bill Reel [00:23:47] And so as we're conversating about being privileged and being able in this moment in 2023 in America to begin to talk about how we create a society that values individual well being, safety, security, contentment, this is a complex conversation that we could be entirely wrong on. Does that make sense?

John Dehlin [00:24:14] Oh, makes all the sense in the world. Because, number one, like. And I think about this little. I've been thinking about this every day for 20 years. And that's. That's not to say I've got better thoughts. It's just like I'm. This is all I think about. Because I, like, I care about humanity, I care about human suffering, and I care about our species in a sense. I want to see us. I mean, I don't like the harm that we do to each other and to the world on the one hand, but I also have pride in our species and want to see us do well and maybe even do better.

John Dehlin [00:24:52] So. So I am constantly thinking about, well, number one, I start with this conditioning that Mormonism was good for me. So like we talked yesterday about how your mom was in foster care, you didn't feel like you got what you needed when you were growing up. Love and nurturing, you know, but then when you found missionaries or found Amanda and found the church and then got into it, it starts developing you and challenging you in ways that you may not have been able to find on your own. Right.

John Dehlin [00:25:28] And like that. I think that many, many, many give stipulating the harm that religion has caused and continues to cause. That's the price of tribal thriving. If what we just said 10 minutes ago is true. In other words, if we're going to survive and not get snuffed out by the other tribe, then yeah, there's going to be a cost of the individuals sometimes being harmed for the benefit of the group.

John Dehlin [00:25:59] But if that's true and religion is sort of what brought us to the dance, if religion brought us to 20, 23, to where, hey, we're all kind of thriving so well that we can consider putting off the tribe, which is kind of where we are, it's almost like a faith crisis is a privilege where we've advanced to the point intellectually, socially, financially, where we can go, maybe I don't need the tribe anymore. 200 years ago, you know, you know what the saying, right? A lone monkey is what, a dead Monkey? Yeah. Like 500, a thousand years ago, you just decide you don't need your tribe. If your tribe doesn't kill you, the other tribe will. Yeah, right.

Bill Reel [00:26:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:45] So now religion has got us to the point where we're like, ah, maybe I don't even need the tribe. But then the question is, number one, are we really going to be better off without it, or are we going to get lost like a lone monkey psychologically?

John Dehlin [00:27:03] If there isn't a threat of some tribe killing us, is there the threat of our own minds killing us? Is there the threat of just meaninglessness or existential dread or just being left to our own devices without a grounding moral force?

John Dehlin [00:27:21] Are we individually going to do better or worse? And then secondly, will our species do as well? Will our community do as well? Will or will our community fare worse? And that's what I'm thinking about all the time. And in 2023, I wish I could say, oh, yeah, leave religion and you're going to just thrive for sure.

John Dehlin [00:27:48] And our species is going to just do way better. I'm not convinced individually or as a species, after interacting with tens of thousands of people who have left their religion, I'm not convinced that more often than not we don't end up making a bigger mess for ourselves individually, causing more suffering to ourselves individually than whatever pain we would have experienced in the religion. I'm not sure.

John Dehlin [00:28:16] And then with a bigger, bigger concern, I'm not sure that as a species, if we throw off religion and get rid of it, we're better off in 100 years than what brought us to the dance, which was religion and shared myth.

Bill Reel [00:28:31] Okay, go. No matter how much we turn the society into one that favors individual well being. We're going to need to have, if we live in a world where there are geographic boundaries and there are bad guys out there, in other words, unhealthy, powerful people who threaten our existence, such as Putin and Russia right now.

Bill Reel [00:28:58] And so we have to have a military that is willing to put its life on the line at any given moment. We have to be so determined to survive that we have to have the best tools and technology to destroy them if need be so that they don't destroy us.

Bill Reel [00:29:17] And if we create a society of people who discard God and discard the unhealthiness of a religious tribe, then you've got to bet your bottom dollar that that's going to also have ramifications for the intensity upon which a military is built and can engage an enemy.

Bill Reel [00:29:47] We live in a world right now that's in transitions. In other words, we're trying to have a conversation about the other side of something that we're in the middle of right now. So some data is coming back, at least for me. I would say this is sort of anecdotal, although I've tried to survey folks like in southern Utah, for instance, and you've done this work as well, where you're getting feedback from people who have deconstructed religion and you're checking in on them to see how they're doing. They're reporting back on how life is going.

Bill Reel [00:30:23] And what seems like happens is the deconstruction of religion is traumatic. It is the dark night of the soul. But on the other side of that, once people get some footing and grounding, most of them seem to report that they are as happy or to a large extent happier than they were. Not everyone, we talked about that yesterday.

Bill Reel [00:30:47] But also some results are coming back and showing that children, for instance, suffer more from depression. The more softness that their home has, the more free time they have to think about things. There's something beneficial to fighting for your life every day to the point where people in extreme poverty, in underdeveloped countries or in developing countries seem to not deal with the depths of depression as people who seem to have their basic needs taken care of and free time to think about it.

Bill Reel [00:31:23] And so I think we're in this transitional moment where we don't yet know the answer, and we have to kind of step out into the shadows a little bit. And we might have to sort of test these ideas and be willing to make adjustments if the data shows that things aren't Healthy. And I think the results as of right now are both good and bad.

Identity, Meaning, and Spirituality Post-Religion

John Dehlin [00:31:47] So maybe one way we could frame our conversation today. What I like to do is describe this phenomenon of leaving religion as having all these holes emerge again. Identity, spirituality, morality, community, resolutions about the afterlife, etc. Right.

Bill Reel [00:32:07] Should we start with each one those holes?

John Dehlin [00:32:09] And the question I, what I tell people is when they come to me with the faith crisis, I'm like, have you identified the holes that have developed since you've left your high demand religion and how have you filled them? So one thing we can do is just talk to you guys about how you look at each of these holes and how you have filled, thought about filling them and what's worked and what hasn't.

Bill Reel [00:32:31] So should we start with the first one? Identity?

John Dehlin [00:32:34] Sure. Yep.

Bill Reel [00:32:35] So when I was in a philosophy class in college, most folks who have delved into philosophy and delved into kind of religions of the world will grasp this. But in this was in the section on Buddhism actually, and they, they were having a conversation about who we are and they talked about, you know, if I cut off your arm, are you still you? And the answer is yes. If I cut off your legs, are you still you? Yes. If I cut off, if I have a sheet over you and I cut you off from the neck and below and somehow machines are allowed to keep you alive and you don't know yet that your entire neck down is gone.

Bill Reel [00:33:10] And the doctor comes in and goes, hey, how are you doing? You're going to go, I'm doing great. Life is good. Super excited to be here with the surgery went well or whatever. You don't recognize yet that everything about you is missing. But in your brain you understand that you are still you.

Bill Reel [00:33:25] So no piece of you or part of you is taken away. And then, then the next thing is, are you your thoughts? And we recognize that thoughts come and go. Some of them we sort of sense we can choose to go into. But now there's this debate about free will. And even, even those on the forefront of science who say that free will does exist, they agree that it is extremely limited, uber limited to the point that it is essentially no free will. Anyway.

Bill Reel [00:33:53] So you're not your thoughts, and so what are you? You're the observer behind the eyes, and that's it. You're simply the observer. And you get this time frame of life to observe all these moments passing in front of you. And you don't quite grasp it, but you think of past and future. Again, animals do the same behaviors we do. They Just don't apply stories to it. And so we were talking yesterday, just at lunch or dinner, talking about how I saw kangaroos fighting and it looked like a bar fight. These guys were duking it out, but they didn't have a story about things.

Bill Reel [00:34:31] So we apply stories to things and we have consciousness, or at least something we call consciousness. And that consciousness calls us to reflect on the past and the future as if they are with us in the present. And it's not real. The past is just a memory and the future never comes.

Bill Reel [00:34:50] All you have is the here and now. And so identity on the reconstruction side for me is that I really am none of the things I think I am, and hence I shouldn't have allegiance to any of it.

Bill Reel [00:35:08] My goal is, in terms of my identity, is to constantly try to show up in a way that I'm improving upon what happened before so that I can be my best, healthiest self and be accountable to my bullshit, be accountable to my unhealthy mechanisms and find a way to treat other human beings as if they were me. We were talking last night at dinner. There's a really cool YouTube series called Soft White Underbelly. And this guy interviews what most of us look at as the dregs of society. Prostitutes, drug dealers, gambling addicts. And all the guy does is put him in front of a camera and he says, share your life with me.

Bill Reel [00:35:53] He basically does Mormon stories for folks on the back alleyways of Las Vegas. And as he's having the conversation, what you realize within a couple of episodes, then they're short, they're 7 to 20, or once in a while there'll be a 40 minute conversation. Most of them are in the 15 to 20 minute range. In that range, you realize very quickly that these human beings really are you under a different set of circumstances. And so while religion, others people, The woke side, and you and I, you know, we talked about that word being problematic because there's, there's ills to wokeism as well. But the waking up to things as they really are, it's nudging us or compelling us to sense that every human being is us.

Bill Reel [00:36:44] And as Eckhart Tolle, I think I said it yesterday, that we are the universe, expressing ourselves as a human for a little while. That creative energy created everything, and we are it. And so while religion taught us to see ourselves as. As separate and coming into the world, the reality is we're not separate. We are each other and we are the plants and we are the animals, and we are the rocks.

Bill Reel [00:37:11] And we ought to see other people as ourselves. And only in doing that do you become inclusive and you stop caring about right and wrong and good and bad. But you start to think of ethical and unethical, you start to think of responsible and irresponsible, and you start framing the world in a different way, that you care about people as yourself and you want them to have the same opportunities, the same protections, the same safety, and the same opportunity to seek their fullest selves of contentment.

Bill Reel [00:37:53] With the only rule being that we work our butts off to remove as much as we can. And I should say this trauma is part and parcel a part of this life. You can't be born into this world and you can't give birth to someone in this world without incurring trauma.

Bill Reel [00:38:14] So trauma is a necessity. But we ought to work our butts off to reduce intentional harm and unnecessary trauma so that people can live their best lives possible. And othering people is never going to get there.

John Dehlin [00:38:31] So you started approaching the topic of identity.

Bill Reel [00:38:35] Yeah, I am everything.

John Dehlin [00:38:37] And what you're saying is, we are everyone. We are everyone in each other. We are one. We were all one. Everything's one. Yeah, this is, you know, this is like John Lennon's Imagine song that the world maybe is one.

John Dehlin [00:38:51] Everyone that I've talked to that has had kind of a psychedelic experience, which we've covered a little bit on Mormon stories, that's kind of one of the most common epiphanies. And if you even look at, like, Jesus and what he taught, it seems like there's a oneness to humanity that Jesus seemed to be preaching. So. So for you, but what, what the tension there is, is it. It's basically saying the erosion of a tribal identity, the erosion of I am my worth and I'm. Margi, I want to get your thoughts in here. I, you know, in Mormonism, it's like, I'm a Mormon, I'm a member of the church, Jesus Christ.

John Dehlin [00:39:30] I'm a father, I'm a mother, I'm a priesthood holder. I'm a deacon, I'm a teacher, I'm a priest, I'm endowed. I'm a missionary, I'm a bishop, I'm an elder, I'm a Relief Society president. I'm, you know, I'll be a God someday. Like, I'm, you know, it's like all this story and all this identity and. And then I, My behaviors, I'm worthy or I'm not worthy. I am a masturbator. I'm a. I'm an adulterer or I'm. I'm a worthy person. Right. And you're saying for you, throw all that away.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] And it's just, I am. And it's. I am one with everything. So no more identity. But then that, that answers. That begs the question sort of, of what about the tribe, you know, and. And is that an identity, just being one with everything? Is that enough for people?

Bill Reel [00:40:24] Yeah. It seems as though, again, taking all of that logic to its end, everything is myth. It's all made up, it's all pretend. I think of like the financial system. We started out by finding some metals in the earth, and we called them gold and silver, and we decided that they were more valuable than the others.

Bill Reel [00:40:44] And so I accumulated my gold. And you agreed that my gold was worth something. And I agreed that my gold was worth something. So we did a trade. I got some goods and gave you a piece of gold. And at some point gold went away. And we had money, but money was based on gold that we didn't see that was hidden away somewhere. And then that gold just kind of vanished, didn't it? And suddenly there was money. But now we created the money, got put off to the side, and now we created these plastic cards and these pieces of paper called checks, and now most of the money is gone as well.

Bill Reel [00:41:15] And then the money just disappears. And then now we create the Internet and we transfer money electronically, and I put a routing number in and an account number and I can send you thousands of dollars. And now there's no more paper checks. And now the cards aren't being used as much, and it all slowly fades away. It's all myth, it's all made up.

Bill Reel [00:41:36] But myth is valuable in the same way that there are things we have to sort of pretend in, and we might be able to choose which myths we emphasize. And some myths are better than others. But almost assuredly, inevitably, we're going to have to create. If we're going to create something better, it's going to have to have some form of myth in order to bind people together and to lead them to trust each other so that we can have collaboration, reciprocity, fairness, trust.

Bill Reel [00:42:08] Because if we're. Because any good society is going to be built on those kinds of things. And so we're going to have to here figure out what myth we create that can get a world society to trust each other. In spite of geographic differences, skin color differences, cultural differences, language differences. There's quite a feat ahead of us. And as we said, I don't Even know if we get there.

John Dehlin [00:42:34] Yeah. Yeah. And I should add a credit to Noah Rashetta and secular Buddhism and just Buddhism in general. This idea of we're not our stories, we're not our labels. You know, we're not our actions, we're not our behaviors. We just are. We're the. We're the. We're the consciousness behind the thoughts and the feeling. We're not our feelings, we're not our trauma. This idea that we are simply observers of what's around us and that we're kind of one with everything, it kind of starts with Buddhism, doesn't it?

