Welcome and Introducing Neville Rochow

John Dehlin [00:00:01] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John Dehlin. It is January 21, 2022, and we are so super excited for today's Mormon Stories interview. Today we have with us who I. Someone who I think is a very, very special and important guest. Neville, tell us. Tell us your full name, if you don't mind, and where you're. Where you're joining us from.

Neville Rochow [00:00:33] Yeah, sure. Neville. Rocco. Neville Grant. Rocco, I'm joining you from Adelaide, Australia.

John Dehlin [00:00:40] All right. And I'm also going to add Gerardo to the mix. Hey, Gerardo. So glad to have you with us.

Gerardo Sumano [00:00:46] Hey, thanks, John. Yeah, I'm excited for this interview.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Yeah. Neville, I'm gonna. I'm gonna let you talk a little bit about yourselves, but I always just like to let my listeners know why I picked them so that they can kind of, hopefully they can just take my word for it that this is going to be worth their time. Neville, in your modesty, you'll probably take issue with that characterization. But, Neville, I was introduced to you, I believe, possibly by Simon Southerton, but also possibly through other means. But if I had to summarize why I'm so excited to talk about Neville, I would say that that Neville, and it's Rocco is how you pronounce it.

Neville Rochow [00:01:25] Rocco. Yeah, but that's. That's close enough.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] Rocco. Okay. Neville, Neville. Rocco, in some sense, kind of represents a similar level of, you know, influence or prestige or gravitas, in my view, that the Tom Phillips maybe had in the UK So I, I don't. You know, I know that Tom Phillips is most well known for having received the second anointing. Neville, I haven't even asked you if, if that was something that was even an opportunity that was presented to you. But what I will say is, is that I have to imagine that at some level your. Your status or your importance in Australia is somehow at least in the same family or category of.

John Dehlin [00:02:11] Of what I imagine Tom Phillips's was in the UK and, and for those of you who don't know Tom Phillips in the UK he was, you know, bishop, served stake president twice, and was just very, very deeply respected and well regarded throughout the UK before he had a crisis of faith and ended up leaving the Mormon Church. And, of course, Tom Phillips did receive the second anointing, and in our Mormon Stories podcast, he was willing to talk about it. So, Neville, thank you for coming on. And I would love to invite you just really quickly to maybe introduce yourself to our audience at a high level Correct or add to anything that I've said and then we'll jump into your amazing story. Is that okay?

Neville Rochow [00:02:55] Yeah. I'm not sure about comparisons, so I won't venture into those. But I was a convert to the church in my late teens and spent a long time very dedicated and devoted to the Church. I have experienced, I guess, most things that one would experience from a.

Neville Rochow [00:03:21] A good life in the, in the Mormon Church. I served several missions. I have been a bishop. I've been in the Stake Presidency. I've been in the mission Presidency. Penny, My wife and I were the Church's representatives at the EU for two years working in the Brussels office of the Church.

Neville Rochow [00:03:50] We've had a lot of great opportunities that have come our way through the church. And I think the best way to summarize where I am now is that our relationship with the Church has changed over the last few years through some experiences that I'm sure, John, you'll draw out as we go along.

Neville Rochow [00:04:15] But it's at a point now where I don't believe in the truth claims that the Church makes. I. I can't accept those. But I have deep respect for a number of members of the Church with whom I'm still good friends and they respect my position as well.

Neville Rochow [00:04:37] We have three children, we have four grandchildren. My. The other side of my life has been that I've had a, what I describe as a very exciting legal career. I've enjoyed a great time at the, the, what we call the Bar. I've practiced as a barrister for several years and in 2008 I was elevated to Queen's Council.

Neville Rochow [00:05:05] And I've also just finished a PhD thesis on human rights and international rights and constitutional law. I think that's a reasonable snapshot. If there's anything that I've missed that you think is important, John, I'm sure you'll ask me.

John Dehlin [00:05:27] Oh, that's perfect. That's perfect, Neville. It's just one thoughtful Australian Mormon story. And so I'm just really. And you are a convert to the Church. So today we're going to be talking about your life before Mormonism, your conversion to the Mormon Church, all the many ways that the Mormon Church, I'm going to guess, was actually very beneficial and useful to you in your life, all that you learned from it. And then you know what, what has led to a change in your relationship with the Mormon Church and kind of where, where you, where you are today. So that's we're in store for, let's just say a two or Three hour Mormon Stories interview.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] And of course, Neville, if you need to take a bathroom break or however they would say that in Australia, go to the loo. I'm not sure I will cover for you as you need to step out. But we go, we go long. We go long and deep on Mormon Stories podcast.

Neville Rochow [00:06:25] That's, that's great fun. I'm looking forward to it.

John Dehlin [00:06:27] Gerardo, anything you want to say before we jump in?

Gerardo Sumano [00:06:30] No, just. Just really excited. I think something that's really interesting about Neville's story. I think he has some insight into the church's legal movements in Australia. And so it's going to be really interesting to hear how the church operates legally in Australia.

John Dehlin [00:06:53] Yeah. And Neville, I asked you just to explain this right before we started, but for our listeners who, who don't know, do you mind explaining kind of your. Your legal title or position in Australia and what that means? Because it's on the thumbnail and it's kind of in the title. Queen's Council. Right?

What It Means to Be a Queen's Counsel

Neville Rochow [00:07:11] Yeah, sure. We, we follow the English tradition of having a separate profession between solicitors and barristers. And within barristers, there's a division between what are called junior council. By junior. It's got nothing to do with their age. It just means that they're not senior counsel.

Neville Rochow [00:07:35] And senior council, or Queen's Council is the upper division of barristers, or what we call the inner bar. So Queen's Council is an accolade that is received after a barrister has practiced in a number of areas and received a lot of experience, and has attained a level of eminence that the state acknowledges by conferring the title Queen's Council or qc, which is usually after their name.

Neville Rochow [00:08:14] And it means that you get to do the more complex cases. You usually work with a junior barrister and solicitors. The solicitors take the instructions from the client. The barristers get the case ready and present it in court.

Neville Rochow [00:08:33] And I've had opportunity over several years to work with some great legal teams. I've really enjoyed my associations in the legal profession. I consider our profession here to be a noble one, a respectful one and a respectable one. I trust all of my colleagues implicitly and love working with them. I also have great respect for our judges. We have a very good judiciary in this country, I think, and it's one that's respected through the world. But I'm very. There's never been a day when I've not been very happy to get up and go to work because I just love the work, very much

John Dehlin [00:09:20] love it. Okay. Well Neville, where does your pre Mormon story, your pre Mormon Australian story begin? Let's start there.

Growing Up on the Wrong Side of the Tracks

Neville Rochow [00:09:31] Yeah, sure. Well, I think it's fair to say that I was probably born on what we might call the wrong side of the tracks. My family weren't particularly well off. In fact I think they were lower middle class or maybe even working class. My father was in the navy, my mother was home duties without going into it too much.

Neville Rochow [00:10:02] My family was fairly dysfunctional. It wasn't a very happy home but somehow I was able to cut through because even though we lived in poorer areas, I found refuge in, in books and ideas from a very early age that gave me a way of escaping from what was a pretty, pretty awful sort of milieu.

Neville Rochow [00:10:33] So I was born in Sydney, grew up in what we call the western suburbs, which are the, which is the poorer area of Sydney. I did my primary or elementary education at Sydney. I did very well at school.

Neville Rochow [00:10:51] I was always the smallest kid in the class and the youngest kid in the class because I'd skipped grades and I, I was, I was given a pretty rough time with bullying I think because my bookwormy weights which were really out of keeping with the area in which we lived.

Neville Rochow [00:11:12] When we finish, when I finished primary school we moved to Adelaide, which is where I live now. I went to again a fairly down at heel high school. It wasn't very good but then when I got to university I think that's really when I got my break. I was finally among people that I could relate to.

Neville Rochow [00:11:38] I, I loved law school. I loved the intellectual challenge, I loved the, I just loved everything about it. And that's really where I came into my own. I discovered lots of things that could give me solace. But in the middle of all that I was converted to the church.

John Dehlin [00:12:01] I, I'm sorry Neville, can I ask you a question just really quickly?

Neville Rochow [00:12:05] Of course.

John Dehlin [00:12:06] So you kind of referenced this a little bit but this is something that I've found, you know, I found in my missionary experiences as a Mormon missionary and I find is very common in the lives of those who convert to the LDS Church and that's that oftentimes people that convert to high demand religions come from pretty turbulent, often come from very turbulent backgrounds. You don't find people who are like super healthy, super happy, came from a great family, have a great career and then they join Mormonism. You know as an adult with a high education level and a super happy life, there's usually often a pretty turbulent life or a pretty turbulent upbringing bringing that somehow makes them Seeking puts them on a path to.

John Dehlin [00:13:00] Seeking to fill some holes or to repair some wounds from their upbringing. You know, you talked, you, I think you referenced a bit that it was maybe a bit of a difficult upbringing. But do you want to talk about maybe what, what was it about your life that made you ripe or, or, I don't want to say vulnerable because that's negative. Like that made you open or amenable or curious about a religion like Mormonism.

Neville Rochow [00:13:30] My amenability came in two ways, I think. First, when I was a teenager, I met a friend at school who was a Christian and he invited me along to his church and Christian church, which I attended. And it wasn't long before I became what we refer to as a born again Christian.

Neville Rochow [00:13:56] And I know that's a term that's common in the States as well. So that was my pathway, I guess, to give me some sort of eternal hope. Whether I was seeking that as such, I couldn't really say. But I could say this, that I met another friend who was reading the Book of the New Testament in the library at school. I asked him what church he belonged to and he said the Church of Jesus Christ, Flood Day Saints, what do they believe? The Bible, The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of great price.

Neville Rochow [00:14:38] And that started a fairly long process of investigation which I undertook with him. A lot of debate, a lot of hope on my part that I might be able to prove it all wrong. But in due course, I was converted to the LDS faith.

Neville Rochow [00:15:02] I think some of the draw cards for me were in contrast to my own family. It presented a pattern for raising and conducting a happy family. They used to have in those days, the family home evening manuals, which I found very attractive. The other, the other thing was that it presented me with the truth as, as it was claimed, and the glory of God is intelligence, or in other words, light and truth. And those concepts were very attractive to me.

Neville Rochow [00:15:46] And it seemed to me like a life raft, as it were, from what was a fairly unhappy type of life I was leading in my family. The other refuge that I found was I built sort of a bubble or an internal world in my family. I, I was very interested in art and music and literature and that and film and, and those sort of intellectual pursuits. So I had a modality for a family that was being presented to me by the Mormon Church.

Neville Rochow [00:16:26] And there was an escape intellectually into these other worlds that I enjoyed very much. So I think the two coalesced to give me an avenue out. And that avenue led on to university, to my obtaining law degrees, and to what has really been a fairly happy life since I started to gain an education.

Investigating and Converting to Mormonism at Sixteen

John Dehlin [00:16:53] So what age did you start investigating Mormonism, approximately?

Neville Rochow [00:16:59] I think it was about 16 or 17. I, I remember the converting experience very vividly. I was in my, in my bedroom at home, door shut alone, and I was reading the book by Legrand Richards. A marvelous work and a wonder.

Neville Rochow [00:17:24] I, I was really enjoying that. And then I came to one of the early chapters that says Joseph Smith was prophesied in the Bible. I remember the, the disgust that I felt at that claim. I thought, really, everything's going well. You don't really need to spoil it with this preposterous claim that Joseph Smith is somehow, you know, somebody that was prophesied thousands of years before.

Neville Rochow [00:17:55] So I put down the book in disgust and I thought, well, that was going well for a while, but clearly that's not the way forward for me. And then I just got this. I guess at the time I would have called it a prompting. Now I, I'm not sure what I'd call it, but it was a prompting at the time to open my Bible to Isaiah 29 in the Old Testament. And those who are familiar with Mormon doctrine or its culture know that Isaiah 29 is a fairly pivotal scripture. And I read that. And as I, as I was reading was as if the page melted away before me.

Neville Rochow [00:18:38] And I just saw visually the events of the restoration of the Gospel, including the translation of the Book of Mormon, the, the offering of Charles Anthem, the opportunity to translate the book, and not being able to read a sealed book. And so as a result of that experience, that became foundational for me. It was what we would call, in the biblical sense, a Pentecostal experience.

Neville Rochow [00:19:11] As I interpreted it, because it was deeply spiritual, it was, it was the heart burning, all those sorts of things that Mormons are familiar with. And I wanted to shout the restoration of the gospel from the rooftops. I was profoundly persuaded at that point that it was all true.

Gerardo Sumano [00:19:31] I, I have a question for you, Neville. So this, all these things that you were, that you knew about Charles Anthon and the prophecy about not being able to read a sealed book, did you learn those things through Legrand Richard's book, is that correct?

Neville Rochow [00:19:50] I, I'd learned it through my long discussions with my friend, through the reading of the material that he gave me. I mean, none of the things that I saw in, in that visionary experience weren't new. It was just the way that they flowed so nicely, as it were, on the Page that, that was a new experience. It all brought it all together. The, the difficulty, and I think we'll come back to this in any event, but the difficulty that I have with that experience now as riveting and as changing it was for me at the time was the, the, the vision, as I think you're suggesting, was a regurgitation of things that I'd already learned.

Neville Rochow [00:20:42] And it was, there was nothing new. But one thing that was interesting was the process of translation of the Book of Mormon that I saw in this visionary experience. And it was Joseph Smith sitting at a table with the Urim and Thummim with the plates and translating. There was no rock and a hat phenomenon.

Neville Rochow [00:21:09] None of the things that now seem to have osmotically have been absorbed into Mormonism. Now that's, that's significant for one reason. At the time I was obviously still in communication with people from my previous church and they were giving me a lot of what was called anti Mormon literature.

Neville Rochow [00:21:30] And one of the tracts that I was given suggested that Joseph Smith had actually not translated the Book of Mormon from plates, but that he had just put a rock and a hat. And the rock was one that he'd found when he was a treasure digger and he used that rock to dictate the Book of Mormon from what he saw in the hat. I put that both to the missionaries and to my friends.

Neville Rochow [00:22:00] Oh my, my friend in the church. And he said both of them, both the missionaries. And he said it was preposterous. And that was never the case and could never be the case. And I said, well I'm glad you said that because if it were, I wouldn't have anything to do with this. That's just absurd. And they gave me a quote from Joseph Fielding Smith who I think was either the then prophet or was about, was just succeeded as the prophet. Maybe Harold B. Lee had taken over. I can't remember exactly but, but where? He said, I've heard this story before and I can't think of anything more absurd or ridiculous.

Neville Rochow [00:22:45] It's just not true. He, he translated from the plates, otherwise what's the point of the plates? Why were they preserved? You know why, why have a urim and thumb if you're not going to use it? You're just going to find some rock and a will. And I mean, I'm paraphrasing what he said.

John Dehlin [00:23:02] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:03] Joseph feeling Smith says that he would. It was an inferior, an inferior method and he just couldn't grasp as to why Joseph Smith would use that instead of The Urim and Thummim. Therefore he didn't believe that Joseph Smith used the Rock and a hat.

Neville Rochow [00:23:18] Yeah. You're familiar with the, the quote.

Gerardo Sumano [00:23:21] Yeah. Anyway, Doctrines of salvation on volume.

