Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to a very special edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John Dehlin and today we are rebroadcasting for sure one of the most important series of episodes ever released on Mormon Stories Podcast. We are going to be rebroadcasting and integrating our multi part series with Jeremy Runnells, the author of the Letter to a CES Director, or the CES Letter as it's now known as. For those of you who don't know, the CES letter is, you know, by 2025, probably the most widely read, widely downloaded, most impactful document ever created in the history of the Mormon Church that attempts to express the concerns with the Mormon Church's truth claims.

John Dehlin [00:00:49] It's probably impacted more Mormon testimonies than any other thing, any other podcast, any other YouTube channel, any other book, any other person, any other single thing to give you just a little bit of background. Jeremy Runnells is an amazing human. He was born and raised in the church. In February of 2012 he started having a faith crisis. And between 2012 and 2013 a high level church educator, director in the church education system reached out to Jeremy and they started to have a dialogue where Jeremy wrote to the CES director his questions and concerns with the Church's truth claims. And basically Jeremy never got a response to this letter that he wrote the CES director.

John Dehlin [00:01:38] So eventually this CES letter made it onto the Internet, it was spread through the ex Mormon Reddit and by the fall of 2013, Mormon church apologists started attacking the CES letter and most importantly attacking Jeremy just for expressing sincere and honest concerns and tried basically to malign Jeremy's character. And for the past 12 years, the Mormon Church continues to not offer credible responses to the CES letter. It still has not. Even though there's a wide perception that the CES letter has been debunked, it has not in any way. It still stands very strong. And even worse, the Mormon Church and its apologists continue to malign Jeremy Runnells.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] And if that weren't enough, In June of 2014, Mormon Stories I interviewed Jeremy Runnells. So episodes 480 to 482 were an interview I did with Jeremy. And back then I used to split up my interviews into multiple parts. So it was a long time ago and it was split up in multiple parts. And so that's one of the main reasons we're re releasing is because we want to not only introduce it to a new generation, but also integrate it into one single episode so that the whole thing can be watched easily at one time In February of 2016, this was a year after I was excommunicated, year and a half after Kate Kelly of Ordained Women was excommunicated, Jeremy Runnells was summoned to a disciplinary council.

John Dehlin [00:03:08] We on Mormon Stories did a live event where we interviewed Jeremy Runnells on the eve, I believe, of the date he was threatened with excommunication. I think the church postponed his disciplinary council as a result of that. You can check out that. That's Mormon Stories episode 621. And then in March of 2016, Jeremy attended his disciplinary council. He recorded it with a secret video, I believe. And then right before they were able to excommunicate him, he resigned, taking his power back. So, anyway, I've made a promise that until the Mormon Church stops maligning Jeremy, and until the Mormon Church provides adequate answers to Jeremy's questions and concerns, I'm going to keep promoting the CES letter.

John Dehlin [00:03:56] So if you want to download it right now, go to cesletter.org or cesletter.com, download it. It's a PDF, I believe. It's like 80 pages. You could read it in a few hours and it will give you a really good rundown on, let's just say, 80% of the main Mormon church truth claims. And you can decide for yourself whether the church has good answers and whether you find Jeremy's questions and the data that he provides compelling. So, anyway, please enjoy this interview with Jeremy Runnells. We would love your feedback. I hope you enjoy the series. And then in a couple days, we're going to be releasing an LDS discussion episode where we review the CES Letter's criticisms or questions or concerns with the Book of Mormon and on the LDS discussion series, which we've, you know, been doing for a few years now.

John Dehlin [00:04:48] We may be doing some new episodes, reviewing many of the main questions or concerns or arguments of the CES Letter chapter by chapter to give additional analysis and to respond to any apologetics or critics that are out there. Thanks, everybody. Enjoy this rebroadcast of Jeremy Runnells interview on Mormon Stories Podcast. And please give us any feedback. We would love to hear it. Thanks, everyone.

Meet Jeremy Runnells

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, and as always, I'm super excited to have a special guest with me today. Today we're recording this in Salt Lake City, kind of downtown. We have seven people who are here watching. You can't see them, but I'm happy to have a bit of an audience here. And we're here to interview Jeremy Runnells.

John Dehlin [00:05:43] Jeremy, we're going to get into his story, but some of you may have heard of the letter to a CES director, cesletter.com I think is the website. The short story, just to hook you into the interview, is that Jeremy was struggling with his testimony, lived a very traditional, devout LDS life until the point where he started having questions. And eventually his grandfather found out about this and offered for Jeremy to write a letter to a CES director friend of his grandfather.

John Dehlin [00:06:16] He wrote the letter. The letter was received but was never responded to. But, but it was such a good letter, I guess he got good feedback from it that he has kind of expounded upon it and published it to a webpage. And it definitely has been a phenomenon sweeping intellectual Mormonism and it's impacted a lot of people. So we're going to talk about it today. This is part of a multi part series. So after we're done with this interview, I've invited Brad Kramer, who I've interviewed a few sessions ago, who's a faithful sort of scholar. He's going to sort of defend the believing positions. And I've invited Jane Nelson Seawright, who is a professor at Northwestern University, and he's a non believer and they're good friends and they're going to have kind of a very gentlemanly discussion about letter to the CES director, pros and cons and perspectives about it. So this is a long series, but I'm loving every minute of it. So without any further ado, Jeremy Runnells, welcome to Mormon Stories.

Jeremy Runnells [00:07:23] Thank you for having me.

Growing Up Deaf and Cochlear Implants

John Dehlin [00:07:26] So, before we begin, Jeremy, you are deaf. Why don't you talk just about that for just a second?

Jeremy Runnells [00:07:32] Sure. I'm actually deaf in both ears and I hear through what is called a cochlear implant. And it might be better to explain through a video. So just watch this video and it will just go over how cochlear implants work.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:07:51] In a cochlear implant system, sound enters a microphone and travels to an external

Video Clip 1 [00:07:57] minicomputer called a sound processor. The sound is processed and converted into digital information.

Video Clip 1 [00:08:06] This digital information is sent over a transmitter antenna to the surgically implanted part of the system.

Video Clip 1 [00:08:14] The implant will turn the sound information

Video Clip 1 [00:08:16] into electrical signals that travel down to

Video Clip 1 [00:08:19] an electrode array inserted into the tiny inner ear, or cochlea, bypassing the damaged inner ear. The cochlear implant provides an entirely new mechanism for hearing.

John Dehlin [00:08:41] Real quick, were you born deaf?

Jeremy Runnells [00:08:43] I was born hearing. And when I was about three or four years old, I was diagnosed with hearing loss. At first it was mild hearing loss, and then over the course of 20 years, it just progressively got worse. In the course of 20 years, I wore hearing aids. And when I was about 24 years old, after I came home from my mission, I got my first cochlear implant in my left ear. And about seven years later, I got my second cochlear implant, and it just totally changed my life.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Excellent. Well, let's just jump in then. Tell us, just briefly, about your early experiences with the church. Were they positive? Tell us about the level of testimony you obtained before it started unraveling, and just a high level. Any positive experiences you've had with the church, just sort of tell us to what extent you were committed and believing before things started unraveling.

Faithful Upbringing and Early Church Life

Jeremy Runnells [00:09:39] Sure. I was born into a faithful home. My parents were. They were married in the Salt Lake City temple. I was born in Whittier, California. And throughout my life, I lived in different cities in Southern California. My parents were strong believing Mormons. I come from a pioneer heritage. I have family all the way back to Nauvoo. They travel the plains to Utah. I always believed in the church. I just grew up Mormon. I did the whole 9 yards. I was baptized when I was 8 years old.

John Dehlin [00:10:20] Where were you growing up? In the church.

Jeremy Runnells [00:10:23] This is in Southern California? Yeah, Orange county, parts of Los Angeles. So, yeah, I just went to church my entire life. I was baptized when I was 8 years old by my dad, and my parents were divorced when I was three or four years old. So that had a really profound impact on my life, on the life of my brothers, my family.

Jeremy Runnells [00:10:56] That's an interesting situation right there. My parents, you know, as they were going through the divorce, it kind of got hairy in the courts. And so somehow they got. I'm not sure if my dad proposed the idea or the bishop came to them, but it was proposed that instead of the judge in the court deciding, you know, which kid goes with who, we would have the bishop do it. Oh, yeah. And so it wasn't like this bishop was a judge or a social worker or anything. He was a financial planner. So I sound qualified, but at the time, it shows you how strong my parents believed.

Jeremy Runnells [00:11:42] I mean, maybe this man has inspiration. He would know what. What God would want for a family. So from what I understand, the bishop decided, you know, me and my oldest brother would go with my dad, and my other brother would go with my mom. And so that was pretty Devastating to my mom.

Jeremy Runnells [00:12:08] From what I understand, it created a pretty crazy situation over there. I mean, word spread around in the ward and the stakes. And the stakes in that area, from my understanding, it was mostly negative because they just couldn't believe how a bishop would decide this. A lot of people felt that it should have been the courts. I'm not sure all the details. That's my understanding.

Jeremy Runnells [00:12:34] But I just want to bring that up just to illustrate how strong my family believed in Mormonism, you know. And so it started that I lived with my dad my entire childhood. I had a great childhood. Both my parents loved me, and it was great.

Jeremy Runnells [00:13:00] After my parents divorced, my dad remarried. And that was an interesting situation because my dad had four kids and the new woman that he married had four kids. So it was a Brady Bunch situation. So, you know, so he.

Jeremy Runnells [00:13:21] That marriage lasted about six years. After that, we moved over to La Mirada, California. And I would say that that's where my testimony really took off. I went to church my entire life. I was baptized when I was 8, but I didn't really know what I was going to church for. I didn't really understand the restoration and Joseph Smith and what the church really stood for.

Jeremy Runnells [00:13:48] So when I was about 12 years old, I was ordained a deacon. This was around the time when interesting things happened. My. For the first time in my life, there was a death in my family. So I was a 13, 14 year old. That really impacted me. This was my grandpa.

Jeremy Runnells [00:14:10] So I never really experienced death or the concept of death. I mean, I'd seen Rambo, whatever, you know, TV shows and movies. But this was, for the first time in my life, somebody that I actually knew was one day was there, and the next day he was gone. So that had a profound impact on me.

Jeremy Runnells [00:14:32] This happened in September 17, 1994. And then another powerful event in my life happened about a week later. My dad arranged with a stake president, with our stake president to meet with the area authority at the time, Elder Lance B. Wickman.

Jeremy Runnells [00:14:54] And we met with him for me to get a hearing blessing. And so what we wanted to do is basically went to him to see if he could restore my hearing. Because as a teenager, it was a tough situation, not being able to hear very well, you know, in my circle of friends in school.

Jeremy Runnells [00:15:23] So it was a tough situation. I just. I really believe that, you know, all the stories that I read and heard in church about Christ healing, you know, the deaf and the lame and the blind, and I really believed in the concept that, you know, the church was Restored in these latter days. And the priesthood was real. And if it worked then, why can't it work now?

Jeremy Runnells [00:15:46] And so we met with the stake president. Me, my dad, and the stake president went over to where Elder Lance B. Wickman was at the time. It was when we met Lance B. Wickman, something weird happened. When I went up to him, I shook his hand, and I experienced this really powerful wave of emotion.

Jeremy Runnells [00:16:14] It was just looking back, I kind of compare it to kind of getting hit in the face in that sense of shock, confusion. But basically, when I shook his hand, I just had this surreal feeling. And from then on in my life, I identified that as the Spirit. Basically, I met with this special servant of the Lord, member of the 70, and, you know, he just. I just felt this. I just felt the Spirit. He was very gracious, very kind.

Jeremy Runnells [00:16:55] The entire meeting was very spiritual. He gave me a blessing that basically stated that my ears would be unstopped and my hearing would be restored. So it was pretty bold. My dad was in tears. I was in tears. And it was just a very special day. And I consider that one of the most special days of my life.

A Blessing, Hearing, and Shaken Faith

Jeremy Runnells [00:17:26] So I had faith that my hearing was going to be restored. I mean, I was expecting next week to put my hearing aids down. I was expecting my hearing issues to be resolved. That was just the kind of faith that I had as a kid. I really believed that what happened that day with Elder Lansbury, with me, and that my hearing would be restored.

Jeremy Runnells [00:17:50] Well, you know, that week went by, and then another week went by, and, you know, weeks turned into months and years, and my hearing just kept getting worse and worse. This kind of created a cognitive dissonance in the sense of.

Jeremy Runnells [00:18:10] He told me that my hearing would be restored and my ears would be unstopped and my hearing getting worse over time. I was just wondering what was going on. Did I have enough faith? I don't know. But anyway, I did the whole thing.

Jeremy Runnells [00:18:27] Deacon, teacher, priest. I was heavily involved in Boy Scouts. I had great experience in Boy Scouts. I'm an Eagle Scout, and I enjoyed the troop that I was in. The scout masters were fantastic, just great men. The war that I was in was just fantastic. I had awesome bishops. One of the bishops was Hawaiian.

Jeremy Runnells [00:18:49] So he just, you know, every week. Brothers and sisters, aloha. So there was that sense of community and. And sense of ward family. So I had a great experience overall. I went to efy, especially for youth, in Provo, Utah, and I had some spiritual experiences there.

Jeremy Runnells [00:19:12] So it was just the cumulative effect of that Day when I got my hearing blessing and just the experiences that I've had in my ward family and efy and I just, I've read the Book of Mormon. I, you know, I read all I could about Joseph Smith. I was very fascinated with Joseph Smith because he was also similar to me in the sense that he was about 13, 14 when he started having these questions about life. In my case, you know, when my grandpa died, I just wanted to understand what was going on. Is there really a God? It just such stuff that I'm going to.

Jeremy Runnells [00:19:51] Is it really for real? So I kind of identified with Joseph Smith in that sense of having questions and wanting to know about life. So just fast forwarding over to, you know, when I was in high school, I had a lot of good friends and a lot of them were non members.

Jeremy Runnells [00:20:14] One of them was my girlfriend. I had a girlfriend in high school, she was a non member. Her family were Presbyterian. So that kind of played into the, you know, like Joseph Smith, his family was Presbyterian. So I didn't understand Presbyterianism but kept hearing about it in the history of Joseph Smith. So I just kind of was fascinated with that. But this family was just a wonderful family. They were just, they had it together, mom and dad, the kids well educated. They just loved each other.

Jeremy Runnells [00:20:46] They also drank beer and wine and it just caused me some kind of. I was looking at this family, this non member family, drinking alcohol. You know, they were better in a lot of ways than a lot of Mormon families that I've met. So I kind of wondered about that, but I just kind of let it go.

Serving a Mission to the Deaf in New York

Jeremy Runnells [00:21:08] I was called on a mission to New York City to teach the deaf in American Sign Language. And this was 2000 to 2002 and it was just a powerful experience. I love my mission. It was a mission like any other. I've had my ups and downs. I had my awesome companions and I had my crazy companions.

John Dehlin [00:21:34] Did you know sign language before your mission?

Jeremy Runnells [00:21:36] I did a little bit, but I didn't really understand how to do it. It really took off in the mtc.

John Dehlin [00:21:44] Show us real quick how you would bear your testimony in Zion and talk as you say it.

Jeremy Runnells [00:21:50] I want to share my testimony that I know the church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet, that the church is restored the last days. So that was kind of the testimony that I shared with deaf people on my mission.

Jeremy Runnells [00:22:12] Yeah, so my understanding of American Sign Language really took off from my mission. So I had a great mission president. He was A nice man. And on my mission I've had some really amazing experiences in terms of just the people that I've met and the places that I've been. Most of my mission has been in the South Bronx and the whole island of Manhattan.

Jeremy Runnells [00:22:43] So I've done things on my mission that I can't believe I've done. Like we would sometimes take the stairs in the project at 8 o' clock at night. You know, we were invincible. We had the name tags, Jesus Christ, he's going to protect us.

Jeremy Runnells [00:23:01] We're on the Lord's errand. But just looking back, just some of the things we've done, going in the alleyways and the stairs, we were in places that we really shouldn't have been. We've had a situation where NYPD pulled over and said, hey guys, you shouldn't be going there. You know what I mean? But we're invincible. We're on the Lord's errand. The nypd, they don't know what they're talking about.

Jeremy Runnells [00:23:28] So it was just kind of funny. Just the confidence that I had as a missionary that I was really on the Lord's errand. We taught a lot of families. I've had success as a missionary. One powerful event on My mission was 9 11.

September 11th and Mission Experiences

Jeremy Runnells [00:23:49] So 911 happened on my mission. Just seeing the before and after of that event, it just blows my mind even to this day. Just the kindness that people had on the subways after that it was just very interesting, the change as a whole in that city.

Jeremy Runnells [00:24:09] Some of the families that I've taught, they had family members that were killed on 9 11. Just seeing the impact that 911 had on them, it was very, very up close and personal. I mean, I'm sure everybody else, they've seen 911 on their television. I've seen it.