Bill Reel [00:43:13] And let me say too, again, everyone's welcome to disagree. My belief is that humans, each human being, is doing the best that they can. You and I were talking yesterday about, unfortunately, the idea of serial killers or pedophiles.

Bill Reel [00:43:31] There is genetics involved in that. The science says that the unhealthiest among us are genetically predisposed to think the thoughts that they think. And they have the same difficulty in doing the healthy thing that you and I have about whatever it is that our brains tell us to indulge in. So if my thing is, I've got to have chocolate ice cream. And lots of us do recognize that the most unhealthiest humans around us are also predisposed to think those unhealthy thoughts in the same way that we can't control exactly all of our behaviors. And hence, when you grasp that all humans are just trying to.

Bill Reel [00:44:14] All humans are doing the best they can, regardless of the degree of healthiness or unhealthiness that's within them. You gotta find ways to stop, I guess, punishing people. You can try to, in a sort, reform people. But the goal now, instead of inflicting pain so that you pay a price for what you did, is really, how do I keep the unhealthy mechanisms of each of us from impacting the innocent people around us? And hence, it's a whole other way of creating a moral code. It's a whole other way of designing rules. It's a whole other way of creating myth stories to ingrain important and societal principles within.

Bill Reel [00:44:58] And again, we're right in the middle of. And maybe we're in the beginning of this process of trying to figure out even how to do that.

John Dehlin [00:45:05] Margi, do you have any thoughts on Bill's reflections on identity? I'm just curious, like, does that seem solid for you? The idea that we're all one and that labels and stories and tribal identity aren't going to get us where we need to go in the future.

Margi Dehlin [00:45:22] I have a question for you about that. How has that, however you want to talk about it, that thought that you hold, that idea that you hold, how has that affected your life, your relationships, your relationship with your family? I'm just kind of curious about that.

Bill Reel [00:45:46] Every one of us, whatever trauma happened to us in our life, those moments where something threatened us and we were scared, in that happening, we've developed mechanisms, I'll call it, and I think they call it shadows, right? Like we have these shadows, which are something happened and we created this underlying way in which to put walls up around ourself and protect ourselves so that when something now in the future looks like that thing, our walls go up and we now manipulate the outside world so that we get to feel safe and secure. So if Amanda says something that triggers me, I say something back, which is designed to put her at distance from me so that she can't poke it at my really fragile parts and pieces.

Bill Reel [00:46:44] So what you're pointing to, Margi, is that me coming to grasp that I'm just the observer that I've taken on secular Buddhism, I begin to lean into the fact that I shouldn't have any attachment to all of that, which allows me then to look in the mirror and to confront the unhealthy aspects of myself without needing to put my walls up. So now, for the first time, the last five years, for the first time in my life, I've been willing to sit in space with people that I've hurt and hear honestly their reflection of, like, hey, here's the things you do when the world isn't the way you want it to be, when you are grasping at things, trying to make the world what you want it to be, or you're pushing away things that are in your space that you don't want, you're hurting the rest of us in the way that you do that.

Bill Reel [00:47:40] And so for the first time in my life, I'm able to look in the mirror and go, oh, you're right, I'm doing those things. I'm protecting my ego. I'm protecting myself at others expense, and they're me. Hence I ought to concern myself with protecting them and giving them safety and security in the same way that I want it. Hence, I shouldn't use unhealthy mechanisms to distance myself from accountability. I shouldn't use unhealthy mechanisms to protect myself at the expense of causing harm or trauma to someone else. And I think that's a whole nother way of living out A life.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:21] Yeah, I can see that.

John Dehlin [00:48:22] Yeah. So let's go to maybe a second hold to fill. Let's do spirituality. What is like a lot of Mormons, post Mormons become allergic even to the word spirituality. They associate it with abuse and with trauma and with manipulation and with religion. And with Woo.

Margi Dehlin [00:48:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:43] And with religion.

Amanda Reel [00:48:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:48:45] So what are your thoughts on spirituality? And. And if you still hold a place for something like or called spirituality, what does that look like?

Bill Reel [00:48:56] Yeah. So I separate completely the words religion and spirituality. We all remember those tests in school that would be designed to gauge our intelligence and we would have logic questions. You know, all apples are fruits and all fruits glow. And then you had to mark the box that say apples glow.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] Right.

Bill Reel [00:49:18] And we all connect the dots. Even if, even if it's an absurd statement such as I just said, we recognize that the flow of it is still logical spirituality. Religion has spirituality. Religion is a controlling way to get the tribe to collaborate together.

Bill Reel [00:49:38] And on some level it convinces its, its followers that they are having, and they do have a spiritual, have spiritual experiences. Spirituality, though, doesn't necessitate religion. So this is maybe where drugs come in. If I go back 200,000 years ago, whatever we were, we were certainly interacting with conscious altering tools. But rather than having a religious authoritative voice who said, hey, I know how this works for all of you.

Bill Reel [00:50:10] Here's what's on the other side. I'm the voice for that. You all believe me. He told me the rules, I'll tell you. Instead, there was a shaman who had us interact with conscious altering tools, and everybody was permitted to go off and have their own experience.

Bill Reel [00:50:26] And so the shaman in medicine tools is there to help each person have their own journey. And your journey will be completely unique to everyone else in the room. And somewhere along the way, that got sabotaged. And the person in power, in a position of power said, oh, what if I control the narrative? And I say that what I experienced or what I would like people to believe is experienced, I impose is the way it is for all of you. And so when I did ayahuasca, there was a group of us in a room and we all took the medicine. And the shaman did these rituals and he had this table set up and he had candles on it and he blew tobacco into the air.

Bill Reel [00:51:09] And he asked everyone to come forward and take the medicine. And I raised my hand and I said, tell me about this. What does this ritual mean? And he said, to be honest, I don't know. You figure it out. And I thought that was Gorgeous. Like, you could tell it was spiritual. You could tell it was setting the groundwork for us to internally sense that something big was about to happen. The environment's going to change here.

Bill Reel [00:51:35] But he didn't tell me what I was supposed to make meaning of it. So I take the medicine and within an hour I am off on my own journey. And there are people in the room who are in their head, literally on a raft, falling off and drowning in the water and trying to survive. There's another person who's going back into their early childhood and dealing with sexual abuse. There's another person who's talking to their dead grandmother who passed away six months ago and meant a whole lot to them. There are folks in the room who are experiencing what, what they needed. The thing the shaman told us all throughout the two day event was the medicine is the teacher.

Bill Reel [00:52:14] The guru isn't some outside voice or person who claims to know things. And in fact, I think the wisest among us recognize that anytime somebody tries to define what it is, they got way closer than they were ever meant to be. And you automatically already know they're wrong.

Bill Reel [00:52:33] It's the folks who stay at distance and go, it's something. I don't know what it is. There's some connective force among all of us. But I'm not here to tell you what it looks like, how to label it, what the rules are, I don't know. And I think those are the wisest voices in our society.

Margi Dehlin [00:52:54] I was curious if you wanted to share some of the shifts or insights that have come to you. What I'm hearing you kind of describe a little bit, tell me if I'm getting it right, is, you know, this switch away from religion. Religion being very external, very much like, here's the map, here's what it looks like. And yeah, I think there's moments of, you know, a structure of connecting to yourself, but also that nothing you get from that experience can be at odds with what the external, you know, power sources, authority are telling you too. So what I'm hearing is where it used to be a very external in nature, right? With religion moving spirituality, moving toward a connection to yourself, more of an inward journey. Is that what you're kind of saying?

Bill Reel [00:53:52] Every human being is completely alien to the human being next to them. Somebody said to me, you look at each other, if you just look around a room of people, you can see they all look so different. Different color skin, different noses, different ears.

Bill Reel [00:54:08] Someone said that if you could see the inside of someone's Head and the way they think about the world, the way they process what their values are, what they need to be happy, what. What the things they're drawn to and the things that they detest. It would be so much different inside their heads than the differences we perceive in the outer world. And we sense like it's easy. An easy correlation is like weight loss. For the folks who are trying to lose weight, the best way to do it is to create an individualized plan. Because some people metabolize different than others. Some people need exercise more than others.

Bill Reel [00:54:44] Other people need certain kinds of diets that are different than the person next to them. And we kind of recognize in the weight loss world that there are a thousand ways to do it, and some ways are better than others. For each individual person, and hence, for me, spirituality is the idea that every human is different from the human next to them. And we ought to find an individualized plan without an outer authority voice saying, this is the plan for all of you is to create something unique that is appealing to you, that drives you to feel awe and transcendence about the world around you.

Bill Reel [00:55:17] At the macro level, right, we are nothing on a rock arguing with each other about politics and elections and Covid and all the things that we do. And meanwhile, it's all meaningless. We're all on this little tiny spot in a map on a tiny little rock floating through space at whatever miles per hour that is. And whatever we do and bicker about and shoot nuclear weapons at ourselves, it means nothing out there. We're so small.

Bill Reel [00:55:48] And then if you look at the micro level, there is so much going on that you don't even see little, little organisms and plant processes and things happening. Mycelium under the. The forest ground floor. And you can't even fathom at the micro level all the things that are happening.

Bill Reel [00:56:09] And I think if we're going to be spiritual beings, we ought to look for on transcendence at the macro and micro level. And we ought to engage in experiences that draw us to be internally accountable to who we are, what we do, that work to shed labels, diminish suffering and harm, and draw us to improve upon who we are so that we make the world and ourselves a better place. And that, to me, is spirituality.

Margi Dehlin [00:56:46] Great. Yeah, thank you for that. So

John Dehlin [00:56:53] I guess. And we may not have time to delve into it. Here is. I've thought about, like, spiritual experiences, which is kind of how I thought about spirituality. Mormonism is like having that the flow, right? The be in the flow, the tingling of my arms and on down my spine, feeling oxytocin or endorphins or serotonin or whatever those positive chemicals are that go in my brain.

John Dehlin [00:57:24] Like whenever I got that in Mormonism, I felt super positive. And it's probably not super indistinguishable from like when a mother has a baby, I understand it when the baby is delivered, the mother feels those rush of similar chemicals or when you're at an amazing concert, you know. But I was taught that those were the Holy Ghost and it was in a Mormon context. But thinking about things evolutionarily, I could see a benefit. Because if an, if a religious organization or a political organization can get you to have those feelings in a religious or a political context, then you feel a sense of allegiance to the group, right?

John Dehlin [00:58:09] You feel a sense of community with the people around you. You feel a sense of loyalty and allegiance to the group. And sometimes it comes after a set of tasks that the religions ask you to do. Whether it's praying or reading the Book of Mormon or fasting for a long time. There's a payoff at the end, hopefully that comes or going to a youth conference or sitting through 12 hours of general conference. Like, there's work that you do that, that comes before the spiritual experience, that's kind of the payoff. And within a traditional, cultural, societal context, I can see why evolutionarily those spiritual epiphanies developed because they usually have a social context and even a behavioral context that, that elicit those experiences.

John Dehlin [00:59:03] When I talk to my friends who have had psychedelic experiences, it's, there's. This isn't a criticism, it's a question. I believe all my friends when they say that it's changed their life. I've almost never met someone who's had a psychedelic experience who doesn't say, it's changed my life.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] However, when I've just like, said, okay, I knew you before, I know you now, and I've tried to say, huh, do I experience them as a fundamentally different person? Maybe sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes they seem to be more of a mess sometimes after all these psychedelic experiences than they were before.

John Dehlin [00:59:48] And one of the questions I had is, what if psychedelics, number one, are simply substances that trigger the feeling or the perception in your brain that you've had a life changing experience without actually having a life changing experience or without actually doing the work that would lead to actual change? And so in that sense, it's kind of a shortcut.

John Dehlin [01:00:14] It can be conceived as a shortcut to get the payoff without doing the work. And so sometimes I. So that's kind of a question I have about psychedelic experiences. And then the only other thing I'll say is that when they talk about psychedelics like it's the medicine and the wisdom of the plant or whatever it is, I don't mean to be mocking, but it starts to pull a religious feel to it again of like this mushroom or this thing that I ingested knows all and it's going to deliver to me the wisdom that I need in the moment. And there almost starts to develop for some this kind of like blind faith again that somehow this little piece of food that I'm going to eat or this plant that I'm going to ingest knows what's best for me and is going to tell me what I need, when what it might be doing is simply pulling some of the same triggers a dream does.

John Dehlin [01:01:20] And those things could be random just as much as they could be deeply meaningful and significant and spiritual. We probably don't have time to cover all this. I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yum. I'm trying to be respectful and validating, but also be sincere about the questions that I have. And I'll add, the final thing is it seems like sometimes people can get addicted to altered states of consciousness. Avoid learning to sit with their real distressing emotions that are actually trying to get them to make room. Real changes. But instead, psychedelics and other drugs, alcohol, pick your drug. Can ultimately become a way that people actually think they're enlightened, but in reality are just avoiding and or developing addictions for themselves. Yeah, anyway, that's a lot.

Bill Reel [01:02:12] So again, now we're in and do another complex topic that is not cut and dry. So there are people in this world who are using drugs to escape reality and to avoid confronting the challenges that lie in front of them for whatever reasons, for fear and all shame and all the negative feelings that we feel that we want to escape and get away from.

Bill Reel [01:02:38] But there's also significant data coming in. So for instance, in recent therapy with mdma, they show that folks who had severe PTSD did three therapeutic sessions with MDMA or Molly, guided by the therapist, with some distance in between each session. And when they got done, it was 76% of people. It was 76% of people who said that their reported back. The data showed that their PTSD was either gone or significantly diminished. And then when they came back and visited those patients a year later, it was like 60/60% still felt that way. And that's Remarkable because with opioids and other medicines, we can diminish PTSD a little bit.