Neville Rochow [00:23:24] It is, that's right. Yeah, it is, that's right. Anyway, so with that quote, I thought, well, okay, okay then as weird as all this is, and it was weird, it still produces a pretty good result, you know, from what I can see. It's the sort of thing that I want in terms of its outcomes. I think they both had a very low rate of divorce among people who are temple married. They, you know, the family home evening gave this very glossy, and I mean literally glossy version of family life. I thought, yeah, that's what, that's really what I want. And so with that assurance, I was prepared to be. Become a member.

John Dehlin [00:24:17] Yeah. And we'll come back to this, Neville. But I'm kind of torn because on the one hand you're saying that if you maybe if you had known all the accurate elements of Mormon Church history, you, you might maybe not have joined it as you did or when you did. On the other hand, I think you're also acknowledging that at some level all religion, including even the correlated version of Mormon history, defies logic at some level. And that really you weren't converting over the logic, you were converting over a lifestyle that you felt like Mormonism would offer you. Is that fair to say?

Neville Rochow [00:24:56] That's fair to say. Coupled with that perceived spiritual Pentecostal experience that I'd had, which just brought all of these weird teachings together into a package of prophecy. So with the assurance that I never felt comfortable about Joseph Smith at all, I have to say that's true.

Neville Rochow [00:25:22] I, I never really liked the idea of a prophet called Joseph Smith. It never gelled for me very well. But my, my feeling ill at ease about that was placated, I think, even eroded by all these other things that you just mentioned, John. So I got to a stage where I could live with that and in fact, even eventually celebrate it as something that didn't disturb me nearly as much.

Neville Rochow [00:25:56] So it's, it's, it's very hard to work out precise causes and effects in these sorts of things because they're very nuanced and there are so many little influences. But from that point forward, I just went as hard as I could to get a hold of that lifestyle as quickly as I could. I love it.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] Makes sense. And so did you. Did you. What was the determining factor? You sort of accepting Moroni's promise and you know Moroni 10:4 reading the book of Mormon, praying it and getting a spiritual witness. Or, or did, did that decision come in some other way?

Neville Rochow [00:26:40] I think in some other way. I, I, I was not your classical kneel down and ask whether the Book of Mormon is true sort of guy. It came in a number of ways. I mean I, I checked out a lot of the claims about the restoration and modeling of the church through New Testament study.

Neville Rochow [00:26:59] I was fairly familiar with the New Testament and so I, I think I approached it in a fairly academic way in that I made extensive notes on what Paul had said about the foundation of the Church being on apostles, prophets, etc and Jesus Christ being the chief cornerstone.

Neville Rochow [00:27:21] There's a lot of interlocking and dovetailing of concepts from church teaching, missionary discussions, New Testament study. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't really say that the Book of Mormon, while, while I didn't disregard it, it wasn't instrumental in my conversion. It was more a New Testament, Old Testament spiritual experience with the Isaiah 29 type of process rather than just one night kneeling down by my bed and saying, I'm checking out Morono's promise here. God, is it true? So it was, it was incremental,

John Dehlin [00:28:10] it

Neville Rochow [00:28:10] was gradual, but it was pretty solid too.

Social vs Spiritual Motivations for Conversion

John Dehlin [00:28:16] How, how much of it would you say was social or social or emotional versus spiritual? Because I, I kind of have a theory that most conversions are primarily social and emotional and maybe secondarily or tertiarily intellectual. Was it, was it a, was it largely a social or emotional conversion?

Neville Rochow [00:28:40] Well, I'm probably a bit influenced by David Hume because he says that we're, although we like to give the symbols of rationality as humans, we're really emotional beings in our decision making. And I, I think that's right. I think we'd like to dress up things as having been logical, but I think that's an ex post facto set of rationalizations for what are really emotional decisions. Where we go with where our desires lead us and hopefully there's some rationality to back it up. And I think that's true of me with my conversion, that it certainly was emotional. I had, I had a lot that I really wanted to be backfilled into my life that wasn't there.

Neville Rochow [00:29:26] And I rationalized myself that the Mormon Church was there, but I'd had these spiritual experiences which turn out to be emotional experiences in any event, but I had those that I think brought me to a place where I was right for the picking in terms of conversion.

John Dehlin [00:29:48] I love it. It's so Great. Okay, so anything you want to share about your baptism or your conversion or what happened after that?

Neville Rochow [00:29:57] It was pretty lackluster, the baptismal experience, I've got to say. What had happened was my parents were firmly opposed to my joining the church, so I was what they call a dry Mormon for a couple of years. Years. And then.

John Dehlin [00:30:15] What do you mean? Tell us what you mean by that. For those who don't know.

Neville Rochow [00:30:18] Well, what I, I was living, living all the principles and acting as if I were a Mormon, but because I wasn't allowed to be baptized, I wasn't officially a member of the church. And. But then, then some events at away bother going into occurred where I had the opportunity to, to leave home, which I had to do because my parents said you'd never be a Mormon under our roof. Travel interstate, get baptized. And that's. It was all just a, it was a pretty lacklust

Gerardo Sumano [00:31:03] non.

Neville Rochow [00:31:03] Event in a way. I, I don't want to be disrespectful about the ordinances, but it wasn't anywhere as near as sp. As special as those types of spiritual experience that I was enjoying before I actually joined the church.

John Dehlin [00:31:19] Okay. And so baptism was a tiny bit anticlimactic.

Neville Rochow [00:31:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:31:27] And your parents weren't super excited? No.

Neville Rochow [00:31:30] Well, they're excited, but not enthusiastic.

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Yeah. Because I mean, oftentimes from a non Mormon parent perspective, you know, and this is an offensive term to use at least in the United States, like from a non Mormon's perspective, especially parents. It's like my kids are joining a cult. A cult is, is stealing my child from me. And that's not to call the Mormon Church occult, it's just to convey, and I'm guessing in Australia it might even be worse than in the United States.

Neville Rochow [00:32:00] I, I think it's, I think it's very different again here, just another layer added to that because whereas the, the Mormon Church in the United States has some prestige, some presence, some level of acceptability, certainly back at the time that we're talking about in the 70s, it had none of that here in Australia. And my mother had a cousin who had joined the church who became a very prominent member in the, in the church in New Zealand.

Neville Rochow [00:32:40] And in fact, he, he was the principal of the church college in New Zealand. But she had a lot of anecdotes that she thought were pretty weird about him and his family, and she didn't want my having any part of that to be part of my experience, so.

Neville Rochow [00:32:59] Yeah, but they were, I mean, these, these were not sophisticated people My parents, they were pretty visceral in their reaction to things. So it wasn't like I could sit down with them and reason with them. It was. There was a lot of yelling and screaming about this stuff, and it wasn't pleasant. So I made a lot of sacrifices to join the church. And for a while when I, when I, my relationship with the church changed, I have got to say I was pretty angry because, I mean, I'm not angry now. I'm fine. But at that time I was a bit angry because I thought, I've given up a lot for this and it turns out to be a bag of beans.

Neville Rochow [00:33:49] You know, it's just, it's just not worth the sacrifice that I made. Now, again, that's something we can probably return to a little later. But, you know, I, I made some pretty significant sacrifices for what I believe to be true.

Neville Rochow [00:34:07] And they were emotional sacrifices as much as, as temporal or physical sacrifices. I was really severing relationships with my family, such as it was. I mean, I still love my parents, even though they were, they were crazy. My father was an alcoholic, my mother was a neurotic, my brother was a habitual drug user.

Neville Rochow [00:34:29] So it wasn't. And I was none of those things. I was, I was just different. I was different in every way from the rest of my family. And that made me sort of a weird, quirky kid anyway. And they, they, they like other people in my environment, made me feel uncomfortable about those things. So, yeah, comes at a cost. And the question always is, with cost benefit analyses, is it worth it in the end? And I think, I think looking back on it, yes, it was worth it, really. The whole thing has been worth it.

Neville Rochow [00:35:11] Weaving it into the woof and wolf of my life, it's been tremendous, but it's just not what I thought it was. And so my relationship has had to change.

Early Church Service and a Building Mission

John Dehlin [00:35:24] So let's talk about what Mormonism brought to you and what your Mormon experience was like, because you could, you could probably say you turned out pretty well, especially relative to other people who were your peers or other family members. And I'm going to just predict that. What I'm going to say at the end is, hey, you turned out pretty well, Neville. And it's hard to say the church didn't have a positive influence. So let's talk about the positive and negative influences of Mormonism in your life after you converted.

Neville Rochow [00:35:53] Happy to do that. Because it is true that it has been a very positive influence in my life in many ways. And I think, I think the first positive Influence. I, I, I, I, After I was baptized, I served a short mission in Tasmania working as what they then called a building missionary. I had to come home because I was injured. I, I broke my foot on a work site but, and in fact my parents accepted me back into their home after that, which was sort of funny after all the acrimony that we've been through. But I served a building mission while I was in law school. I was, I was in my, I'm

John Dehlin [00:36:42] not sure people know what a building mission is because I don't know, I

Neville Rochow [00:36:46] don't think most law Mormons know anymore.

John Dehlin [00:36:47] Yeah.

Neville Rochow [00:36:47] Because they don't exist. But what I did was I, I volunteer, I was asked by my bishop to volunteer as a, as a building missionary and I worked on the reconstruction of a chapel down in Tasmania. And you work under a supervisor, you don't have a companion as such. But what I did, because I was mad keen as a, as a new convert, I went out with the full time missionaries, the ordinary proselytizing missionaries as an off often as I could to engage in teaching and tracting and the like in my hours off work. But normally you can just live a fairly normal life out of, out of work hours. But yeah, I, I, I did some building work on the Glenhugan Chapel in Tasmania.

John Dehlin [00:37:42] Okay. And that was before serving a traditional Mormon mission, right?

Neville Rochow [00:37:47] Yeah, yeah. So then, then I came home, then I, then I enrolled in law school, had a great time with my friends, with the student body. I, I, the, the thing about university and law school for me was that I learned for the first time in my life that there were rich people.

Neville Rochow [00:38:15] I, I just, I just hadn't experienced that. But just about everybody at law school came from very wealthy families and from private schools and I was probably one of the two or three in my, in my year that hadn't been to a private school.

Neville Rochow [00:38:36] But I was adopted into their, into their friendship circles. I formed fast friendships that I still enjoy today and it, I think all the interests that I'd had as a teenager I could just indulge to their absolute limit.

Neville Rochow [00:38:58] Excuse me. Because of the university environment and yeah, so that was great. But then, then I qualified for what we call an honors year. Excuse me, I've just got a drink here.

John Dehlin [00:39:12] No worries. This is so, this is so fun. I'm loving it.

Neville Rochow [00:39:20] Yeah. Okay, so I, I qualified for what we call honors year, which is where the, the top 5% of the, of a class get to write an honors thesis under supervision of one of the, one of the professors and it's sort of a very prestigious thing to be invited to do. And so I. Oh, I'm sorry about this, John.

John Dehlin [00:39:48] No worries.

Neville Rochow [00:39:50] Got that plaguing frog in the throat. I, so I was invited to do that. I, and at the same time I was feeling pretty bad about having not served a full time mission, traditional mission, and I prayed about it and then I got this.

Gerardo Sumano [00:40:12] Neville, can you, for non Mormon listeners, can you talk a little bit about your feelings around not serving a mission? What that's like in the church? Why is that important? Sure.

Neville Rochow [00:40:27] I mean they're.

Gerardo Sumano [00:40:28] When they don't serve a mission.

Neville Rochow [00:40:30] Yeah, there, there are. If they're not officially mandated, there are certainly socially expected steps in, in the pathway for a young Mormon man. The first thing is to be ordained an elder, which is receiving what's called the Melchizedek priesthood.

Neville Rochow [00:40:54] The next thing after that is to serve a mission which is where the prophet of the church allocates you to some area of service in the world where you proselytize. And the missionaries on bikes, the guys who knock on the doors, those guys and, and indeed the ladies as well, they've all gone through that process of being called on a mission and I hadn't made myself available for that service and I was feeling a bit guilty about that because I, I was.

Neville Rochow [00:41:34] Well, sort of, yeah, I felt that that was a thing that was missing in my life. So I was praying about it and I got this, what I considered at the time to be an answer that you can go on a mission anytime you like, but this is the last time I'm calling you. I thought that was a voice from heaven telling me that. So I went straight away to see the bishop. He, he got the paper process going

Gerardo Sumano [00:42:01] and

Neville Rochow [00:42:04] then in due course I was, I was called to serve in the Germany Humboldt Mission. That was great for me because I'd never been out of the country. I, I'd never experienced anything of travel or any of those things that, that could be so life changing.

John Dehlin [00:42:23] So did you speak, did you speak German?

Gerardo Sumano [00:42:27] No.

John Dehlin [00:42:29] No.

Neville Rochow [00:42:31] So yeah, it was. Although I have, have a very strong German ancestry. The genealogy of our family or my family is Danish, predominantly German, a little bit of English, so we're very northern European. You can probably tell that by looking at me. But. So that was the next heartbreak for my family that here I was being offered a prestigious opportunity at the university and I was going to knock that back and go off and serve a, serve a Mormon mission and they couldn't accept that. There's a lot of entanglement that could go through on that. But anyway, the short of it is that I accepted the call. I postponed my honors year for two years and went to Germany, Hamburg. And that was, I think. Don't want. Sorry.

John Dehlin [00:43:40] Oh, keep, sorry. Keep going.

Neville Rochow [00:43:42] I thought somebody called me. The. That was completely life changing. When I arrived in Germany, I decided, okay, this is home for the next two years and I'm just gonna love it. And I did. I loved the German people. Although I didn't speak German, I'd read a lot of German literature in translation.

Neville Rochow [00:44:03] And because the Germans generally are so cerebral, that stood me in good stead in, in general conversation, the fact that I played chess pretty well. They loved that because this, they're great chess players. And I just had this fantastic experience of being, I guess inculcated in a, in a new culture that was so rich and had such a long history and, and was part of my history.

Neville Rochow [00:44:34] So that, that was a, that was good and that satisfied. I think I made that division between the intellectual and the spiritual before that was certainly very appealing to my intellectual self. I just enjoyed it. I had very early a companion who was, who was German. He was an older guy. He had already finished his university training and he and I just hit it off so well. We, we got along so well, but he trained me in my German. We, we'd speak German all day and I'd help him with his English at night. And, and he said, you know, he hadn't been able to find a companion that knew anything about English grammar.

Neville Rochow [00:45:17] That's what. Grammar's easy. I, I know that. And so I was able to help him with grammar. And, and at the end of our couple of months together, we couldn't tell, we really couldn't tell whether we're speaking English or German.

Neville Rochow [00:45:33] And I'd quite often go on the doors and people would say, which part of Germany are you from? Because he'd trained me in the right accent and the right inflections and gave me a few colloquialisms that I could throw into my, my speech. And so my, my German was, it was good. When I got out of the mtc, I think I had a fairly high FSI score when I left the mtc.

Neville Rochow [00:45:59] But by the time I'd finished with him, I, I remember sitting in church one day and I thought, gee, I understand everything they're saying, everything. I get this. I. And I could say everything I wanted to say and it was just, it was just marvelous. So, but then, then the Other thing was that I served with a lot of American companions, who they were, and some of them are still my friends today, again, who had been raised in good families.