John Dehlin [00:24:29] You know, like you remember, you could see the smoke billowing from where you

Jeremy Runnells [00:24:35] were seeing the first tower collapse. And I wasn't like right next to it at the time. I was in the South Bronx, but I could go on my roof and see it. And kind of an interesting story is three weeks before 9 11, my district, we went over to the World Trade Center. It's on a P day and we just wanted to check things out.

Jeremy Runnells [00:25:01] One of the things that we wanted to do was go up to the observation deck. And so this was near the end of the month when our savings account was diminished because usually missionaries account their savings replenishes every first of the month. So anyway, we went in to ask how much it would cost to Go up to the observation deck and we were told $13.

Jeremy Runnells [00:25:23] And to us, it was a lot of money at the time. And we were like, we'll come back later. And three weeks later, the whole thing was down. So it's just unbelievable that those buildings were massive and it's just unbelievable that they're just.

Jeremy Runnells [00:25:43] Three weeks later, they were just completely gone. They were just in its own footprint. So, yeah, that was my experience on my mission in terms of something that just powerful, just seeing the change in people, the change in the family that we taught.

Jeremy Runnells [00:26:04] So I had a great mission. I asked to stay longer in my mission. I could have gone home in June of 2002, but I asked the mission president if I could stay another transfer. So I ended up going back home in August.

Jeremy Runnells [00:26:22] So I was really a dedicated missionary. I really believed in what I was doing, teaching people about Joseph Smith and restored gospel. So I came home and went to school. I. I went to byu. And I had overall good experience at byu, majoring in marketing.

Jeremy Runnells [00:26:52] It was pretty much uneventful. It was just a normal BYU college education. I really enjoyed my roommates. I met my wife in my junior year and we met in the Wilkinson center at byu. So we so kind of funny. It was like a really Mormon courtship. The Wilkinson center at byu. And we dated for probably four, five, six months before I took her down to the Grand Canyon and just gave her the ring and asked her to marry me. And she said yes.

Jeremy Runnells [00:27:33] We got married in the San Diego Temple. That was also the temple kind of going back. The San Diego temple was where I got my endowments. A lot of people, I've heard a lot of stories about people having a terrifying experience, going to the temple for the first time, or a very uncomfortable experience.

Jeremy Runnells [00:27:54] To me, it was a little bit weird, but it wasn't completely shocking. I think part of the reason for that is I just trusted family were there, and if they're cool with it, then I should be cool with it. But that was pretty much my temple experience.

Jeremy Runnells [00:28:16] I was unable to go to the temple on my mission. The New York temple was not yet there, so the closest temple was the Boston temple. So for two years, no temple experience. My dad moved over. My dad moved over to Las Vegas during my mission. So when I came back home from my mission, it wasn't really home, it was Las Vegas.

Jeremy Runnells [00:28:41] So it was kind of an adjustment there, giving homecoming talk in a ward that I've never been in. So it was kind of a struggle at that time, being in this place that I was unfamiliar with this ward that I was unfamiliar with.

John Dehlin [00:28:57] After being in kind of the same place for so long and having so many church memories with your California community.

Jeremy Runnells [00:29:04] Yeah, absolutely. So in some ways, it was that kind of struggle with the wards that I've been after my mission, trying to recapture that, that really sense of family that I had in California. And so kind of shows how much

John Dehlin [00:29:25] of maybe what we perceive as testimony is really socially connected. Right.

Jeremy Runnells [00:29:30] A big part of that. I mean, obviously, if I hate the word and it's causing me misery, then that would be quite a big, you know, a big hurdle in order to keep going to church. So the social aspect of the church, the community aspect, is a major part of it. But for me, I didn't consider myself a social Mormon. I consider myself.

Jeremy Runnells [00:29:57] I really didn't have a testament. I really believed in the first vision in 1820. And the book of Mormon is a little history of Christ's visit to the Americas and so on. I believe that Joseph Smith is a prophet. So that testimony is what grounded me, especially in some of the things that have happened after my mission. You know, some of the wars that I didn't like, the singles wards and all that. So to me, even though sometimes I didn't like the word or I didn't really connect with some people, I still went every week because I was spiritually dedicated to the church.

The Beginning of Doubt and Faith Crisis

John Dehlin [00:30:35] So what led you Starting to doubt

Jeremy Runnells [00:30:39] so fast forwarding about 10 years to when I'm 30 years old. I. You know, I didn't. I still have my testimony. I was still going to church, though, serving in college. What happened is online, on Facebook, I was hearing some, you know, noises.

John Dehlin [00:31:00] What year?

Jeremy Runnells [00:31:01] This was 2012.

John Dehlin [00:31:03] Two years ago.

Jeremy Runnells [00:31:05] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:31:06] Up until two years ago, you were a total traditional believer.

Jeremy Runnells [00:31:09] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:31:10] Without serious doubts or concerns?

Jeremy Runnells [00:31:13] No. I mean, I can't think of any. I took everything literally. I can't think of anything that, you know, like, some people, they say they put things on the shelf, and then eventually the shelf cracked. I didn't really have a shelf. I mean, it was all true. Yeah, it was all true. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Okay, so Facebook.

Jeremy Runnells [00:31:38] So Facebook. I was starting to hear stuff about people. There was a blog here and there about the church, kind of talking about, like, feminist housewives. I was just seeing all this stuff that I considered unapproved popping up on Facebook.

Jeremy Runnells [00:32:01] And one night I was reading the news online and came across an article about Marlon King Jensen giving a Q and A at Utah State University. And in that Q and A meeting, he specifically Stated, well, he was asked by someone in the audience what his thoughts were regarding the drove of members that are leaving the church over Google over history.

Jeremy Runnells [00:32:30] And his response was, basically, we're experiencing an apostasy that we haven't seen since Kirtland over history. So that shocked me. It shocked me in the sense of, you know what, I'm sorry, I need to go back a little bit. Just before my mission, and this was when the Internet was really coming out and I was on AOL and stuff.

Jeremy Runnells [00:32:54] I wanted to be prepared for my mission. So I went online and looked up stuff and I wanted to just kind of anticipate the different questions that would be asked by investigators at the time the church was true. Confirmation bias was fourth gear. I mean, the church is true.

Jeremy Runnells [00:33:17] What can I learn to prove that or back that up? So I looked up stuff. I came across some of the Tanner stuff, but a lot of it was bizarre stuff. Like Brigham Young says that there were men that look like Quakers that live in the sun, or something like that.

Jeremy Runnells [00:33:41] Men live on the moon. Or just really weird stuff that sounded so fake. I just didn't believe it. And I looked at everything in the context of Mormons against the other Christians, evangelicals. So it was like, well, evangelicals say that we believe in a different Jesus. Well, no, we don't, because Book of Mormon this and that. So it was in that context. It wasn't in the context of none

John Dehlin [00:34:06] of it being true.

Jeremy Runnells [00:34:07] Yeah, it wouldn't be like secular, talking about the church's history using the church's own sources. It was more of those crazy Baptists that were. You know what I mean? So that was kind of my exposure. But I didn't come across any of the polyandry stuff or the Book of Abraham stuff or any of that stuff. It was just really weird stuff. Like some of the quotes that Brigham Young made. And so fast forwarding. But even that I didn't put anything on my shelf because I just quickly discredited.

Jeremy Runnells [00:34:39] Fair was awesome. Fair, you know, fair was doing the Lord's work. So, you know, it's kind of funny now looking back. But anyways, fast forwarding over. So fast forwarding back to that article, it shocked me that people were leaving over church history. I didn't understand why they were leaving over church history. What is it specifically about church history that they're leaving over?

Jeremy Runnells [00:35:12] So one of the things that popped up was Joseph Smith's polygamy. So I pulled up Google and I typed in Joseph Smith's polygamy. And I Learned looking through Wikipedia, I learned that he had several. He had like 34 wives. And I was like, okay, that's kind of interesting. I thought Brigham Young started polygamy, but then when I got into the polyandry, you know, Joseph Smith was married to other living men's wives. That really shook me. That really shocked me.

John Dehlin [00:35:45] Do you remember where you were reading that? What website or book?

Jeremy Runnells [00:35:48] Yeah, so the first time it was through Wikipedia. Then I went back into Google and started looking some more and I came across the polygamy page of Mormonthink. Mormonthink, yeah. And a lot of people seem to have that same route. And Mormonthink has a lot of pages on the search engine. But Mormonthink, it was unimproved.

Jeremy Runnells [00:36:14] I didn't know if the information was reliable. But after looking at the polyandry stuff, I went over to the Book of Abraham and started seeing what Joseph Smith, what his translation was versus what Egyptologists state, what it really means. And that really shook me as well. So basically the polyandry and the Book of Abraham were the two first things that really shocked me.

Jeremy Runnells [00:36:43] So I started looking on Amazon for different books that I could look at. One of them is Rough Stone Rolling. I ordered that. I also ordered Mormon Origins with Grant Palmer, got those books, started devouring them and looking for them.

John Dehlin [00:36:58] That's an insider's view of.

Jeremy Runnells [00:36:59] Insider's view of Mormon origins or Mormon Origins. Yeah, yeah. Those two books blew my mind in the sense of, for example, Richard Bushman is obviously a faithful scholar in the church and this is a book that was being sold in Desiree Book and I remember this book at the BYU bookstore. So I knew that this was a credible book and it is a credible book.

Jeremy Runnells [00:37:29] When I came across some of the stuff in there, he goes over to Polyandry and it just really. I just didn't. I just, I started having these feelings of betrayal and just like I wasn't the village idiot, you know, I read books.

Jeremy Runnells [00:37:55] I read a lot of the approved books. I just couldn't believe that I never heard about the polyandry stuff, for example, or that Joseph Smith was married to 14 year old girls. You know what I mean? It just really shocked me in that sense.

Jeremy Runnells [00:38:13] And knowing what I know now, that's the path that a lot of members take. It's not just being exposed to the information, but the feeling of betrayal in the sense, well, why hasn't the church told me this? Why haven't I learned this before? Why am I discovering this now at 30, 31 years old. And I've never heard of something as crazy as Joseph Smith marrying other living men's wives.

Jeremy Runnells [00:38:46] What else don't I know about? And so that question really took me on this crazy path of research. I became absolutely obsessed with Joseph Smith, church history and the origins of the church over the next year or two.

John Dehlin [00:39:03] What were your main sources of study or learning?

Jeremy Runnells [00:39:07] It was rough, stone rolling. I've looked at fair. I've looked at Mormon think. I relied a lot on FAIR because they were on the front trenches of this. I mean, Richard Bushman, it was more of a scholarly. It wasn't really in the trenches in terms of apologetics. So FAIR just made things worse in the sense of I read about this and I learned about something new, and then that leads to something else. And it just created this, you know, this thing that just kept going on. I was learning this and this and that and this and I don't know. I mentioned in my debunking fetch debunking that I really looked to FAIR as a lifeline during my faith crisis. And it ended up being weight that drowned whatever luck I had of a testimony. So, yeah, so I just. That year, it was a struggle.

John Dehlin [00:40:15] So that's 2012 to 2013.

Jeremy Runnells [00:40:18] Yeah. So my faith crisis started in February 2012. And then just to give you an idea, I published the CES letter in April 2013.

John Dehlin [00:40:29] Real quick, did you listen to Mormon stories during that time?

Jeremy Runnells [00:40:33] I did, actually, yeah. Mormon stories was really something that made the landing softer. It made. It gave me hope that things would be okay, that there was light at the end of the tunnel, that this was a process. It really explained or put into perspective that what I was going through was normal in the sense that there's cycles of grief. There's a process of learning about the things I never knew about in church, but all the different podcasts that I've listened to. I actually went to the Salt Lake Mormon Stories meeting in. I think it was June or July of 2012.

Jeremy Runnells [00:41:30] I think it was the Presbyterian Church. So that was a pretty powerful event. Just listening to the different stories, listening to Andrew Ainsworth, just listening to his story. It was very powerful listening to the different testimonies, the different experiences of people just seeing the people in that church.

Jeremy Runnells [00:41:57] They weren't these boogeyman scary anti Mormons or ex Mormons. They were just people. They looked like me. They were just people that had different stories. So thank you for your work in Mormon Stories. It really had a profound impact on me during my faith transition.

John Dehlin [00:42:19] But we're not to blame.

Jeremy Runnells [00:42:20] No. You probably get a lot of flack that you're taking people out of the church. But in my case, it wasn't that. It was the opposite. You actually helped me become a better person. I wasn't as angry, if that makes sense. I mean, the alternative was going to exmormonomy.org or whatever and just getting riled up. But with you, you try to show both faithful and ex Mormon perspectives. And so it just really gave me a 180 view of things.

What Led to Writing the CES Letter

John Dehlin [00:42:59] So tell us about what led to. To the CES letter. I guess my first question is, did you attempt to do anything online or publish anything prior to the CES letter? I saw this letter that's attributed to you to Elder Wickman.

Jeremy Runnells [00:43:17] No, it's actually. It was an open letter to Elder Cook.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] Elder Cook. That's what I meant.

Jeremy Runnells [00:43:22] Sorry. Yeah, so that's interesting.

John Dehlin [00:43:26] Was that your first time to publish something public or.

Jeremy Runnells [00:43:29] Yeah, I mean, it was more. I just put it on Reddit. I didn't think too much about it. I actually put it on Facebook for an hour before my wife asked me to put it down.

John Dehlin [00:43:40] When would that have been?

Jeremy Runnells [00:43:41] About what month and year that was in October of 2012. You have to remember, my faith crisis happened in February 2012. And then by that summer of 2012, I was like, I don't believe in this anymore. So this happened in October 2012. So I no longer had a testimony at that time, but somebody put an original version of this, and I thought it was so cool that I kind of borrowed it and revised a paragraph here and there, and then I just put it on Reddit. But basically it relates to Elder Cook's General conference address in October 2012, where he was basically talking about, you know, if you go and look at sources online, I can't remember exactly what the quote is exactly, but it was basically, you know, to the effect that if you look into unimproved sources, you can risk your testimony and to, if that's the case, to repent.

Jeremy Runnells [00:44:44] So I wanted to illustrate that you don't have to go to the Tanish website or some other anti Mormon website. A lot of this stuff is in LDS sources. So the Rock and the Hat, Book of Mormon translation.

Jeremy Runnells [00:45:00] Elder Nelson talks about it in his 1993 July insight. It's right there. I mean, the Journal of Discourses with Adam, God and all that. So I wanted to illustrate how even looking at the church's own sources can put a kink, put a wrench into your testimony. Because when you see this stuff, you see how it's not correlating or aligning with the correlated version that you're getting from the church.

John Dehlin [00:45:31] It's almost all church. It's either church published materials or like Joseph's diary or diaries of people that we revere today. I mean, what else? What are the other sources? I mean, it's not like people are looking at the hurlbut affidavits and that's like, where they're basing their disaffection on. It's always like journal discourses, the Book of Mormon text itself, comparing Book of Commandments to the early versions of the Doctrine and Covenants. Like, what's anti Mormon about that?

Jeremy Runnells [00:45:59] Right. Yeah, exactly.

John Dehlin [00:46:02] Its own accounts of the first vision.

Jeremy Runnells [00:46:04] Yeah, exactly. And that was pretty much the point that I was trying to make. And it's satire. I was kind of being. I was being sarcastic in that letter.

John Dehlin [00:46:16] It reads a little bit angry, to be honest with you.

Jeremy Runnells [00:46:18] Well, of course I was pissed off, you know, and anybody that tells you that when you leave the church, you should just leave it alone and don't be angry. Don't be the angry apostate. They don't understand the trauma and the process of leaving. There's no such thing as a graceful exit from a church. There's no, you know, thank you for your time and your two years. We appreciate it and we wish you the best.

John Dehlin [00:46:45] 30 years, 40 years.

Jeremy Runnells [00:46:46] Yeah. And we wish. Thank you for the two years in the mission field. We love you and we wish you the best and whatever. There's no such thing. You left because you want to sin or you were lazy or you never had a testimony. I've been told I never had a testimony. I had a testimony. I loved this church. It was just my worldview. It was the way that I looked at life. It was my heritage. I loved the people. So this nonsense of I never had a testimony is ridiculous. So anyway, so I wrote that satire, and looking back at it now, it was just. I don't see anything wrong with it, to be honest, other than it's sarcastic and maybe has a little angry tone. But what I was trying to illustrate in that was I disagree with Elder Cook's perception of the situation.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] So any false starts or attempts at doing something public other than that letter before the CES letter?

Jeremy Runnells [00:48:01] No. I mean, I was becoming more and more active on Reddit, but it was

John Dehlin [00:48:07] just, you know, in the ex Mormon subreddit.

Jeremy Runnells [00:48:09] Yeah, okay. It wasn't, you know, it was just a comment here and There. So.

John Dehlin [00:48:13] Okay, okay, so let's talk about how the letter came about.