Bill Reel [01:03:27] We can give people tools to cope with it, but making it essentially vanish has been impossible. So the science says, at least with a segment of people, this thing is working demonstrably.

John Dehlin [01:03:40] The science, early data seems to suggest, suggest that it may. Like that's different than science has actually established it.

Bill Reel [01:03:49] Right, yeah. No, science is always changing.

Margi Dehlin [01:03:50] Right.

Bill Reel [01:03:50] New data comes in and I'm just saying it's early.

John Dehlin [01:03:53] Yeah, it's really early.

Bill Reel [01:03:54] It is, but the research results seem significant. The other thing is people taking mushrooms and dealing with depression, there's always this risk. There's a small number of people who, when they take conscious altering tools, they're actually at risk. If you are borderline schizophrenic or schizophrenic, you should stay away from any conscious altering tools because you're already struggling to discern what reality is. And this is going to complicate that. But for the far wide majority of folks who take psilocybin, for instance, they're going to have a conscious altering experience and then five hours later, or if it's LSD, 12 hours later, they're going to come out, come out of it and come back to their normal sort of state of mind.

Bill Reel [01:04:38] But what prompts people to make change? Like we have this idea that if we teach people and they'll change, and reality is people don't generally change. What does cause changes is when you experience the world in a way that disrupts your current patterns. So there are lots of ways to get there. One of the ways, they say, is to travel. If you travel and see other places in the world, interact with different cultures, see different people, you are prompted to question, disrupt and reorganize the patterns of your life.

John Dehlin [01:05:09] Right.

Bill Reel [01:05:10] Meditation is a big one. Folks who have a meditation practice have that same experience. Folks who are voracious book readers, those folks experience the same sort of thing because they're encountering other people's narratives and stories and realities that are different than their own. Hence they have to question their own story.

Bill Reel [01:05:29] Conscious altering tools, as you said, is a shortcut. I can take a few mushrooms within 45 minutes to an hour and a half, I am in an altered state of consciousness. But that altered state of consciousness if used as a tool because you can go into a drug recreationally and you can go into a tool trying to look into your inner self.

Bill Reel [01:05:48] And if you take a conscious altering tool, you are suddenly thinking and seeing the world different than you did. Hence, you have no choice but to sort of confront how you were seeing the world and what you're seeing now. And those patterns get disrupted. And you get, for the first time, whether it's conscious altering tools or meditation or reading a story in a book or going to visit Switzerland, you can sense like, oh, it could be different.

Bill Reel [01:06:19] It doesn't have to look the way it does. And so I think you're 100% right about the good and the bad, but I think we can deeply reduce the bad and significantly increase the good if we had a way in which we took conscious altering tools and gave them to people with the education, the environment, and the professional community who were there to guide them through that experience.

Bill Reel [01:06:50] And I think if we did it appropriately, almost everyone would have a productive experience of some sort, even if they had a bad trip.

John Dehlin [01:07:00] Amanda, did you want to add something?

Amanda Reel [01:07:01] Yeah, I wanted to pipe in, you know, maybe for listeners that are teetering with may this be, you know, something for them or not? Not everybody has these big epiphanies either. Like, so Bill and I have done the same. The same drugs pretty much at the same time. And so as he was speaking to his ayahuasca experience, for example, he had this huge thing. A lot of people learned so much and things like this as you were talking about, and it doesn't happen like that for everybody. I just want to give that caveat. Like, I don't have those big things. Like, I have some visuals and I can play with some visuals and that's fun.

Amanda Reel [01:07:44] But these big epiphany things I don't get. But also there's something in my brain I can tell has shifted and maybe it's a placebo effect. And I'm okay with that too. I'm okay with shortcuts and I'm okay with placebos, but I don't think the shortcut does take out the work, though.

Amanda Reel [01:08:08] So like you said, you've now sent something different. And so now I can go and learn about that and build and start correcting some things in me. And so an outsider wouldn't see this big life changing event. And maybe I don't even act differently per se, but I know something's different even if I can't put my finger on it. So now it's my job to go and do the work if I so choose to. But I have not had these big epiphanies like a lot of other people have.

Amanda Reel [01:08:44] So maybe don't keep going for the next thing. Next thing, if you're looking for that big epiphany because that might not be how it comes, for whatever that's worth.

Bill Reel [01:08:57] And the other side of it is that sometimes these things are huge. You and I did MDMA together, and we were our very first time doing it. Had no expectation. Exactly. We kind of sort of knew what the drug would do. We took it. And an hour later, you and I are in a space where our egos completely dropped off. Like, there's zero ego. And Amanda is voicing her concerns about our relationship, and I'm voicing my concerns about our relationship. And there is this soft space to just hear the other person let all your walls down and go like, oh, you're right, I'm doing that. I've never been able to even see that before. More or less be accountable to it. And when we woke up the next morning, it was like we had been through 10 years of therapy, and for the first time, I felt like that next day our relationship was real.

John Dehlin [01:09:56] Yeah.

Bill Reel [01:09:57] And so sometimes these experiences can be incredible and lead people to addressing their shadows that they not only couldn't be accountable to, but didn't even know were there.

John Dehlin [01:10:20] Okay. And is that how much of your thoughts on spirituality than sort of, like, are now kind of psychedelic? Like, are now kind of enshrouded within the psychedelic circle?

Bill Reel [01:10:35] Oh, I just think psychedelics are one shortcut avenue to get there. Most people aren't going to take on meditation. And even most. And even of the group who do take on meditation, most of them give it up quickly. Right. It's like exercising, oh, I'm going to start my new year, and I'm going to lose 40 pounds. And literally within a month, 95% of those folks have just gone back to using their treadmill as a coat rack.

Bill Reel [01:11:04] So. So meditation may not be for everyone, because it takes work to get to the point where you're experiencing enough success that you can tell the practice is worthwhile. Hence, I shouldn't. I don't think we should shame shortcuts at all if the outward result is still incredible.

Bill Reel [01:11:24] And pointing out meditation books, travel, all of those are paths to it. I don't need any one path to be the path. Let's just acknowledge that any process that causes you to bump into your way of thinking and to be able to challenge your own patterns in your head is productive and I think leads to spiritual experiences.

Margi Dehlin [01:11:50] So I have a question. So you mentioned kind of travel. What are the other kind of. If we're looking at it like a toolbox. Right. And psychedelics would be part of that toolbox for you. You said travel any like I would like to hear any of the other kind of tools that you use to either reframe or connect to this intention that you said earlier about reducing harmonious in the world. And also, do you rely on practices at all or is it more intention for you?

Bill Reel [01:12:27] Yeah. One of the things I'm lucky to have around me are really good friends who are also trying to figure out how to be better. And so sitting around with good people and again, being where I'm at, those people tend to be white, middle age. So I also have blind spots where I'm not exposed to differences otherwise. But in the midst of this group of people who have a lot of overlap of similarity, we are more than willing to engage in vulnerable conversations. One of the things religion does is it prevents us from talking openly with each other. There's too much risk.

Bill Reel [01:13:09] There's too much risk in telling you how my life really is. Because in religion there is this judgment that still again leads to othering you. You either fit in the tribe exactly or you don't. And so there's a psychological mechanism called costly signaling where we're always trying to tell the other person that we belong in this tribe as much as they do. And it really isn't belonging, it's fitting in because every one of us has to wear a mask and compromise ourself to be there.

Bill Reel [01:13:33] So sitting around with my friends, we've all edged into this vulnerability. We've started sharing with each other the things that we worried we'd feel shame and fear and judgment about. And then we shared it and it was welcomed. And not only that, then they shared back. And so now there's this ability in the group where there wasn't in religion to talk about real life problems and to talk about like, hey, I seem to be drawn to this sort of behavior. Oh, here I am too. I'm not. I had that. I had that issue, but I thought about it differently. And so now these real live conversations take place where I'm allowed to lay my life out on the, on the table for everyone to look at.

Bill Reel [01:14:10] And folks can give feedback and share similarities, share differences. What a beautiful opportunity to learn about humanity in the church. When I was a bishop, I did a fireside on sexuality and it was so progressive. I was going to give, I was going to give the whole ward membership room to think about sex outside of the box that Mormonism put them in.

Bill Reel [01:14:32] And it wasn't super crazy. It still would have it would have been super kosher with Mormonism, but it would have valued this idea that you don't need to feel shame. Some of the early leaders said that whatever you do in the bedroom isn't anyone else's business.

Bill Reel [01:14:45] And it would have gotten away from, like, Spencer W. Kimball saying that oral sex was bad. Because in Mormonism, we sort of sense. We put on our white shirt, we put. Put on our tie, we put on our dresses, and our job is to smile and pretend that everything is good and there's no way to have a real conversation.

Bill Reel [01:14:59] And when you find real friends who allow you to be your brand of humanity, you no longer have to compromise yourself and fit in, but you start to really belong. Like, here's me, here's. Here's my good, here's my bad. And they go, amen, Keep coming. Can't wait to see you. Will you let me be me, too? Yep. Absolutely. And so suddenly, conversations happen where we can share our humanity and begin to really address what's healthy, what's unhealthy, what works, what doesn't work, what tools are you using? What tools are you using? Here's what I'm doing.

Bill Reel [01:15:32] That, to me, feels as spiritual as anything in my life. I read a lot, so I love books. I think books are a big key. And drugs for me, is the other one. I don't travel much. I'd like to travel more. I don't. I don't meditate much. I do a little bit. It feels productive, but I don't have a solid meditative practice. But I don't care what tools you use and which tools you set off to the side and never touch. But find a way to challenge the patterns in your life.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:01] Yeah. What I kind of hear you saying, which I feel so similarly about, is just how relationships can be spirituality. Because if you're really being aware, and that's your intent, is to be aware of how your behavior affects other people, how other people feel.

Margi Dehlin [01:16:20] Right. When they're relating to you, how they're living. And that. That kind of sharing, that. That becomes this template for reflection and I mean, ideally for growth. Right. To kind of shift and change based on the data you get from the experience that people have of you, you know? Yeah. Is that what you're saying? I'm hearing that kind of as you share as well as being seen, coming from this place in religion where so much of us hid different parts of ourselves. Right. The things that we thought wouldn't be approved of, the things that would devalue us or make us unlovable, that now you've made this shift into doing the opposite, into now showing up more fully for those who value and have earned the right to witness that in you, and that you're finding that to be extremely healing for you.

Bill Reel [01:17:14] Yeah. How could you have been any other kind of human than you are? And anytime you're being something other than you are, you're compromising your authentic self. And hence you're hiding yourself. And we have to do that. We live in a world that will not allow us in most spaces to be a authentic or near authentic version of ourself.

Bill Reel [01:17:44] And when we compromise and try to fit in, it's because we're scared. It's because we're worried of shame, of judgment. The other thing I would just want to note here is my brain just. I think it works differently than other people. Some folks have the ability to be good listeners, and I'm not. I'm not. I'll sit in a conversation with someone and they'll say a thing. And then my brain wants to take the concept and start unraveling it and play with it. And then let's go down this path with it. Let's go down that path with it.

Bill Reel [01:18:19] And then they're still talking, and my brain isn't listening. My brain's playing with the first thing they said and tinkering with it. And then I'll come back to the conversation two minutes later and I'll. I found this really cool idea that I tinkered with, and I bring it back to the conversation and go, what about this? But I've lost this moment with them.

Bill Reel [01:18:38] I think we ought to recognize that all of us are so different in how we think that everyone brings gifts and flaws to the relationship. And how can humans. How could humans be any different than different? And bumping into each other a little bit and meshing a little bit. And some people are very different and don't mesh at all. And we all pick and choose. Like, oh, I can. I really enjoy this person's personality. This person's really abrasive. So I put distance.

Bill Reel [01:19:07] We have to sit with people who are different and to respect those differences. Such a learning environment, too. There's really cool stuff happening if we sit and be present with it. And when I go to a party, I often. Because I'm an introvert, I'll often sit in the back and I'll just kind of watch everyone. And it's such a neat thing. Everyone kind of branches into these groups of three to five and they talk for a little bit and then someone steps away and someone else steps in and someone steps away and someone else steps in and. And there's this really cool thing happening where people are going like, hey, let me open up and show you my insides and see if I'm allowed to be in this space.

Bill Reel [01:19:50] There's just really cool social things going on. If we'll sit and just listen to people better and recognize some people maybe don't listen as well, but they bring some other gift to the table. I think we all have a chance to learn from each other how to show up better and to make this thing more healthy where we all have a better chance of flourishing.

John Dehlin [01:20:14] Beautiful. Okay, really quickly, let's. And we're going to do maybe three or four more. Let's do meaning and purpose.

Bill Reel [01:20:25] Yeah. Because it's all myth. There isn't any real meaning other than the meaning that we make. And I think, Margi, you said earlier

John Dehlin [01:20:38] that,

Bill Reel [01:20:41] that we have to have some sort of purpose. I think we have to. And that everyone's stories are sacred. And I think we have to respect that every person is different and we have to give them the space not only to create their own sacred meaning and stories, but we have to stop thinking we know better than them what they should do with that. Like often, judgment and shame is this idea that I wouldn't do things the way you would do it without really any clear understanding that that person isn't you. They really don't have the same values, desires, traits, gifts, genetics, history, experiences.

Bill Reel [01:21:24] And you ought to respect their sacred story as unique and that they have more ability to interact with their sacred story than your ability to interact with their sacred story and tell it for them. I think there isn't any overlapping meaning that we should impose on anyone. I think everybody should be allowed to make meaning in their life. Now the fear in this is that if you deconstruct everything, you end up at nihilism and you end up essentially hopeless.