Neville Rochow [00:46:34] And I was learning how the dynamics of Mormonism is implemented, how it's practiced, what the, what the praxis is for a family, how you, how Mormonism is done, and, you know, like, blessings on the food and morning and evening prayer and those sorts of things that are natural to people who've been raised in the church, but were things that I had yet to learn. And I picked up a lot of that sort of thing from, from my companions and, and their tales of their families and things like that. And I, I started to get a good picture of how a Mormon family might be. So that was all very, very good for me.

Neville Rochow [00:47:26] And, and the, the German people I found very accepting of me. They, they loved me and I loved them. So I, I had no experiences as a, as a missionary that I just didn't love. I mean, I didn't enjoy tracting very much, but, you know, that, that just was part of the, the deal.

Neville Rochow [00:47:49] And I also got to see a lot of Germany because for the last seven months of my mission, I was what they call an assistant to the President, which is where I, I could travel with him. Him. My, me and my companion, both of us would get to travel with the President to the various parts of the mission.

Neville Rochow [00:48:09] We also had to go through what was then called the Zone, which was the communist part of Germany. So I went through that several times. I was, I'm probably one of the few people in any room that got arrested at Checkpoint Charlie.

Neville Rochow [00:48:27] I, I managed to somehow get out of that, that tangle, but I got arrested there for having spoken with the, with some native communist Germans. So, yeah, that was, that was fun, but yeah, it was a great experience.

Neville Rochow [00:48:45] And I came home. In fact, I came home and I did start my honest thesis a few. About a week after I got home, and I, I found that I could no longer read English properly. I, I remember I was sitting, sitting in the law library reading a law report, and I read a page over and over and I just couldn't understand it. The language, Language was too complicated. It was just too hard. And I, I just walked out in tears. I thought, gee, I used to be very good at English and I'm not anymore. But everything started to come together and I, I settled in and when I came home, my wife Penny was still on her mission in Italy, and eventually I proposed to her. We got married the following year and the Rest is, as they say, history.

John Dehlin [00:49:48] I love it. All right. Yeah. I think for so many of us that Mormon mission is such a formative experience and that temple marriage is such a formative experience. And I was, I think I was a successful missionary and I didn't make assistant to the president. So I think, you know, you sharing with us that you did achieve that level of service just testifies to how committed you were as, as wanting to be a devout, hard working, faithful, obedient, righteous, committed Latter Day Saint. True.

Marriage, Family, and Deep Commitment to the Faith

Neville Rochow [00:50:24] Yeah, yeah, that, that's it. That, that's really it. Yeah. So Petey and I got married in 1983. We were sealed in the music New Zealand temple and I think she'd been raised in the church and I think that's where I really started to realize that some of the dysfunctionality of my, my nuclear family had still survived in me despite all the conversion process and all the experiences I'd been through.

Neville Rochow [00:50:58] And so I, I was really indebted to her to pointing out a lot of things that were just quirks that I'd brought with me from my previous life as a non member and as a fairly unhappy non member.

Neville Rochow [00:51:15] So we, we had, you know, we had, I had to learn a lot in the first year or two and she was a very patient teacher. It was fantastic. But I think in those early days, Penny and I probably realized that while we were absolutely committed, devout, tithe paying, card carrying members of the church, absolutely devoted, never say no to a calling, do whatever you're supposed to do, serve whatever, that both of us realized that what I call retail Mormonism was not quite for us.

Neville Rochow [00:52:04] We wanted something a little more, a little more challenging. And we were a bit isolated out here in Australia because there was no one. Or there, I won't say there was no one, but there was the few and far people, the few and far between people who can talk with you about some of the more interesting areas of the gospel and history and, and the church. And so I'm not sure how I hit upon it, but I said, why don't we subscribe to Dialogue, a journal of Mormon thought? Which was, which gave us sort of a, another angle on the way the church worked and the way other people thought about it.

Neville Rochow [00:52:49] So that brought us into a community of thinkers within the church. And that was for us, quite satisfying in those early years. I remember I was, I was at work one day and Penny called me up and said, neville, the first Dialogue, Dialogue has just come and I've just read the first article. Let me tell you all about. And she was so excited to, to share it all with me. And so we, we had a very enjoyable life where we had our routine retail type of stuff that we were doing in church, enjoying the fellowship of the members, participating in activities, attending church on Sunday, paying our tithing, etc.

Neville Rochow [00:53:45] But then we had this other stuff that we could get into and, and look into and, and think about and challenge each other with and say what if and what about. And that was, that was a lot of fun. So really I'd, I'd reached nirvana, if you will. I was very, very happy. And then our first daughter came along fairly quick.

John Dehlin [00:54:10] Neville, can I ask you really quickly a question?

Neville Rochow [00:54:13] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:54:15] So Dialogue Journal. So for our non Mormon listeners, I just included a link to it. We'll include it in the show notes. I just pasted it in the comments. Think for those of you don't. And there's a lot of, I'd say most Mormons have no idea what Dialogue Journal even is. And so I'll just summarize that. Basically in the mid to late 1960s, a group of faithful Mormon scholars got together. People like Eugene England and, and I would say people like Leonard Arrington and Bob Reese and others. Even down.

Neville Rochow [00:54:51] Don't leave out Del. I was going to say that yet.

John Dehlin [00:54:53] Del H. Oaks are current number two Mormon in the world. The First Presidency, first counselor in the Mormon First Presidency. They start a Dialogue, a journal of Mormon thought, which was intended to be an academic journal where Mormonism could be discussed academically, intellectually, scientifically, but also faithfully.

John Dehlin [00:55:13] And over the years, you know, dialogues talked about feminism, they've talked about racism, they've talked about the Book of Mormon and science and evolution and, you know, Book of Mormon historicity and just any of the controversies that ended up that Fawn Brody revealed in, in 1945 in her book no Man Knows My History. Any of the things that ended up in the CES letter or the Gospel topics essays were covered in depth in excruciating and loving delightful detail in the Dialogue Journal, which came out quarterly and continues to come out quarterly for four or five decades. And so I'm, I'm, I just have to ask you, like, so we're talking about the 1980s, which is right when they'd be talking about BH Roberts and, you know, Book of Abraham stuff and just all of the big controversies.

John Dehlin [00:56:10] So you and Penny are faithful Australian Mormons and you're like subscribing to Dialogue and giddy to receive your first copy like that's. Almost kind of mind blowing to me. Can you talk to us about, like, how was that? How were you faithful and reading Dialogue? And why were you even curious about Dialogue? Because so, you know, even the church, by the late 80s, early 90s, had denounced both Dialogue and Sunstone as being dangerous.

John Dehlin [00:56:44] So I'm just trying to imagine a world where you guys are faithful Australian Latter Day Saints and giddy to receive your first copy of this journal that the church ends up condemning as, as an enemy to faith.

Neville Rochow [00:56:58] Well, yeah, that's a hard question. That's a hard question to answer because it's, it's almost like there was this. I, I, I've got a lot of filing cabinets in my head. And I, I remember when I was a kid, you know, I was very young. I was, I was probably 6 or 7 and I was really into paleontology. I know that's really popular now with young kids. Every kid likes dinosaurs and fossils and everything, but back in those days, that was a little more rare. It's a little more eccentric to be so turned on by, by those sorts of things. And I, I just assumed, without even thinking about it, the theory of evolution was correct.

Neville Rochow [00:57:52] But I also believed in Genesis. How do you do that? And we had a large Catholic family that lived across the street from us and they had 10 kids. And one of the kids that was my age said, how can you believe in the Bible and believe in dinosaurs?

Neville Rochow [00:58:16] And that question had never occurred to me. And I just, I just, from that time on, I just kept separate, separate compartments. So there was, I think, coming moving fast forward to our early married life of dialogue. I think what it was was we were absolutely committed at the faith level to the church and did all the things we had to do and had no compunctions about doing those things. We were returned missionaries, were married in the temple. We did the stuff that covenants told you you had to do, but we couldn't put our brains into suspended animation. So we needed some stimulation.

Neville Rochow [00:59:02] And so when, when questions came up in dialogue, I don't think it ever registered with me that they were threats to the believability of the church. I just, I just stored those away in that little Dialogue filing cabinet.

Neville Rochow [00:59:18] Open that up to enjoy that, close that when I was about to go back and do faithful service and teach elders quorum or high priest quorum or whatever, I had to do. Not a very good explanation, I know, but that's, that's the best I can come up with.

John Dehlin [00:59:34] No, it's just, it's actually amazing explanation because nowadays it seems. Well, it seems like the Church is really torn, and it has been at battle with itself. Because on the one hand, it seems like for decades and decades, whether it's Joseph Fielding Smith or Bruce R. McConkie or Boyd K. Packer, these sort of orthodox, fundamentalist, conservative Mormon church leaders. Bruce McConkey, that they felt like intellectuality is antithetical to devout Mormonism, that science is an enemy to faith, that reason is an intellectual, that reason is antithetical to faith, and that you have to stomp out the intellectuals. And that's why they denounce Dialogue. They denounce Sunstone.

John Dehlin [01:00:24] They excommunicated the September 6th. They've excommunicated so many other people thinking that that's what they needed to do to preserve faith. And I can get why they did that. I don't think that's unique to Mormonism. On the other hand, what I hear you saying is I hear you saying two things. That, number one, that you needed a place to be able to explore intellectual things, scientific things. You and Penny, you needed that. And that Dialogue, the very thing that the Church ended up condemning, was actually an important part of your remaining faithful in the church.

John Dehlin [01:01:09] And that's what I heard with Mormon stories for so many years before they excommunicated me. And that's what I heard about Bill Real and so many other. And so, I don't know, it's making me wonder whether sometimes I feel like the Church did the right thing, that by condemning intellectual enterprises, they were preserving people's devotion to the Church. But in your case, I'm hearing the Dialogue, things like Dialogue was actually helping you and Penny stay faithful. Is that. Is that true or fair to say?

Neville Rochow [01:01:39] It's fair to say with a couple of. A couple of, I guess, qualifications on boundaries. So we had concluded from what we'd heard, not from what we'd read, that Sunstone would be a step too far for us. So we never subscribed to Sunstone.

Neville Rochow [01:02:04] And we actually did cancel our subscription to Dialogue when that condemnation started, when the Church was saying, you can't be reading that stuff anymore. Well, you can't be reading that stuff. So we stopped because we were faithful members, but we felt the loss.

Neville Rochow [01:02:24] But Dialogue also brought it upon itself for us as well, because as they change editors, so the. So the. The camber of the thought changes, as well, as you would well know. And they brought in some editors that were really into.

Neville Rochow [01:02:41] And this is after the September 6, we. We grieved and were Shocked at their excommunications. We, because we, they'd become, they didn't know this, but they'd become our friends. And when they were excommunicated, that, that troubled us, but not troubled in that we were questioning the Church. We just thought, whoa, we can't go too far here. We got to be a bit careful.

Neville Rochow [01:03:06] And then when the editor changed to start bringing in praying to Mother in Heaven and those sorts of themes, we thought, yeah, you know, this is, this is really off beat. I don't find this intellectually interesting. It's not going into any history. It's going into realms of theological speculation.

Neville Rochow [01:03:32] We don't need it. And so we stopped it. And it was about that time that I started getting called into responsible positions. I was called into the High Council, the, the bishopric. Then I was called as bishop. Before that, I'd been called as a 70 and I became the state mission president. So we were getting busier and busier and we had less time to spend reading things like Dialogue or other books.

Decades of Heavy Service with No Time for Questions

Neville Rochow [01:04:03] So in a way, service overtook us and we just got busy. We had no time for questions. We had no time for things. Penny was a Stake Relief Society president. I was, I was then the bishop. And then soon after that, I was called in the state presidency.

Neville Rochow [01:04:24] Then after the state presidency, I was called for a long time into public affairs. And I was the sort of guy that they, they, they all hated behind the scenes because I was this intellectual lawyer, too big for my boots, they probably thought.

Neville Rochow [01:04:41] But I was also sort of guy they wanted to wheel out when they needed to make some good public impression. So there was this schizoid approach that the church adopted towards me. They, they got more and more tired of my intellectualizing when I'd ask the hard questions of policy decisions or programs or whatever. But they loved boasting about the fact that they had this barrister in their midst that, you know, was a pretty smart guy and could talk to most people about most things.

Gerardo Sumano [01:05:14] Yeah, if I can say something about the dialogue question, John, I think it just speaks to the blinders and, or the Mormon bubble that you always talk about. You know, how people, I think at some point, even me, I, I, I heard about Joseph Smith's polygamy and I, I just ignored it. Just watching a couple days ago, Randy Bell's interview, you know, he freaking had dinner with Todd Compton and knew about the research he had done about polygamy, and it just didn't face him until he saw it on the LDS website on the Church Gospel Topic essays. So it's just really interesting how Neville has, you know, like the, the additions of, of dialogue and it's not, it's like, it's not facing him like any of the big issues that were being discussed at the time.

Neville Rochow [01:06:16] Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. Sorry, John.

John Dehlin [01:06:20] Yeah, and it's not a, it's not a particularly Mormon trait to compartmentalize. I think humans are master compartmentalizers and I think confirmation bias is a human condition, a human phenomenon, not a Mormon phenomenon. And so, you know, you just, you, you live life, you, you follow what's working, you follow what's, what's make bringing you joy and providing you meaning and purpose. You gather the evidence, wherever it comes from that makes you feel good about the choices, the path you're on and the choices you're making. You kind of ignore and, and, and turn your eye and your face away from any evidence that would cause you any dissonance or problems, even if that evidence is right there staring you in the face or on your coffee table, as it were.

John Dehlin [01:07:07] And, and then you add to that. The Mormon Church does such a good job of keeping everyone really busy. They, they get you into bishop, you know, they get you to bishopric, you're serving as a bishop, you're in stake high councils, you've got kids and you've got a successful career and life's too busy to, you know, it's life, life's too busy to get distracted.

Neville Rochow [01:07:26] Right, that's, that's exactly how it was. And look, I, I read all about the polyandry and the polygamy in the early days of the church with Joseph Smith and, and as was just said a moment ago, you know, it didn't register me as being a problem. I thought, well, there's just these evolution of the whole thing. It's part of the workout. It didn't occur to me at the time that Joseph Smith was a scoundrel.

Neville Rochow [01:07:50] I guess probably because the detail hadn't been fleshed out sufficiently in some of these articles. It was just like there were some anomalous things in church history and. Okay, well, I'll think about that at some stage. So, you know, really what we're doing, what we're doing is we're, we have all these little quotes, questions that bubble up and you sort of relegate them to the too hard pile, I don't have time pile at the time, you think, I'll come back to that and I'll get that sorted because I'm sure, because of my spiritual witness that the Church is true, that there's going to be an answer to it, and I just don't have it right now.

Neville Rochow [01:08:31] So I'm not going to get bent out of shape over something that I can't explain for the moment, because there will be an explanation. I have deep conviction of that. And the Brethren are assuring us that that is true. I believe of them. I believe that of them because they're prophet seers and revelators. And so I just. I just swallowed the Kool Aid and went on pretty happily.

John Dehlin [01:08:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I. I'm guessing if you were to draw a pie chart of all the things you learned through the Gospel topics essays or CES letter or Mormon stories or whatever your ultimate sources were that might have taken you out of the church, how much of that did you already know from your exposure to dialogue in the 80s, if you can even make that calculation? I just have to ask.