Jeremy Runnells [00:48:17] So I couldn't bring myself to tell my grandpa, my 85 year old, or 83 at the time grandpa, that I no longer believed in the church. I love that man. I just love that man. And you know, he lived Mormonism his whole life. You know, he and my grandma, just wonderful people.

Jeremy Runnells [00:48:45] They lived Mormonism for a long time and they lived in Hawaii for 40 years. You know, people have asked what would it take for me to go back to the church. If I moved to Hawaii, I would go to church.

Jeremy Runnells [00:49:00] The people there, I mean, the aloha spirit there, just unbelievable. The community is just unbelievable. It's just to me, it's a different church over there. So I couldn't tell my grandpa about my disaffection and what happened. But a few other family members knew, my dad knew and, and I guess it got to a point where, you know, the rumors are going around.

Jeremy Runnells [00:49:28] So my dad told my grandpa that I no longer believed in church or I lost my testimony. So I think it was around, you know, maybe just before Christmas, he found out somewhere around there. So in 2013, he actually drove up to my place, about a 600 mile trip, round trip, and just to come up and talk to me, see what's up and how he can help. We just had a conversation and to me it was a tough conversation because I didn't want to. How do you tell somebody, okay, I don't believe because of this and that and this and this without, you know, you don't want to put that on them.

Jeremy Runnells [00:50:11] I didn't want to put it on my grandpa and, you know, somebody at his age, anyway, so we had a good trip and a good visit. So he went back home and a few weeks later I received a phone call from him asking if I would be willing to meet with his friend who is, you know, CES director, just to see if I could get my concerns resolved.

Jeremy Runnells [00:50:40] And whatever questions I had, I said sure. Even though I lost my testimony at the time, I still wasn't 100% sure that the church is false. I still accepted the possibility that my understanding of history and Joseph Smith and origins was incomplete or inaccurate and that perhaps there was a perception that, or answers that the CES director could provide.

Jeremy Runnells [00:51:12] And also this was at the time before the church released its essays. This was before I ever heard of the Swedish Fireside Rescue. So there was really not very much official answers from the church. So to me, this was an opportunity to get as close to Official answers from a church that I could, because this is somebody that works for the church. He's in the church education system.

Jeremy Runnells [00:51:41] So I said, sure, Grandpa, I'll talk to him. And so my grandpa forwarded him my information, and I was surprised to see Esther actually emailed me. A very nice guy. He's just trying to help my grandpa, and I. I have no beef with him. I honestly don't blame him for not responding back to me. He was probably expecting five questions in an email, and I throw him close to 77, 80 pages. Document.

Joseph Smith's Polygamy and Polyandry

John Dehlin [00:52:14] Okay, okay, so let's talk about that for a second. So a lot of the criticisms you've received come from kind of two angles. One is that, well, one is they weren't sincere, that you really had already made your mind up before you wrote the letter. That's one. Is that true?

Jeremy Runnells [00:52:33] Well, I mean, obviously I didn't lose my testimony or lead the church over not. You know what I mean? I was kind of like, I believe I did my research, and I trusted the research enough to where I stopped believing in the church. But I was sincere in that, like I said, I accepted the possibility that my research could be wrong, my sources could be wrong, and that he might have a perspective or a view of the situation that I would never have heard about. So in that sense, I am sincere.

Jeremy Runnells [00:53:13] I'm up front in the letter that I didn't believe at the time. If you read page five of a letter, you can clearly see I'm a disaffected member. I'm just going to lay it out. So I set it up. I said, I'm just going to lay it out where I'm at with things. So in that sense, that's kind of where I laid it out. So some of the stuff in my CES letter obviously look like conclusions rather than all questions. So that's where it comes from. And I was upfront with the CES director. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:53:46] The other one is that you kind of. That you wrote that with the Internet in mind, that it was just kind of premeditated, kind of theater. Like, I'm just gonna. I'm writing this for the Internet, but I'll go ahead and send it to the guy anyway. Just have a good story to support what you end up publishing.

Jeremy Runnells [00:54:04] At the time, the only people that I had in mind with the CES director, my family, because obviously my family was involved and, you know, a few people on Reddit that I was going to, you know, just to get their feedback, to make sure that my sources are okay. And, you know, just general editing on my paper. So. But in my mind, it was just the CES director in my family for the most part, because I saw this as an opportunity to not only get official answers, but also to explain my train of thought and what happened, explaining why I left the church or stopped believing in the church.

John Dehlin [00:54:47] Isn't there the strong desire to tell people and explain? You referred to it earlier. Everybody judges you. Everybody looks down on you. I had a member of a very prestigious LDS family come visit me the other day. He's, you know, you would all know the name, and he's no longer a believer. And what he said to me was, and I hate to use the word cult. I'll just say that now. I hate to use the word cult. I know it's kind of really disrespectful, but the quote really stuck with me. He said, a cult is any organization that will not let you leave it with your dignity intact.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] So a cult is an organization that won't let you leave it with your dignity intact. And that goes back to what you were saying about, are you sinning? Are you looking at porn? Are you cheating on somebody? You never had a testimony to begin with. You never like, oh, he left and he's happy. It's more like, oh, he's dark and sinning, and oh, he drinks coffee and oh.

John Dehlin [00:55:52] And so I'm just. I shouldn't be speaking, but really, you just want to be able to explain to people. You want to say, no, no, no. There are credible reasons that people leave. And I've actually done a lot of thinking and I've put a lot of time into this and. Is that what you were thinking?

Jeremy Runnells [00:56:13] There are very few people on this planet that I respect and love more than my grandpa and my dad. And so to have them be disappointed in me, it just. It bothered me a lot. So I wanted to be understood. I wanted to make sure that they understood that I didn't leave because I want to go to the strip club. I left because I came across very disturbing information about the church I never heard before.

Jeremy Runnells [00:56:44] And I don't think a lot of true believing Mormons understand that. They don't understand that desire to be understood. I hate that saying, they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone. John Larsen talked about it in Mormon Expression, one of his podcasts.

Jeremy Runnells [00:57:00] I can't remember which one, but basically it was to the effect of, you live this religion for 30, 35 years. You put all this time into it, all this money into it you really believe it, it's your worldview, and then poof, it's gone.

Jeremy Runnells [00:57:16] And what kind of weird psycho would just move on? Yeah, just, oh, okay, what's next? You know what I mean? What kind of weird psycho would do that? It doesn't make. You know what I mean? We're still human beings after we leave. We want to be understood. We still have family that are in. And here's the other thing that a lot of true believing Mormons don't understand is that the family members within are most often seeing the people that leave as the broken ones, the ones that need help, the ones that need to be rescued, the ones that need to be pulled back into the church, the ones whose testimonies need to be restored, the broken ones.

Jeremy Runnells [00:57:56] So they don't understand that the disaffected one, they feel like they can't have a true relationship. There's always that 800 pound gorilla in the room. So in an attempt to bring that relationship back to where it was before they left the church, they're trying to educate their family members on the reason why they left. So at the core of it is to be understood and to restore or repair their relationship with their family members. And they see it as the church is getting in the way of that with this, I'll just say fundamentalist black and white worldview, you know what I mean?

John Dehlin [00:58:41] Okay, so you write and why make it so comprehensive so long? Well, I mean, for the CES director.

Jeremy Runnells [00:58:51] Well, because to me it wasn't just, okay, the Book of Mormon. I mean, the Book of Abraham got some problem. To me, it's. I look at each individual issue and then I take a step back and say, look, I don't just look at the trees, just a tree here and there. I look at the trees individually and then I take a step back and I look at the forest and I say, really?

Jeremy Runnells [00:59:21] Is this really the forest? The one and only true force on the face of the earth? You know what I mean? It doesn't look like it's God's work. It just looks like one clumsy hoax. So what I wanted to illustrate, for example, for example, the kinder her plays, Joseph Smith might have made a mistake or whatever. Before that, I wanted to illustrate Joseph Smith's character. So when I went over the polygamy and the polyandry stuff, I went over how Joseph Smith had this pattern of behavior over the course of 10 years of his life where he was hiding and denying polygamy and polyandry, not just from Emma, not just from the Saints, but from the world.

Jeremy Runnells [01:00:07] He's given interviews to newspapers. The Doctrine and Covenants has officially banned polygamy. We believe in monogamy. And then the affidavit that he put out in the Times of Season, he was so concerned about the rumors circulating in Nauvoo about his polygamy in polyandry that he set up this affidavit with 31 people.

Jeremy Runnells [01:00:35] And the signage of the affidavit included his plural wife and several other of his buddies that knew about his polygamy. I mean, Elijah Snow was one of his plural wives that he married three months earlier. She signed it.

Jeremy Runnells [01:00:49] The parents of the bishop, Whitney and his wife were witnesses to one of the. I think it was Sarah Whitney a couple months earlier. So you look at that and you say, well, his pattern of behavior, his modus operandi for 10 years of his life was the high stuff, to be deceptive, to be dishonest. So when you take that snapshot of his character and you start looking into the Book of Abraham and the priesthood restoration and the backdating of it into the Scriptures.

John Dehlin [01:01:32] Yeah, we'll get to that. I hear you. And this is with the Ph.D. i've been working on. I admittedly have not had time to study a lot of these things as closely as I would like. So obviously through the podcast, I've heard about the first vision stuff and I've heard about the translation stuff. It's very, very different when you start lining up the timelines. It's one thing to know that the first vision story changed.

Changes in Mormon Doctrine Over Time

John Dehlin [01:01:58] It's another thing then to realize that what Joseph believed about God, his trinitarian view about God, you know, when the Book of Mormon was published, is different than what he ends up with Nauvoo. And then when you line up the Book of Mormon with his beliefs in 1830 and it supports the trinitarian view, and then you learn that they made changes to the Book of Mormon to reflect the non trinitarian view later, and you see the changes in the Book of Commandments versus the Doctrine and Covenants, and then he develops his High Nauvoo theology. Well, those timelines across multiple issues all start lining up. And so that's why you wrote a 70 plus page.

Jeremy Runnells [01:02:36] Yeah, because if I didn't write a comprehensive overview, it would just be like, you know, that's just one issue. The church is still true. Mistakes were made. You know what I mean? But when you start to look at it all, the modus operandi, the deception, then you look at the Book of Abraham. Then you look at the kinderhood place, you just see this pattern, the Book of Mormon. You just see this pattern of. I'll just say deliberate fraud.

John Dehlin [01:03:13] So you write this letter, you send it to the CES director through email?

Jeremy Runnells [01:03:18] Through email, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:19] Okay.

Jeremy Runnells [01:03:19] I attached the PDF.

John Dehlin [01:03:21] Did you ever meet the guy in person?

Jeremy Runnells [01:03:22] No.

John Dehlin [01:03:23] Okay, and what response did you get?

Jeremy Runnells [01:03:26] Well, he didn't respond to me directly in email, but he told my grandpa that he ran very well written letter and that he would provide a response. He also said, you know, a few other things that, you know, the brethren are aware of some of these problems and they. Whatever that means.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] But so I hope they are.

Jeremy Runnells [01:03:53] I hope they are. Yeah, they are now. Well, they better be by now. And so, you know, they were aware of this and, you know, he would. I guess my understanding is that he forwarded the letter to some of his colleagues that knew more about history. So I was anticipating to hearing back from him.

John Dehlin [01:04:18] You sent the letter, what month of what year? About.

Jeremy Runnells [01:04:21] So that was in April of 2013. Okay, so about a year ago? Yeah, a year ago.

John Dehlin [01:04:27] She sent her on April 6th. Just to be funny.

Jeremy Runnells [01:04:30] No, April 23rd or whatever it was.

John Dehlin [01:04:34] Okay, so about a year ago. And then you waited?

Jeremy Runnells [01:04:37] I waited. A month passed, two months passed and three months passed and I started. I'm probably not going to hear back. So at that time, as I mentioned, I had put my letter on Reddit for feedback and for people to.

John Dehlin [01:04:54] You put this letter.

Jeremy Runnells [01:04:55] This letter in early April before I sent it out. So a couple people really ate it up. I guess they liked it.

John Dehlin [01:05:04] Did you crowdsource the original version where other people were giving you information and studying with you? Was it a team effort?

Jeremy Runnells [01:05:10] No, I just wrote it up and then I just put it up and say, what do you guys think?

John Dehlin [01:05:15] So the original version's all your study and writing?

Jeremy Runnells [01:05:18] Yeah. And I didn't get a lot of criticism. I just got, wow, this is kind of cool that, you know, made it all comprehensive. So it kind of just kind of spread it around, got viral a little bit, and it ended up getting into the hands of Mormonthink Tom Phillips, and he really liked it. He emailed me, said, this is great, let's put this up. I said, cool. So we put it up and then it really blew up from there.

John Dehlin [01:05:53] Okay, so when did it get put up?

Jeremy Runnells [01:05:55] About, I don't know, like around that time in late April, somewhere around there.

John Dehlin [01:06:02] Okay, well, that's not. So that's not a long. You didn't wait three Months to publish it online?

Jeremy Runnells [01:06:07] No, like, remember, like, I didn't, I didn't like, go like it went viral. Like, some of the people on Reddit, they were checking it, they spread it around and then got into the hands of Mormon Think.

John Dehlin [01:06:19] Okay, so how much time did you spend thinking about, do I really want to be a named dissident across the world regarding Mormonism?

Jeremy Runnells [01:06:32] I didn't think like that. I didn't realize this was going to blow up. I just thought it was just a letter and, you know, it would just eventually fade. But when it started getting on Mormon Think, and I started getting emails and then more emails and then more emails. I'm like, okay, this is starting to, you know, what did I do?

Jeremy Runnells [01:06:56] So it just got, for a while, I was kind of concerned. I don't want my name to, I don't want to be this guy that's tearing down the church or anything like that. But when I started getting the emails from people, just hearing from people, like, I really struggle with this. And then I came across the CES letter and then things just snapped for me. It just made sense. You know, I got it because I kept looking at these individual issues. I think what appeals to a lot of people with the CES letter is I don't focus on these different issues on its own. I, I take a step back and then I tie them up to show how they're all connected and the big picture of things. And I think that that's something that was missing for, you know.

John Dehlin [01:07:44] Yeah. Why do we need a letter to the CES director? Why not just MormonThink? How did you think of the letters being different than MormonThink or the FAIR website?

Jeremy Runnells [01:08:00] I don't know. I mean, Mormon thinks did a great job going over all the individual issues. I've used it during my faith crisis.

John Dehlin [01:08:11] Did it help you write the letter?

Jeremy Runnells [01:08:12] Well, yeah, I mean, there are some things I got from there, but it wasn't just Mormon think. It was Rough Stone Rowling. It was the insider fear of Mormon origins, you know, some of Leonard Arrington stuff and just different sources. It wasn't just like I copied MormonThink. It was rap stone rolling different things here and there.

Publishing the Letter and Going Public

John Dehlin [01:08:31] So were you worried about putting up your own website? When did your own website go up?

Jeremy Runnells [01:08:35] Well, what happened was I kept getting people asking me on Reddit, where can I download this letter? I've heard about, where can I download it? So I just put up this really simple one page website that has a PDF icon, a letter to a CES director. Where I lost my testimony, and that was just my website for seven months or so. And then what happened, what really changed things was when FAIR started getting into the picture and started doing their analysis of the letter. This happened in the summer of 2013.

John Dehlin [01:09:10] Let's save that.

Jeremy Runnells [01:09:10] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:09:11] Is that all right?

Jeremy Runnells [01:09:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:13] Okay. So I'm going to transition just a tiny bit, and we're going to dig into some of the main issues that are covered in the letter. So it's 83 pages long, the letter, but you can read it in a day. I think you can. Certainly within a couple days. You use Creative Commons attribution, which I thought was Creative Commons licensing, which I thought was cool. What went into that decision?

Jeremy Runnells [01:09:42] It's not my information. And I stand on the shoulders of giants. The Tanners, they're the real hipsters, the Tanners. Yeah. They knew a lot of this stuff in the 60s and they're just now being vindicated. I grew up, I heard about the Tanners, the anti Mormons and the God Makers and all that stuff. But, I mean, how could you not watch that interview with Sandra Tanner? She's just this nice grandma that knows a lot of stuff about Mormon history.

Jeremy Runnells [01:10:10] I mean, I'm not a Christian. I don't really relate to the whole Christian stuff, but they're just what they. I mean, the stuff that they figured out and came out with. I mean, they were involved in a lot of stuff. The Mark Hoffman stuff, the Book of Abraham.

Jeremy Runnells [01:10:31] So it's really interesting. But I stand on the shoulders of giants. I just. What I did is I took their research and their insights and their. The works. And I put it in a way that worked best for me, that explained my train of thought in terms of why I no longer believe in the church.

John Dehlin [01:10:53] It's almost like a condensed version of Mormonism, Shadow and reality. In the sense. If you look at the Tanner's book, Mormonism, Shadow and Reality, it's like several inches thick, and this is a lot thinner. So you could even see it as a distillation without the bold and capitalized letters and underlined letters that Gerald was famous for.