Bill Reel [01:21:58] I haven't experienced that. I somehow skipped it entirely. And the. The solution to nihilism at the very end is a thing called absurdism, where you recognize this is all crazy, like 13 point something billion years ago happened and here you are and it is miraculous. If your dad had stumbled at work and been one second later to getting home, then when him and. And your mom were intimate that night, you wouldn't be here. It'd be something else.

Bill Reel [01:22:26] And to recognize like it is miraculous still, it's still a miracle. And that everything about this world is Just chaos and absurdity. But it's also organized, right? Like evolution preferences organisms as they reach for nourishment and safety. And it punishes you when you don't have the ability to do that and instead put yourself in danger or starvation.

Bill Reel [01:22:53] And hence, evolution does have a flowchart that ends with more complexity, more progress, more development. So it's chaos, but it's organized chaos. And hence let everybody make their own meaning. And we also need to have safeguards in place, an education in place that helped to protect folks who seem to be drawn towards nihilism.

John Dehlin [01:23:26] Yeah, because, you know, for me and for Margi and I think many people I know, this is not a hard one to sort of absorb this idea of, wow, yeah, life is great. You create the meaning, right? And you can even create it consciously, knowing that you're creating it. But still, that's just what you value and what you choose to focus on. There's a group of people that are like, no, like, I want some external authority to tell me what my purpose is. I want a God. I want to believe that there's a supreme being who lives, loves me, who's like, got this chaos figured out, who's going to intervene to help me, and who am I to decide what my meaning and purpose is?

John Dehlin [01:24:14] I would much rather have someone tell me. And by the way, that sometimes people, you know, with ayahuasca, it's like. Or psychedelics, it's like, oh, the plant is telling me what my. You know. But, yeah, but anyway, I don't want

Bill Reel [01:24:28] to make another myth that they take literally.

John Dehlin [01:24:30] But, like, yeah, I'm just saying there are some. I just want to acknowledge there's some people who want to be told who they are and what their purpose is and what their meaning is. And it's not comforting for them to be told. They get to construct their meaning. They want a savior who died for them, who resurrected for them, who loves them unconditionally. And they want to be told, this is what happens when you die, and this is where you go, and this is what you have to do to get there. And short of that, they're feeling afraid and hopeless.

Bill Reel [01:25:07] They have a right to their sacred story, too. I don't want to take that away from them. For the folks who are deconstructing and see reality different than them, I simply want to talk about the tools that were helpful. Everyone has a right to their sacred story. So if somebody wants to believe in Mormonism or Jehovah's Witnesses or Scientology, I'm going To be one to say, like, hey, for those willing to think about it, is it possible there's some unhealthy things there that maybe you're more. Maybe it's more beneficial for you to think about? But I don't need those things to necessarily vanish. People who want those things are going to find them and stay in them. They're not going to deconstruct anyway.

John Dehlin [01:25:48] And then what would you say to somebody that's saying, bill Real, you're the dude that runs around telling people that Santa Claus doesn't exist. Your whole Mormonism live, your whole Mormon discussion, that's all you do is steal and rob people of their myth, of their sacred myth. I'll levy to you a criticism I once received. You're a spiritual Jack Kevorkian. You are killing people's sacred beliefs and stories and myths, but because you're proactively generating content that tears down faith.

Bill Reel [01:26:26] I'm also the guy who co hosts the Almost Awakened podcast that seeks to give people tools to reconstruct things in a healthy way and define spirituality post religion. I'm also the guy who seems to notice that everyone that comes out of Mormonism that credits me for being a part of their journey thanks me up and down for helping them to find a better, healthier life. And again, for the folks who don't want to deconstruct, their brain is going to find a way to not deconstruct. That's the human journey. Confirmation bias, backfire effect, belief, persistence. Those are real. As you guys pointed out yesterday. Jonathan Haidt, emotion is really what drives us. People will figure out what their needs are and they will move towards those.

John Dehlin [01:27:22] Okay, yeah. So. Oh, please.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:24] Oh, I was going to say one really quick thing about nihilism, and I kind of talked about this a little bit in my Thrive story that for me, I'm not sure. I'm not talking about nihilism as a place to, like, nest, pitch a tent and live.

Margi Dehlin [01:27:42] But, like, nihilism was an important part of my story. It's not something I chose. It's just how, for me, the towers of things, of reality and how I perceived that reality and what I felt like was true, how the timing of how many went down at the same time that I had a moment of nihilism, that was really kind of important to my journey too, ironically, that having that space and that darkness and being kind of by myself without all the voices telling me who to be or what they expected of me or trying to make sure I was okay and to Fix it and rebuild it too soon.

Margi Dehlin [01:28:32] That that was a really important part of my rebuilding, was to be in the dark for a while and to actually look around me and say, wow, there's a significant amount of wreckage, and I'm just gonna sit in it for a while.

Bill Reel [01:28:52] Yeah. The only thing I would add to that is I think Brit Hartley feels the same way. I've had conversations with her, and she had a nihilistic stage. At some point in this conversation, we're going to talk about the idea of life ending and the ending of life.

Bill Reel [01:29:12] And what I mean by that is that we're all going to die. And we have this process in this country, and it varies from state to state, but the ability to intentionally end life. And I have thoughts around that. But in the nihilistic stage, my worry is that folks will become so hopeless. And some do that they take their life when there really was. At least if they would have given it a moment, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Like you, like Brit Hartley, you come around and you go, oh, let me. That's also another thing that I'm deconstructing. I come up with a new way to make meaning, and I would want to push for us to educate and have tools that I don't have a problem with someone spending time in a nihilistic stage. My worry is that some will be so hopeless that at least some do end up taking their life.

Margi Dehlin [01:29:59] Yes. I so see that. That's completely valid. And my nihilism, I always talk about it like the. And we can move after this, but like a cocoon. For me, I experienced it like a cocoon, meaning it was a process. It was part of. Caterpillars in cocoons literally digest themselves. Their old form disappears, and that's when, in turn, they become a butterfly. But if you poke a hole, if you interrupt that process, they don't get to the butterfly. So I like that idea of it's being part of a process of something that changes form or, you know, creates something different on the other end. So I think that's really valid. Yeah. And important to say.

Bill Reel [01:30:47] I love that.

John Dehlin [01:30:50] Me too. Okay. I think I want to end with death, resolutions about death. So I want you to know that's coming. Please, let's do morality next. And specifically, I think when. When Mormons think about morality, they think of sexuality and, like, do's and don'ts around sexuality. Of course, morality can be anything from how to treat people to how much harm do you do to how to treat one another. Yeah, I think Mormons also think, I think they think of two things, sexuality and word of wisdom, like drugs and alcohol.

John Dehlin [01:31:28] And so, and so what, what sometimes I see is that. And I'll just set this up because I'm really curious about your thoughts on this. And Amanda, you have many thoughts and feelings about this too, that, you know, if, if you were an orthodox Mormon who, who did their best to obey the law of chastity and the word of wisdom, there's a decent chance you made it to marriage never having a sexual partner and having never tried, you know, drugs or alcohol or if you had maybe only minimally, right. And so there's all sorts of these, you know, post Mormons that didn't have their rum springer.

John Dehlin [01:32:13] They didn't have their, their college, fraternity or sorority experience. They've probably only had one sexual partner their whole lives. But more importantly, they felt incredibly controlled and oppressed and suppressed when it comes to sex, drugs and rock and roll.

John Dehlin [01:32:32] So then they lose their faith. They're angry and resentful at all the time and money that they sacrificed to something that they now believe turned out to be a lie. And they're often in their middle age, which is when take religion completely out of it. You're like, is this all that life's about? Do I really want to be married to this person?

John Dehlin [01:32:55] Like, life's not exciting for me. I'm in a dead end job. My kids, you know, it hasn't, you know, whatever. And so they're seeking. It's a very vulnerable time, midlife crisis, frankly, I think so. What so many do is they're like, I've had these chains on me forever. I've been lied to. I feel like I missed out on all these amazing opportunities. And so it's like, how do I experiment with sexuality?

John Dehlin [01:33:24] You know, maybe it's non monogamy, maybe it's affairs, maybe it's whatever. There's that angle that then I've seen sometimes lead to blowing up relationships that otherwise might have been really healthy. Or sometimes it's blowing up relationships that never should have been forged to begin with.

John Dehlin [01:33:48] But you do see a lot of carnage sometimes. Now you, I'm not saying that that's all you see, but you can see that. You can't see people blow up their lives that way. And then of course, drugs and alcohol. I have seen people become addicted. I've seen people just become a, a sloshy shadow of their intellectual selves because they think I'm, I'm in control, I'm my own authority. This thing's already addictive. And then fast forward five or 10 years and you're like, wow, you're not the person that I used to know.

John Dehlin [01:34:24] You're, you're just, you have a new master, you know, and it's not necessarily a healthy master because addictions are real, you know, so religion says for better, for worse. Here are the do's and don'ts, here's how to stay out of trouble. And like, part of why I've tried to avoid some experimentation is because I grew up seeing some of these things destroy lives in my formative years. And I'm like, okay, well, let's not throw out the good.

John Dehlin [01:34:57] Like, maybe Mormonism had some good rules that were all better to follow. So how do you create a moral center and not end up getting lost in all the chemicals that sexual and drug and alcohol and all sorts of explorations can afford that can also become fire that wrecks your life?

Bill Reel [01:35:24] Yeah, man, that's a big question. So let's start with morality generally. So the debate between religion and atheist on morality is that how does an atheist know that they're actually creating a coherent, healthy, good morality if on some level it is subjective?

Bill Reel [01:35:46] And the religionists come in and say, you know, once you posit that there is a God, that the rules that God gave are legitimate, hence whether we think the rule is good or not, God is, you know, God's ways are not our ways, and hence we can just trust in them and we can know that God's rules are good even if our own inner self can't figure that out.

Bill Reel [01:36:10] And I just don't buy that because I can sit and look at the rules that God made, and even the most strident Christian among us would be picking and choosing which ones over time they've discarded and which new rules aren't even in there, and then which rules are in there that we continue to obey? So God himself might be great at making rules, but because he's limited to giving his rules to another human being and that human being writes them in stone, the rules themselves end up being flawed.

Bill Reel [01:36:44] So then the question becomes that even if on some level an atheist creating a morality is subjective, can we put some trust in that? And again, if we go back to the evolutionary process, we're where even the earliest life forms that were single cell organisms move towards nourishment and safety and away from danger and of trying to avoid starvation, we can sense that even the earliest life among us has values. And I can go onto YouTube and I can type in animal morality, and I can watch chimpanzees have reciprocity and fairness. So even without the narrative, even without the stories, and without God entirely, other species of animals with lesser mental function than we have are figuring out that they have values, even without having a story, that they have values.

Bill Reel [01:37:34] So when I look at religion, I recognize that when you have an outside voice, God. And God is giving his set of rules to a human being, and that human being places the rules on the tribe and says, those are his rules. Don't argue with them. What ends up happening is that bad rules are allowed to be perpetuated generation after generation. They can't be criticized, they can't be questioned.

John Dehlin [01:37:58] Not only bad rules, though, good rules.

Bill Reel [01:38:00] Good rules, too, totally. But as people are different and moments in time are different, we need to have things have more of a softness where we can shift and adjust. Because there are moments in time, in time where violence may be required, and there are moments in time where violence is the most horrific thing in the world. And the trouble is, when you have rules and they're given by God and they're written in stone, literally, they're not adaptable or changeable. And so Sam Harris gives a TED Talk where he says we can sort of rely on science to tell us the best ways to treat each other, and science might be a better way to do it.

Bill Reel [01:38:42] Now, again, this is all complex because you're right. Religion gets things, some things right. It may be getting some things right that we judge as wrong, and if we change it, we got worse for it. But God is also isn't the arbiter of that because we can see bad positions that take hundreds of years longer to denounce and get rid of.

Amanda Reel [01:39:01] Right?

Bill Reel [01:39:03] So for me, morality has to center around values that we collectively agree on, have held solid throughout time without any religious peer pressure, shame, or fear. And having that conversation, and it seems to be the things that the animals have already picked up on some level. Reciprocity, fairness, reducing suffering in the world, compassion. We ought to create rules around those things.

John Dehlin [01:39:33] Right?

Bill Reel [01:39:34] And the atheist is probably getting some things wrong. The religionist certainly has gotten some things wrong. But I think when you put the rules insulated into an echo chamber where they can't be criticized, that is way worse than having an open forum where we can discuss whether in real time those rules are ending with positive benefits or not. But both systems are flawed.

Bill Reel [01:39:58] Okay, so there's morality, generally, the argument that the atheist can't have a solid morality, we already know that that's nonsense. The problem comes in is that the religion still wants to say, even if you think you're making good rules, how do you know?

Bill Reel [01:40:14] And we can know because we can test at least to some degree, whether the rules have net benefits or are causing unforeseen harm. And we may have to live out this experiment trying to figure that out. Now, in terms of sexuality, I was telling you guys last night, one of the videos on the soft white underbelly is this person who has a deep sexual compulsion to have sex with everyone, everywhere.

Bill Reel [01:40:43] And as a society or as an individual, we look at folks like that and we go, ooh, I don't know. That's a rough life to live out. I don't know. That might. We might want to shame that person and judge that person and talk about it in such a way that anyone who approaches that sort of paradigm that they. That we shame them into avoiding it

John Dehlin [01:41:06] or incarcerate them or kick them out of the group. Right. Excommunicate them from the group.

Margi Dehlin [01:41:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:41:12] So that they're shunned and isolated and out of our sight.