Neville Rochow [01:09:22] Well, you know, most people become lawyers because they're poor mathematicians. But look, I. I don't think. I don't think the Gospel Topics essays told us much new. Not a great deal new. We. We had heard or knew about most of it, and in fact, we were helping other people with these sorts of questions because. Because we were considered the repository of all things weird and hard with the church. And so young single adults or wayward people would be referred to me or Penny to help counsel them through their trials of faith before.

Neville Rochow [01:10:10] Before trials of faith became a thing that they are now. You know, so this is just the odd random person that had read something in maybe Foreign Brody or whatever. And, I mean, I. I read Foreign Brody. I remember. I remember how this happened. Penny gave me two books by Fawn Brody, one her biography of Jefferson. And the other one. The other one was no Man Knows My History for a birthday present. And I. I looked at Foreign Brody's no Man Knows My History. And I said, are you sure that you want to give me this state, you know, what the Church has said about this and how we're supposed to stay away from it.

Neville Rochow [01:10:55] And she said, I think you can handle it. It'll be okay. And. And so. So I read it, and. And it was all. So, you know, I took it in the same stride as I'd taken things that I'd learned in Dialogue. I thought, oh, that's a bit weird. And.

Neville Rochow [01:11:15] And I. I actually, in those days, collected BYU studies. And so I. I checked up on some of the things she said in her book, and I thought maybe she's stretching the limits here a bit. That's her opinion. So I, I found ways to minimize what she was saying and, and just sort of go on as if she hadn't said it. But still it registered in my mind that it had. Had been said.

Neville Rochow [01:11:44] But, yeah, I. I don't know how I got through all this being so blase. I mean, when we come to gay marriage, same sex marriage, I, I've been through a. A similar process, and we'll talk about that soon, I hope. But, yeah, I. Maybe I'm just not a very nice person and I don't think deeply enough about things. I don't.

John Dehlin [01:12:08] No, that's great. And I'm dying to hear what it was that in the recent times that really flipped the bit for you, as they say in the development. Yeah, but I don't want to get ahead of ourselves in the chronology, so thanks for letting us kind of. But it's fascinating that you not only were reading dialogue in the 80s, but you freaking read no Man Knows My history, which is 98, which is 80% of what's in the CES letter. You were reading that in the 80s, that it didn't even phase you.

Neville Rochow [01:12:40] Yeah, I think it basically comes down to my being just dumb and amoral. No, no, it's.

John Dehlin [01:12:47] I mean, it's. It's probably a combination of the church was working for you, and the church does a really good job of, let's just say, immunizing its own members to truth.

Neville Rochow [01:12:58] That. That's, that's precisely, that's precisely what it was. And, and I had been trained to be a skeptic of foreign Brody before I even opened the book. You know, that, that inculcation had been thorough. You know, don't ever read no Man Knows My History, you'll leave the church and, you know, Satan sat at her elbow when she wrote it, and she was excommunicated and yada, yada, yada, you know, just don't do it. And that's why I was. I was a bit surprised when Penny gave it to me, and I was very pleased because of the confidence that she was showing in my ability to. To take on the hard stuff and not be destroyed by it.

Neville Rochow [01:13:46] Yeah, but see, it wasn't just church things that were destroying that were leaving little niggles. And I have to admit that some of the things she said niggled. And open that filing cabinet drawer. Put it in there. I'll come back to it later. But I was reading things by John, John J. Gould, who's a paleontologist at Harvard. I was reading a lot of his scientific work, and there was one book, I think it's called Time's Arrow, where he said, it's impossible, it's just impossible that there was enough water on the earth for the Noah myth to have occurred.

Neville Rochow [01:14:30] And, you know, it hit me for the first time that there were questions about the Bible and about the Old Testament and that maybe it doesn't square up with, with scientific research. And I thought, nah, there's got to be an answer on that one. Open up that old filing cabinet rule whack, put it in there. And I'll come back to that later. But bit by bit, lots of things that I was reading, both in relation to the church and also that I was reading just in my general reading, were sort of challenging faith in little ways.

Neville Rochow [01:15:05] And at some stage I knew I'd have to open that filing cabinet, pull out all those files, put them on the table, and go through them one by one. But that time wasn't then because I was too busy serving the Lord.

John Dehlin [01:15:20] Yeah. Yeah, okay, so. So you served as a bishop, you served in stake presidencies, and you served in mission presidencies. And those are all, I mean, stopping short of becoming a Mormon apostle or general authority, that's like, right, that's like right under there. You, you reached, I would say, some of the highest levels of church leadership in the country of Australia, short of actually becoming an area authority or a general authority. Is that fair to say?

Serving as Bishop, Stake President, and Mission Leader

Neville Rochow [01:15:54] Yeah, I think that's fair to say. And, and the same thing was true of our mission in Brussels. I mean, we were working with general authorities all the time. And when I was working. Well, fast forward, if you don't mind my doing so, John, in 2013 and 14, we were called on. It wasn't formally called a mission, but it was a full time mission. And we were called to be the, the National Direct Interfaith directors. Penny and I were called to do that. And I spoke to the area president, which was Jim Ham at the time.

John Dehlin [01:16:33] Whoa, whoa, whoa, that's a big name. James Mila is the Mormon general authority who was excommunicated. Yeah, a few years ago.

Neville Rochow [01:16:42] Yeah, well, he was area, he was area president at the time and he were, he and I were good friends. Yeah, I think it's fair to say, and I think he'd acknowledge it, that we're, that we were friends and we got along well. Anyway, when he, when he called me to do this, when he called us to do this, I said, what does that mean, yeah, what's an interfaith director? I've never heard of that.

Neville Rochow [01:17:04] And he said basically Neville, it's whatever we want Neville to do. And so that's what they did. They got me to troubleshoot, they got me to go to meetings with non members, they got me. And our big project that we were working on was to do a, an econometric study of the contribution that religion made to Australian society. Now the agenda behind that, if one is to be honest, was to continue the tax deductibility of tithing in Australia. So they had some resource upon which they could call but what they wanted to do because they knew that the Mormons alone would never make that case.

Neville Rochow [01:17:46] They got us to gather together a council of experts, economists, econometricians, theologians, people from all different walks of professional life that would be relevant to this from different faiths. The Catholics were represented, the Jews were represented, Seventh Day Adventists, I think from memory were certainly the Uniting Church was involved. The Anglicans were working closely with them.

Neville Rochow [01:18:23] This group was to come up with a set of instructions for Deloitte to prepare this report on how religion was a plus in society. And so that's, that's basically what we did for a couple of years working on that. So that, that, that kept us busy.

John Dehlin [01:18:44] Again Neville, is there anything you want to say about what it was like to be a Mormon bishop or in a Mormon stake presidency in terms of, you know, the problems or the blessings, the good or the bad of.

Neville Rochow [01:18:57] Yeah, coming back to that.

John Dehlin [01:18:59] Okay, go ahead.

Neville Rochow [01:19:00] I, I, I just, can we just sort of have that as a sidebar? And I'll come back to that in a second because when I, when I was working in this calling, I, I got to, you know, I got to introduce Elder Cook, for example, to the Archbishop of Sydney. I, I worked closely with a number of, you know, high ranking church officials during this time.

John Dehlin [01:19:24] This is Mormon Apostle Quentin Cook. Right.

Neville Rochow [01:19:27] Yeah, we got to be, we got to be friends. We were friendly with all these people. So you know, in terms of faithfulness or dedication to the church. No, no space to think of anything other than that. We were right at the, the coal face and we were chipping away very hard. But, but just going back to your question John, about being a bishop and being in state presidencies and, and, and presidency, I'd like to separate because that's a, that's a different thing.

John Dehlin [01:20:00] Sure.

Neville Rochow [01:20:01] Something pretty disastrous happened during that time. But I, I, I think the first year of being a bishop I had a hard time because I didn't really, this is where I was really being forced to implement retail Mormonism rather than just being able to believe it, practice it as far as I needed to, but then have my own little reserve. And so during that time, that first year, I found it pretty difficult. Then I read a book by Dallin Oaks called the Lord's Way. Now, I'd known Delanoaks for some time when I was thinking about a legal career, and before I became a barrister, I worked for a period for an international law firm by the name of Baker McKenzie. You might have heard of them?

John Dehlin [01:20:51] Sure, yeah.

Neville Rochow [01:20:52] They're an American firm. They're a big deal. And I was a bit, bit nervous about committing myself to a big international firm like that. So I, I actually wrote to Dylan Oaks. Just out of the blue, I wrote to him and I said, you know, I'm thinking about this and, you know, what's your counsel to me? And he wrote back and he said, oh, you know, I think it's a good move. And, you know, I've got a friend of mine who's a member of the firm, he's a good lawyer. That happened to be Bill Atkin, who in due course would become a good friend of mine, is the International Legal Council for the Church.

Neville Rochow [01:21:31] And, you know, to this day, I think Bill Aiken is one of the, one of the very good LDS lawyers. He's, he's a, got a great legal mind. But anyway, so Delano wrote back to me and I went to work at.

Neville Rochow [01:21:46] So I, I, I got to know a number of general authorities over that time and it never occurred to me that it was anything weird or out of keeping with their apostolic calling that they were doing. That was, it was all pretty good fun. I just loved it. But, but in terms of the, the working in the Stake Presidency, I didn't like that time at all.

Neville Rochow [01:22:13] I, I just didn't like the structuralism. I didn't enjoy the, the way in which people were treated in stakes. I just don't like the whole idea of this hierarchical thing. I knew I had to do it. I did it and I did it with vigor and fervor, but my heart really wasn't in that sort of thing. I didn't like that at all.

Neville Rochow [01:22:40] As bishop, I had more, more license to do my own thing. But after reading that book by Dylan Oaks, I started doing by the book and I did it so much by the book that they called me into the State Presidency. Then I did that for five years, and then I think they must have detected That I wasn't enjoying it because I was basically put out to pasture for a few years. I just. I had nothing to do. They didn't know what to do with me. I was. I think I was on the nose. Yep.

Gerardo Sumano [01:23:17] Well, what were some of the parts. I mean, you talked about the hierarchy, but what were some of the parts that you didn't like that you were not enjoying? Can you give some examples? You mentioned how people are being treated. Is that bishops who are being treated badly by the sick presidency or, I

John Dehlin [01:23:39] don't know, like, was it also disciplinary councils? Did you have.

Neville Rochow [01:23:43] Yeah, yeah, I didn't enjoy disciplinary councils very much. I. Even though I'd held a number of disciplinary councils as a bishop, and I did so because I thought that was the right thing to do. I. I just don't like that sort of process very much where a people, a bunch of people who are really your peers, are set up in judgment against individuals.

Neville Rochow [01:24:14] It's a medieval concept. It's, you know, it. It was redolent to me of, of the Catholic Church during the medieval period, you know, with the, the Inquisition and that sort of thing. And the, the other thing was, overall, people have got no privacy whatsoever. They. They have to tell everything to a bishop that they ask. They have to tell everything to the stake president or the member of the state presidency that they ask. There's no saying, well, that's none of your business, because everything is your business.

Neville Rochow [01:24:54] And it felt weird. I mean, in retrospect, it feels evil to me, but you have no, you have no way of, of, you know, your, Your bedroom life is not a secret because they can ask you about that. Your family life is not a secret because they can ask you about that. Now, in some ways, it's a good thing because when there are evil things going down in a family, it's good that it's good to some extent that a church can intervene and step in. But.

Neville Rochow [01:25:29] Yeah, and when I was. A couple of times, I was engaged to act for bishops and state presidents in court where documents might be subpoenaed from disciplinary council, whatever, and my job was to resist the subpoena and, and do that.

Neville Rochow [01:25:51] I found that there was this sort of power surge that went through the minds of a lot of these guys, were called to these things. And one of my favorite LDS scriptures of section 121, I. I still love that scripture to this day. You know, no power, influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, you know, only by principles of love and concern and charity.

Neville Rochow [01:26:18] So, yeah, I think. I think all that. Just sit. Sit badly with me. I think although the stake president was a nice guy, I think underneath it, he was a. He was a fanatic. He was a. He was, I think, basically a dangerous person who was the state prison president.

John Dehlin [01:26:44] Oh, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [01:26:50] And usually the kind of people that beings take precedence, right? Like the. The ones that really. Those are the kind of people that end up being stake presidents or end up having those church callings, the ones that go by the book, the ones that are willing to follow, you know, what. What the handbook says, and we're willing to follow the process and follow the Brethren where. Wherever it takes them.

Neville Rochow [01:27:13] Yeah. The term they use, which most people wouldn't be familiar with, is they're aligned. They're aligned with the Brethren. They'll do what they've got to do. And it's a positive thing to be told you're aligned or to say of somebody that they're aligned, which is for the con. He. He. He's in the club. He's. He does what we. We ask him to do.

John Dehlin [01:27:40] Right. Yeah. It means you do respect the authority. That's what it means.

Gerardo Sumano [01:27:45] It.

Neville Rochow [01:27:45] It means. Yeah, that's exactly it. See, when. When we're. When I was working in that. In that calling as the national director for. For interfaith, the thing that I found was that I got to see the Brethren at a more human and sensible level rather than their hierarchical level. So I enjoyed that. That was great. You know, we could have conversations. We could talk about anything and. But I was doing a job that really didn't have any hierarchy attached to was. It was just easy to do because there was no power play or structure. We didn't have any power, but no one had any power over us either. It was just great. Enjoyed it.

John Dehlin [01:28:37] Yeah. There's that idea in the United States. There's this idea of, like, seeing how the sausage is made. Like, you. You grow up, let's just say governmentally, with this. This experience of, like, oh, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the Constitution in America is great. And, you know, the president and the Congress and the Supreme Court and they're all noble humans doing good for freedom. And then you actually go work on Capitol Hill and you see the corruption, you see the special interest groups, and you see the. Just the problems and you. And you see how the sausage gets made.

Neville Rochow [01:29:17] Well, that's right.

John Dehlin [01:29:19] It's better just to enjoy the sausage than to actually see and not see the sawdust.

Neville Rochow [01:29:24] Yeah, yeah. No, that's right. And I think I think that actually brings up the other negative thing about being a bishop or in a state presidency or an admission presidency. We, we obviously were subject to direction from Salt Lake. And so a lot of American leaders would come out and there was this real thing about, you know, we got to do it the American way.

What the Church Community Gave and What It Lacked

Neville Rochow [01:29:52] And look, the. I have, you know, hundreds of friends who are American. I've got no problem with Americans per se, or, you know, doing things with Americans or whatever, some of our best friends to this day, faithful American lay saints. But there was this, there was this added authority that not only am I a general authority or whatever it might be, but I'm American.

Neville Rochow [01:30:25] And so therefore you colonials, you, you peons will do it the way I say it because I know I'm American. And that, that, that I think over time that festered a little because, I mean, can I put it this way? You know, imagine, imagine the church was established in Australia and Australians had to come to America until you had to do it because this is the Australian way. Or to tell you, look, the American Constitution is subordinate to the Australian Constitution because the Australian Constitution is the inspired one.

John Dehlin [01:31:10] Yeah.