Jeremy Runnells [01:11:15] But, yeah, this relates to my deafness. Writing is really my language. It's just the place where I don't mispronounce stuff or you know what I mean. It's just my language. It's where I'm comfortable. So I developed this way of being able to communicate through writing that I guess a lot of people relate to. But I just want to get straight to the point. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Because Anybody can write a 500 page book or whatever. I wanted something that the CES director would read at the time this was directed to the CES director in my family.

John Dehlin [01:11:56] So read the quote you have from J. Reuben Clark at the beginning.

Jeremy Runnells [01:12:01] So, yeah, if we have the truth, no harm can come from investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed.

John Dehlin [01:12:09] If we have the truth, it cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not the truth, it ought to be harmed. I just thought that bore repetition. So, all right, so this is going to be hard because we're going to try and cover a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time. But let's start with, with the Book of Mormon. If you had to summarize maybe your top three concerns with the Book of Mormon, if that's even possible,

Book of Mormon Historical and Textual Problems

Jeremy Runnells [01:12:38] or what

John Dehlin [01:12:39] are some of your main, what are some of the main concerns in the Book of Mormon?

Jeremy Runnells [01:12:43] The presence of 1769 King James Version errors in the Book of Mormon. I mean, this is 1769 version. This is errors specific to that edition. I mean, what is it doing in the Book of Mormon, supposedly ancient texts, you know, with these ancient prophets in the Americas that were engraving on gold plates. What are the errors doing in there?

John Dehlin [01:13:09] So we've got a version of the King James Bible that we know that Joseph had in his possession.

Jeremy Runnells [01:13:14] Pharaoh would say, well, he didn't. But you know, if I shoot you with nine millimeter bullets and you're on the ground and there's nine millimeter bullets around, it doesn't matter whether a witness, like you don't need witnesses or a video recording of the murder. Just the fact that there's nine millimeter bullets, shell casings on the floor is its own damning evidence. So put another way, what are 19th century 9 millimeter shell casings or bullets doing in a work from the Book of Mormon, time before 421 A.D. yeah,

John Dehlin [01:13:57] so there are errors in that version of the Bible. The 1769 King James Version of the Bible. How in the world do we go from the prophets writing, you know, the Nephite prophets writing what they wrote or writing down Christ's words, Then it gets, so it gets spoken by Jesus, then it gets written in the plates, then it gets saved, it gets abridged by Mormon or Moroni, whoever abridged it, then it gets put in a hill, then later it gets delivered to Joseph, then he has to translate through the power and gift of God these plates. And then all of a sudden we've got direct quotes coming from this version of the Bible.

Jeremy Runnells [01:14:35] Yeah, like errors that are errors. It's not just quotes unique to that edition. Yeah. In Pharaoh, they change their answer, but basically they say possible God gave him the heirs.

John Dehlin [01:14:47] Maybe God inspired Joseph to include the heirs to test our faith.

Jeremy Runnells [01:14:53] Well, I mean, if God can attest our faith, I don't want to worship that kind of God. That's playing games with. You know what I mean? But yeah, that's how damning the evidence is. He put errors in it. And Pharaoh admitted that it's possible that God gave the errors.

Jeremy Runnells [01:15:10] So that's a big one right there. The other big one for me is so the Sermon on the Mount. There's the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Mormon and there's a Sermon on the Mount in the Bible and they're identical. Well, later Joseph Smith basically said, well, I got to go fix this. So he did a Joseph Smith translation on the Sermon on the Mount and it's different.

Jeremy Runnells [01:15:32] So he basically corrected the Sermon on the Mount in the Bible. But unwittingly, the Book of Mormon contains that incorrect Sermon on the Mount passage that he corrected. So why is the Book of Mormon containing that incorrect Sermon on the Mount passage when it should have contained the correct Joseph Smith translation to begin with?

John Dehlin [01:15:58] So if Joseph produced the true version of the Bible through his translation, that should have just appeared in the Book of Mormon, but it doesn't. Yeah.

Jeremy Runnells [01:16:12] And then the other one is the italics. So Basically this is 17th century King James translators. They put their own words into the text to make the English more readable. And these are like, for example, there's seven words exactly in consecutive order. You know what I mean? That these translators put in, in 1611,

John Dehlin [01:16:38] 1612, sort of translating the Hebrew and then adding their own.

Jeremy Runnells [01:16:41] Well, translating from what I understand Latin

John Dehlin [01:16:47] or Greek.

Jeremy Runnells [01:16:47] Yeah. Somewhere. I'm not sure exactly. But basically taking in translating and putting their own words into it.

John Dehlin [01:16:56] And they italicize those words.

Jeremy Runnells [01:16:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:16:59] So that we know they were.

Jeremy Runnells [01:17:00] That's how we know that they were words that the translators put in.

John Dehlin [01:17:04] So why are the words of translators of the New Testament also showing up in Joseph?

Jeremy Runnells [01:17:11] Well, why are the words of 17th century, basically 1611, 1612, 1613 dudes in England. Why are there words appearing into this ancient Book of Mormon that was written in the Americas thousands of years ago and did exact words. I mean, you know, going back to

John Dehlin [01:17:34] the translation, Joseph Smith translation, you would think he would have known if he had used the Bible to just create the Book of Mormon, you would think that he would have Remembered that he did that and remembered that if he were to do a retranslation of the New Testament, that that would show a discrepancy. Right.

Jeremy Runnells [01:17:54] Every genius makes their mistakes once in a while, you know what I mean? It doesn't matter how perfect, there's always going to be a slip up somewhere, you know what I mean? I don't know. It goes back to. I'll show you what 9 millimeter bowless we can talk about. Why didn't Joseph know this or why did he let this happen? It doesn't matter. We have the 9 millimeter shell casings and an ancient work. Yeah, okay.

John Dehlin [01:18:24] You know, you talk about DNA in here. I think we've covered that some on Mormon stories. I think we had Simon Southerton on at one point. Anachronisms we covered with Michael Coe. I refer our listeners to that very good interview archaeology. Anything else about the Book of Mormon that sticks out? You've got a really good map here. And we can, we can maybe splice in this image of Book of Mormon geography. Talk about that for a second.

Jeremy Runnells [01:18:50] Yeah, so the Book of Mormon geography is based on a guy by the name of Vernon Holly in his work Book of Mormon. So what was it? Book of Mormon authorship at clutch luck. This is kind of controversial. So it's basically what he did is he based the geography based on Joseph Smith's backyard in upstate New York, New England, parts of Canada.

Jeremy Runnells [01:19:20] And so there's similarities. He obviously made some mistakes and fair pointed those mistakes out and I corrected them in the CES letter. And so if you go to debunking fairs, debunking which is on my website, you can see some of the different individual cities that fair went over. Fair says, well the, this city is incorrect. And I go, well yeah, okay, that's incorrect. So to me this is, it's not a slam dunk. It's not proof that Joseph Smith.

Jeremy Runnells [01:19:54] It's not the strongest point in my paper, but I just put it there just to kind of. It's interesting. It's got some names in there that's very similar to or if not the same as many of the cities in Joseph Smith's time.

John Dehlin [01:20:10] So some of the examples would be.

Jeremy Runnells [01:20:12] So yeah, there's a few of them like there's like Lehi and then there's Ramah, which is basically the Jaredite hill Cumorah, it's close by. Pharaoh says, well, you know, it's not exactly in Palmyra where the hill Cumorah is. But a lot of what apologists and ex Mormons that say, well, Joseph Smith messed up don't realize is that the maps don't have to match up perfectly. They just have to be. They just have to match up closely. You know what I mean? It's not real if somebody's making it up like the Lord of the Rings, it doesn't matter if a city is. It doesn't make sense if the city's here, it's made up. You know what I mean? But the fact that the presence of the name is, you know, and you're

John Dehlin [01:21:03] saying, I mean, the letter says that there are a lot of names that occur in the Book of Mormon that clearly Joseph.

Jeremy Runnells [01:21:10] Well, it's possible that Joseph could have used them as reference. Again, I'm not saying that Joseph did it and it's proof and it's slam dunk, case closed. I'm just bringing it up as, you know, it's an interesting note to look at.

John Dehlin [01:21:24] And you also talk about Moroni as the capital city in some islands in the Comoros.

Jeremy Runnells [01:21:31] Yeah, so this is pretty interesting. So, yeah, in the southeast part of Africa, there's an island called Comoros. Its Arabic name is Comora, and that's what it's known. In the early days, they had a port, Moroni. So it was famous in Captain Kid stories because Captain Kidd visited the island on a ship. And there's a famous story where a lot of his crew members died on the island and something happened there to where he was later convicted of and hanged basically for a crime that happened near the island. So it's a big part of the whole Captain Kidd thing.

John Dehlin [01:22:24] Who was it? Who did what? Whose occupation was what?

Jeremy Runnells [01:22:28] He was a pirate. He was a treasure hunter, basically.

John Dehlin [01:22:30] A treasure hunter. And who else was a treasure hunter?

Jeremy Runnells [01:22:34] Joseph Smith. And it wasn't just Joseph Smith. It was his dad, it was his brother. They had a family business. And it wasn't just them. I mean, you read the news, there's like a newspaper article or a clip of a newspaper that talked about. In those days, it was pervasive. It was widespread in New England. They were really into treasure hunting. They were really into these stories about Captain Kidd, buried treasure, you know, buried treasure in the earth.

Jeremy Runnells [01:23:04] So Joseph Smith and his family, they had a family business where they would go around to the neighbors and, you know, Joseph Smith would look and rock and his hat and oh, yeah, you know, gold is over there, silver's over there. Thank you for your money. Have a great day.

Jeremy Runnells [01:23:20] So, you know, we'll get into the Book of Mormon translation and how that relates to that. But in order to really understand Mormonism, you have to understand the setting, the culture of that time. They were really into folklore. They were really into superstition. So Joseph Smith's neighbor, you know, would come up to you. If he came up to you and he said, I received the vision of the Lord, your natural response would be to say, well, what did the Lord say? It wouldn't be okay, just stay right here. I'll be right back. And then you go call the mental hospital, come pick up the guy.

Jeremy Runnells [01:23:59] It was a totally different culture and way of seeing life. And you have to understand the treasure digging and Captain Kidd and all that stuff in order to really understand the witnesses and the restoration of the church, because it really plays into how the witnesses saw what the worldview was.

John Dehlin [01:24:23] And you think that there's a good likelihood that Joseph would have heard these Captain Kidd stories and known about Moroni and Cumorah?

Jeremy Runnells [01:24:31] Yeah, I mean, there were nickel and dimes novels in the day. Joseph Smith was in the area where there was a lot of traffic, a lot of coming and goings. You know, a lot of people have written articles about the connection with Captain Kidd's stories and Joseph Smith. A lot of new articles are going to be coming out. So 2014, 2015 are going to be known as the years of Captain Kidd, because we're just now starting to really understand Captain Kidd and the connection with not just Joseph Smith, but his peers.

John Dehlin [01:25:09] So what about the, I think it's called the loose translation kind of argument that of course, Joseph's translating reformed Egyptian. I mean, he can't, like, use names. He probably doesn't even know how they're pronounced if he's reading reformed Egyptian. So of course he's just going to pull names, familiar names, you know, whether it's steel or horse or moroni, he's not going to be able to speak in reformed Egyptian, so he's going to use words around them.

Jeremy Runnells [01:25:38] Well, that's not according to the historical record. When you read David Witmer's account of how the rock in the hat translation, Joseph Smith would look at the rock and the word would appear on the stone, the peep stone, so it wouldn't disappear and a new wood would come up until he got it right, until he pronounced it right. So that's a really tight translation.

John Dehlin [01:26:06] So God's giving him the English words through the stone?

Jeremy Runnells [01:26:11] Yeah, he's giving him the English words in the stone, but at the same time, he's also giving him weird words like kill him and Kumamum. Yeah, just weird words that don't mean anything. And you know, you got this weird situation where there's no horses in the Americas. So you have guys like, you know, Peterson saying, well, maybe they were tapirs.

John Dehlin [01:26:33] Tapers.

Jeremy Runnells [01:26:33] Yeah, tapirs. I'm sorry. Yeah, so they were tapirs. And see, you got this. You know what I mean? Like, well, it's not really Horus, it's taper. It just creates this really weird contorted. It just doesn't make sense.

John Dehlin [01:26:50] Also, there's all the currencies that have these weird names too. So it's not like weird names weren't appearing on the stone. Right.

Jeremy Runnells [01:26:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:26:58] So why would God give Joseph Moroni or Cumorah or whatever.

Jeremy Runnells [01:27:03] Yeah. And then when you go back to the 1769 King James Virgin, errors in just creates all kinds of problems.

John Dehlin [01:27:13] Okay, so there are three other potential sources that you mentioned that are kind of mind boggling. One is View of the Hebrews, which I think our listeners are going to know about. But then the other is the Late War. And then the other is the First Book of Napoleon. Now, we've also heard people talk about the Spalding manuscript. I don't see much talk of that in your letter. But talk about each of these sources and then help us make sense for how you're seeing the Book of Mormon come together. Because I've been on a personal quest lately to try and figure out where the book comes from.

Jeremy Runnells [01:28:00] Yeah, I credit a lot of the recent work that's going into this to the Johnson brothers. So Chris and Duane, they're doing a lot of work. What's happening now is very fascinating because as computers are getting better and better, we're able to process or mine through big data.

Jeremy Runnells [01:28:25] So what's happening is Google, they're putting more and more books online and they're making it digital. So we're seeing more and more of these books online and we're able to go through these books looking for patterns in certain words.

Jeremy Runnells [01:28:43] So what's happening is very fascinating in the sense, for example, the late war. This is a fairly new development. I mean, one person wrote about the late war in 2008, but the Johnson brothers, from what I understand, they didn't realize or didn't come across this work until after they released their research. But basically they went through a lot of books looking for specific Book of Mormon wording that was unique to the Book of Mormon and basically doing statistics to see which works were closest to the wording and pattern and so forth. So Late War was one of them that showed up, and the first Napoleon was another. When you read the Late War, it's just really fascinating.

John Dehlin [01:29:32] Do you mind if I read a little bit of it?

Jeremy Runnells [01:29:33] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:29:34] All right. So you've got this here. So this is a book that was published in 1819.

Jeremy Runnells [01:29:40] Yep.

John Dehlin [01:29:41] So that would have been a year before Joseph allegedly had his first vision. Eleven years before the Book of Mormon would have been produced. And this is how it starts. So this is chapter one of the Late War.

John Dehlin [01:29:54] Now, it came to pass in the 1812th year of the Christian era and in the 30 and 6th year after the people of the provinces of Columbia and had declared themselves a free and independent nation, that in the sixth month of the same year, on the first day of the month, the chief governor, whom the people had chosen to rule over the land of Columbia, even James, whose surname was Madison, delivered a written paper to the great Sanhedrin of the people who were assembled together. And the name of the city where the people were gathered together was called after the name of the chief captain of the land of Columbia, whose fame extendeth to the uttermost parts of the earth, albeit he had slept with his fathers. So what does that have to do with the Book of Mormon for you?

Jeremy Runnells [01:30:43] Well, it didn't just stop there. I mean, just listening to that, it sounds a lot like the Book of Mormon. But when you start to look at the parallels and the themes that the book also has, I mean, three Indian prophets, a rod of iron, war between the wicked and the righteous, maintaining the standard of liberty with righteousness, false Indian prophets, brass plates. Yeah. On the CES letter, there's a link to a webpage. I strongly recommend you click on that link. That's Dwayne Johnson's webpage. It's an excellent one page that just goes over the late war in relation to the Book of Mormon. And seeing the different parallels, it's just really fascinating. You look at that and it really makes you think about things.

John Dehlin [01:31:35] And the fact that it has chiasmus in the text is significant. Why is that significant?

Jeremy Runnells [01:31:40] Because, I mean, that was a big defense that the apologists used for decades. The Book of Mormon has them as well. They're ancient, they're of ancient origin, but

John Dehlin [01:31:50] here we have only Hebrews or whoever would have used chiasmus.

Jeremy Runnells [01:31:53] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:31:54] And so it's evidence of an ancient text.

Jeremy Runnells [01:31:56] Right. But here we have a contemporary 19th century book in 1819 that's using it. So this really blows out that defense out of the water.

John Dehlin [01:32:09] Okay, and what about the first book of Napoleon.

Jeremy Runnells [01:32:13] It's very similar, too. I mean, when you read the.

John Dehlin [01:32:15] And this is an 1809 book, right? So this is even earlier.

Jeremy Runnells [01:32:19] Yeah. I mean. And behold, it came to pass in these latter days that an evil spirit came on the face of the earth and greatly troubled the sons of men. And this spirit seized upon and spread amongst the people who dwelt in the land of Gaul. Now, in this people, the fear of the Lord had not been for many generations, and they had become a corrupt and perverse people. And their chief priests and the nobles of the land and the learned men thereof have become wicked in the imagination of their hearts and in the pathos of their life.