Bill Reel [01:41:15] Yeah. But the other side of it is so there again, because human. There is no right way to be human. And the only overlaying code for me is to not allow intentional harm or unnecessary trauma. That there are folks in this world who are asexual. We had a great friend back in Ohio who was asexual. She had zero interest at all in being intimate with other people on a sexual.

Bill Reel [01:41:42] On a sexual part of their life. And we all on the woke side of things, on the deconstructed side of things. We all look at someone who's asexual and we go, yeah, no biggie, that's cool. Like, I don't need you to be something other than you are.

Bill Reel [01:41:56] Wouldn't we expect to find on the other side of the spectrum somebody who is highly sexual? Like, isn't that also a normal expression of humanity? We have this conversation in the fields of science about what's normal or abnormal. And the way we think about it in a layman term, isn't correct. Any behavior that shows up consistently, no matter how small, is a normal human behavior. And I don't mean normal as we should allow it. It's good, it's healthy, because we recognize that certain.

Bill Reel [01:42:29] Let me say it this way. Human beings should have the right to be their fullest, authentic self. But there are higher priorities than that, such as consent and reducing harm. So while we want to let all human beings be as much of themselves as they can be. We also have boundaries and should have boundaries in our society that don't let people be who they want to be at the expense of hurting someone else unnecessarily. So we have rules like consent and enthusiastic consent. And so in humanity, if somebody has a high sexual drive and they reach out to another human being and they say, I would like to do this with you, their extent, and as long as they are honest and open about their sexual health there, there really isn't anything going wrong there.

Bill Reel [01:43:20] We're judging it, we're applying shame and judgment. But if two consensual adults agree to do something that doesn't cause harm on anyone else, it's no one else's business. And within a marriage, for instance, there's no way you can get two human beings who are going to mesh in those facets of their life perfectly. And there are certain issues that really are abrasive in a relationship. One issue is one partner doesn't want to have children and the other does.

Bill Reel [01:43:59] And the other trouble with Mormonism is it imposes and pressures young people who don't really know who they are yet, and they sure as hell don't know who their partner is yet. And how could they pressures them into making very quick decisions with very little experience. So the science says that for you to find a partner that you can share a life with and be compatible enough that it will be a life of a good chance of contentment and well being and happiness for the two of you that you need to experience somewhere between 4, 14 and 17 relationships before that to really understand who you are and what you're looking for in someone else.

Bill Reel [01:44:44] But in Mormonism, you, you marry the first person that you had, you seriously date, you go to byu, you date them, you marry them, and maybe it works. But probably more likely is that there are significant differences that you don't even figure out until you're 10 years down the road.

Bill Reel [01:45:00] And hence, why wouldn't the divorce rate in this country or anywhere else for that matter be somewhere around the range of 50%? Because you're, you're, you're just not even aware of who you are until you experience more of life. And so rather than encourage people to marry young, maybe we ought to encourage people to experience life for a minute and then to marry once they better understand each other. There's a quote here too.

Bill Reel [01:45:23] See if I can grab it here really quick. And I love this quote, because relationships are about compromise and negotiation. And that's also a very complex matter in that it almost never is a win win. Somebody is fighting to show up as more of themself and the other person is trying to push back because they want to feel safe.

Bill Reel [01:45:50] And so here's the quote. Within ethical and legal constraints, we all have the right to push for what we want from our partner and to suffer the consequences for pushing too hard. Similarly, we also have the right to deny our partner's request and to suffer the consequences for shutting them down.

Bill Reel [01:46:12] But we need to remember that nothing in a relationship happens in a vacuum. It is influenced by what comes before as well as what else is going on in the relationship. So generosity can be rewarded and bad behavior can be punished in more ways than one. Therefore, we have to keep the bigger picture in mind. What price am I willing to pay for this?

Bill Reel [01:46:37] If it's worth it, then it's worth it. But since life and relationships involve compromise and sacrifice, we have to consider the potential ripple effects. And what I read from that is it's sort of. It's a really difficult thing to negotiate a relationship in such a way that both sides feel safe and both sides get to be as much of their authentic self as they need to be so that they feel well being and contentment.

Bill Reel [01:47:10] And trying to find a perfect way to lay all that out, especially if you're going to design the rules so that we all have to agree that we all have to do it the same way, is ridiculous. And again, because people's sacred stories are personal and we ought to trust them to know their sacred stories better than us, we ought to let each individual and each relationship determine what that looks like without us putting our own own expectations on it because we do it a certain way. So some people in this world lean very much towards monogamy.

Bill Reel [01:47:43] They really only want to have the security of one person. They don't need to experience intimacy anywhere else. And other people are very different than that. And we should expect that to be the case. And hence we ought to let every person or partnership within an ethical boundary.

Bill Reel [01:48:03] Again, we should have boundaries about how we treat each other in ways that hurts others unnecessarily. So consent's a big deal. Religionists want to make a slippery slope argument. Well, Bill, if you're going to let people be gay, if you're going to let people have open marriages, well, before long. It's not going to be long before we allow people to have sex with animals and children.

Bill Reel [01:48:27] And that's just absurd. It's ridiculous. It's a fallacy because we all recognize we're going to collectively build a society on consent. And you already see the world moving that way. When I grew up, nobody taught me consent, and then somewhere along the way they taught consent, and then somewhere along the way, they taught enthusiastic consent. Because consent alone isn't sufficient.

Bill Reel [01:48:51] People aren't people when there's power differences. When people have fears and feel shame or judgment, they tend to not exactly show their excitement about doing something, and hence they'll do the thing that looks like they're consenting, but they're really not.

Bill Reel [01:49:06] And so we're already seeing the society move that way. We ought to trust people to figure these things out, but we also ought to give people much better support, education and frameworks so that they can do that in a healthy way. Because really, what stops us from doing it healthy is that there's so much shame and judgment, often created by religious systems, that we all go like, oh, I have to figure this out in secret. I can't actually talk out loud and figure out how to do this in a healthy way. I gotta sort of just figure it out without telling anybody. Because if I tell somebody, uh, oh, what happens?

Bill Reel [01:49:43] And so the religions want to point at how this always shows up unhealthy, but maybe it's the constraints and the judgment and the shame that they put on everyone that actually leaves us unable to do this in a healthy way.

John Dehlin [01:49:57] Beautiful, thank you. Super thoughtful. Amanda, I'd love to hear if you have any other additional things to add.

Amanda Reel [01:50:04] Yeah, I'll try to be quick because I do want to get into death and your mom, but to try to go along with some of your thoughts and questions that you were asking about morality. So for me, a big part of my personal growth and my journey in all of this is is. Is changing my thought processes from having good and bad to different.

Amanda Reel [01:50:28] So religion, you know, puts on as things are good and things are bad, but again, that's arbitrary. And that was somebody's opinion of how they wanted that thing to work. Right. And so as. As I am switched from that and still working very hard on a lot of those. But going different opened up a world of empathy for me as well. And then jokingly, we have. We have one rule. Don't be a dick.

Amanda Reel [01:50:56] Also knowing that sometimes everybody's a dick, right? But if we hold fast to, like, don't be a dick, try to relieve suffering and things like that, what people do, it's none of your business. Like we're all saying here, as long as we're consensual adults, it's nobody else's business. And as far as the. The addiction and the drugs and things, you know, like, Bill, when he started his podcast, was trying to get people just to slow down.

Amanda Reel [01:51:28] That's what I would say. As you're deconstructing, slow down. You know, if you look at teenagers going through a normal life, they don't do all of these things in one night. They take years to experience themselves. Right. Well, now that you're an adult and you've deconstructed, you don't have to hit the ground running. Slow down, take your time, do research.

Bill Reel [01:51:51] And this is where secular Buddhism comes in. If you're able to sit with your feelings, you don't need to rush to address them quickly. You don't have to resolve the tension that's going on between what you want to be or how you want your world to look and the fact that it isn't and doesn't. You can sit still for a minute and process things. Take your time, do the research, think about things from multiple angles and make calculated, methodical decisions about how you want to shift and change your life so as to be again, to be kind to everyone else around you, to respect everyone else's need to feel safe in your space, and for you to show up as much human as you can again without causing intentional harm or unnecessary trauma.

Margi Dehlin [01:52:42] I was just going to say really quick one thing that I do feel like is quite unique and I just have. I want to, like, openly acknowledge as being a challenge within Mormonism. People leaving Mormonism in the middle of their lives is just that. It's almost like we were handed a tower.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:04] Religion helped us build this tower of morality, and then as we transition, it kind of crumbles. But how difficult it can be to rebuild morality while you are actively living the choices of a conditioned self. So you're married to someone you know, under. And the qualities and the things that you looked for in that person were, you know, they represent your conditioned self. So, and some of those values were like, monogamy is supreme and monogamy is all. And you selected someone and kind of. And I do feel like. Or you are a mom when you, you know, kind of are transitioning away from Mormonism. And maybe part of your reconstruction is really coming to this conclusion that maybe you wouldn't have had four kids.

Margi Dehlin [01:53:53] But guess what? You woke up and you have four kids, you know, and so how tough it is to kind of do this work and privilege of connecting with ourselves. And I do think there's identity work here. In non monogamy, I do see that as part of oftentimes much like attraction or much like other things that you know, that it can emerge during this time. But to do it in real time while living a reality of a life that a conditioned past self created, I think it's really, really tough. And people deserve just all the softness as they're, you know, negotiating and rebuilding.

Bill Reel [01:54:46] The only thing I would add to that, because any expression of sexuality, anything from asexual to monogamy to being something other than monogamy, ethical non monogamy in all of its thousand forms, those are all valid expressions of humanity.

Bill Reel [01:55:07] So nowhere would I say any one of those, including monogamy or asexuality, is wrong. What I would say though is that the societal or tribalism mechanism of imposing monogamy or polygamy, by the way, monogamy, two different reasons. But monogamy as a overarching structure by which this is the rule we all have to play by, recognize why that myth was created, that myth created mechanisms by which trust would be less likely to be broken from members of the tribe to each other and on a lesser extent, perhaps risking the health of the tribe when you talk about sexually transmitted diseases, for instance. And so it makes perfect sense that religion would come along and for the far majority say monogamy is the status quo.

Bill Reel [01:56:00] It's the rule. We all need to follow it because it contributed to the trust that we would all have with each other. And notice, by the way, patriarchy and objectifying women also is part of that. She's my object. She's not your object. She's not your object. I own her. Hence you can't bother her. She's mine. It ensures that we all again trust each other and don't start getting into the gray areas of bumping into each other's boundaries. Polygamy, on the other hand, from a religious perspective, seems to be about privilege and patriarchy. Not that there's something wrong with polygamy. If consenting adults agree to do it, great. But when religious coercion comes on, comes along and says God said to do it, notice to who that benefits and who that hurts.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:49] I love your emphasis on harm.

Bill Reel [01:56:51] Yeah.

Margi Dehlin [01:56:52] You know, by the way, when you

Bill Reel [01:56:53] ask for what, how I'm different than I was, it's that I'm constantly self aware of harm that I'm doing and others are doing.

Margi Dehlin [01:57:01] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:57:04] All right, all right. So the next big one is community. Yeah, I think they, they, you know, oftentimes religious people will like to say Religion is associated with greater happiness and statistically there is a correlation there. I think it's a weak correlation, but there's a correlation meaning that on average there's a. Statistically, people who attend an organized religion have a small statistical advantage in terms of happiness than people who don't. And that's all self reported data, I think. But when social scientists tease out the active ingredient in religion based happiness, it, it's community.

Community, Loss, and the Death of Bill's Mother

John Dehlin [01:57:51] So one of the biggest things I notice when people leave Mormonism or organized religion is loneliness. They lose, they immediately lose all their friends, many of their family, and then their ward community. And then they're faced with trying to figure out how to piece that together. Now over the past 20 years with the Internet, we've made in social media, we've made major strides in trying to help people find friends, find community. Whether it's through workshops, retreats, Facebook groups, ex, ex Mormon, Reddit, thrive, whatever, you know.

John Dehlin [01:58:33] But there still is this massive hole of ex Mormons feeling lonely, can't find a good friend, missing the community associations that they had, and in many instances longing for a community to do life with. Because you could talk about spirituality in isolation, morality in isolation, all sorts of things in isolation. If you can find a group of people to positively reinforce, to teach and to positively reinforce force, spirituality, morality, meaning, purpose, child rearing, it takes a village, all that.

John Dehlin [01:59:18] I mean, isn't that why we, we thrived in tribes? Isn't that why religions developed? Because, because community helps with all these other holes that we're talking about. So have you cracked that nut? And I know the answer is no, but I'm going to ask it anyway.

Bill Reel [01:59:40] Yeah, so first we got to go back into the things you started with this idea that there's a slight advantage to folks feeling happy inside the religion. I want to question that a minute. In a system that tells everyone that every member is a missionary, that the church is the best thing for your neighbor to convert to, that we need to protect the good name of the church. All the mechanisms that exist that tell a believing Mormon they need to present Mormonism in its best light, might there be a propensity to report a higher level of happiness than there actually is? And my hunch is that yes, because there's so much motivation for you to show your community that things are working out really good over here in Mormonism that you tend to report being better than maybe you actually are. So I'm going to question that for a moment as a premise.

John Dehlin [02:00:42] Okay.

Bill Reel [02:00:44] Second, is that in a system that denigrates the people that leave that tells you to distance yourself in relationship from those who are apostate, that calls them names such as lazy learner or the chafe among the wheat or the tares or looking for sin. Might religion be creating the monster and then pointing at the monster and saying, look what happens when you leave. You're not happy, you're lonely, you lose all your relationships. When it was actually the religion by its own theology that created the distance between you and your loved ones to begin with. So if we account for those now, the difference might be either less significant or insignificant.

Amanda Reel [02:01:27] Right.