Neville Rochow [01:31:11] And you've just got this derivative, derivative thing. It wouldn't go over too well. But, but, but we're, we're expected just to swallow this sort of stuff, this, this manifest destiny that is played out, sure, in bit parts, in other parts, that the church outside of America, but you know, its ultimate destiny is to, you know, rescue the Constitution and welcome Jesus to, to Independence, Missouri. And you know, everything is rah, rah, American. And it just, you, you won't notice it if you're an American because it, it probably feels natural. But if you're outside of that bubble, and particularly if you're, you're a thinker, you've read, you've, you've looked at American history, you've got different versions of American history than maybe the, the foundational myths that are constantly circulated. It doesn't, doesn't go down very well.

John Dehlin [01:32:15] Right. Yeah. And, and Neville, before we go on to what happens after they put you out to pasture, so to speak, I don't want to get lost. I want to give you a chance to at least speak for a few minutes on what I think for many is the beautiful local community that the Mormon Church can provide even for people in countries like the UK or Australia or elsewise, because, you know, I've traveled through, you know, Mormon churches in Canada and again, the uk I've been to Guatemala.

John Dehlin [01:32:51] There's a real, you know, so many people are surrounded in a secular society. They can feel alone, they can feel isolated, they can experience poverty or suffering or loss. And no matter where I've gone, what I've always noticed is kind of the beauty of Mormonism at the local level because you've got, you know, families and parents showing up with kids and they're dressed nicely and they're. Kids are singing songs and their hair is combed and the bows, the girls have the bows and the hair and the, the couples are working to love each other and the kids have youth groups and they're leaders who care about them and, and there's activities and steak dances and.

John Dehlin [01:33:36] And then, you know, my kid marries your kid. Your, you know, my kid marries your kid. And there's multi generational Mormon families. And in a secular scary world where people feel alone and isolated, you, you believe in a God, you believe in a loving Jesus, you've got a community that cares about you and your life is full of meaning and purpose and you've got this identity where, okay, there's a bunch of secular people in Australia, but I'm a Mormon and I know who I am and I know God's plan and God loves me and I'm part of something great. Do you mind? I don't. I didn't mean to like, like plant that for you to talk about it, but is it that.

John Dehlin [01:34:16] Was, was that your experience or something like it? And if you just want to start over, what was your Mormon experience overall at the local and even stake level? You know, not counting the leadership for you, for your kids, for your wife, for your friends, all that, it's, it's

Neville Rochow [01:34:35] a mixed thing really, because we loved the fellowship and we loved the Saints and we loved being around them. And yeah, you're right. You know, there are all these people trying to do good things and they're happy and, you know, turning up a sacrament meeting and singing the songs and being involved, if you're, if you're into it, it's great. You know, it really is good.

Neville Rochow [01:34:58] There's nothing quite like it. But then there's the, the qualification on all that. While I was very in it, I was also very on the edge, on the periphery because I was a little bit odd. You know, our family was a little bit odd.

Neville Rochow [01:35:19] We, we live in a, in an area where there are some fairly wealthy pockets, but the preponderance of our ward is pretty poor. And of course, as you were saying before, mainly poor people are attracted to the church and they're the sort of People that come along and the, the. There was a bit of resentment, I guess, you know, about my education, my being a lawyer, our being comparatively wealthy, driving nice cars that sort of came through for some people, not everyone, but some people. And so I was quite often made to feel, yeah, sure, you're one of us, but, you know, you're not quite one of us because you don't have the same struggles that we have.

Neville Rochow [01:36:16] They, they just imagined that our, our life was, was carefree, you know. Know, there we were, supposedly the perfect Mormon family doing all the right Mormon things, an example to everyone. But, you know, we also, the ones that were driving the Volvos and the BMWs and going overseas for holidays and that sort of stuff. And so there was a little bit of resentment, too. And, and I always came across as a bit too, bit too toffee or intellectual for their taste, you know, so there was this thing where they'd always come to me for the answers to questions, but when they did want an answer to a question, they didn't really want to hear too much from me or, or see too much of us because it, it probably reminded them, well, you know, if you maybe made a few different choices in your younger life, that could be your life too.

Neville Rochow [01:37:15] I, I don't know, because there was nothing special about me. I mean, like I said, I came from the wrong side of the tracks. I had to work for every dollar that I've ever had, and I've had to work hard, and I've put a great deal of time and effort into it, but they don't see that and they don't care about that. And so it was a mixed experience until, I guess, when we were in Brussels, and I'll come to that a little later. But, yeah, when.

John Dehlin [01:37:50] What would, what would Penny and your children say about those years? Something similar or.

Neville Rochow [01:37:55] Yeah, yeah, I think they'd say. I think the kids had good fellowship. They've got a lot of good friends in the church, but they were always treated like, oh, you're the rich kids, or you're the snobby kids, or you go to the, the toffee schools or whatever it might be, you know, if, if there was any way of winning an argument, they couldn't win any other way. It always get down to this ad hominem approach to things. When I say an argument, I don't mean there's an actual argument going on, but if there's a, if there's a, some sort of question around, well, they could always minimize our importance because you Know, we weren't really one of them.

John Dehlin [01:38:38] Got it. Okay. Yeah, the, the church does have a lot of teachings about prosperity and pride and sort of an anti intellectual bent. And so I can see why. And just the human, human nature is sometimes to be envious and spiteful of people that are succeeding. So I can see why your family might feel a little bit odd or left out in that country.

Neville Rochow [01:39:04] The irony is that, you know, we, we've had real financial struggles over the years because, you know, I was the sole breadwinner and I ate what I killed and there were lean years and there were good years. Overall it was good. But there were tough years. But we had exactly the same problems that they would have. And yet we were somehow disqualified from talking about them because it just didn't, didn't really matter that we would suffer because we had so many compensations.

John Dehlin [01:39:44] Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense. All right, well, where should we go next on your Mormon story? Neville? I'm really loving this and enjoying it. Thank you for.

Neville Rochow [01:40:00] I think chronologically is probably the best thing. We've skipped a whole lot of detail, obviously, because that's fairly, that's fairly pedestrian sort of stuff. You know, we had a good time in the church. We've had bad times, you know, like that Led Zeppelin song, Good Times, Bad Times. We had those, you know, so, you know. But overall, but overall it's been good. And the thing is, it gave me, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks, a way to live where I could actually succeed both at the personal and the family level and professionally. I mean, it gave me all this incentive to get on and do things and to work hard, and I did all that.

Neville Rochow [01:40:42] But okay, I think we've got to the point where we had been working as the interfaith directors for the country and then I was, I, I used to make a trek to the States every October. I would go because there was a J. Reuben Clark Law Society conference, because I was in the leadership of the J. Ruben Clark Law Society. So I'd go to that conference. And that's, that's a society that is designed especially for La Descent lawyers.

Neville Rochow [01:41:17] It's got about 15,000 members across the world. As they would count it. They, they count a little bit, I think, like the church counts its members. If you've even just crossed the portal, you're in. But so I, I go there for that. Then there was the Law and Religion symposium, which I went to every year at the BYU Law School. And I, I've probably been to 20 or more of those annually.

Gerardo Sumano [01:41:51] And what are those about? What are, what are these meetings and these councils?

Neville Rochow [01:41:56] Okay, the, the symposium is one where the International center for Law and Religion Studies, which is a, a unit within the BYU Law School, the J Room, Clark Law School, invites people from all over the world who have an interest in law and religion. And that interest may be peripheral. They may not even, excuse me, see themselves as interested in it, but.

Gerardo Sumano [01:42:25] And we're talking religious liberty, is that correct?

Neville Rochow [01:42:29] Religious liberty is one big theme that they have, but it's also how religion works in government and interfaces between politics and religion. Anyway, the symposium is held every year and they have usually about 50 delegates from countries as diverse as Vietnam and Indonesia, you, UK, Germany, just south America, Africa. They'll have people from all over and they, they spend, I guess, about an equal time socializing and in, in symposium type settings where there is discussion and presentation of papers and the like.

Neville Rochow [01:43:24] The truth of it is that it's designed to be soft proselytism. That's the real purpose of it. But anyway, I, I, I'd been to that every year and I was there. One, well, it must have been, Let me see. Just got to get my years right.

Neville Rochow [01:43:50] This must have been 15, 2015. And Bill Atkin, my friend that I, I spoke to you about before, I was sitting at dinner at one of the social events and he came up and grabbed both my shoulders and he said, how's my favorite silk?

Neville Rochow [01:44:10] And I said, yeah, I'm fine, thanks. I'm fine, thanks, Bill, how are you? He said, yeah, well, he said, can I talk to you for a minute? And he said, look, Neville, we've got a, we've got a vacancy coming up in either Geneva or in Brussels, and we think that you and Penny would just be perfect for it.

Neville Rochow [01:44:33] You'd be representing the church at governmental levels. You'd be working closely with other faith groups that are working on freedom of religion and more and religion issues. And I think you guys would just be great. Would you consider that? Well, Penny wasn't with me and so I had to make this fairly interesting phone call. You know how you thought you were going to spend time with grandchildren over the next couple of years?

Neville Rochow [01:45:04] Well, maybe, maybe you need to rethink. Anyway, so she was a little. Excuse me again. She was a little reluctant because. Oh, I'm sorry. I've got this frog up. I just got to fix this.

John Dehlin [01:45:23] No worries, Gerardo. I'm well, well, one thing, Neville, I, I hope you can hear me. One thing that I, I had the thought of Is, you know, you mentioned in interfaith, interfaith efforts on the part of the Mormon Church and you mentioned your participation in the J. Reuben Clark Law Society and you talk about soft proselytizing. It's hard to ever really. No, but nobody has a single motive. No institution has a single motive. But what occurred to me, Neville, is I don't really imagine church leaders just sitting around saying, I'd love to have a good relationship with other faiths, let's build bridges, because we teach.

The Church's Interfaith Role and Political Involvement

John Dehlin [01:46:01] I think the Mormon Church literally has a history from Joseph Smith on, of teaching that all other creeds are corrupt and all other churches are false and that what everyone needs to do is stop believing whatever they're believing and believe in what the Mormon Church teaches and join the Mormon Church. But what happens is that when we have enemies, when people see us as a threat, when we denounce the Catholic Church, when we, when we, when evangelicals hate us, or when governments that are secular, like in Australia, want to consider, see us as potentially a cult and want to take away our tax exempt status, then all of a sudden the church leaders care about how other people think and feel about us, even if we're looking on them as inferior.

John Dehlin [01:46:47] And so whether it's public relations positions or interfaith efforts or the like or diplomatic efforts, it's pretty much always to look after the Church's best interests financially, you know, from a fiduciary perspective and from a public relations perspective. My guess is it's not always just genuinely, let's just learn. Let's just learn to love other people and see what we can learn from them, just like they might be able to learn from us. Now tell me whether any of that is relevant. And that's me talking while you get a drink of water, basically.

Neville Rochow [01:47:23] Well, just, just going back to when I was in the Stake Presidency, the thing that always came through with these church councils was the first thing we're going to protect is the Church. And first and foremost in anything we do in the Church is to protect the Church. What's that name of the Church? Yeah, that's the name of, that's, that's true, that's true in these public affairs things. That's true in the symposium, whatever it might be. Ultimately it's the Church that has come out of this smelling good and looking good and being advantaged. So yes, you're right, it's, there's always an ulterior motive and it's, it is a clear ulterior motive at all times.

Gerardo Sumano [01:48:14] Yeah, how, and I don't know if this was, if this is, has anything to do with it, but how, how much did the Church care about the same sex marriage issue around the time you were involved with the G. Reuben Clark Society? Talking about religious is, was it a topic of conversation? I know that something that, what John was mentioning just reminded me to something Greg Prince has said, that the church mostly solidified his relationship with other churches, specifically the Catholic Church, in an effort to fight against same sex marriage in the United States.

Neville Rochow [01:49:03] And same here. Excuse me again, the same same is true here. I probably was one of the leading anti same sex advocates in this country for some years. I appeared before just about every parliamentary committee, every, every committee, every inquiry inquiry that there was into same sex marriage and its equalization with ordinary marriage. I advocated strongly against it on constitutional and legal political grounds and I was successful for a number of years.

Neville Rochow [01:49:47] Along with a team of other like minded lawyers we were able to draft submissions and one lawyer and I appeared before the entire upper house, what you'd call the Senate of the Tasmanian Parliament, to argue against a bill that had passed their lower house and why it should not be passed by the upper house because it would be unconstitutional and would create more problems than it actually would solve. And they accepted our argument. So we kept same sex marriage at bay for a long time in this country.

Gerardo Sumano [01:50:28] And something that the Church was asking you guys to do, was it something.

Neville Rochow [01:50:33] Now that's, that's the rub and that's the interesting bit. The Church was very encouraging behind the scenes of my doing all this. They loved my doing it, they thought it was great. But at every, at every committee that I appeared, at every parliamentary inquiry, there'd be an empty chair beside me either notionally or actually and that's where that was the chair that the Mormon Church was invited to. And it never appeared formally before any of these, these inquiries. And the reason why it didn't, I was told by Jim Amula, is because during Romney's run up for the presidency they didn't want anything controversial to be said anywhere in the world against anything at all. I found that pretty troubling.

John Dehlin [01:51:30] Why?

Neville Rochow [01:51:32] Well, here, here I was doing the Church's dirty work and they weren't prepared to own up to it.

Gerardo Sumano [01:51:40] Yeah, it's very similar to what happened with, happens with apologists today or has happened for several years. Right. Like the Church wants to keep an arm's length with what fair Mormon, with this apologist organizations are doing, including the conversion therapy organizations like Evergreen or Northstar. They'll sit on their boards. They'll, they'll encourage them. They'll be telling them how happy they are that they're doing this work. But at the same time they want to put their feet to the fire and say like, we're, we're encouraging this publicly. And that's kind of what was happening to with you. They, they were encouraging you to do all this. Like you, you called it dirty work that the church was expecting you or wanting you to do. But they, they wouldn't show up. Like the official representative of the church wouldn't show up.

Neville Rochow [01:52:36] Well, when. John, I wonder if we can just pause.

John Dehlin [01:52:41] I've got a. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Gerardo and I will talk for a second. Go ahead, Neville. Gerardo? Yeah. You make a really good point that, you know, this is lobbying. Like I think about when I worked at Microsoft. Microsoft had a lobbying organization that would go to Capitol Hill and try to persuade senators and congressmen to pass certain legislation or to block certain legislation.

John Dehlin [01:53:11] It, on the one hand, it feels a little bit insidious that the church would do this. On the other hand, literally every corporation on the planet kind of works this way. If you've got money and power, you use it and you look around and you figure out what the levers of power are, whether it's the media or politicians or federal government or local government or the legal system, and you use as much of your money as you feel like you need to to pull all the right levers of power so that your interests are optimized. Right, Gerardo? Like that's, I mean, on one hand it's weird for a church to do that. On the other hand it's literally just, it's, it's the human way.

Gerardo Sumano [01:53:55] Well, what is weird is like what they're using it for. Like it's one thing for a church to be using. It's leveraging their power to help people in, in third world countries, to help people who are suffering economically, to, you know, to help people come closer to Christ is another thing. To be actively lobbying and fighting against someone. Right. Someone's right to, to marry the person they love.