John Dehlin [01:33:00] That sounds very much like the Book of Mormon to me. Or the Bible.

Jeremy Runnells [01:33:04] Yeah, more like the Book of Mormon. More like the Book of Mormon, yeah. And this is something that only those that have really read the Book of Mormon, you know, understand. I mean, there's that language that you become familiar with, you know what I mean, the themes. So I've read the Book of Mormon, you know, many times, and when I first read this, it floored me. I had to check and see, you know, is this really. It just really floored me, the similarity. So.

John Dehlin [01:33:34] And your letter goes on to explain in a lot of details the parallel. But what I. So the other thing I'll say just really briefly is I think my listeners will have heard about the View of the Hebrews, which is a book that Oliver Cowdery's minister, Ethan Smith published. Around what year was View of the Hebrews published?

Jeremy Runnells [01:33:56] I think 18.

John Dehlin [01:33:57] 1825.

Jeremy Runnells [01:33:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:33:58] So five years before the Book of Mormon comes out. And it also has parallels where it's talking about. It's trying to explain the origin of the Native Americans, and it mentions that they came over from Jerusalem in a boat and came to America and that some were wicked and some were righteous. And there was a. What? The wicked group beats the righteous group?

Jeremy Runnells [01:34:19] Yeah, like the civilized. Yeah, I mean, it's just got like, you know, Hebrew is the origin of the Indian language. They came from Jerusalem and the scattering and, you know, the lost Indian records talks about yellow leaves. But to take a step back, this isn't just something that some ex Mormon or anti Mormon looked into. This elder, B.H. roberts, he was a general authority.

Jeremy Runnells [01:34:49] He was a very respected scholar in the church back in the early 20th century. And this was private research that he was doing and with the end goal of presenting his research to the quorum of the 12 in the first presidency. And it was private it wasn't meant to be put out for the church or the world, but it ended up being published in 1985 into a book called Studies of the Book of Mormon.

Jeremy Runnells [01:35:20] So it's really fascinating. I mean, this was a believing general authority that was struggling with all these parallels. And I mean, this wasn't just some author that wrote the View of the Hebrews. Ethan Smith was Oliver Cowdery's pastor in Pulteney. I'm not sure if that's pronounced correctly. Pulteney, Vermont. So it's very fascinating, the connections. And as you know, after Martin Harris lost 116 pages, Oliver Cowdery took over as the scribe for the Book of Mormon. And he was more than likely aware of the View of the Hebrews and its connection because his own pastor was all over it.

John Dehlin [01:36:05] Okay, so let's go back to the macro view for a second. So we've got the Late War, we've got the Napoleon, we've got View of the Hebrews. What does this have to do with the Book of Mormon? Do you have a theory of how the Book of Mormon was produced?

Jeremy Runnells [01:36:19] I don't have an original theory, but I share the Johnson's point of view that everything is a remix. So it's not like Joseph Smith used one source. And that tends to be the point of view of the people. You know, the Spalding Manuscript and all that. You know, what I look at it is everything's a remix. So, for example, we know that Joseph Smith used 1769 King James Version errors in the Book of Mormon. They're there. We also know.

John Dehlin [01:36:55] So we know one source for sure.

Jeremy Runnells [01:36:56] Yeah. But we also know that it's not just the Book of Mormon. When you go into the Book of Abraham and you see how Joseph Smith copied hieroglyphic characters from. From different papyri to fill in missing parts of facsimile two, for example, he copied totally random hieroglyphics and he turned them around.

Jeremy Runnells [01:37:25] I have graphics in debunking Ferris. Debunking. But it shows how he grabbed the hieroglyphics and he turned them around and switched them around to fill in the damaged parts of facsimile 2. So you see that modus operandi, you see that pattern, how he's grabbing stuff from different sources.

Jeremy Runnells [01:37:50] You know, in the Book of Abraham, there's a lot of similarities between. I'm sorry, the name of the book is a Future State Philosophy of a Future State. So to me, he didn't just use one source. I mean, another example is The Lehigh's dream, that was his father's 1811 dream. That's another thing that he borrowed for the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin [01:38:14] And that's in your letter.

Jeremy Runnells [01:38:15] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:38:16] And it is pretty. There's, you know, there's a tree and there's an iron rod. Right. And a great and spacious building. I mean, it's.

Jeremy Runnells [01:38:23] Yeah. When you read Lehi's Dream and compare it to Joseph Smith Sr's Dream, it's. It's very similar. So just for example, looking at the Book of Mormon, the eras in Lehi's dream and Joseph Smith's father's father, you see that it's not just one source. It's different sources and everything is a remix. You know, I mean, people think that Star wars is original. It's not. I mean, there's a lot of borrowing from different sources in previous shows and, you know, to create something. So you look at life and a lot of the creative work, people are borrowing from different sources. So I share the view of the Johnson brothers on this subject

John Dehlin [01:39:10] that he drew from many sources.

Jeremy Runnells [01:39:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:39:14] Do you think he had any collaborators in authoring it?

Jeremy Runnells [01:39:18] I don't know. It's all speculation. It's all opinion. But I. My personal feeling is when you look at Oliver Cowdery, he was also involved in the Book of Abraham in 1835, 1836. So a lot of people don't realize that Oliver Cowdery wasn't just a scribe for the Book of Mormon, he was also a scribe for the Book of Abraham, and he was big on a philosophy of the future state, and he even put it in.

Jeremy Runnells [01:39:48] I can't remember if it was the Times and Season, but some Mormon newspaper that he was the editor. So he put. He copied. Well, he took extracts from the book and put it in the newspaper. So Oliver Cowdery thought it was important enough to share with his readers. So if it was important enough to share with his readers in the newspaper, why not share with Joseph Smith? And Joseph Smith had a copy of that book that he donated in 1843. So, you know what I mean? I think there's more to this story with the whole Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith working together.

John Dehlin [01:40:31] And that could explain why Oliver Cowdery never denied the Book of Mormon.

Jeremy Runnells [01:40:35] Yeah, I mean, if he's a co author, then, yeah, a lot of people are like, well, why didn't he deny it? Well, reputation was everything back then. And, you know, Oliver Cowdery still had fame. He was well known. A lot of people admired him as well. A lot of people were like, wow, you're one of the witnesses, the Book of Mormon scribes, and you knew Joseph Smith.

Jeremy Runnells [01:41:01] So you know Oliver Cowdery. I mean, he couldn't be going out and saying, hey, guys, this is all hoax, by the way. I was involved in it because it would totally ruin his life. His credibility was everything because he was in. He was a lawyer.

Jeremy Runnells [01:41:17] So if he were to come out and say, yeah, this is all fraud, and I played my part in it and I swore as a witness in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, this would have really ruined his credibility.

Jeremy Runnells [01:41:34] So there's more to the story with the witnesses. You know, all this, you know, these claims or these witnesses never denied it. There's more to the story of why they didn't deny it. There's the culture, the reputations, you know what I mean?

John Dehlin [01:41:51] And we'll talk about that in a sec. Just to close out the Book of Mormon, I don't know exactly what page it's on, but there's this summary that you make, which is that, oh, and by the way, the plates were actually never used in the translation. Like, we forget about that. Like, all the energy that would have gone into like killing Laban, bringing the brass plates, smelting metal pages, inscribing by hand, protecting them, passing down from generation to generation, you know, sealing them up in a hole, having an angel deliver the plates. Joseph hiding the plates and protecting them. And then when it came four years

Jeremy Runnells [01:42:28] education with Moroni, he has to go every year before he gets the place.

John Dehlin [01:42:33] And then when it comes time to actually translate the Book of Mormon, what

Jeremy Runnells [01:42:37] the Book of Mormon we have today, he didn't use to go place. He used a rock and a hat.

John Dehlin [01:42:42] So they weren't even used.

Jeremy Runnells [01:42:44] They were used for the 116 pages with Martin Harris.

John Dehlin [01:42:47] Allegedly.

Jeremy Runnells [01:42:48] Allegedly. But the Book of Mormon that we have today, the plates were not used.

John Dehlin [01:42:54] It was a stone and a hat.

Jeremy Runnells [01:42:55] Yeah, the same stone and a hat that he and his family used for their treasure hunting, family business. But here's the important thing. A lot of the apologists, especially Pharaoh, what they try to do is they try to make the whole stone in the hat a little bit confusing. They keep throwing words like yeoman thummim and the seer stone and try to make it sound supernatural. This rock was just the rock that Joseph found in his Neighbor's property in 1822, a year before Moroni showed up in his bedroom. It's just a common rock that he found in William Chase's property. So there's nothing supernatural or special about it.

Jeremy Runnells [01:43:40] It didn't come from ancient America. Morone didn't put it in the hole in Hill Cumorah. It was just a rock that Joseph Smith found. But a lot of people get confused into thinking that it's special because they hear Urim and Thummim or Nephite interpreters and so forth. Yeah.

The First Vision, Witnesses, and Priesthood

John Dehlin [01:44:00] So let's talk briefly about the first vision and the witnesses. Only because I think the way you weave those things together, these multiple timelines start to the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It's one thing to go, oh, the first vision, the story changes. And if I'm looking at that in isolation, then I'm like, oh, well, yeah, if I retell a story, each time I tell it, it's going to change a little bit. Okay, well, we'll give them a pass on that. And then we have the first, the three witnesses, and we have the priesthood, restoration and the dates. And then we have the evolving theology of, for example, God from trinitarian talk about those things as they kind of weave together in a timeline. And as to how the aggregate of those stories on top of each other is a little bit more significant than in isolation.

Jeremy Runnells [01:44:54] Yeah. So the correlated vision, as everybody knows, is that Joseph Smith had his first vision in 1820 as a result of the revival. Well, first of all, the historical records show that there was no revival in 1820. And second of all, Joseph Smith's family stated that they didn't join Presbyterianism until Alvin Smith died. And Alvin smith died in 1823. And that matches up with that there was a revival in 1824.

Jeremy Runnells [01:45:32] So the whole 1820 revival thing doesn't match with the historical record because that's three years before Alvin Smith died in four years after they joined the family, joined Lucy Smith and, you know, joined Presbyterianism. So. And then there's the other one where, you know, Joseph Smith tried to join the Methodist Sunday School. He put his name down, you know, after being told eight years. This was 1828, so eight years earlier, he supposedly saw God the Father and the Son, who told him that all the churches are an abomination. You know what I mean? But here he's trying to join the Methodist Sunday School or whatever it was two years before the church was restored or established on the earth. And eight years after the first fishing. Nobody like members of a church. Never.

John Dehlin [01:46:24] Also the ages, depending on what account his age changes.

Jeremy Runnells [01:46:28] Yeah, like 14 or 15. But there's only one account that has 15. And the apologists will say, you know, the scribe put that in. I discussed that in debunking first debunking. You know, my thoughts on that. But to me, it's not just who appears to Joseph Smith. It has all these, you know, it has angels, like you mentioned angels, and just the Lord and two personages. It's not just that, but it has a contradiction. For example, in 18, in Joseph Smith's handwritten account, in the 1830 account, he states that he read the Bible and he came to the conclusion that the world was lost. Like the true church of Jesus Christ, the New Testament Church was no longer on the earth. And then he went to the woods to pray for forgiveness of his sins. In the official.

John Dehlin [01:47:26] That was the 1832 account, right?

Jeremy Runnells [01:47:27] Yeah, the first handwritten. This is Joseph Smith's own handwritten account. In the official version, it states that he didn't know which church to join. He was confused. He read James 1:5. If any man lack with them that are massive God. And he went out to the woods for the purpose of asking which church that he should join. And then he later says, it never entered into my heart that they were all wrong. So you have this contradiction where he studies and he comes to his own conclusion that they're all wrong. Then he goes in the woods and asks for forgiveness of his sins. And then you have this other one where he has no idea.

Jeremy Runnells [01:48:09] He. He thinks there might be a true church. So he goes into the woods to get the answer, and he's told that they're all an abomination. And then it never occurred to him that they were all wrong. So that's a major contradiction. To me, it goes back to that modus operandi, his behavior of hiding things and not being.

John Dehlin [01:48:30] And to me, again, it's super significant that in the 1832 version, when, you know, the 1830 version of the Book of Mormon, God and Jesus are one. It's a trinitarian view, just like everything else. 1832, he's still believing in that view. So when he tells the first vision story, it's the Lord who visits him. In that account, by 1836, apparently he's changed and he's believing that God and Jesus are separate. Well, that not only manifests itself in the new version of the first vision, the 1836 version, having God introducing Jesus like that's a major difference in the cast of characters in the vision.

Jeremy Runnells [01:49:08] Yeah, it was the 1838 account.

John Dehlin [01:49:10] 1838.

Jeremy Runnells [01:49:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:49:11] Sorry.

Jeremy Runnells [01:49:11] But the 1838 account didn't get printed and published until 1842, but it's the official version that we.

John Dehlin [01:49:18] Okay, thank you. But then they're changing the Book of Mormon.

Jeremy Runnells [01:49:24] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:49:25] In a subsequent edition. And those changes that we all was sort of dismiss as insignificant, they're basically changing the text. And you show this in the letter for making it sound like God and Jesus are one. They're always trying to make it sound like God and Jesus are separate.

Jeremy Runnells [01:49:40] Yeah. And it's not just the Book of Mormon, like, for example, the Lectures of faith. There's a part that specifically talks about God is a spirit, and then it talks about tabernacle, flesh, Jesus. It separates the two. So it's really fascinating the evolution of Joseph's theology and his perception of who God is, the Godhead or whatever. But when you step back, you know, you step back and say, well, wait a minute, this was happening in the 1830s, you know, 12, 15, 22 years after the first edition in 1820, when he should have been, you know, crystal clear that these are two separate beings. And you know what I mean?

John Dehlin [01:50:30] Yeah, yeah. And then for me, the witnesses become really important because, you know, what we think is that Joseph had the vision in 1820. He knows he's got to start a church. He's just patient, doesn't tell anybody, comes out with the Book of Mormon and then starts the church, but then. And gets the priesthood. Right. Before he actually releases the Book of Mormon, he receives the priesthood.

Jeremy Runnells [01:50:57] Yeah, but that. It wasn't like, hey, guys, I got the priesthood. Like, that stuff didn't come until 1833.

John Dehlin [01:51:03] And that's my point. When you read David Whitmer's letter that he writes after he's left the church, what does he say?

Jeremy Runnells [01:51:10] Basically said he never heard of it.

John Dehlin [01:51:12] Never heard of what?

Jeremy Runnells [01:51:16] The Aaronic priesthood or John the Baptist coming to confer the priesthood to Joseph Smith and all the cattery.

John Dehlin [01:51:22] So, Mark. So one of the founders of the church, one of the three witnesses, is saying this stuff about Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood. We went five years and never talked about it.

Jeremy Runnells [01:51:33] Yeah, Like David Whitmere, I mean, he was one of the guys that was involved. And I mean, he was there during the Book of Mormon translation and when the church was restored. So it's not like he was just some guy that sat in the back pews. I mean, he was involved in the development of the church. And it's very telling that he's saying that. I've never heard of any priesthood before 1834.

Jeremy Runnells [01:52:00] And it matches to the record of the Book of Commandments being the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants different than the 1833 Commandments. Book of Commandments. Like there's backdating going on. You know what I mean? So Richard Bushman talks about it in Rough Stone Rolling. I mean, he admits that.

Jeremy Runnells [01:52:27] It appears that it's a fabrication based on the later accounts. Talks about Mr. Lyman Wright, I think his name is, he conferred the Melchizedek priesthood to Joseph Smith in 1831. Talks about that part in the Rough Stonewalling. That's pretty mind blowing as well.

John Dehlin [01:52:49] Yeah. And does the Book of Mormon have Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthood in it?

Jeremy Runnells [01:52:53] No.

John Dehlin [01:52:54] Right. And doesn't Alma start baptizing without any sense of being ordained?

Jeremy Runnells [01:53:00] No.

John Dehlin [01:53:01] So in 1830, they weren't believing that priesthood was necessary by the laying on of hands. So of course it wasn't in the Bible. And of course Joseph didn't talk about it. And of course David Widmer says we never talked about it. But as Joseph's beliefs and doctrine change, then you start seeing the doctrine the Book of Commandments amended to change with the new story. Right, right. And future revelations. But why doesn't the Book of Mormon just contain all this truth from the beginning?

Jeremy Runnells [01:53:32] Why doesn't it contain.

John Dehlin [01:53:33] Why didn't the first vision stick? And why didn't the Book of Mormon contain all the truths from the beginning? Versus having to change the Book of Mormon, change the first vision story, change the Book of Commandments to the Doctrine and Covenants. Everything's evolving with Joseph's beliefs.

Jeremy Runnells [01:53:47] Right, right.

John Dehlin [01:53:48] And so those things in parallel to me mean something more significant than when you study, oh, he changed his story at the first vision. It's not that simple. It's how those stories lay on top of each other.