John Dehlin [02:01:28] Well, I'm gonna. Honestly, if in the spirit of dialogue, I'm gonna. I'm gonna. Let me respond. So can we go to the complete opposite end and agree what we're finding now, especially post Covid, which is that loneliness is more deadly than. Than cigarettes and. And drugs. So, like, loneliness is. Is horrible.

Bill Reel [02:01:54] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:01:55] Do you agree?

Bill Reel [02:01:55] Yeah, totally. Absolutely.

John Dehlin [02:01:57] Okay, so then if you don't have loneliness, then how do you have community? How do you find friends? Yeah, right.

Bill Reel [02:02:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:02:05] And what, you're just. You could. I could. I could match you in listing all the harms about, you know, groups, group think and. Or religion, from patriarchy to judgment to superiority, to, you know, the protection of the group over the individual, to abuse, to protection of abusers. Like we could, you know, to rules that benefit the group and harm the individual. I could list a million things, but the truth is there are certain rules for group thriving.

John Dehlin [02:02:42] And guess what? Having an enemy turns out to be one of the rules of group thriving. So what you're listing as a bug is actually a feature if you start with the premise we just agreed to, which is that loneliness is deadly. So, yeah, yeah, it sucks that groups usually have to finger an enemy. And when I mean finger, I mean point to identify an enemy. But guess what? That makes a stronger group.

John Dehlin [02:03:06] And having a myth that may be superstitious, I mean, watch the village, right? Like, okay, a bunch of people got together and made some shit up and knew that it wasn't true and taught it, but. Sorry for the spoiler, but guess what? That was the order and the myth that the group needed to organize around.

John Dehlin [02:03:31] And so you either, you either don't have a myth, which means you have a weaker community, or you all figure out a way to delude yourself into a believing a myth, which is hard. Maybe that was Joseph Smith's stroke of brilliance, or maybe there's a. There's a group of elites that knowingly perpetuate a myth but in their minds, it's for the benefit of the group, regardless.

John Dehlin [02:03:56] Like what you're mentioning as bugs might be features, because these are the types of things groups need to thrive and survive. Another one I'm gonna say is guilt and shame. We all. Brene Brown, 2020. Whatever. Shame, shame, shame is the worst thing, right? Well, well, turns out. How do you get people to show up and set up chairs? I've tried in a secular community, some will, but usually it only lasts a few weeks or a few months and then they're gone. And it's like show up at some Sunday meeting and hear some person, blah, blah, blah, or brunch and watch Netflix. Over time, almost everyone chooses brunch and Netflix.

John Dehlin [02:04:37] Community dies. At least that's been my experience with thrive and with other things. It's not that thrive is dead. It's not that Oasis is dead. It's not the community of good or all the different secular communities we've tried to build. It's not that they're dead, but that it's been really hard to create a critical mass of a sustainable community. And turns out guilt and shame are along with enemies in a fictitious myth. They're all super valuable to create a community, and you don't have them. Guess what? In many instances, you don't have community. So again, start with the premise that loneliness is deadly.

John Dehlin [02:05:15] Name all the bugs you want. They're probably features, not bugs. And so what are you going to do to create this community again? You have a podcast that's like someone would say is destroying people's faith, which is destroying their allegiance to their community, which is destroying community, which is leading to loneliness and sadness and despair and death. But you don't ever. You don't have a way to build healthy community that's sustainable.

Bill Reel [02:05:43] Totally.

John Dehlin [02:05:43] So, okay, that's my response.

Margi Dehlin [02:05:46] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:05:46] So now that we've laid all that complexity, I would only note. All I was trying to say in the beginning was that once someone's deconstructed and they're now out of the system and they're experiencing loneliness, at least in part, it's because the system itself has a theology that tells all of the people who are still in to stay away from the people who got out the connection. And anytime we other someone, we are hurting human connection because now they're different than us. They're other, they're we're good, they're bad, we're in, they're out. Anytime we apply those labels, we are causing a fracture and distance in human connection.

Bill Reel [02:06:26] So with all that said, and with all the complexity you added, this topic is probably out of all these things that are part of this formula of thriving and flourishing, this one is probably the one I have the least amount of answers for.

Bill Reel [02:06:42] And as you pointed out, you already knew my answer would be, I don't quite know how to get to it. I'm lucky. In part, I'm privileged in that forming deep, authentic, vulnerable friendships are so difficult to even initiate. So, for instance, we came from Ohio. Our faith was falling apart there. Had we left the church there and had our friends done what the church taught them and they separated from us, which for the most part, for most of them, would have been inevitable, what would me and Amanda have done? Would we have gone to the bar and essentially, whether we wanted to drink or not, we would have had to have hit that scene and started just walking up to complete strangers and entering conversations and then hoping that our lifelong religious experience would have some sort of overlap with some other strangers, that we could begin to sense that our lives might have enough meshing to form really deep friendships.

Bill Reel [02:07:42] And my hunch is that would have been an absolute nightmare and struggle. I'm lucky that we moved to Southern Utah, where there are tons of post Mormons. And so rather than bonding over our beliefs, we bonded over our deconstructed beliefs. Right.

Bill Reel [02:08:02] And by the way, trauma bonding is such a beautiful and problematic initiation into deep friendship, but on some level, it absolutely works. And so getting together with people who all have this similar journey was really helpful to forming tons of friendships. What I would call really good friendships. People that every time I see them, I am grateful and I want to hug them and I want to sit next to them and catch up and I want to know what's going on in their lives and what are they thinking about and what are they reading and what's challenging them and what's going well.

Bill Reel [02:08:39] All that said, we also run into another problem going back to sapiens, which is you only can really have a deep, dynamic, vulnerable, authentic friendship with a small number of people. If you get that group into too big of a size, if you want to be everyone's friend, you end up having no deep, meaningful friendship at all.

Bill Reel [02:09:08] So you have to find a way to find two other people, five other people, maybe eight other people. But there comes a point where you hit 10 or 12, 14, where you now are too big for you to really be able to spread your time enough that all of those other people perceive you as giving them the investment that they hence feel the value in returning it.

Bill Reel [02:09:36] So how do you build a community? And I think you've said this as well as anyone, which is you've used the word pods. But you have to find. And by the way, again, if you're not in an area heavily saturated with, with post Mormons, you're going to have exponentially more difficulty, I think, doing this.

Bill Reel [02:10:01] So I speak from a place of privilege. You speak from a place of privilege where you might feel like you at least have access to enough good people with enough life experience overlap that a connection can be made and a deep friendship can be initiated. But if you find 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 more people who will let you be your authentic self, and again, never perfect, you can't exactly be you anywhere.

Bill Reel [02:10:30] You can't even exactly be you inside your own head. Sometimes find a small number of people that you can be as much of your authentic self as feels safe and secure and gives you contentment. And then you have to invest in those people. You have to, you have to give them their time, your time. You have if they have a thing happen in their life, you have to care, you have to show up, you have to serve, you have to help.

Bill Reel [02:10:55] Religion shames you into doing that. It tells you we have to make assignments and drop off casseroles. So there's real work involved. And this may be one of the harder facets to replicate outside the church in such a way that you feel like you're getting the human connection you need versus being in the system. Even if the friendships were superficial, because the moment you showed up as your real humanity, you were othered.

Bill Reel [02:11:26] So the relationship wasn't exactly real. But the benefit of even the superficial relationship can often feel real and meet that social need because you're a social creature and hence how you find those people. If you're, if you're quirky, how do you find those people? If you're extremely different, how do you find those people? If you're out in the Midwest and you're not near post Mormons at all, there are so many barriers and so many folks, as you point out, have deep emotional hurt and pain over not being able to do it. And I don't have the perfect answer and what works for me, and it isn't exactly working.

Bill Reel [02:12:14] What works for me only works for me because I'm privileged in a place and in a situation that I couldn't recommend it as a formula because it wouldn't be almost anyone else's circumstance.

John Dehlin [02:12:33] And I don't want to frame all this in language of fear and negativity. We found some amazing friends, we found amazing community and we know a lot of people who have. I do want to say, and when you add to this acknowledged difficulty of community creation and maintenance, the sex and drugs problem that we just talked about previously, you that that can make it a lot more complicated. We. When people are dealing with the trauma of having left a high demand religion and they're newly experimenting with, and they're angry and they're newly experimenting with lots of sex and lots of drugs and they're trying to form a community that can be even more complicated and fraught with problems. Yeah, right.

Bill Reel [02:13:21] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:13:22] And risk to your personal health to abuse and to your relationships that you value.

Bill Reel [02:13:30] Yeah. The only thing, again, I speak from a place of privilege. It's not even fair for me to say. And I will add that I've been in settings with 50 people who constantly revisit each other in their lives. Like there is this coherent friendship that maybe for some isn't as deep as they would like, but they have a group of people that they know well enough and, and are constantly bumping into and enjoying that interaction.

Bill Reel [02:14:01] And in the midst of these 50 people revisiting each other, say at a party, they're all showing up as their various brands of humanity. And everyone seems to be really okay with letting the group be different from each other in that shared space.

Bill Reel [02:14:21] So I think it's attainable. But the privilege of having those kinds of people with overlap of experience around you and you almost get a free introduction to get to know them on the front end is. Isn't always available in any other situation.

John Dehlin [02:14:43] Yeah, yeah. I sometimes have thought, having tried to create community, secular community, now for 20 years, it seems so hard without guilt, shame, manipulation, superiority, enemies, dogma. It seems almost impossible. I almost think of it like E equals MC square or evolution. Pick, pick your thing that was like transformed humanity. Germ theory. The person that can figure out healthy secular community. Healthy community, healthy sustainable community without religion. That's going to be like a sea change in humanity if it ever happens at all. It's like electricity, like evolution, germ theory and freaking healthy sustainable secular community. You know what I mean? You know what? I'm writing the printing press and in some sense, Bill, we were talking about this, like what if humanity depends on it?

John Dehlin [02:15:54] What if we're effing with you, me, Radio Free Mormon, Lindsay Hinson Park. Anyone who steps up into the, you know, criticizing religion or high demand religion space or helping, you know, facilitating deconstruction, what if we're literally pulling at the seams of humanity and actually doing harm to our species. Because as awful as some may think organized religion is, guess what? It can get worse. Try anarchy. Try Bosnia Herzegovina, you know, try post Saddam Hussein Iraq.

John Dehlin [02:16:38] Take your pick. There is something worse than tyranny, and that's anarchy. At least with tyranny, you know, you, you kind of know the rules of what's going to get you into trouble. When there's no rules and everybody's doing whatever they want, you've just got snipers that are taking you out and you don't even know why or have no police you can call.

John Dehlin [02:16:58] Right? So, like, what if we're doing harm to humanity by what we do as podcasters and as YouTubers? I mean, it sounds extreme and alarmist, but it's possible.

Bill Reel [02:17:14] As you point out, these are the things that we've been thinking about for years. I don't know a better way than to value individual well being over systemic perpetuation that includes harm. And we. What you just named might be true, but I don't have any choice but to push ahead and see

John Dehlin [02:17:45] Margi's nodding.

Amanda Reel [02:17:46] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:17:46] Why are you nodding, Margi?

Margi Dehlin [02:17:48] Because I feel that you agree.

John Dehlin [02:17:51] You feel the same. The bill does.

Margi Dehlin [02:17:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:17:54] Yeah. Do you want to expand or.

Margi Dehlin [02:17:57] Nope, that's all.

John Dehlin [02:18:00] Yeah, I do too, because like, the idea of perpetuating lies, like you think about the movie the Village, the idea of knowingly and consciously perpetuating lies or superstitions or falsehoods, that seems untenable. It's like, if that's what's required for humanity to thrive, then maybe humanity doesn't deserve to continue.

John Dehlin [02:18:23] Or if it's like, you know, you meet these people where it's like, man, if I had a gay kid, I'd leave my church too. But because I don't, I'm staying in it. Like, this idea of like knowingly knowing indifference to large, non significant, non insignificant. Knowing indifference to the harm of non insignificant groups of people and just like, yeah, but that trans thing isn't my problem. That gay thing isn't my problem. That feminism thing isn't my problem. That racial thing, the police stuff, that's not my problem. And just like going with a community that's like you and that feels familiar. If that's what you have to do to be a Mormon or to be in a high demand religion.

John Dehlin [02:19:15] F that. F that Shiz. So like, but that is Mormonism. The people that stay in Mormonism, a big chunk of them are bound by Suspicion or indifferent to the suffering of large groups of people, or they feel like they're trying to change it from within. But that's, that's misery. Staying in a toxic organization indefinitely to try and change it when, when it kills the people, it's change agents, when it's known to kill its change agents. How toxic is that? So like, I'm with you, we, we only can press forward, but like it may be too. Hopefully it won't be to our collective demise. But it could be.

Bill Reel [02:20:00] Yeah, it could be, yeah. The thing I would add on top of that is we do have a little bit of perspective. Finland was just voted the country with the best individual well being. Like the citizens reported being the happiest, safest, securest life opportunities, healthcare, chances to be themselves six years in a row. Now who is second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth? It's those same countries right around it, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark. What is unique about that block one is, if I'm not mistaken, on the modern moment they are much more atheistic, more secular, which seems to indicate that a deconstruction of religion does have a trajectory of ending with more happiness and self contentment.

Bill Reel [02:21:02] And the society seems to function great. Also, if we go into their history, if I'm not mistaken, we're tied into sort of like the Northmen and the Vikings. It's sort of a different history. That block of countries comes from a different past than everyone else.

Bill Reel [02:21:21] And it might be worthwhile to dive into both. How those countries in the modern moment operate, what is it that makes those countries unique? Cause if it was just Finland and the other ones were somewhere in the middle or lower, then you would sense like, oh, it's just a coincidence or maybe Finland's unique, but it is the very people who populated those geographic locations who have some sort of historical, evolutionary of some sort advantage, that they are producing safe places where people are happy and content.