Gerardo Sumano [01:54:24] Which the church today I'm sure would be ashamed of admitting how, how big of a role they played, not only the United States, but in other countries to fight against same sex marriage. You know, there's that quote from Elder Holland, I think it's in Harvard where he says, we didn't, oh, we actually didn't spend at a single red sand on Prop 8. Don't, don't try to tie us to that when we all know how, how important of a role the church played on that. So it's one thing to, to have organizations, even churches, lobbying against certain legislations and, and, and wanting, you know, to help a country move forward in the best way. Then I think it really shows the interests of the church. And what, what we're hearing from Neville say.

John Dehlin [01:55:20] Yeah, and Neville, I want to get you in. I'll just say two things really quickly. I can, I'm to, to argue against what I'm, what I'm. The position I'm taking rhetorically. Gerardo, there is the article of faith that says we claim the privilege of worshiping almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all men the same privilege. Let them worship how, where, or what they may. If the church is literally lobbying in sovereign countries to affect their legal system. And in the case you bring up, Gerardo, to literally take the right and the privilege of marriage away from couples, you know, that that is problematic.

John Dehlin [01:55:57] And it, in some sense it goes against that article of faith. Live and let live. We really aren't living and letting live. But the other Gerardo point, I think the point you're making, Gerardo, is the, the ways that a church spends its money in power says a lot about that church. And to what, to what extent was Neville being used to, like, get clean water to people who are sick, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, you know, to strengthen families or to promote literacy or education? Like, if the church was using its money and power and lobbying efforts to do that sort of thing that says one set of things about a religion that claims, or a church that claims to follow Christ because that's supposedly what Christ stood for.

John Dehlin [01:56:51] But if the church is, like, primarily using its money and its power and its influence just to preserve its money, to preserve its power, to manipulate the legal system so that no changes get made that could be inconvenient to the church, looking like its leaders aren't called of God or that could challenge the prophetic authority of its leaders. If that's how the church is using its money and its power, then I think that calls into question its validity as, as a religion that, that claims to follow Christ. Now, Neville, again, this was all to give you time to cough. So, yeah, thank you.

Neville Rochow [01:57:29] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:57:29] What would you like to say as you jump in?

Neville Rochow [01:57:32] I, I, I, I recall the day that I picked up Elder Hamula. He'd come over from New Zealand to visit Adelaide, and I picked him up from the Airport and Romney had just lost the election. And I've got a particular mindset about religious people being in positions of power and influence. I don't think that anyone who has made an oath to any organization that would conflict with their public duty should be elected to public office or should be nominated to public office.

Neville Rochow [01:58:05] I can develop that if you need to, but that's just a, that's just a position that I have. But he, I picked him up and he said, well, Neville, we're off the leash now. We're okay, we can start publicly being involved and getting you working for us officially on this same sex marriage stuff and other issues because Romney's now lost and we had radio silence during the campaign and his lead up to the nomination. So now that's done, we, we can show our face.

Neville Rochow [01:58:43] And I mean, I, I didn't show it, but internally I was gobsmacked. I thought, wow, that is really saying what really is going on, that we are handmaidens here to American politics and that American politics will dictate what is suitable for Australia when it's convenient to the church.

Neville Rochow [01:59:12] And that was, that was really disturbing. Why could we not be seen as being independent and just have the church look after us as an Australian church? And that's where this American church thing comes in at several levels. And as we close, I'll tell you a fairly graphic story about that. But anyway, because, because Jim was my friend, I didn't make any comment. I just sort of took that in my stride. Anyway, I think we were getting up to probably now. The.

Assignment to Europe and Working at the Highest Levels

John Dehlin [01:59:49] A friend was talking to you about maybe going to work in Belgium. Is that right? Or.

Neville Rochow [01:59:53] Yeah. So Bill, Bill puts his hands on my shoulders and Penny and I have to have to deliberate on this over a distance. And she's, she's a little reluctant, but she knows that they want me. And so as a faithful lady saint, she's not going to deny them that. She knows that they want me for my legal expertise and my experience in public affairs and in hammering together relationships and that sort of thing. So she says yes. And so long story short, we do go. And we had probably one of the best times of our life. We just loved every minute of it, every part of it was just fantastic because we weren't really missionaries in the normal sense.

Neville Rochow [02:00:42] We got a, we had a call from the first presidency and Elder Wickman wrote a letter as to exactly what our duties would be. And we were a little bit different. Though we weren't under a mission president, we were really autonomous we worked with the office manager in Brussels, but we could just do whatever we needed to do. So we were very quick to form relationships with other NGOs that were, that were faith based.

Neville Rochow [02:01:14] And in the EU you have to belong to what's called, called a platform. And a platform is a group of like minded NGOs that coalesce to have access to the Parliament and European Parliamentarians and to work with the Commission and to really be part of the, the whole political and constitutional structure of the eu.

Neville Rochow [02:01:44] So we, we were right in the middle of it all. And what was interesting was a lot of these other NGOs that were very small organizations but had very intelligent, experienced and dedicated people working with them. They quite often didn't have a lawyer in their office. The Catholics had a lawyer or they had several lawyers in their office, but these smaller organizations didn't. And so they were pleased that a lawyer with some experience like I had had come in to our platform and that I could help them interpret legislation, that I could draft submissions, that I could take positions, help them take positions that were articulated for members of Parliament, that we could go and make submissions to members of Parliament.

Neville Rochow [02:02:32] So we, we just had a great time working closely with all these wonderful, excellent, brilliant people. The other thing that was good at a social level for Penny and me was there were three, three American couples in our ward who were expat and had been out of the States for several years, except for one missionary couple that were called, you probably know, the Norbies.

Neville Rochow [02:03:01] He was the one that was injured very badly in the, the Brussels airport bombing. But we, we formed fast friendships with these people. And I have to say that if we had a ward in Adelaide that had those people in it, we probably wouldn't have had time to ask any of the questions that we did because they would have been around our place working with us and doing stuff and discussing things.

Neville Rochow [02:03:32] One of, one of the couples, he, the husband was the head of the IMF in Europe. The other, the other couple had a husband who was the, the arms negotiator for NATO. So these were bright, wonderful, faithful, excellent, bad day saints. We love them, we're still friends with them all. We get in contact whenever we can and we just had a brilliant time with all of them. So we had our work, our work on a day to day basis was just to die for.

Neville Rochow [02:04:13] We weren't allowed to wear name tags. In fact, I probably dressed like I am today. Most days. We weren't supposed to look like or act like missionaries in any way. And we didn't, we just did the work that we had to do. We would, I would write memoranda for Salt Lake to consider on various legislative proposals that were going through the, the EU Parliament or through the Commission.

Gerardo Sumano [02:04:40] Neville, can you give us a few examples of the kind of specific legislations or work that the church was.

Neville Rochow [02:04:48] Yeah, look, I think, I think I can give you a generic description that most of the stuff we're interested in would affect either freedom of religion generally or would affect the way in which the church could operate in Europe.

Neville Rochow [02:05:03] I think that everything pretty well filled into those two envelopes. That's, that's what we were doing. And there was a lot of stuff, you know, there are a lot of directives that we're going through. The other things that we were doing was we were organizing monthly conferences. We'd have these breakfast meetings that we'd invite all of the moving parts of the EU to and we would have specialist speakers speak at these, at these things. We'd organize conferences.

Neville Rochow [02:05:35] My daughter Jackie came to work with us for a month and I took her to London with me where we drafted questions for question time and they were used in the House of Commons. We would meet with various religious leaders so we, we would move around Europe meeting with people that could make a difference to questions we had. Most of our work was in Brussels, but sometimes like we gave talks to the European Human Rights, the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. We gave them a talk on comparative religious freedom in Australia and America. We did that.

Neville Rochow [02:06:16] So it was just, it was just go off and have a good time and that's what we did. We worked hard because we loved it.

John Dehlin [02:06:25] And Neville, I just have to imagine like we're starting and when I kind of started this episode talking about kind of Mormon elite in a particular country, when I talked about kind of Tom Phillips level, even approaching second anointing level Mormonism, I'm just imagining what probably was very thrilling, which is like, well, semi relatively wealthy, educated, high class Mormon leadership, men and women, couples wheeling it, you know, picking up general authorities and apostles from the airport, touring around with them while they're in town, presenting in parliaments, interacting with people that in their day jobs are among the world's elite. Lots of money, lots of power and high quality people all feeling like they're doing God's work, they're advancing the Lord's one true church, saving the world. Like it just, I imagine it was just this amazing, heady, fulfilling, almost like a rush of a wonderful experience. Is that fair to say?

Neville Rochow [02:07:36] It Was nirvana. It was just fantastic. We just didn't have a day when we weren't enthusiastic. Get out of bed and get to work. Because we loved it. And I guess if you wanted. If you wanted to put it into the comparison of an ordinary mission, it's like a. Like a missionary companionship knocking on every door that just opens. They teach all the discussions and the family is baptized every time. Just every time. Just everywhere you go, they just join the church and they all love you and you love them and it's just one big happy family. So, yeah, it's. It was that sort of thing.

Neville Rochow [02:08:21] And they were very pleased with the work we did. I mean, we've had reports back in the years since where we've been talked about in Frankfort. Penny and I have been talked about in Frankfurt. And they'll say, yeah, we need a couple like the Roccos to come back here and do this or that, you know. And I say that in all humility, because we didn't seek those types of accolades or any praise while we're doing it. But it just worked with us. It fitted well with our skill sets because Penny's great at organizing and great at pulling things together. I. Not so much, but I'm good at the intellectual organization, the putting things into a system and making complex things capable of being broken down into their constituent parts.

Neville Rochow [02:09:16] I can do that. It's just what I do. So we worked well together as a team. We loved working with Francesco delilo, who was the office manager. He was brilliant. He'd been doing it for years. He was right on top of this stuff. So we just had an absolutely magical time. It was just flawless, faultless. We were working closely with the area presidency on most things. We. We spoke with.

Neville Rochow [02:09:45] With them on a regular basis. We sometimes go up to Frankfurt to meet with them, or they'd come down and meet with us or whatever. It was just. And we'd been constant contact with Salt Lake. When they realized that they could trust us more than Pepsi, they otherwise might have done.

Neville Rochow [02:10:03] Instead of things taking six weeks to get approval, they found ways of fast tracking things we recommended so that it bypassed some of the things that would otherwise be the bureaucratic heaviness of Salt Lake. Look, I can't. I could talk about this for hours. We loved it. It was great.

John Dehlin [02:10:23] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's. I mean, it sounds idyllic. It sounds like the type of experience we all aspired to in the church. Let me ask you just really quickly, just as a check in when you're engaged in these activities at the Belgium, almost like church headquarters level in Europe and elsewhere. What was the literality of your Mormon testimony? Was this God's one and only true church on the earth? Was Gordon, was Russell Nelson God's one true prophet on the earth?

Neville Rochow [02:10:57] Was the, he was a prophet then he wasn't prophet yet.

John Dehlin [02:11:00] Oh, okay. Whoever it was.

Neville Rochow [02:11:01] Yeah, but, yeah, but the answer to that, in short, is yes. We, we were absolutely committed, signed up, tithe paying card carrying, yes sir, no sir, Mormons. But we didn't have too much yes or no sir going on. You know, we could, they trusted us to do the right thing and we did the right thing. We had a lot of license, a lot of, lot of room, but certainly we did it all with one small exception. And this is very important. We were encouraged at that time to read the essays, and the essays were still fairly new.

John Dehlin [02:11:46] So this is 2014, 2000, 15, 16.

Neville Rochow [02:11:51] Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. So we were, we were encouraged to read them and to be familiar with them because they were out there and the church had put a lot of effort into getting them out. And so people like us should know about them and not be caught flat footed if anyone asked a question about them. So we, Penny and I said out to read them and we read them together and we were absolutely disappointed.

Neville Rochow [02:12:18] We could not believe how bad they were. We, we read them and you know, we'd sort of grade them as if we were marking university papers. We, we graded them and you know, we'd give one a B and one a C plus, you know, and, and just think, what are they doing with this? This is rubbish.

Neville Rochow [02:12:43] They're just so poorly constructed and, and they were contradictory, they didn't make sense. The grammar was poor in some of them. Yeah, we just wondered how some of them got through proofreading. And so we weren't very impressed with those. And I said to Penny, I'll look at some stage we're going to come back to the these, but you know, okay, we've read them, we're ready for any questions that come up. And they raised all the questions that we were pretty well armed on anyway. We had quite often we'd have interns come and work in our office and the interns were young single adults who were bright kids.

Neville Rochow [02:13:23] Most of them came from Europe, some of them from the States, but most of them were European, really smart kids, had good grades and wanted to do something with their testimony and with the church. And there was one young Dutch girl and we loved her to bits. She was, she Was so down to earth. And she, I, I think, I think she boasted that she'd never worn a skirt in her life. She did not like the idea of wearing a skirt. And she was a black belt in taekwondo.

Neville Rochow [02:13:56] She was very disciplined, very intelligent young lady. And all of them spoke impeccable Oxford English. You know, they just, they were very smart and very together. I mean most people in Europe speak several languages as we know, but these kids were great. So anyway, she had some problems because she, her best friend at school or at university, I can't remember, was homosexual. And she couldn't understand the, the position of the church on homosexuality and same sex marriage. So we had a couple of books there. I mean we had a pretty good library in Brussels. I, I'd actually shipped a lot of my library over to Brussels so that we had things available to us.

Neville Rochow [02:14:38] And I think I remember somebody complaining about a 60 kilo bag that we had of books and that they had to lift it. But we had, we had a good, pretty good reference library and we gave her a couple of books on some of the questions she was having and they seemed to satisfy her. They're apologetic books, but they were well researched and well reasoned. So she, she was pretty happy with that. And so you know those, there were questions that came up from time to time and sometimes some of our friends that we had in other churches would courteously ask us questions, but very courteously and we'd answer those.

Neville Rochow [02:15:18] But for the most part it didn't work. We did have one heads up when we first started there. We're organizing a conference working with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Now that sends up balloons in just about every jurisdiction that I know of because of their fanaticism. And you know, they really die die hard. Ultra right wing approach to legal defense. I, I know that, but in Brussels, alliance for what? Alliance Defending Freedom.

John Dehlin [02:15:54] Okay.

Neville Rochow [02:15:56] ADF is the, the acronym they commonly use. But in Brussels we got to know the people there and they were, they were wonderful. They were bright, they were intelligent, capable lawyers. The head of the, the head of the office was either a master's or a PhD in philosophy. She was really very clever. She was German. The others were from various parts of Europe, but we got along really well. But the head of the office, we were organizing something and I, I put on the program that we were organizing.

Neville Rochow [02:16:30] Brit Shafts, who's at byu, and Cole Durham, both of whom are friends of mine, very clever lawyers and great on law and religion. And she said, Neville, I just have to tell you something. We can't have both of them on the program. I said, why not?

Neville Rochow [02:16:51] She said, I'm just going to tell you this for future reference. We like you guys because you're Australian, but Europeans have a real allergy towards Americans, and you can never have more than one on a program. I thought, wow.

Neville Rochow [02:17:06] And. And then another one of them said, you know, we're so glad to have a fresh face on this because we get people in your position that come out, and all we hear is that the First Amendment is the gold standard and that we don't know what we're doing. And, you know, we've got to think about the American way, because it's obviously much better. And so that was. That was a bit of a shock to me because I didn't realize that the antipathy to being told how to do things by Americans was so strong in Europe. But it was. And these are from very sophisticated people who are quite open about it.