Jeremy Runnells [01:53:59] Yeah. And these are foundational stuff.

John Dehlin [01:54:02] Yeah. Right.

Jeremy Runnells [01:54:03] This is foundational stuff. This is not how the sacraments being passed. You know what I mean? This is like.

John Dehlin [01:54:10] Which changes too, by the way. But okay, so yeah, that's really important. And not to mention, I've mentioned this in the podcast before, there's no temple marriage in the Book of Mormon. There's no endowment ceremony in the Book of Mormon. There's no celestial marriage in the Book of Mormon. Polygamy is forbidden in the Book of Mormon with the escape clause. But why aren't any of his Nauvoo theologies in the Book of Mormon? Yeah, so it's a pretty clear picture of he's making it up as he goes along kind of thing and then changing it as he goes, and then trying his best to cover it up by updating new versions that cover his tracks.

Jeremy Runnells [01:54:52] Right?

John Dehlin [01:54:52] Is that right? Yeah, and that's kind of what comes out here.

Jeremy Runnells [01:54:56] Yeah. And it goes back to Joseph Smith's modus operandi. How was he operating? And you know, when you look at the polygamy and the polyandry, how he hid it and denied it for 10 years, you look at the Book of Abraham, how he was grabbing stuff that was unrelated and depending on, put in the missing parts of facsimile two. And like, as you mentioned with the whole revolution of the first vision and the whole priesthood stuff, I mean it just looks like a big. It just looks like a clumsy hoax.

John Dehlin [01:55:30] Yeah. And again, if it were just the Book of Mormon, you'd be like, oh, it's not quite a translation, is it? But then you've got the Book of Abraham and it's like, oh, well that's not really a translation either. And then you've got the Kinderhook plates which you talk about in here. Talk about that really briefly.

Jeremy Runnells [01:55:48] Well, I mean, just taking you to this graphic real quick. This graphic right here says Joseph Smith claimed to have translated three ancient records. The Book of Abraham proven a fraud, the Kinderhood plates found to be a hoax, the Book of Mormon, the only one of the three for which we do not have the original. I'm sure he was only wrong on two out of three. After all, wouldn't you buy a third car from a man who had already sold you two conkers?

John Dehlin [01:56:20] Right.

Jeremy Runnells [01:56:21] So that kind of gives you why it's important. Yeah.

Coercion and Troubling Aspects of Polygamy

John Dehlin [01:56:25] Talk briefly about what's most troubling to you about polygamy or Joseph's practice of

Jeremy Runnells [01:56:31] polygamy, the polyandry and the marriage of the 14 year old girls.

John Dehlin [01:56:39] There's only one, right?

Jeremy Runnells [01:56:41] No, two. Okay, so one of them was Helen Markhambell and the other one was, I can't remember, I think her first name was Nancy.

John Dehlin [01:56:48] And in the letter you have a graph of all the wives.

Jeremy Runnells [01:56:54] Yeah. So. One of the things that some people were offended by or objected to was my use of a term, pedophilia. And they were like, well, Joseph Smith wasn't a pedophile just because he married 14 year old girls. And I responded to that on my website. But basically pedophilia is a sexual attraction of girls before puberty or during puberty. So in the 19th century, girls, they had the puberty around 14, 15 years old. So this was before or during puberty. That Joseph smith married these 14 year old girls. And the only justification based on the polygamy rulebook of 132 doctrine and covenants, 132 is the only justification for polygamy is to multiply and replenish the earth, bear the better souls of men and raised seed.

Jeremy Runnells [01:58:00] So the only justifiable reason for Joseph marrying 14 year old girls was to basically have sexual relations with them. So to me it's pedophilic because he was marrying these 14 year old girls for the purpose of having sex and having children with them. But you know, in the 19th century they were in either about to or were in the process of puberty. So that's why I use that term.

John Dehlin [01:58:31] You mentioned being troubled by the coercion that was used. It really stuck out to me as I was preparing for this podcast. Not only did he tell the girls apparently that they might lose their souls if they said no.

Jeremy Runnells [01:58:44] Well, like Helen Mark Campbell, it was pressured that she had to marry Joseph because for her family's salvation and exaltation.

John Dehlin [01:58:54] Right. So he's basically saying to the parents, let me have your daughter and I promise you eternal life.

Jeremy Runnells [01:59:00] Yeah. And then they in turn are putting the pressure on this 14 year old girl that, you know, this is a Mormon home and Mormon family and she feels obligated to follow this prophet and her dad who is, you know, and then there's a backstory with the dad, you know, Heber C. Kimball. Joseph Smith tried to marry his wife. The apologists tried to portray this as, well, the Kimballs. And he would see Kimball, he wanted to dynastically seal himself and his family to Joseph Smith. But when you read the account about how Joseph Smith asked Heber C. Kimball for his wife, he was so troubled by it that he didn't eat or sleep for three days. So that doesn't sound like somebody that wanted like this doesn't sound like an innocent ceiling that had no effect. It sounded like he was married, wanted to marry his wife in a little sense of return.

John Dehlin [02:00:01] Yeah. And of course he was denying it, lying about it, hiding it from Emma.

Jeremy Runnells [02:00:06] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:00:07] Like all this stuff is problematic. He wasn't following the prescribed rules of DNC 132. It's very clear. The wife needs to approve and they need to be virgins. Right. And he's not following any of the rules that are outlined in D&C132. Not only that, and this is something your letter really brought to my attention, he's violating the 1835 version of the doctrine and covenants while he's already started practicing. Talk about that.

Jeremy Runnells [02:00:34] Yeah. So the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants is based specifically banning polygamy. It's saying, hey, guys, we believe in monogamy, and this is scripture that's enforced the entire time, all the way. I think in 1875, somewhere around there, they changed it. But Joseph Smith, his whole life these scriptures were enforced. And here he was in the dark, marrying other men's wives and teenage girls while denying to Ammar and the Saints in the world. So, yeah, so to me, that's a big, revealing thing about Joseph Smith's character. And again, I use that snapshot as a basis for when you go into the Book of Abraham and the Kinderhood place and so forth.

Response to the Letter and Public Reaction

John Dehlin [02:01:26] Excellent. Any other aspects to the letter that you think we should bring out before we talk about sort of what's come about after publishing the letter? I mean, there's so much here, we could talk for days.

Jeremy Runnells [02:01:42] Yeah, I think we pretty much. I think it's pretty straightforward. I think the reason why the CES letter appeals to a lot of people that it doesn't just hone in and focus on each specific issue. It also takes a step back. You take a step back and it ties it up from a big point of view.

Jeremy Runnells [02:02:11] My letter is not meant to be a one stop, all comprehensive, you're done with your research type thing. My letter is meant to introduce you to the problems and issues, and then you go from there and you look at the sources and you confirm the sources for yourself and you read the sources. Different books and different.

Jeremy Runnells [02:02:36] Just do the research. It's basically kind of like a launching ground for people that are just getting exposed to these issues. So I just want to make that clear. It's not meant to. Okay. Once you read this, then you're an expert on all the problems of Mormonism.

John Dehlin [02:02:52] So talk a bit about the positive response before we talk about fair. How many emails do you think you've received?

Jeremy Runnells [02:03:03] Thousands.

John Dehlin [02:03:04] Thousands?

Jeremy Runnells [02:03:04] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:03:05] In a year.

Jeremy Runnells [02:03:07] Like, ever since the CES letter got released in April 2013, I just get lots of emails and. It's really just being on the front line of real suffering, real confusion and heartache. A lot of people are like, you know, I've had emails where, you know, a gentleman, for example, he emailed me saying, you know, when I first came out to my wife that I had doubts, it really devastated her and she was just. It was just traumatic and for, you know, weeks, it was just really miserable. The word divorce was being thrown around And I was just really worried about my marriage. And so kind of as a last push, I asked her to read the CES letter and she agreed to read it.

Jeremy Runnells [02:04:08] So after she read it and looked at the sources, read what FAIR has to say, and read my debunking. Fair's debunking. She just, she was done. So the word divorce stopped being thrown around. They're recovering, moving on with their lives.

Jeremy Runnells [02:04:24] So to me, when I look at divorce, I look at it through the eyes of the little boy. A long time ago, I used to cry myself to sleep at night over my parents divorce. I wondered, am I the cause of their divorce?

Jeremy Runnells [02:04:46] Did they divorce because of me, because of my hearing issue or whatever? So to me, it's about saving families, about saving marriages. I get that sometimes divorce is necessary, but to me, there better be a damn good reason for getting divorced because it's traumatic to young kids. And I know that personally.

Jeremy Runnells [02:05:14] So it's my passion. It's probably why I put so much effort into debunking first debunking, because if I can help just save one marriage or one family, to me it's worth it. And I just. These emails are kind of feedback. I'm seeing the effect that it has on people's lives. And it's just I have a passion for it.

Jeremy Runnells [02:05:45] That's why in Debunking Fest Debunking introduction, I talk about real lives. Marriages and families are on the line. These are real people that are suffering because of the church's dishonesty. I mean, Joseph Smith's rock and the hat thing is a fact.

Jeremy Runnells [02:06:04] And when a husband goes to his wife and says, Joseph didn't use the gold plates, he used the rock and the hat. And the wife says, no, that's anti Mormon. That's not true. He used gold plates. Well, what's the problem here? The problem is she didn't get the memo. The church didn't give her the memo. So you have this married couple that are clashing and they both need their light.

Jeremy Runnells [02:06:27] You know what I mean? It's dishonest. And so my goal is to just bring out the honesty. Let's make this honest because we can't afford to be having all these marriages and families getting destroyed over Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith's religion. If you're going to get divorced, get divorced over a good reason. Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith's religion is not a good reason to get divorced over. If one spouse believes Joseph Smith and the other one doesn't work on it. Figure Things out. You know what I mean? Religion shouldn't be the reason for divorce. It should be the spouse is totally unreasonable or abusive or whatever.

John Dehlin [02:07:08] What's it like for you to feel in your heart like your motivation is to save marriages and lives even? And yet the way that some would characterize you or describe you just say attention seeking or negative or trying to tear down people's tender faith. So there's such a contrast between. Have people said bad things about you?

Jeremy Runnells [02:07:36] Very few. I don't see a lot of them.

John Dehlin [02:07:39] How about fair?

Jeremy Runnells [02:07:40] I mean, fair. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:07:41] What'd they say? Like, what was their tactic? I read. So FAIR created a response to your CES letter. I'm a little bit familiar with, you know, that class of people writing something personally and in response to your work. So I. I know what that feels like a bit. I've read a bit about their response to you. How did they start it and what feeling did you get from how they were approaching it? Start with personal. How did you feel they were trying to paint you?

Jeremy Runnells [02:08:14] Just this imbalanced ex Mormon that's getting all his sources from anti Mormon sources who, like, as you mentioned, is out to get attention. I'm not out to get attention. I'm not. You know what I mean? I'm not this. I'm not the greatest public speaker, you know what I mean? I'm just, like I said when I wrote the letter, I didn't expect it to go anywhere. I mean, this thing landed into my lap. It just blew up. I would have never imagined that I would be talking to John Deland two years after my faith crisis. You know what I mean? It just blows my mind. I'm just an ordinary guy.

John Dehlin [02:08:55] How about that? You're bitter and angry and negative.

Jeremy Runnells [02:08:59] I was pissed off in my faith crisis, and that's natural. That's part of the five step, five stages of grief. I'm not angry anymore. I mean, I go on Father Sons camp outs. I'm still on the Elders quorum email list. If somebody needs help to move, I'll go move. You know what I mean? I'm past that. I've moved on. I'm not bitter or angry. It goes back to saving marriages and families. These are real people. And I just think that the church needs to be honest. It just needs to. It can't be doing business as usual like it has the last 40, 50, 60 years. I mean, we're in a totally different world now. Something has to give and honesty is the way. Yeah.

Responding to Critics and Apologetic Arguments

John Dehlin [02:09:51] So what did you think about fair's response to you overall, the substance of it.

Jeremy Runnells [02:09:56] Well, I just want to put it out there. I appreciate that Fair did their response, their analysis, because it gives my readers a balanced view of the issue so they don't just have to read my letter and take my word for it. So, for example, the rock and hat stuff, they can see Fair's response that Fair confirms that Joseph Smith really used the rock and a hat. So it adds that next level to the compensation. It adds that credibility. But on the other token, it was just responding to fear was actually more time consuming and more difficult than it was writing the CES letter itself.

John Dehlin [02:10:41] If you had to characterize their response overall, how would you characterize it?

Jeremy Runnells [02:10:49] Misleading.

John Dehlin [02:10:50] Misleading, why?

Jeremy Runnells [02:10:52] There's just so many strawmen that they used.

John Dehlin [02:10:54] What do you mean by strawmen?

Jeremy Runnells [02:10:56] Where they mischaracterized my argument. So I'll give you an example. You know Captain Kidd and you know Kimoros and Moroni. My argument is that Joseph Smith got those names from Captain Kidd's stories. Their argument as well. Joseph Smith didn't have access to these maps. There was only so and so maps and his library and all this stuff. No, that's not my argument. He didn't use maps. They were from the Joseph Smith stories.

John Dehlin [02:11:29] The Captain Kidd stories, yes.

Jeremy Runnells [02:11:31] So there's all kinds of different strawming that they use. And there's so much obfuscation where they try to make the issue more confusing than it really is. And then their conclusion part was kind of ridiculous. They were basically attacking me on comments that I made on Reddit. These were comments that I made long after my faith crisis in transition. So I just didn't appreciate how they tried to character assassinate me that way.

John Dehlin [02:12:08] How does it feel to know that when you post something on Facebook or Reddit that there's apologists out there that are paying attention to it, copying it, pasting in some little file and trying to figure out ways to use that against you later.

Jeremy Runnells [02:12:22] It's creepy. I mean, I already have the NSA after me, so now I have to worry about all these Mormon apologies.

John Dehlin [02:12:29] Does it feel creepy?

Jeremy Runnells [02:12:30] Yeah, it feels creepy. It feels like, I don't know. I'm an open book. My life is an open book. My wife has. Has passwords to everything she wanted. Like, I have nothing to hide. And in that sense, you know, even after knowing that fear was watching me, I still went on Reddit and put stuff down. So it's not like I'm unpredictable and making all these crazy comments and stuff, but at the same time, it's just kind of just creepy and weird, you know what I mean? I just don't like it.

John Dehlin [02:13:07] Have you ever feared for your safety?

Jeremy Runnells [02:13:11] No, not at all. I mean, a lot of people have this perception that I'm ha. You know, they might think because I came out with this, I'm putting the church in an unfavorable light that, you know, I have a lot of enemies. I don't, I don't have any enemies that I know of.

Jeremy Runnells [02:13:37] I mean, 98% of the emails I get are positive. I mean, the few that I get that are negative, they're interesting people. So I've had emails from like fundamentalists and polygamists and stuff. And then I had a few from really strong believers that say I'm not giving the nuance that it deserves or when I ask what they mean by that, they don't really give me examples.

Jeremy Runnells [02:14:09] But overall, I don't fear for anything. I don't see any enemies. I just live life as usual. My life hasn't really changed other than, you know, I'm more well known than I was two years ago.

John Dehlin [02:14:25] Does this put stress on your personal life in any way? Just.

Jeremy Runnells [02:14:29] Well, it does in the sense that it's emotional getting these emails. I mean, I'm sure you can relate to that, John. You get emails all the time, but just seeing these people, what they're going through, the struggle they're doing and they're asking for advice and, you know, your heart goes out to them. So it's emotionally draining in that sense. It's a little bit, it's, you know, it was stressful with fair, dealing with their, you know, just dealing with them. The last six months, I mean almost every night until like three in the morning I was working on this. My weekends, goodbye, you know, but it's calmed down a lot since then.

John Dehlin [02:15:11] Why did you feel so necessary to do such an exhaustive response to fair? Like, I didn't even read, I may get in trouble for saying this. I didn't even read Gregory Smith's hundred page article about me. I didn't even read it. Like not because I was scared or I just didn't think it was worth the time.

Jeremy Runnells [02:15:28] Yeah, well, my faith crisis in transition was prolonged because of fair, because just going through all this stuff and to me it can be very confusing. There's so much research and all that. So to me, I saw this as an opportunity to provide that source for people to go to, to see. Okay, fair says this, I say this. Here's the donut, here's how much we eat.

John Dehlin [02:15:59] Yeah, you've got these donut graphics in your response to fair not only overall but also broken out by section where you specify to what percent did they agree with you? To what percent did they just not respond? And then to what percent did they disagree with you? And it's overwhelmingly what a lot of

Jeremy Runnells [02:16:21] it is overwhelmingly neutral. So that's a lot of people when they see fair answers or response, they think, well, they're on top of it. But they're not. They're not responding to most of the issues and the ones that they are, it's about half agree, disagree.