Bill Reel [02:22:00] The second thing is we might want to look at who those people are historically and what kinds of beliefs, traditions, values. Because we see the Vikings for instance, as barbarians, but only because it's the religionists who are writing the story.

Bill Reel [02:22:20] And hence if we dive into the history and examine who those people were, we might learn something about what made an environment where the countries that are one through six happiest countries on the planet, why they're different than the rest of us. And stop assuming, by the way, America is the greatest, it's the best.

Bill Reel [02:22:40] That's not true, that's a myth. Patriotism is essential to beating the bad guys. But if you're going to start deconstructing, deconstructing the United States of America as the best country on earth, that's a good place to start.

John Dehlin [02:22:57] I know Margi loves some of those Scandinavian countries. I think we have things to learn from those countries. The only critique or pushback I have is they're super white. They don't have multiracial, multi ethnic societies to deal with that are much more complex and difficult. They don't have necessarily the history of slavery or of oppression.

John Dehlin [02:23:24] And, and also my own personal critique is they've benefited from the protection of other countries. So like, yeah, if, if, let's just say the UK and in the United States and others hadn't intervened to keep Hitler from sweeping through Germany or Stalin from sweeping the other way, those countries, none of them would have stood totally. And they don't have the military budgets to defend themselves, but they rely on treaties with countries like us to be able to maintain their status. So there's something about, it's more complex in some sense. They have a lot of white privilege and a lot of socioeconomic privilege, a lot of size privilege in the sense that they're smaller, that I don't think we, that fully accounts for their status.

Bill Reel [02:24:19] Yeah, we sort of intuitively grasp that there are certain democratic countries who would stay inside their own lines

John Dehlin [02:24:31] sort of forever. Right.

Bill Reel [02:24:33] If Great Britain and America were left alone, for instance, you sort of intuitively perceive that neither one of them is going to go fight for more space. They might in democratic ways engage countries such as providences that have been adopted into the United States but aren't states yet. Right.

Bill Reel [02:24:51] We sort of intuitively get that the countries that play by certain rules aren't fighting over boundaries anymore. They might be having influence and sending delegates and trying to change other countries political systems. Granted. But they're not trying to increase the size and scope of who they are.

Bill Reel [02:25:09] And so maybe on that angle we ought to sense that what the world needs is that really on some level democracy does need to win so that all countries are willing to stay in their own lines. And at that point, I think now you can start to have a conversation about how that block of countries works together with others to use that as a model for how all of us across the world have to get to a point if we're going to solve these problems of staying in our own lines and valuing each other and working together as a world society.

John Dehlin [02:25:42] Yeah. And just to leave this topic, the last thing I'll say is we tried super hard, thrive has been an attempt to create secular community within the post Mormon space. And it has been super sad, disconcerting to me to see the level to which people, and mostly post Mormons have risen up to destroy, to completely defame and try to destroy honest, sincere, genuine attempts to simply provide community for people. There's something about that crab analogy where a bunch of crabs are in a pot and one crab starts to get. Get out and the other crabs pull it down. Even as post Mormons sometimes we're so effing toxic and self destructive.

Amanda Reel [02:26:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:31] And it's been super disheartening to see post Mormons come out of the woodwork to try and destroy other people trying to do good. And specifically people who try and create community by people that you would think would be fans of, of such attempts, but inexplicably they're destructive forces. And thrive is still thriving in many ways. But it's been super sad for me to see that adds just an extra layer of complexity that I just wanted to call out. I'm ready to move on.

Margi Dehlin [02:27:04] Yeah.

Bill Reel [02:27:05] I would only say to that I 100% agree with you. I don't really have anything to add, but we ought to again respect each other's differences and values. Almost every difference of opinion or conflict is based, is value oriented and one value may not be worse than another. And if we understand other people's values, maybe we can understand why they do life differently than us.

John Dehlin [02:27:29] Yeah. Okay. So if you study psychology, especially psychology in the 50s and 60s and 70s, there's this idea of existentialism. There's a whole movement of psychology called existentialism. And it all revolves around how do we deal with death.

Bill Reel [02:27:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:27:48] And as religion and sec. As religion's on the decline and secularism's on the rise, that spotlights one of the biggest issues that we have as a species. It's like juxtaposing our self awareness as conscious creatures with the realization that we and those around us who we love die. And that's one of the main value propositions of religion, is that presents itself as a solution to the mortality and the death problem. It says, hey, don't worry about it. Not only are we going to tell you who you are and give you spirituality and morality and meaning and purpose and community, we're going to tell you what happens when you die.

John Dehlin [02:28:27] And guess what? It's going to be great if you pay us a lot of money and do everything we say. Yeah, that's the rub. Right. And so they control death, but they plug that Hole of death. Because you get all these Mormons that'll say, I'm not, oh, my dad died.

Bill Reel [02:28:43] I'm fine.

John Dehlin [02:28:45] I'm going to see him in, you know, a few years, or death's not bad. Death's a celebration. He's on to a better place. So, Bill and Amanda, if you want to add, let's end and, you know, we've got 20 minutes. Let's tackle death as the final topic that we talk about. What a better topic to tackle. And, Bill, I have a sense you maybe have a story or two you want to tell as a preface to our discussion of death.

Bill Reel [02:29:12] Yeah. So before I left Ohio, my mom got skin cancer. She used tanning booths a lot in her early adulthood, and that literally came to bite her back in the ass because that's where she got her first. A skin lesion of cancer was on her rear end, and she went and got it cut off. And they thought they got all of it.

Bill Reel [02:29:41] They didn't. She. It came back. It came back as brain cancer. She's 59 years old when she passed. Leading up to her death, she enters stage four. Doctors tell her that she's going to be lucky if she has months to live.

Bill Reel [02:30:01] She's still working. She just. She just always kept going. I would. I would try to have conversations with her where I checked in on her, and you could just tell she didn't. She wanted to ignore all of it.

Bill Reel [02:30:14] She just wanted to keep pretending it wasn't there. Still going to her doctor's appointments, doing the best she can to take care of it, but not wanting to outwardly. And I get it, who wants to be occupied with their time coming to an end when they can continue living? Because every moment, you never are dead. Like, your consciousness is never aware of death. Any moment your consciousness is there, you're living.

Bill Reel [02:30:42] She had issues with her memory. She went into the hospital at one point, and I flew into Ohio to visit. My dad was hysterical, falling apart. My mom couldn't identify me. She mistook me for my brother. She couldn't identify her grandchildren. She would look at the pictures and she sort of had an echo of, like, knowing she knew that person, but she couldn't name any of them. She didn't know what day it was.

Bill Reel [02:31:06] And we thought, oh, my gosh, this is the way it's gonna go down. This is horrific. And she got her wits back about her. My oldest kid was. My oldest kid's wife was pregnant with my first grandchild, her first great grandchild.

Bill Reel [02:31:22] And she convinced my dad to Let her fly by herself from Ohio to Vegas, get out of the airport, get herself to the rental car place nearby, get a vehicle, go to the casino hotel to stay at, leave the next morning and come to southern Utah. Two hour drive and to see see her first great grandchild as she's getting ready to die.

Bill Reel [02:31:55] And it was a horrific experience. The next day we're at the hospital. My daughter in law had just given birth and now this is two days later and it's the day to go home and my mom is supposed to show up at 1 o' clock and she doesn't.

Bill Reel [02:32:10] So we start panicking. I call my dad and my brother back in Ohio and I say what's going on here? Mom's not here yet. We try to call her, she's not answering her phone. My dad convinces the hotel to do a wellness check. They go to her room, she's not there, but all of her bags are. She was supposed to be checked out at 11 o'. Clock. They don't have the hotel reserved for the the day.

Bill Reel [02:32:31] My mom isn't answering her phone, she's sort of being, she is like texting once in a while. My dad can see that she's taking money out of the ATM machine every so often. She loves to play the. She loved to play the slot machines.

Bill Reel [02:32:46] She what ends up happening. My dad can trace the chain of events by seeing when things happen, such as when she checked into the hotel, when did she pick up the rental car? She gets into the airport, plane lands on time. It takes like four hours for her to get from the airport to the rental car company, which makes no sense at all.

Bill Reel [02:33:05] It takes another two hours when it should have taken 15 minutes for her to get from the rental car company to the hotel. My mom in some state of mind, unable to function fully, is in loops, getting stuck and taking way longer to accomplish things that should have taken short amount of time.

Bill Reel [02:33:25] The next step for me is I don't know what to do. The best thing I can do is figure out how to get somebody as I get in a van with my wife and start heading to Vegas to find my mom, who I don't even know really where to start other than the hotel she's supposed to be at. I call ahead to friends who are already in Vegas that live there and I say, hey, I got an emergency. My mom is somewhere in Las Vegas and I don't know where she's at.

Bill Reel [02:33:46] So my friends go to the hotel in Vegas that she's stayed at. I send them a Picture. They've never met her. They start walking around the casino and my friends start sending me pictures of strangers. This kind of looks like your mom. Is this her? You know, and it's not.

Bill Reel [02:34:04] And eventually they find her. She's at a slot machine. She loves slot machines. And she gets stuck in a loop. She didn't know she needed to move on, so my friends find her. I also have a sister in law, my brother's wife's sister, who happens to now live in Vegas. And my mom has met her a few times, so we call her as well. So my friends just kind of keep an eye on her, wait till the known person comes. And then they get my mom to her room and get her bags and I go to pick her up. And you can tell that she's not all there.

Bill Reel [02:34:33] We get her in the van and she's mad at us for coming. I. I would have gotten to you eventually, Billy. I get her back to Southern Utah and it's this magical moment. Her mind comes back into full function. And she spends a week holding her grand. Her great grandson, her first great grandchild, and spends a week with us. She insists on staying at a hotel. She wouldn't stay in our guest room. She's such a stubborn woman.

Bill Reel [02:35:07] And then a month later, she falls and doesn't regain consciousness for a moment. My dad makes the decision to put her in hospice. I fly back to Ohio again with my wife. And we watched my mom go. From the day we got there, she was talking. I sang a song to her. She smiled, we chatted a minute. She got annoyed with something I said, which is exactly her.

Bill Reel [02:35:35] And then the next day she mumbled, but you could sort of understand. The next day she mumbled and you couldn't understand anything. And then the next day, her eyes were closed, her lips didn't move. And over the total of 11 days in hospice, she starved to death.

Bill Reel [02:35:51] And we live in this country where in most places around the world and here, we value the comfort of the living over the comfort of the dying. And we don't let people choose end of life measures so that we can end their suffering soon, so that we who get to stay behind get to be more comfortable than them.

Bill Reel [02:36:11] And that process was horrific. And it led me to realizing that how we treat those who are dying in this country is one of the cruelest things we could do. Every human being with a terminal illness should have the right to end their life when they no longer want to be here. And no person, and people don't even get it. You're sitting in the room in hospice, it's day four. Your mom isn't moving her eyes or lips, but you don't know how conscious she still is.

Bill Reel [02:36:41] As Margi pointed out earlier, they say that listening, not earlier in this interview, but entering a private conversation before the show started, that listening or hearing might be the last thing to go. That's what the medical community says. And you ought to assume that, by the way, because what you don't understand if you've never been there, is you sit in a room with your dying loved one, and as they're unable to respond, your brain starts to automatically forget that they're there. And you sit around with your loved ones, starting to have a conversation about how you're gonna handle the funeral or how you're going to handle this part of the.

Bill Reel [02:37:14] The process, or how you're going to handle that part. And then suddenly someone in the room goes, oh, wait a minute, Mom's right there. Who knows if she's listening or not, but sure as hell she doesn't want to hear this conversation.

Bill Reel [02:37:25] And you realize that you're torturing her if she is listening. And then I remember sitting out of the hallway crying and thinking to myself, when no one's looking, and everyone stepped out of the room, I'm going to walk back in the room of the pillow and suffocate my mom to. To death. Because it's the only way I know to end her suffering.

Bill Reel [02:37:42] So I sit for days thinking about how I can kill my mother so that she doesn't have to suffer anymore. And I asked my dad and my brother, and they're thinking the same damn thing. What I learned in this process was that when you do spend time with someone at the end of life, if I can tell you one secret, it is to treat them and talk to them and interact with them as if it's just some other ordinary day.

Bill Reel [02:38:13] Because if you were dying and you were aware of it, the only real distraction is for everyone around you to pretend that life is normal. So we sat there the one night and we watched the Cleveland Browns game, which is the thing we do in our home all of our life. And we screamed at the TV set and we talked to mom as we did it.

Bill Reel [02:38:35] I would go into the room at night, my dad would lay next to her every night as she wasn't conscious, and I would just walk in the room and go, hey, mom and dad. How are you guys doing? Love you both. Give them both a hug. Give them both a kiss. Ask them how their day Was my dad would interact. Obviously she wasn't able to, but I treated it as if it was just another day. And this was life as normal. Because I have to imagine if you are conscious on any level, listening to what's going on around you, that that might be the only escape from the thoughts that are in your head that say that your death is eminent.

Bill Reel [02:39:12] And I. I couldn't be more adamant about all of those things. There was a moment every day in this hospice center, huge hospice center. The nursing staff was incredible. Every day in this center they had a community room in the middle. And every day they would bring a performer in and all the loved ones could essentially get away from their dying loved one and just kind of reground. And one day a guy came in and he just played the native American flute. And I just sat there for hours just trying to escape this thing that's happening that you can't get away from.

Bill Reel [02:39:53] We can do better. We could, because Oregon's already done it. We have nothing stopping us from simply again. When we learn other people's experiences, we get to challenge our own patterns. So the moment you can sit with my story and learn, oh, I didn't know that. But that's what it's like now you can be a voice for change.