John Dehlin [02:17:47] Fun. Very. Yeah, Very interesting, right?

Neville Rochow [02:17:51] It is very interesting. And I think. I think to some extent, it's quite unfair. But I think. I think there is a bit of a. I think there is a bit of an attitude that is carried by people who come from Utah cold into a European setting. If you have, like, I'd lived in Europe, Penny had lived in Europe, we spoke European languages. Penny's got good French, you know, so we. We sort of fit it in with the European mold in many ways. And. And we loved it. I mean, most of our. Most. Most of our vacations have been spent in Europe and trying to just blend in. But I think unconsciously, some people just don't blend in as well. And that's the sort of memory that they have when they've had uncomfortable situations.

Gerardo Sumano [02:18:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:18:45] You know, it's always it when you grow up in the United States. Of course, everyone loves America. Of course this is God's one true country. Of course, the Constitution was inspired of God, and of course, everyone would join an American, the one true American church, because not only is the Mormon Church true, America is true. But then you just got to get outside of America. Like, I went to Guatemala, and someone started telling me about, like, the United States CIA operations in Latin America, like, literally assassinating, you know, presidents of sovereign countries and destabilizing governments and installing dictators. And I'm not an American hater. Like, we get a lot of listeners and viewers that basically, if we just talk about true, factual American history, some of our American listeners are like, well, you hate America, you know, And I'm like, no, I don't hate America, but this is factual history.

John Dehlin [02:19:47] And all I'm saying is, like, it, it wasn't until I traveled. And you know, Mark Twain is famous for saying, travel is fatal to prejudice. And again, I'm including an American author here. I apologize.

Neville Rochow [02:20:00] I love Mark Twain. I love Mark Twain.

John Dehlin [02:20:02] It is until you get outside of America that you realize that we don't always have a great reputation everywhere.

Neville Rochow [02:20:09] No, I, I think, I think Americans are the best hosts in the world that, you know, when you go to America, you are made to feel so welcome and you cannot help but have just the best of times because you're great hosts. You. You're very welcoming. And, and I would say, if you're white.

John Dehlin [02:20:34] Thank you, Gerardo.

Neville Rochow [02:20:35] That's, that's, that's the only experience.

Gerardo Sumano [02:20:39] My family, I mean, I'm from Mexico and my family, we used to travel to the US Just for vacationing a lot. My mom always says that before Obama was president, just coming in and passing through immigration was, was. Was not a very pleasant experience. Experience. We as Mexicans, we were made. Felt like, as less. And I mean, things changed after Obama became president and how Mexicans traveling to the US Started being treated a lot better. But, but, yeah, I just want.

John Dehlin [02:21:17] Oh, we just lost Gerardo. But, but Gerardo, I just want to say, wasn't that wonderful contribution from Gerardo? Because it's so true. If you're white. If you're white is the big.

Neville Rochow [02:21:27] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:21:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:21:29] Disclaimer.

Neville Rochow [02:21:30] That's, that's the takeout. No, and, and I, I must assume that is true. But we, we've never had any problems traveling in America at all. In fact, they love our, our cute little accent. You know, I'll say something, anything.

John Dehlin [02:21:46] Let me ask you. Oh, go ahead. Was someone going to say something? I wanted to ask Neville.

Neville Rochow [02:21:49] Oh, no, I'm just going to say that. But you're right. Once you venture out of the States, the reputation is not. Is mixed. It really is mixed.

John Dehlin [02:21:58] And hate or love Republicans or Democrats in the United States, hate or love Donald Trump. I'm just going to say something objective. I think my sense is that George Bush, you know, the second George Bush, because of what happened in Iraq and, and because of our involvement, that George Bush wasn't great for the reputation of the United States in foreign countries. And then I would say Republic, you know, Republican or Democrat aside, Donald Trump's reputation was definitely not good for the United States outside of the United States. Now, Neville, correct me if I'm wrong there, that's My general impression.

Neville Rochow [02:22:40] Yeah, in fact, in fact that that was mentioned to us several times when

John Dehlin [02:22:45] we were in Europe.

Neville Rochow [02:22:48] You don't, you're not American, so you don't support Donald Trump, do you? Because they were very keen to make sure that we were clear about that, that they, they could not stand Trump in any shape or form. Now, I mean, you know, I've got my own opinions and I won't even express those, but they were very clear about that, that right from the beginning that Trump was bad for America's reputation.

John Dehlin [02:23:14] Yeah, interesting. Really quickly, Neville, I want to ask you from, you know, we all know it happened in 1993 with the September 6, with the denunciation of sunstone and dialogue. It sounds like even though that was upsetting to you, you got swept up into church service and for another several decades you were doing fine. I just want to, I always ask this question. Around 2004, 2005, the Game Changer was the Internet emerging, Google emerging, and things like Mormon themed blogs coming on the scene, Mormon themed Internet sites, Mormon themed podcasts, YouTube, Facebook, social media. And then it really culminating in, after the Gospel Topics essays are released after the Swedish rescue, you know, then we have the excommunications of people like Denver Snuffer and others, and the excommunication of people that are speaking out on social media, whether it's podcasters or Jeremy Runnels or Bill Real or others.

Gospel Topics Essays as a Turning Point

John Dehlin [02:24:17] You, you, you mentioned the Gospel Topics essays as like a point of pause in 2015, 2016, as you were serving not only in Australia, but also in the UK as kind of an elite Mormon influencer, Were you aware of the Mormon Internet from 2004 to 2016 prior to the Gospel Topics essays, or were you completely oblivious of all that was going on during that time?

Neville Rochow [02:24:46] Completely oblivious. I really only knew about those things in fairly recent years. I, I mean, I probably was conscious at some level of those things being around. But no, I, I wasn't, I wasn't visiting those sites or thinking about that stuff or knowing anything about it. I was just busy doing the stuff that I had to do.

John Dehlin [02:25:08] Yeah, that makes sense. So there's all this stuff going on and you're so busy in the church, you're. You're unaware of, of all that stuff. Even Sam Young and all that and everything. Yeah.

Neville Rochow [02:25:19] Oh, Sam, Sam Young sort of came later onto my radar a little bit because Sam Young's a little more recent. Okay.

John Dehlin [02:25:27] So, hey, Kelly, Kate Kelly and ordained women and that sort of thing that

Neville Rochow [02:25:31] I, I was aware of those Sorts of things because they were fairly public outside of their Internet presence. But I, I, and I, I, I've had sort of a, A mild sympathy for their cause, but no time to get, to take it up or to really consider it.

John Dehlin [02:25:48] Yeah, right. Because they keep you so busy.

Neville Rochow [02:25:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:25:52] Okay, so what's next in your story? I'm dying.

Neville Rochow [02:25:54] Okay. Well, I guess, I guess the next thing is coming home because that's when things start to move pretty rapidly. Penny. Penny and I came home and this is, I guess we got home in 16, and for, I guess, eight months, Penny was really absorbed back into primary and doing all the stuff she does with music because she's very, she's very talented as a music teacher. And so she was teaching the primary children music and completely absorbed right into it. And I was just left on the shelf. What do you do with Neville?

John Dehlin [02:26:46] Neville, I have to ask you that, like, once you've reached the status of, like, hobnobbing with Mormon elite in Belgium, you know what I mean? In the UK area presidencies and general authorities, what's it like to come back to your home ward and just, I'll use a term, you know, schlepping, shopping with the local people in your ward, serving in primary. That's got to be unstimulating or a letdown on some level. Or maybe it's a huge relief and really nice to get back to basics. But what was it like for you?

Neville Rochow [02:27:21] Not too good to me. It was like jumping off a speeding train. You know, you land and you dust yourself off. Your, you think, where am I? What's going on? So I, you know, we'd been, we'd been traveling at knots. We'd been doing really interesting and relevant stuff. We had fantastic friends in the church, and we imagined what a ward would be like if we both, if we all six of us or eight of us could be in the same ward, you know? And then nothing. I was just left on the shelf. The state president, I think, had made it pretty plain there's a new state president by this time, but he'd made it pretty plain that he didn't like me much.

Neville Rochow [02:28:11] He, I think he felt a little intimidated by me because he liked to be the smartest guy in the room. And I challenged that proposition for him. So, so he, he just, they had nothing for me to do at all. Nothing for months. And then I spoke with an area authority friend of mine.

Neville Rochow [02:28:37] I said, what's going on? I've been, I'm just sitting here idle. I'm, I'M sure I can get myself busy with the stuff that I'm doing with BYU from a remote sort of thing, which they wanted me to do anyway, but because BYU actually wanted us to go back to BYU after Brussels, they wanted us to go and live in the States and they saw that as a long term proposition that we would live there, working BYU in the law school and basically go around the world doing the sort of stuff that we'd done in Brussels only from a base in, in, in Provo. And Penny wasn't having that.

Neville Rochow [02:29:15] She said, no, we can do that remotely and you can travel where you need to, but I just want to be back home. So that's the way it was organized. So I had, I had stuff to do, but I had no calling at all. And so I spoke to a friend of mine who was an area authority and I said, you know, Keith, this is ridiculous. I mean, the stake president basically trembles whenever he sees me and runs to the other side of the room.

Neville Rochow [02:29:42] What are we going to do? You know, I've got to get some, I've got to get doing something. And he said, leave it with me. And anyway, I got a phone call from the, the mission president. He said, look, I'm down a counselor and I feel really good about calling you as a counselor. How would you feel about that? I said, yeah, that sounds fine. So he gave me the usual run through about holding a temple Rick and being worthy and all that sort of of thing. And I passed that with flying colors. And next thing I was in the mission presidency. Well, one of the first things we had to do was we had, we had to hold a disciplinary council.

Neville Rochow [02:30:18] And I can't go into the details because they're confidential, but I can describe at a fairly high level that it was a missionary and his emotionally and intellectually compromised companion. And there were some pretty seriously bad things that he did to his companion.

Neville Rochow [02:30:47] And so we, we handled that. The missionary was sent home, excommunicated, etc. Etc. Then I spoke to the mission president. I got along really well with the mission president and he and I were good friends almost from the first minute that we met. He was an ophthalmologist from the States, very bright, smart guy, ideas guy, but never stopped. You know, he's just constantly going. He, he just was constantly moving and he got me to do a lot of the stuff that he couldn't do as he was moving so fast. Anyway, I said to him one day, I said look, look, I'm not comfortable about where we've left this.

Neville Rochow [02:31:29] Sure, we've excommunicated the, the perpetrator, we've moved him on, but that's all we've done. And that's the very reason why a lot of the Catholic bishops are getting in trouble because they have done nothing more about getting the thing brought before authorities.

Neville Rochow [02:31:47] And he said, you're right. So I spoke with a fellow silk who's a friend of mine who specializes in criminal law. And I said, you know, we're sort of bound by, confident, well, we are bound by confidentiality, so we can't make the complaint.

Neville Rochow [02:32:04] What do you suggest? And he said, work with the victim to, to report to the police what the perpetrator has done. So I was given the job of working with this young guy who was a lovely young man but had no idea of what had happened to him in terms he knew physically what had happened, but he had no, no emotional or intellectual response about it. He just didn't compute it. This young guy should not have been on a mission, but he was.

Neville Rochow [02:32:44] And as it turned out, both of the young men came from the same stake, so they, they were going to see each other again. So, and, and that was a stake in Australia. So I said, well, I'll, I'll, I'll just convey that. So I spoke with the mission president and I said, look, we're gonna have to help this guy reported. So he, he supported that wholeheartedly. We got Salt Lake involved, involved. And I know that Bill Atkin could not have had much to do with what was going on because the work that was coming out of Salt Lake on this whole thing was ham fisted and amateur.

Neville Rochow [02:33:22] It was just terrible. So I, so I, I sort of, with a friend of mine in New Zealand who is the liaison for church problems like this, we worked out a way that we'd handle it and not get the mission president into any difficulty and see if we could get the perp put where he needed to be.

Neville Rochow [02:33:44] So I went along to all the police interviews with this young guy and as he just matter of factly told these things that happened to him, things that had not come out in the council without emoting at all, I found that I was taking on the emotional burn of it all. It was like I was the victim and I, I got into a terrible position where, I mean, I've seen and done a lot of hard stuff. You know, I've done a lot of heavy lifting over the years as a legal practitioner.

Neville Rochow [02:34:23] You know, there isn't anything that can usually shock me very much, but this was different because I wasn't there as a lawyer. I was there as a support person. And in my role as a support person, I was taking on his burden.

Neville Rochow [02:34:40] And I was ultimately diagnosed with PTSD and told to stay away from the church completely because there were too many triggers and that I would end up in an emotional and psychological wreck if I didn't disconnect. So I did disconnect.

John Dehlin [02:35:01] Whoa. Really severe for you as you were just trying to help people.

Neville Rochow [02:35:07] Yeah. And. Well, at one point, John, I was suicidal and I didn't know why. This was hard stuff. This was hard stuff. So I got some psychological and medical

John Dehlin [02:35:19] out of concern for these young men and their well being. And well, you just took it really personal, the well being of these two young men.

Confronting a Protected Predator and Growing Disillusionment

Neville Rochow [02:35:27] Well, particularly, particularly the victim.

John Dehlin [02:35:29] Okay.

Neville Rochow [02:35:29] Because he, and so ultimately he goes home and the, the steak. I mean, the guy was arrested, the, the perp was arrested, he was brought back to Adelaide to be arraigned. And it looked like they were going to, they were going to try him for what he'd done. But then, then what happened was the family and the local ward, which is with a, of a particular ethnic persuasion, sent the victim to New Zealand. So he was out of reach of the police and put a lot of pressure on him not to testify, not to do anything, but just to let it go.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:16] And this was the, this was his word, like his home word. Yeah, like basically the bishop, who was the bishop saying, you should just forgive, let it go, don't pursue this.

Neville Rochow [02:36:30] That's right. And that's what happened.

Gerardo Sumano [02:36:33] I found that very hard, familiar, because there's a, there, there's been a, a case very similar to that in, in Argentina just recently.

Neville Rochow [02:36:43] Yep. Okay. So that was all very hard. So there was no time limit put on how long I would have to be absent from church. But they said it would take years before I could ever walk into a Mormon building again and not be at risk.

Neville Rochow [02:37:02] So I spoke with a friend of mine, very good friend of mine, who's a family faithful member of the church and as a psychiatrist, he's one of the leading forensic psychologists, psychiatrists here. And I talked with him about it and he said, well, yeah, you've got to, got to follow that advice. I, I can understand that. So yeah, do it.

Neville Rochow [02:37:22] And he also gave me some warnings that, you know, staying away from church for a long time, you'll, there is a risk that you'll stray. And I said, yeah, I know that's, that is a risk. And I'm, I'M alive to it.

Neville Rochow [02:37:36] But anyway, then, then a few months after that, Penny was diagnosed with, with cancer, with uterine cancer and diagnosed in that she had to have surgery the next week. It was, it was aggressive and it was about to breach the uterine wall. They had to give her a hysterectomy and then that would be followed up with chemotherapy and radiotherapy and the like. So she was immunocompromised for several months.