Jeremy Runnells [02:16:42] The book of Abraham was a very interesting thing. It was almost like Pharaoh was defending Egypt's geology more than they would Joseph Smith. So to give you an example, the facsimile one with Abraham on the altar. So in the original CES letter I stated that there's a mummy on the altar.

Jeremy Runnells [02:17:07] And you know, based on the stuff that they found in Egypt, well, it was really Osiris because his leg was up, so he wasn't dead. So that was a mistake on my part so far. Look, it's not a mummy, it's Osiris.

Jeremy Runnells [02:17:26] What's wrong with you, Jimmy? And then I'm like, well, it doesn't matter because it's not Abraham. You know what I mean? So just weird stuff like that.

John Dehlin [02:17:40] Yeah, yeah. So have they responded to your response?

Jeremy Runnells [02:17:48] No, to their response. They changed their answers. They remove some of the stuff that they had before.

John Dehlin [02:17:56] So your debunking of their debunking caused them to re buy through the website.

Jeremy Runnells [02:18:00] Yeah, but that's fine to me. I'm still going to leave my stuff on. And the answer they're giving speaks on its own. I just trust people that they can critical think and look at it themselves.

John Dehlin [02:18:13] Yeah. And what I hear you saying is that if a major tech of fear is to create complexity and confusion so that people just go, oh, it's too confusing. I better just believe because they're smart people anyway, you felt the need to then respond to that fear, uncertainty and doubt by addressing it very meticulously so that you wouldn't let them get away with that tactic.

Jeremy Runnells [02:18:40] Yeah. I mean, really, has the gospel of Jesus Christ become so complicated that you have to read all these scholarly books just under the right condition, under the right apologist or. You know what I mean? To me, the gospel used to be the pure and simple. It was just pure and simple. Now it just seems to have changed into this weird. Well, you know, you got to Read enough scholarly books to understand what really happened. And it begs the question of what kind of mess is this really God's plan? Is this really God's church? To where it's so confusing and complex that we have to figure out what happened in the 1830s and 1840s in order to get it.

Jeremy Runnells [02:19:29] The other thing is the appeal to authority fallacy, which is basically, well, there's smarter guys that have known these issues and they're still in. Well, I mean, there's Mormon intellectuals that are still. I mean, Muslim intellectuals know the problem and they're still Muslims.

Jeremy Runnells [02:19:48] There's Catholic intellectuals that are still Catholics. It doesn't mean anything. Every religion has their intellectual. And the other key thing that a lot of true believing or Chapel Mormons, as I call them don't realize is that these guys don't have the same testimony that the Chapel Mormons do. You hear stuff like, I like Mormonism, I like what it does for my life. Or Joseph Smith introduced the God that really appealed to me. It's almost like a country club to these guys. You know what I mean? You don't hear stuff like you're referring

John Dehlin [02:20:21] to like Richard Bushman's testimony where he says I'm Mormon because of the type of person it makes me.

Jeremy Runnells [02:20:27] Yeah, I like the way of life, you know, I like. You know what I mean? You don't hear stuff like, I know with every fiber of my being that Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ, that the Book of Mormon is a literal history of the Americas or. You know what I mean? You don't hear that kind of stuff. It's a different testimony. It's not the same.

John Dehlin [02:20:52] All right, now I'm going to go into the rapid firing round where I'm going to ask a bunch of just questions, brief answers if you can. We'll expand where we need to. How much money have you made off of letter to the CES director?

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:05] About 1,000.

John Dehlin [02:21:06] $1,000?

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:07] Yeah. Not very much.

John Dehlin [02:21:08] Just people donating.

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:09] Just people donating.

John Dehlin [02:21:10] Do you want donations?

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:12] The donations are mainly there to maintain the website. I'm not going to make a million bucks off of this.

John Dehlin [02:21:18] Okay.

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:18] It was never about money to me. It was about families.

John Dehlin [02:21:23] So if people want to support you. Do you want support?

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:26] Well, I'm not going to turn them down.

John Dehlin [02:21:28] Okay.

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:28] But yeah, there's a donation button on my website.

John Dehlin [02:21:31] Okay. Why didn't you just make a book and paper book print, publish it as a book.

Jeremy Runnells [02:21:39] I look at my document as a living document. I like to add stuff to it. So for example, I added the late war and the first Napoleon stuff fairly recently because those are newer developments. I couldn't have added them in April 2013. So to me in 21st century, it's just when you put a book, when you publish a book, it becomes static and almost old within a few years. I just like the living aspect of it.

John Dehlin [02:22:09] Somebody mentioned a movie. Are you looking at making movies?

Jeremy Runnells [02:22:12] Somebody threw out the idea of making a movie on read it. And at first I was like, eh, whatever, wasn't really interested. But somebody did a trailer which is the trailer on my website now. And after I saw that trailer I was like, wow, that's cool. So we started a little group of really talented professionals. Andrew James is one of them. And brother Jake, hilarious YouTube videos, he was another one and a few others. But after a while, just exhausting from dealing with fear and just the desire to kind of move on with my life, I just kind of just kind of abandoned it. I don't know. It's really a considerable amount of work and I don't have the desire to do it.

John Dehlin [02:23:02] So no movie for now?

Jeremy Runnells [02:23:03] No.

John Dehlin [02:23:07] So do you have any idea how many people have downloaded the letter? How many downloads by now? Any idea?

Jeremy Runnells [02:23:12] I can't give an exact amount because the lottery was hosted on mom and Think and a few other websites for a long time, months. And then the other aspect of people, you know, family members or friends attaching the PDF to email and sharing it. And sharing it.

John Dehlin [02:23:30] Yeah.

Jeremy Runnells [02:23:30] But I'm fairly certain that it's well over 100,000 downloads. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:23:37] Or shares. Are you saying or is that just downloads, not shares?

Jeremy Runnells [02:23:40] Downloads and shares.

John Dehlin [02:23:42] OK, 100,000.

Jeremy Runnells [02:23:44] Like over 100,000.

John Dehlin [02:23:45] That's starting to reach critical mass, I'd say.

Jeremy Runnells [02:23:48] Well, it's accelerating. My visits every month is accelerating on my website. Right now I'm getting on average anywhere from 15 to 20,000 visits on my website and just increasing every month. And I'm noticing a lot more. It's not just looking at the visits on my website, but also the email that I'm getting, the type of emails I'm getting a lot more. People that were true believing Mormons yesterday, a week ago, two weeks ago, that are now starting to discover all these different facts.

Church Essays, Family Reactions, and Personal Toll

John Dehlin [02:24:24] Well, the church is releasing all these new essays. What do you think about the essays and are they going to help?

Jeremy Runnells [02:24:34] Overall, I think they're a good step. It's a step in the right direction in terms of more transparency and openness. I'll take it. But I wish that it was more. A lot of chapel Mormons have no idea about the essays. So I wish they would put in the insight, maybe talk about it in general conference, just be more like advertising more instead of kind of hiding it in the gospel topics part of the website.

John Dehlin [02:25:11] The crazy part of that is a lot of the people I'm speaking with who have experienced a faith crisis in 2013 and 2014 are mentioning the essays as contributing factors to their ultimate loss of faith. Are you hearing that, too?

Jeremy Runnells [02:25:25] Yeah, I'm hearing a lot more people talking about the Race in the Priesthood essay. Yeah, that's a major one.

John Dehlin [02:25:30] Yeah.

Jeremy Runnells [02:25:33] So there's a part in the Race in the Priesthood essay where they talk about, we disavow the theories of, you know, so basically 10 prophets, from Brigham Young all the way to Hill B. Lee. It was the theory that the blacks can't have the priesthood. And it's not just the priesthood. Black families can't go to get sealed in the temple. That's a big thing to me. That's a bigger issue than the priesthood thing. So it was just the theories. They were just Protestants at the time, you know, but it wasn't back then. It was revelation. It was doctrine.

John Dehlin [02:26:09] And you mentioned in your CES letter, is it the 56, 58 first presidency statement that says, well, 49, sorry, yeah, I don't know the years, but what does it say?

Jeremy Runnells [02:26:19] Yeah, the 49, they talked about it, and it was basically doctrine. And the brethren were asked in the late 60s when civil rights movement was really heating up, you know, why not give the blocks to priesthood? And from what I've read in Michael Quinn's books, they had a discussion, and Hill B. Lee was one of the apostles that was pushing it, not Hill B. Lee. Hooby Brown was one of the foster pushing it for it to remove the ban. But Hill B. Lee pushed against it. So the band continued until Campbell showed up. Right.

John Dehlin [02:27:01] Many want to know about how your family has reacted to the letter. You sort of said you want to have a little bit of privacy around your family. So I don't want people to get frustrated that I didn't ask the question, but I also just want to let people know that you're requesting some privacy there. So what are you comfortable saying about how family has reacted to this?

Jeremy Runnells [02:27:25] They know I read the letter. I'm not sure if they read it. Well, one family member I know has read. At least two family members I know have read it. They know about it. I'm not sure they know how big you know how big it has gotten. But. When I stopped believing in the church, my dad, I had a conversation with my dad and he basically said, you know, whether you're in the church or you're out of the church, you're still my son and you're still in this family. So, you know, that's my family. It's the same with my grandpa. He knows I wrote the letter. Obviously he hasn't read it and quite frankly, I hope he never reads it. You know, just 85 years old. But they don't throw away family over ideology. You know, you've got. And so I really appreciate that with my family.

John Dehlin [02:28:33] Someone mentioned that and we're not going to. You would rather not, just for the record, you'd rather not talk about your wife and kids, that kind of stuff?

Jeremy Runnells [02:28:41] Yeah, I prefer not to.

John Dehlin [02:28:42] Okay, so I just. And I respect that you've mentioned a little bit wanting to step away from kind of post Mormon stuff and yet here you are with me. And do you ever feel like you go back and forth on that a little bit?

Jeremy Runnells [02:28:59] Well, when I stated basically I did like a farewell in the subreddit next morning, it was more the day to day, just looking at a forum here and there. I just wanted to move away from that, focus on more important things. Not that it was unimportant. It's kind of like the hospital analogy. You know, I'm sure you can relate with Mormon stories. A lot of people come in and they're using this recovery process and then it gets to the point where they're ready to move on, similar to me. So what I meant by that is move away from the forums and that type of thing. But I'm still going to maintain the website, I'm still going to answer emails and obviously I'm not going to say no to John Delane.

John Dehlin [02:29:49] What do you say? Somebody wrote, how do you explain all the intellectuals who still believe? We touched on this a little bit. So don't go the route of saying all religions have intellectuals that still believe. Any other thing you want to say about how you would explain a Richard Bushman or Terrell Gibbons?

Jeremy Runnells [02:30:08] Yeah, just.

John Dehlin [02:30:11] Or Fiona or Gibbons or Claudia.

Jeremy Runnells [02:30:13] Yeah, they just, from my point of view, they look at religion differently than the Chapel Mormon. They don't see it as black and white. They see a lot of grays. They're much more flexible in things. And I have major respect for Richard Bushman.

Jeremy Runnells [02:30:37] He's an amazing scholar. His book has been very pivotal and important to me. So he, I mean, and he's pushing for honesty. So, for example, he has a problem with the church showing the art of the Book of Mormon translation, putting the fingers over the gold plates, you know, the pictures on the bulletin boards. He has a problem with that. He thinks we need to stop doing that. He thinks we need to not necessarily show more pictures of the rocking the hat thing, but to teach the children how it really happened. So I respect him. I see him as pushing for honesty. His book Rough Stone Rolling has really, to me, changed Mormonism the last decade.

John Dehlin [02:31:29] But how do you personally explain that they're still believers? Like maybe if you tried a little harder, prayed a little harder, had the right perspective, you could be still in and enjoying all these things yourself. Certainly you don't know more than them.

Jeremy Runnells [02:31:44] Well, the way I see it is that it's not just the problems. There has to be other factors. You have to feel like the church is a net benefit in your life and it's just different personalities. Some people can afford to lead the church, some people can't. To some people, it's a heavy price that they're not willing to pay. So some people, they might not worry too much about the doctrines and the history as they do about what the church does for them today. The home teaching, the elders quorum, the, you know, the feeling of community in there or the Relief Society, the feeling community in there. So it's complicated, it's messy. There's no easy answer.

John Dehlin [02:32:38] Do you have any critique of sort of that middle way, New order Mormon kind of approach?

Jeremy Runnells [02:32:44] I don't, I don't judge them. Like you said, it's complicated. I don't know their family situation, I don't know their business situation. And I think my hat goes off. I tip my hat to them in the sense that if they're able to know the issues and still go to church, I mean, that's pretty difficult. Sitting through, for example, Sunday school, how Joseph Smith translated Book of Mormon. You're just sitting there like, no, that's not what happened to me. It's Chinese torture, you know what I mean? So I don't judge them. They have the reasons for doing it, and if it works for them, it works for them.

John Dehlin [02:33:28] How many hours do you think you went into writing letter to the CES director and the response?

Jeremy Runnells [02:33:34] So, you know, I researched for two years and did research that first year. In terms of the actual writing the CES letter, I would say that it was probably about a month and then debunking fairs. Debunking was about six months of late nights and weekends. And part of the problem is they kept changing their answers. And it got to a point where I was like, you know what, I'm just going to chain it here. So, yeah, the debunking fairs, debunking was really a tough one in terms of just the amount of work that was involved. And it wasn't just. It's not like responding to an answer, it's explaining why it's a straw man, why this argument is a straw man, and giving a quick background and then answering the issue.

John Dehlin [02:34:29] Would your goal be that somehow a copy of the letter get in the hands of every Mormon across the world? I saw in Reddit that someone, I think, at LDS Business College found a way to send your letter to like hundreds or maybe thousands of students there, and that you actually weren't thrilled about that. So talk a little bit about how you would or wouldn't want your letter to be used.

Jeremy Runnells [02:34:55] Well, so basically it started about a month and a half ago or something where somebody actually wrote on a bulletin board page or whatever. Visit cesletter.com so basically I went on Reddit and told everybody, look, there's a good way and there's a bad way to share this information. I have respect for other people's property.

Jeremy Runnells [02:35:22] So I don't think it's a good idea to go on church property on the bulletin boards writing this stuff. I don't think it's a good idea. Now, the spamming to the LDS Business College, it was 1,000 students, from what I understand, and I was surprised to find out that the Salt Lake Tribune, actually, they wrote an article about it. I was like, wow, it's news, huh? Okay, so I don't.

Jeremy Runnells [02:35:52] I do online marketing for a living, so I kind of frown on spam just from a career perspective as a professional. So I don't think spamming people is the right way to go. I don't approve of that way. There's a good way and there's a bad way of sharing the information.

Jeremy Runnells [02:36:11] I think we just need to be more respectful in how we do it. And this goes with grabbing the email addresses and names on the, on the Church's war directories. People are giving their contact information and their home addresses because they trust that that information is going to be protected in the LDS war directory system. So I think it's a huge violation of just trust and respect to be going in there and grabbing all these email addresses and spamming the letter and stuff.

Jeremy Runnells [02:36:45] But with that said, the letter is public domain and it's out on the Internet. And I'm not naive to think that I can control how it's chaired or distributed. So if, you know, it's beyond my control. But my position is it is my hope that we'll respect other people's property and privacy.

Church Discipline and What Leaders Know

John Dehlin [02:37:09] So have you been disciplined by the church at all? Have you been contacted by the church in any.

Jeremy Runnells [02:37:13] I haven't. I'm still a member on record.

John Dehlin [02:37:15] How do you explain that? Like, you know, 1993, so 20 years ago, they're excommunicating people like you.

Jeremy Runnells [02:37:24] It's a different time, it's a different place. I think the church is realizing that. I don't know, I can speculate, but my bishop knows I'm not hiding anything. I emailed it to him. He's a very nice guy. I like him a lot.

Jeremy Runnells [02:37:40] You know, I told him I'm not out to deconvert the ward or anything. I've never told anybody in the ward. I mean, my home teacher asked once and he knows, but he approached me on the subject. But I don't know, the only thing I can think of is I have a big microphone online and, you know, my letters are Mormonthink. And you know, the whole David Tree situation back in 2012 where, I mean, the church was going after him because he was an editor on mormonthink.com and so I think that blew up in the church's face because of the number of newspapers and media outlets that were covering it.

Jeremy Runnells [02:38:27] So I think the church realized that, you know, they got to be more careful in terms of who they chase. But I think we're entering a different time now. I think the church is accepting that due to, you know, social media and the Internet, they're just going to have more criticism. And it's not 1993 anymore. It's unrealistic to be going after everybody that, you know, has a negative opinion here and there about certain doctrines and whatever.

Jeremy Runnells [02:38:56] I think the Internet changing everything. And I think that's evident with the essays, that's evident with the Joseph Smith papers, that's evident with the October 2013 talk, you know, and I think times are changing. I think as the Internet evolved, so does the situation. So, for example, in 2002, before Facebook and MySpace and all that, in order to find this information, you had to pull up a search engine and look it up.