Bill Reel [02:40:14] And now we can change little by little. Every state to empower those who are their death is eminent to be able on their own terms, decide when they end their life rather than for our own comfort prolonging their suffering.

John Dehlin [02:40:38] Well, that is a beautiful story and very heartwarming and a passionate plea for physician assisted end of life care.

Bill Reel [02:40:49] Jack Kevorkian wasn't an evil man. As religion told you. Jack Kevorkian was doing some of the most compassionate work on planet earth. We want to certainly try to have things in place so that folks who feel hopeless, who could have resolved their hopelessness had they had the support, love and encouragement could do so. We don't want to give everyone the ability to just take their life. But when folks are. When life is anguish and misery and pain and suffering and there is no hope that that can go away, we ought to respect that death might be. When we in religion say they're at peace now, might we take that literally?

John Dehlin [02:41:47] Amen.

Amanda Reel [02:41:48] Yeah. So my understanding of what I know about hospice, I did work in a long term facility for 15 years as a nurse's aide is comfort care, which they give you morphine and Roxanol, which shut your body down. So in essence, hospice to me is doing what Dr. Kaporkian did. So if we can give Roxanol and morphine enough to slow all your functions down because you're at that point, you're dying. So what? Why can't we, like Bill said, use euthanasia. Your person is already dying. This hospice facility was beautiful. If you were there for two to three days, six days, 10 days, 11 days. To be in a hospice unit is not okay. He said his mom starved to death because she cannot eat.

Bill Reel [02:42:42] And I slept in the next room while it happened.

Amanda Reel [02:42:44] Why is that okay to watch your mother starve to death when it's no problem to take your old sick dog to your get killed. We could do that to our pets. But we have to watch our parents or loved one starve for 11 days. Doesn't matter. They're in the nicest facility.

Margi Dehlin [02:43:08] 11 days.

Amanda Reel [02:43:09] Days.

Bill Reel [02:43:11] You talk about hell. That was hell. For every one of us in the family who stayed there and supported my mom and loved her in that process, it was hell. And the only thing that keeps us as a people doing it that way, if we go back to Buddhism, is our attachment to what is inevitably being lost anyway. Like grasping at something that you have no control and is ending no matter how hard you grasp. And yet for your own attachment, it. It prolongs to a point where you allow the person you care about to suffer so that you get a few more minutes with them or so that you don't get as uncomfortable or disturbed.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:00] Yeah, thank you so much for sharing and I'm so, so sorry.

Bill Reel [02:44:04] Yeah, thank you.

Margi Dehlin [02:44:06] I. I have. I've talked a bit on, you know, different podcasts about the death of my, my dad and there are some similarities there definitely similar thoughts. I did a deep dive while he was dying and after and one book that if people are taking care of parents who you can see around the decliner, it's coming, it's coming for all of us. Just what I have to say. But there's a book called Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. He's a doctor. He has won numerous awards for his past books. One for complications. Anyway, Being Mortal, which discusses kind of end of life as well as the medical system's failure to ignore knowledge, end of life care, and even in its training this strong preference to keep life going at all costs, that that's actually their training and starting to question a lot of those things.

Margi Dehlin [02:45:12] It's very, It's a beautiful book. I actually read it while my dad was starting to fail. I found it comforting. So that's a, that's a Read just a reference point if you're interested. But anyway, so many of the same thoughts and I'm so, so sorry.

Bill Reel [02:45:32] Yeah, thank you.

John Dehlin [02:45:37] Thank you. Thanks to both, all of you and Bill, just because we're, we're coming close to the end of, of today's episode. Let me, let me just inquire a little bit further. You've made it a passion to plea for ethical end of life care.

Facing Death Without Religion and Closing Reflections

John Dehlin [02:45:58] What about just generically, the idea that religion claims to take away the sting of death? Death's not sad because of religion. Religion tells you not only that there is an afterlife which plugs that hole, but it also tells you it's going to be amazing with a few conditions you don't have that you don't even know if there's going to be an afterlife. You may be an atheist and not even believe in an afterlife, which means that for you, maybe you don't even, maybe you have a surety that there won't be an afterlife. There are all sorts of people that are like, that's not a benefit, that's not a bonus.

John Dehlin [02:46:35] That's trading backwards. That's going backwards. That's giving up something really valuable. So how, how do you respond to people who say that's one of the benefits of religion is resolutions about death and you ain't got nothing for that atheist, you know?

Bill Reel [02:46:53] Yeah. So my rebuttal would be that in religion, with all the things you busy yourself about in order to set yourself up to take advantage of that gorgeous afterlife, what you end up doing is treating the present as if it's the past, because you're so focused on the past and the future.

Bill Reel [02:47:15] And so in Mormonism, for instance, we talk about how important families are. But as a leader in the church, I was almost never around my family. And I justified it by saying, I'm building the kingdom now, and I'll spend my time with my family in eternity.

Bill Reel [02:47:30] And so now, having deconstructed all of that, I am deeply aware that all I have is the present moment. The past is a memory. The future never comes. All you have is now. And I live my fullest life in each present moment the best I can. I'm very aware of what that is. I think about death, I meditate on death. I'll sit and watch a show or a movie. I'll see a death happen, and I'll let my brain for four or five minutes just wander off and continuously contemplate my own ending. And for most of us, that ending is going to be in such a Form that it's certainly not going to be pleasant.

Bill Reel [02:48:14] But whether we think about it or don't think about it, it's happening regardless. I don't ever find myself depressed in that meditation. It actually calls on me to be more aware and present in the living moments that I have.

Bill Reel [02:48:28] And so while the religionist might say the things you just noted, John, I would argue that I am living a much more vibrant, full, alive life by being aware that maybe this all comes to an end and there isn't anything on the other side.

John Dehlin [02:48:47] And for those who are like, terrified at the prospects of letting go of God basically and letting go of heaven and the resurrection and the afterlife, I'm sure in their minds they can't imagine ever feeling at peace, let alone like they've traded up giving up God in an afterlife for the now. I think unless you've really done the work and done the work to become comfortable and even to like the idea of focusing on the now. And I agree that's what brings you give up something that may or may not be true, that's in the future for the chance to optimize what, what is sure, which is what you have in the present moment.

John Dehlin [02:49:35] Like, that's the benefit. I'm with you on that. How can any of you give consolation to those who feel like there's no way I'm going to feel better about my existence adopting a focus on the now when I'm giving up reassurances about the afterlife?

Bill Reel [02:49:53] Every one of us is scared because the system told us to fear what happens if we let go of belief. We've been prompted, inoculated, taught and programmed to think that losing our faith would end with such horrible things happening. And life is messy whether you're religious or not. What I know is that all we ever have, our entire life is the present moment and everything else is a mirage.

John Dehlin [02:50:32] Amanda, anything you want to add?

Amanda Reel [02:50:34] No, I think that summed it up pretty good.

John Dehlin [02:50:40] Are you any questions or follow up? No. Okay. Okay. Well, that is. I mean, for many, that is the big question. That's what drives belief in God, drives religion, drives commitment, is death and the afterlife and heaven and all that.

Bill Reel [02:51:00] So didn't you fear that at one time, what would happen if you lost it all?

John Dehlin [02:51:04] Oh, yeah, of course.

Bill Reel [02:51:04] And now looking at it from where you're at, having both perspectives, was it as scary as you were taught to think it was?

John Dehlin [02:51:14] I mean, what I realized is once I started pulling on the thread of religious certainty and the things that I had been taught that Turned out to be false. I realized that I had the illusion of certainty that, like, I could feel pacified by some story that someone told me about God in an afterlife.

John Dehlin [02:51:36] But did I really know it was real? It could have just been as made up as the golden plates and Angel Moroni and the book of Abraham. So what I realized is I wasn't really giving up certainty. I was giving up the illusion of certainty.

John Dehlin [02:51:52] And what I was trading for the illusion of certainty that wasn't real was like 10% of my income and many, many hours a week. Not to mention the constant guilt and shame and fear and all these duties and obligations that really are building up a quarter of a trillion dollar organization at the expense of my remaining time on this earth.

Margi Dehlin [02:52:14] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:52:15] So, like, I feel like I gained everything and lost nothing because what I was believing in was an illusion. Now some people feel like that's fine. If it's an illusion that makes you feel better, go with the illusion. And that goes back to this question about happy.

John Dehlin [02:52:29] There is a sense of kind of illusory happiness, kind of like blind ignorance, foolish happiness, where you just don't know better and so you're happy. But I don't want to live in that world. I don't want to live in that existence. For me, an unexamined life isn't worth living, probably, or it's less worth living than an examined life that's as rooted in reality as possible. And for me, that's what informed consent is about. That's what Mormon story is about. I think that's what Mormon.

John Dehlin [02:53:02] Mormonism live and Mormon discussion and what you're trying to do in your life mission is about is helping people stand in reality and live their best life with. With the time they have left. Right.

Bill Reel [02:53:14] I've never felt more alive.

John Dehlin [02:53:16] Yeah. Yeah. That's not a bad quote to end with, Margi.

Margi Dehlin [02:53:22] Yeah, let's go with it.

John Dehlin [02:53:23] Yeah. Amanda.

Amanda Reel [02:53:25] I agree.

John Dehlin [02:53:26] Yeah. Amen.

Amanda Reel [02:53:27] Amen.

John Dehlin [02:53:28] Can I get an amen?

Margi Dehlin [02:53:29] Amen.

John Dehlin [02:53:30] Amen.

Amanda Reel [02:53:31] Amen.

John Dehlin [02:53:32] Amen. All right. Well, Bill and Amanda, Real. We did it. You did the nine whatever mama stories interview.

Amanda Reel [02:53:41] What do you think?

Bill Reel [02:53:42] I'll tell you. I hope it's helpful. I hope that someone resonates with the things we talked about in each of the three episodes and that it's helpful to folks feeling empowered to be a better version of themself and a more honest version of themself. And I also hope that you find contentment and happiness in doing that.

John Dehlin [02:54:04] Thanks, my brother. And I just want to say, on behalf of a huge progressive and post Mormon community. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. You both have played a crucial role in so many people's journeys and awakenings. And I just. On behalf of this community, I brought you here primarily to honor and thank you for your contributions. Because while I know you love what you do, it also comes at a great personal sacrifice.

Margi Dehlin [02:54:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:54:34] So thank you.

Amanda Reel [02:54:35] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [02:54:36] Thank you. Thanks, Amanda.

Amanda Reel [02:54:38] Thank you. And I am just, I am in awe of you guys and of course of the supporters. And so thank you to you and Margi and thank you for supporters of all of us working together to strive for betterness.

Margi Dehlin [02:54:55] Yeah.

Amanda Reel [02:54:56] Love it.

John Dehlin [02:54:56] Thank you. And hopefully we'll honor you guys tonight. And we plan on recording tonight and then releasing it later as well. But I hope we have a great evening tonight.

Bill Reel [02:55:07] It'll be fun.

John Dehlin [02:55:08] And. Yeah. And then just end by telling everyone about the Mormon Description Discussions Network and how people can support you and all the worthy endeavors.

Amanda Reel [02:55:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:55:18] That you sponsor. Because it's not just you. And believe it or not, it's not just Radio Free Mormon. There's more. So tell people how they can support you.

Bill Reel [02:55:25] Yep. So you go to Mormon Discussions with an s on the end.org on that landing page you will see the listing of podcast thumbnails of podcasts that we offer. There are most of them deal with with facets of Mormonism, but we even have podcasts such as the Almost Awakened podcast that really sort of avoids as much as possible talking about Mormonism and really helping folks with kind of second half of life tools, reference there to Richard Rohr.

Bill Reel [02:55:53] You can go to mormondiscussionpodcast.org that will have the audio content of all of our podcasts. And then every podcast has its own unique website where if you just want to be a fan or follower of any particular one, such as Radio Free Mormon, Ramyuptom ruminations or others, you can do that.

Bill Reel [02:56:11] I would also suggest our YouTube channel. If you go on YouTube and look for Mormon Discussion Incorporated, you'll find our channel. You can subscribe and follow there. We would deeply appreciate you coming on board as a subscriber and you'll see all of our content there. For the host that most of them who are publishing their content to YouTube and I just hope that our content is helpful to you on your journey regardless of where you're at.

John Dehlin [02:56:41] Beautiful. All right. Thanks, Bill. Thanks, Amanda.

Bill Reel [02:56:44] Thank you, my friends.

John Dehlin [02:56:45] I hope you. I wish you both health, happiness and prosperity in what you do.

Bill Reel [02:56:51] Did it back at the two of

John Dehlin [02:56:53] you and a few at least several decades of continued financial success and sustainability in what you do.

Amanda Reel [02:56:59] Love it.

Bill Reel [02:57:00] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:57:01] Thanks Beta.

Amanda Reel [02:57:02] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:57:02] Thanks, Margi. So great to have you.

Margi Dehlin [02:57:04] My pleasure.

John Dehlin [02:57:05] All right.

Margi Dehlin [02:57:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:57:06] All right. Thanks everyone. Please support Bill and go to Mormon discussions.org and please provide them with your financial support and also your subscriptions to Mormonism Live and to their YouTube channel. Help us help and Facebook their Facebook group. All that helps with the Algorand rhythms. Helps to get them, you know, out there. So please support them in all the ways. Thanks to everyone who supports Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. We couldn't do this without you. So again, thanks for all that. Please be good to each other. Please be kind to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast and on Mormon Discussion podcast and on Mormonism live Wednesday nights, 6:20pm Mountain time, YouTube. Take care everybody. And RFM at the end of the day, it's really all about you. True it is.

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.