Jeremy Runnells [02:39:31] Now with social media, it's basically coming in the faces of true believing Mormons, whether they like it or not or whether they're asking for it or not. You know, a thing here and there. So I think it's creeping down, this information is creeping down to the ward and stake level.

Jeremy Runnells [02:39:54] I've heard that my CES letter was a topic for sacrament talk in Hebrew City, Utah. A gentleman, older gentleman, I'm not sure who he was, a high councilman, I'm admission president, I don't know. But he kind of mentioned my letter. He didn't mention it directly, but he mentioned it, the 77 page letter. And then he kind of goes over the, some of the issues and how a member can reconcile like can come to terms with it. So that kind of fascinated. I've also heard that Marlon King Jensen was given a letter by members in New York. I'm not sure if that's correct information.

Jeremy Runnells [02:40:35] So the Internet's really changing things. It's going to be really fascinating what happens in the next five, 10, 20 years, how the Church is going to change. It has to change. It's going to change because it's like the blocks in the priesthood and polygamy in 1890. If the church doesn't change, society is going to change it. I mean the rising generation, they're more sophisticated. My 7 year old, I mean he's obsessed with Minecraft and he wants to figure out stuff. So when he has a question, he posts up Google and he looks up and he finds a website with different tricks or tips on how to do this and that in Minecraft and he keeps that window open with his window on Minecraft.

Jeremy Runnells [02:41:24] Or if he has a question, he grabs my phone and clicks on Google. This is the generation that the Church is facing right now. And I think the Church realizes that with their essays. And I think the essays are causing more problems than they were expecting because I'm, I mean I'm sure you can relate to this, but I'm hearing more and more people that are coming. You know, the shelf broke after reading this essay or that essay.

John Dehlin [02:41:56] Yeah. So the million dollar question of speculation is do the apostles, do you think they know the issues that are in your letter?

Jeremy Runnells [02:42:06] Some do. I'm not sure about all of them. And the reason why I say some do is boy, Kate Bakker, he knows a lot of them. I mean, this is evident with his speech in the 1981 CES symposium. You know, all truths are not very useful. And he's basically telling the CES instructors to teach faithful history. So he knows that there's. And he was kind of involved in the Mark Hoffman thing. Not as much as Oaks in Holland, but so I think he knows a lot of it and the.

John Dehlin [02:42:40] September 6th, right?

Jeremy Runnells [02:42:41] Yeah, September 6th. And then, you know, for example, McConkey, I think he knew a lot of it. You know, especially when you look at the stuff that went on with Eugene England Maxwell. In his book Not My Will But Thine, he talks about the Rock and the Hat.

Jeremy Runnells [02:43:04] So he knew how the Book of Mormon was really translated. But here he was looking at the church museum or, you know, the magazines or the curriculum. He was seeing that the church was showing a different story than the Rock in the Hat. So he knew that summer was out.

Jeremy Runnells [02:43:22] Same with Nelson. He talked about the Rock and hat in 1993, and he knew all these years how the church was presenting the Book of Mormon translation, not how it really happened. So that's kind of where my sense of things is.

Jeremy Runnells [02:43:39] Do I think there are evil men? No, I don't. I think there are men that are trying to do the best they can. I think they're between a rock and a hard place or a stone in a hard place.

Jeremy Runnells [02:43:50] Yeah. And so I don't know. I'm just happy I'm not an impossible. It is my hope that they'll continue to be transparent and that they'll continue that direction and that they'll push harder and quickly, be quick, do it quickly. Because, you know, we're reaching. I mean, we're reaching a point where things are really going to blow up. I mean, the dam is breaking, so to speak.

John Dehlin [02:44:26] Well, how do you see it playing out? I know it's speculation, but

Jeremy Runnells [02:44:34] I'm seeing something very interesting. I call them the Snapperites.

John Dehlin [02:44:39] Snufferites.

Jeremy Runnells [02:44:40] Yeah. So Denver Snuffer.

John Dehlin [02:44:43] And I call them Neo Fundamentalists, which they hate.

Jeremy Runnells [02:44:48] Yeah, they're an interesting bunch. If I understand correctly. They basically accept or believe the foundational claims of the Church. Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [02:44:58] Joseph got it right before Nauvoo and the Book of Mormon got it right.

Jeremy Runnells [02:45:03] Yeah. But then the church right now is a corporation. It's apostate. It's really interesting, their point of view of things. I see them becoming more of a movement in the coming years with the really strong, fanatical. You know what I mean? Very strong, McConkie, Joseph Building Smith type Mormons. I see the RLDS church as a model for how things are going.

John Dehlin [02:45:36] For what? For weakening itself or for doing the right thing?

Jeremy Runnells [02:45:40] Well, I see them both. They did the right thing. I mean, I mentioned in my Debunking affairs, debunking introduction about how in the 60s it was a crossroads and the RLDF church took the road where they became more honest and transparent about Joseph Smith and the problem. And you know, the woman got the priesthood in 84 and then the first non Smith prophet in 96. And then the church changed its name and it's more Protestant now. And then the LDS Church did the complete opposite. I see the church down the line,

John Dehlin [02:46:17] we're stronger now than they are.

Jeremy Runnells [02:46:19] They are.

John Dehlin [02:46:20] We are. We're stronger.

Jeremy Runnells [02:46:21] Right.

John Dehlin [02:46:23] They're weaker than they were.

Jeremy Runnells [02:46:24] Right. Yeah. Because as you made the right decision. I think they did. Because at the end of the day honesty is the best policy. You can't keep being dishonest to people.

John Dehlin [02:46:38] But what if they're preserving a structure that allows great individuals to be raised and produced and great families to have a great experience. So it's a little bit like the Village, the movie the Village by M. Night, Shyamalamalan, Ding Dong or the Truman Show. But what goes on in that little bubble is really good.

Jeremy Runnells [02:47:04] No, it's not really good. It's fake. It's not real. It's not. And this whole argument that the church does great things, it doesn't. It's still a fundamentalist black and white religion. I don't agree that little children should be put in a, in a closed door room with a middle aged man asking them sexual questions. You know what I mean? I don't think that's right. You know, misrepresenting history and the doctrines while telling people that they have to pay 10% of their income. You know what I mean? I think the church, by being honest, the church is going to lose tithing, is going to lose members. But that's just the natural consequence of whitewashing and misrepresenting your history. It's just the price that can have to be paid. I don't think Mormonism is going to go away. I think it's going to be smaller, less vibrant as it was back in the 70s, 80s, 90s.

John Dehlin [02:48:14] Will it continue to grow numbers wise?

Jeremy Runnells [02:48:17] It might in Latin America,

John Dehlin [02:48:20] Philippines.

Jeremy Runnells [02:48:21] Yeah. But as they become more developed with the Internet and information comes out, you know what I mean? But I see the developed countries like United States go in the direction of Sweden where the church is basically collapsing in Sweden. So I don't know. I think it's going to be very interesting. But the bottom line is all the church can do really is be honest about it and let the ships fall where they may. But we know on this planet that's usually not how it works. They fight to the death, keep the status quo, especially when you're getting like 8 billion or 7 billion in tithing revenue every year. And you got all these investments like BYU and City Creek and so forth, all the temples. But I see more offshoots. I see the Sniperites having their own offshoot. You know what I mean?

John Dehlin [02:49:19] What about some type of progressive, like reform Mormon movement?

Jeremy Runnells [02:49:23] Yeah, I see that also being an offshoot. So, like I said, I don't have a crystal ball. I just think it's going to be very fascinating to watch the next five, 10, 20 years.

Spirituality After Mormonism and Advice for Those Leaving

John Dehlin [02:49:37] Many people want to know where you are now with spirituality. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you still have a testimony of something? And most importantly, are you happy now or are you dark and loathsome now?

Jeremy Runnells [02:49:49] I'm happy. I'm happy in terms of my.

John Dehlin [02:49:54] Are you happier?

Jeremy Runnells [02:49:55] I'm happier.

John Dehlin [02:49:56] How. How can that be?

Jeremy Runnells [02:49:58] I don't have that. I'm not at war with myself. In Mormonism, you don't realize that you're at war with yourself. You're always told that you're broken, that you need to be fixed, that you need to keep repenting. You don't do your home teaching one month and you should beat yourself up over that. You're always at war with yourself. The natural man is an enemy of God. I still live an LDS lifestyle. I don't drink or smoke. I don't take drugs. I don't go to the strip club. I don't have a porn problem. I don't. You know what I mean?

Jeremy Runnells [02:50:32] I live that life because it works for me. I'm a family man. I'm not a college student. And life is hard enough, you know, without those problems, whatever. But yeah, so just going back in terms of spiritual. I'm still in the court with that. I'm still trying to figure things out with that.

Jeremy Runnells [02:51:00] Basically, I think right now I'm currently a deist humanist, meaning I believe that there's something more to this. Call it higher power or higher force or whatever you want to call it. I don't know, maybe there's reincarnation or maybe we're in a computer simulation program matrix. I don't know. But I just think there's something more to all of this. I have a hard time believing in a God that intervenes into human affairs.

Jeremy Runnells [02:51:32] So, you know, you've heard the term the God of lost Keys, God of the gaps. Yeah. So the God of lost keys is going to find my keys, he's going to bless my greasy Pisa, and he's going to help me Pass my sath.

Jeremy Runnells [02:51:47] But he's going to ignore the prayer of the kid that's getting molested, or the kids in Africa that are starving and getting hacked, or the kids in North Korea that are eating bark and grass. I mean, it just seems wrong. Something is wrong with that picture.

Jeremy Runnells [02:52:04] So I just have a hard time believing in God that intervenes. Because if he can intervene for my greasy peace off to nourish and bless it, then why isn't he nourishing and blessing the kids in Africa and North Korea? I don't get it.

Jeremy Runnells [02:52:24] So in that sense, I'm kind of atheist. I don't believe in any religion or gods that I currently know of. If a gun was pointing to my head, if a gun was pointing to my head and I. When I was forced to join a religion, I would probably join Buddhism. It just seems chilled.

Jeremy Runnells [02:52:44] You don't hear of any Buddhist missionaries knocking on doors or Buddhist suicide bombers. They're just cool. And you know what I mean. They just meditate. They're cool. But I'm still trying to figure things out on that end. I think what's important is today, love, compassion, being kind to each other.

Jeremy Runnells [02:53:08] Like, we have this, we have each other, we can see it. Let's focus on humanity and moving the species forward. I get my spirituality, if you will. Just during my faith crisis, during my faith transition, it was around the time when we landed the Mars rover on Mars, we landed a freaking car on another planet. And not only that, we used a sky crane to land the car on the other planet.

Jeremy Runnells [02:53:44] And we not only landed a car in another planet, but we're driving that car around that planet. We're communicating with it. We're taking pictures with it. We're taking examples with it. It's amazing. I mean, we did that. We came out of the caves and we did that. Science is personal to me. Microchlear implants.

John Dehlin [02:54:08] Yeah. What if people were to say to you, that's the answer to that blessing you got from Wickman?

Jeremy Runnells [02:54:12] No.

John Dehlin [02:54:13] Why not? That's God's hand.

Jeremy Runnells [02:54:16] That's doing a disservice to the people that. To the pioneers and the doctors and the medical researchers. So I know his name, Dr. William House. Back in the 60s, he's the inventor of cochlear implants. So back in the 60s, he had this idea of putting electricity in the human ear through the cochlea, which is a part of the inner ear.

Jeremy Runnells [02:54:41] He was told by doctors, that's crazy. You can't do that. You're insane. Don't do that. The first implant that he implanted in an individual, that individual's body rejected the cochlear implant. It was a failure. And they really got on him. They were like, you can't do this. This is crazy. Just let it go. He didn't.

Jeremy Runnells [02:55:02] He persisted. He pushed harder. He knew that he could make it happen. And because he did that, I can talk to you right now. And I'm thankful for him for not giving up, for pushing. I hear every day because of science. I mean, I can hear.

Jeremy Runnells [02:55:25] I go from not being able to hear a jetliner, a jetliner's engine, to putting my implants on and being able to hear putting the spoon against the macaroni and cheese or the tick tock of the clock. It's just, I mean, my job, I wouldn't have my job without my implants to be able to talk on the phone. So I just. I mean, it's just amazing. And not just that, but like Felix, he jumped out of a perfectly good capsule 24 miles up in space.

Jeremy Runnells [02:56:00] Remember Felix, back in 2012, he jumped out of it. But what was really cool about it was the commander of that mission was a guy that was the record holder at the time. 60 years before that, he jumped out of a capsule at 19 miles. So that was his record. But here he was in 2012, 2013, whatever it was, he was helping this young man, Felix, to be his own record.

Jeremy Runnells [02:56:28] So that human spirit, that drive to become better, that drive to make progress, to alleviate the suffering of others, it inspires me. I get goosebumps thinking about it. I share Neil Degrasse Tyson's philosophy of learn something today that I didn't know yesterday and to alleviate the suffering of others.

John Dehlin [02:57:06] So there are people out there who are scared, and they're scared for two main reasons. One is they're scared that life will get worse if they move away from an orthodox believing perspective or leave the church. And the second is their marriage is on the brink where one is struggling and one is still believing. What would you recommend? What would you say to those two classes of people?

Jeremy Runnells [02:57:36] It's normal to be scared, but it's worth it. It's worth it. It's not going to be easy. There's going to be a roller coaster that you have to strap and put your seatbelt on and ride it for a couple months.

Jeremy Runnells [02:57:52] But it's temporary and it gets better. When you're in a religion that a fundamentalist religion, black and white religion, it's easy to see the world in terms of Your Mormon filters. You don't know anything else. But if you just take that leap of faith and just be honest, just really ask the hard questions and be open to the answers, eventually life is going to be better. But you're going to have to go through the different stages of grief because you're changing the paradigm, you're changing the way of life.

Jeremy Runnells [02:58:36] But you have to. In terms of family members, that's a sticky situation if you have some family members that still believe. Live and let live. It was hard for me in the beginning of my faith crisis with my own family because Elder Rundles showed up. You know, got to convert or deconvert these people. You know, I have the truth now and you know, they're in a fraud. We got to save them. But over time I've gotten rid of Elder Runnells, I think. And in terms of sometimes the right thing is just live and it is the right thing to live and let live. And everybody's situation is different in terms of how to present these issues to your family members or how to explain to them why you left.

Jeremy Runnells [02:59:30] It's probably best not to say, you know, the judge is a fraud. Judge Smith was, you know, a pitiful. Yeah, even though I put that in my letter. But I think I have a good reason for putting it in. But you don't tell them that. You ask them questions, say, you know, this whole polyandry thing, Joseph Smith married other loving men's wives.

Jeremy Runnells [02:59:52] You know, fair confirms this. You can read about it here. What do you think about that? The gold plates were not used for the Book of Mormon translation. You can see this essay. What do you think about that? What are your thoughts? I mean, I'm confused because, you know, to go place the church is saying that the blacks in the priesthood like, you know, these men were just men. And the church now disavows the theories.

Jeremy Runnells [03:00:19] And you can see the essay here. What do you think about that? How do you reconcile this with the revelation and doctrine in, you know, the 20th century, 19th century where the blacks couldn't have the priesthood because of the pre existence or the curse of Cain? How do you reconcile this? So it's basically questions, not lecturing them and telling them that this is a fraud, this is a fraud, this is a fraud.

John Dehlin [03:00:48] Final words for the audience.

Jeremy Runnells [03:00:54] Just hang in there and just be honest with. Not be honest, but be willing to ask the hard questions and to be honest with yourself with those questions. Look at the church the same way that you would look at other religions. Because if you're going to be putting in all that time and effort and 10% of your income and all that commitment. You owe it to yourself to test your testimony because I don't think you really have a true testimony until you're willing to test it to look at the other side, the rest of the story, it gets better and it's worth it. And I want to thank my readers for all their support and the emails that I've received.

Jeremy Runnells [03:01:47] A lot of them have been very touching. I will try my best to get back to you on the emails. I'm sorry that I haven't responded to some of you, but thank you for your support and it's been a crazy ride. Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:02:02] Well, excellent. Well, Jeremy Reynolds, your story inspires me. So I see you as another modern day hero. I'm going to use that word again. I'll stand by it. You've helped a lot of people and I just want to thank you for all your efforts.

Jeremy Runnells [03:02:20] Thank you John.

John Dehlin [03:02:22] The website is cesletter.com I think, right?

Jeremy Runnells [03:02:25] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:02:27] So check it out. Please also feel free to ask Jeremy any questions you have on mormonstories.org we love that back and forth. So we hope that we'll get some good questions there. Thank you so much everyone for your support for all you've done to make this possible, for those who've contributed or encouraged in some way because all those things really make a difference and make this possible. So thanks for joining us on Mormon Stories. We will be following this up with some in depth discussions between Brad Kramer and Jay Nelson C. Wright digging into a bit more detail on the letter and we hope you enjoy that series as well. So thanks again and Jeremy, thanks so much.

Jeremy Runnells [03:03:07] Thank you.

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