Neville Rochow [02:38:11] And so that gave us another reason not to go to church, that is. So I said to her one day, I said, look Penny, we're stuck here on a Sunday doing nothing when we'd normally be worshiping. Why don't we dust off all of those questions that you and I have had over the years? Because I had, I had a little file in my, in my, both in my computer and also in my head about questions about the Book of Mormon. I was planning on writing a book in response to all the questions that have been raised about the Book of Mormon. Not knowing what the data might be or not knowing what the evidence was, but being confident that the, I'd be able to, as a lawyer, prove the Book of Mormon to be true on the evidence.

Neville Rochow [02:38:56] And I said, why don't we dust all that stuff off and just pursue those questions to their limit? She said, sure, let's do it.

John Dehlin [02:39:06] So Neville, can I just say this does remind me of Tom Phillips. I, I started mentioning Tom. It wasn't until Tom Phillips was out of serving in the, in the stake presidencies, out of serving the area presidency. And same with Hans Mattson. It's not until he was kind of released as an area authority before he like said, whoa, for the first time I actually have time to study these things. It's, it's almost like if the church can keep you on this treadmill of being busy, serving, serving, you know, being a dad, you know, being a mom, being a provider, you're never going to have time to actually stop and think and process. And it was, they say idleness is the devil's workshop. It's like you didn't have a, a big calling you, you, you weren't being fully utilized. And that's got to be dangerous for the church a little bit.

Neville Rochow [02:39:56] Well, the other, the other thing was that I'd been encouraged by a long term friend of mine at the university to do a PhD. And, and at this time I'd started. Excuse me again, at this time I'd started the PhD. Oh, look John, I'm gonna have to take another break.

John Dehlin [02:40:17] No problem. No problem. So, Gerardo, you were saying that you related a little bit when, when we were talking about Neville coming home. You were saying that reminded you of a. Of a friend or a family member. Is that right?

Gerardo Sumano [02:40:32] Yeah. A really close family member who literally gets depressed and anxiety and sometimes anxiety attacks when. When he doesn't have high level callings. So it's been in state presidencies, mission presidencies, and at one point wouldn't have like a calling for. For a period of time. And it was getting. Yeah. Stressed and depressed. It's kind of like an interesting.

John Dehlin [02:41:02] But it's not like pride. It's not like I've got to be important.

Neville Rochow [02:41:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:41:05] I've. I'm. I'm better than everybody. I sense it's more. You just. You want to make a difference and be used at your full capacity. Is that right?

Gerardo Sumano [02:41:15] Right. Right.

John Dehlin [02:41:16] Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [02:41:17] Yeah. It's. It's pretty interesting how the church makes people feel that way that they. They always have to be, you know, because they could be involved in, you know, other humanitarian causes or. But, but it's, it's. We're in the church and high, high level callings with. They feel like that's. That's the God. That's the God. God's way.

John Dehlin [02:41:44] Yeah, yeah. And. And on the one hand, what I hear you saying, Gerardo, is maybe there, there are so many other better uses of high quality people and their time and their money and their power. So on the one hand, as we're looking back now, maybe having the church not totally worked for us. There's a degree to which we could all say, man, I wish Neville could have been used in other ways other than to take same sex marriage away from Europeans or whatever, Australians. On the other hand, when you don't have meaning and purpose in your life and even, let's just say especially when you're older, but probably at any point, it's probably better that you have some meaning or purpose than to have none.

Gerardo Sumano [02:42:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:42:28] And so Neville, in that sense, we're just talking about you, you know, feeling frustrated that you weren't being fully utilized once you got back to Australia and then having leisure time to study the church. It's a real. It's a real conundrum because my guess is it was really healthy for you and, and Hans Matson and Tom Phillips and their spouses to all be hyper utilized. But then, but then it. Once that disappears, it kind of leaves you rudderless a little bit.

Neville Rochow [02:43:02] Yeah, I think that's right. The. But as I, as I was about to say I. I'd started a PhD around this time and. Or, well, I was contemplating starting it. Whichever. Whichever way it goes. I can't remember exactly the sequence, but one of my supervisors was going to be a good friend of mine, Paul Bevy. Paul is an ordained Orthodox Catholic priest, Ukrainian Orthodox Catholic priest. So that means that he's married and has children.

Neville Rochow [02:43:39] But he and I have been friends for many, many years. And I've. I've brought him to the symposium of. He's been to Salt Lake. He's been to the Mormon History Museum with me. He's met general authorities with me. He's done, he's done it all in terms of exposure to the interesting stuff in Mormonism, and we've had some very good discussions. He loves the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. You know, he's just a. He's just a really good man. And we've been able to be frank about our faith journeys over the years.

Neville Rochow [02:44:16] And I, I remember a meeting very early in his supervision of my PhD where I said to him, you know, I'm even more committed now to following where the evidence leads me than I've ever been before. And I, because I've never extended. Extended that to my religion before now, but as I do it, I find that the evidence is not stacking up the way that I thought it would.

Neville Rochow [02:44:44] And I just don't. I don't, I don't know what to do about that. And that's when he told me a Buddhist parable that has been abused to him and various other people that he knows will. Where a man is making his way down the road of life and having all the experiences that life throws up, and he comes to a stream, and the stream can't be crossed other than by a boat. And he espies a boat by the side of the road, he thinks, okay, I'll cross the. Across the stream using this boat. Boat. So he gets across to the other side of the stream and the road of life is there for him to continue on.

Neville Rochow [02:45:31] And he has to. He has the question. The Buddha asked the question, but he has the question, you know, what do I. What do I do with this boat? Do I carry it just in case there's another stream or do I leave it? And of course, the, the metaphor is pretty obvious. The church helped me cross a lot of streams when I was younger, when I needed to cross the stream of having a dysfunctional family background and coming from the wrong side of the tracks and having to get an education.

Neville Rochow [02:46:09] But what was it doing for me now that I had meaning and purpose in my life and that I'd pretty well worked out where I stood on a lot of things. And that was, that was almost like a release valve for me. It was almost like giving me permission to really go where the evidence took me. And that that was part of what informed the inquiry that Penny and I got engaged in. When we started looking at, at things, we looked at the essays we looked at. Well, Dan Vogel was very helpful to me on the Book of Abraham. After I'd, after I looked at the stuff that Dan said, I thought it's obvious the Book of Abraham is not what it claims to be. It just isn't.

Gerardo Sumano [02:46:58] Yeah.

Neville Rochow [02:46:58] And that although I'd heard that around the traps quite a bit, I thought that's one of the things I'll get to eventually. And when I got to really disturbed me that it wasn't what it claimed to be and it couldn't be what it claimed to be in this, this fiction of translation being some other means of receiving revelation than what translation actually means was as incredible as the hat in the rock. To me it was just stupid and I wasn't going to have my intelligence insulted by that.

Neville Rochow [02:47:37] And besides, even, even if it were revelation, it was internally unsupportable as a matter of historical fact and it still had the racism entrenched that I thought was just despicable on the part of the church. So the Book of Abraham just crumbled.

Neville Rochow [02:48:00] And I thought well if that's so, then what about the Book of Mormon? Is there any way that can hold on to the Book of Mormon? So I read, read Grant Palmer's book, An Insider's View on, on Mormonism.

Neville Rochow [02:48:16] And I thought, well, whether he's right or he's wrong, it doesn't look too healthy for the Mormon Church Church or the Book of Mormon at all. And so it's like a, like a set of dominoes. You know, when you set them on edge and you've got them all lined up, the dominoes just started falling one by one.

Neville Rochow [02:48:39] And Penny was a little reluctant I think. I don't think she minds my telling, telling you this. She was a little reluctant about it all. She was saying, but I can't believe Joseph Smith was a rogue. I just, I just can't believe that.

Neville Rochow [02:48:52] Well, when she started to learn about the way that the church finances were being held, truly being run, she said this is just an American money making corporation. It's really a pyramid scheme. I don't want any part of it. And then all the other stuff made sense to her and it all fit together and that was the end of it for us.

Neville Rochow [02:49:16] That was it. Now then, then my daughter Jackie, with whom I've got a very good relationship, I'm very close to her, she and I have traveled the world together. I mean we've done, I, I, we, we, we had two months where we traveled in New York, Paris and London and we just had each other together and we didn't have a cross crossword during that time. We just loved being together and we had a fantastic time. She's a Jane Austen freak and took her to Jane Austen's house and you know, we just had this fantastic time. Well, since, since when she was young, she's now become a lawyer and she's very sharp and she's also a philosophy graduate, so she's good on philosophy and things like that.

Neville Rochow [02:50:05] She said, dad, I'm not too sure about the way you're going with the church. Have you been reading anti Mormon literature? And I said I actually haven't of this. Basically the stuff we read in the essays and a few other things that just don't make sense. I haven't read the CES letter or anything like that. Just, it just isn't jilling for me. And she said, well, look, why don't you do this? Why don't you just stick to the New Testament, Just read the Bible daily and let that be a spiritual sustenance. And in the meantime, Ben, her husband and I will look at the essays and see what we think. In six weeks time. They asked the bishop to remove their names.

Gerardo Sumano [02:50:51] Wow.

John Dehlin [02:50:51] This was your, this was your daughter?

Neville Rochow [02:50:54] Youngest daughter. My youngest daughter.

John Dehlin [02:50:55] And what year, what year was this, Neville?

Neville Rochow [02:50:58] They've been out about three years ago. Yeah, about the time that I started my PhD. Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:09] So three years ago your daughter and her family left the church.

Neville Rochow [02:51:15] Now her, her husband's family are strict true believing Mormons. It's caused a big rift there, but Ben just can't see how he believed it all the time that he has, he's, he's a psychologist and you know, he's, he's no intellectual slouch. Jackie's no intellectual slouch. What killed it for them with the essays was when you read the footnotes. Yeah, it, the, the prose peels away to nothing and she, she reads footnotes. You know, she's, she's a good researcher.

Neville Rochow [02:51:53] I, I use her whenever I can as a proofreader because she's the best person I know on the Earth in terms of footnotes. She can do footnotes quicker than anyone I know, but she reads footnotes and it didn't fit. So they were out. My other daughter was out. My son is still in, but. Well, I don't speak for him, but you know, he's, he's got his own journey that I think is moving in a certain direction.

John Dehlin [02:52:22] But isn't it Neville, isn't it kind of interesting, and I'm being a little bit repetitive here, that the Book of Abraham stuff was discovered in like 1967, 1968. The Tanners were writing about it in the late 60s.

Neville Rochow [02:52:37] That's right.

John Dehlin [02:52:38] It was covered ad nauseam in dialogue, like Robert Ritter's publishing articles in dialogue about the Book of AB Abraham. You're describing the dialogue and somehow it wasn't until like a few years ago in 20, 20, 17, 2018, that you actually have the time to read about that for the first time and process it, what, 30 or 40 years after the information was made available.

Neville Rochow [02:53:08] Exactly, exactly. And I mean, that's just one where the opportunity to reflect on things and also the opportunity to say, okay, now I am going to find the answers. Now I am going to be looking at the evidence and seeing where it goes with the utmost of goodwill and good faith, thinking that that would resolve in favor of the Church, really believing that and then finding that it ain't necessarily necessarily so.

John Dehlin [02:53:40] Yeah, that's fascinating.

Neville Rochow [02:53:43] So, yeah, after that, so I, I continued with my PhD. I had a fellowship that I had to. Well, didn't have to, but I was offered in Mannheim, Germany. So I went there for a couple of, for a couple of months. While I was there, I started to feel ill, had to come home. It turned out that I had to. Multiple myeloma. Yeah, I was diagnosed with cancer.

Neville Rochow [02:54:09] And you know, by this time I have no time whatsoever for any religion at all. And I was determined that no Mormons would turn up with casseroles or make inquiries or whatever. Now they were pretty darn determined. They, they hung in there and they tried every which way they could could to come and visit us and to be with us. I, I was stuck in Perth, which is the other side of the country, for a month because I couldn't travel home. I, I got back from Germany, but I was three hours from dying when I arrived in Perth, so they had to keep me in hospital there.

Neville Rochow [02:54:48] And they did for a month. And Penny came over and we spent that time and we did a lot of talking about things, but during that time people were constantly pestering wanting to be involved. I just wanted to live, I just wanted to get better. And so I just refused any communication whatsoever with Mormons during that time.

Neville Rochow [02:55:11] And since then they're pretty well left us alone. I had a, I had a, a transplant, a marrow transplant at the end of that year. Since then I've been pretty, pretty well recovering and doing a lot better. But apart from those few friends that I choose to communicate with in the church, I don't have any communication with the church at all now, apart from one little incident that occurred last year which was very interesting and I call it the Adelaide Cricket Ground store story.

Neville Rochow [02:55:51] Because what happened was one of the area authorities with whom we worked very closely when we were the, the interfaith directors years before, he out of the blue sent me an email saying, look, I'm going to be in Adelaide in a couple weeks. Can I take you and Penny out to lunch? And I read it out to Penny and smiled and I said what do you think this is about?

Neville Rochow [02:56:17] And she said what's his, what's he's calling at the moment? I said I don't know, but I, I'm sure there's some sort of rub in all this, but let's go, go along out of curiosity. So we did and we had a nice lunch at one of the Indian restaurants that's just around the corner here.

Neville Rochow [02:56:34] And conversation was pretty high level and just reminiscing on a few things. Then he sent for the, for the bill, it was his treat, he was going to pay. And he said, neville, tomorrow there's a special meeting at the Adelaide Cricket Ground for the International center for Law and Religious Studies.

Neville Rochow [02:57:03] And I thought this is odd because I'm actually, I was actually a senior fellow at the time, same center. And it's the sort of thing that I would not only be involved in, but I'd certainly know about. I didn't know a thing.

Neville Rochow [02:57:18] So I, I looked at Penny and I said, shall we go along just for curiosity, see what this is all about? And she said yeah, okay, let's do it. So we went and he was there to meet us and took us up to the, to the members room. I mean I know the Adelaide Cricket Ground pretty well, but this is, this is a room that has an absolutely spectacular view of the ground and the northern part of the city, the cathedral. It's completely picturesque and it was beautiful venue. So we sat down. But what do we find when we're, when we walk in?

Neville Rochow [02:58:00] The place is teeming with Mormons who would have no idea about law and religion and have no connection whatsoever with the International center for Law and Religious Studies. These people would have no clue about anything connected with religious freedom.

Neville Rochow [02:58:20] Constitutional permissibility of legislative restriction. They wouldn't know any of it. And the mission president was there and the missionaries are wearing their name tags. All the things that are completely forbidden in this sort of setting. They're all happening. And so we sat down and we found ourselves a nice little corner and a friend of mine who's a professor at one of the other universities sat with us.

Neville Rochow [02:58:53] He's, he's actually Community of Christ as it turns out. But anyway he sat with us and then my, one of my supervisors was there and so she came and sat with us as well. And Susan Lemire, Suzanne Lemire, who's my other supervisor other than Paul.

Neville Rochow [02:59:10] She is one of the nicest people you'll ever find anywhere on the planet. She just is grace epitomized. And she's also one of the sharpest people. She's the president of the, the Corporate Lawyers association of Australia. She's got a razor sharp mind, very clever, but a wonderful supervisor and a wonderful person.

Neville Rochow [02:59:32] Anyway, the, the thing gets underway and the, the, an area authority, the, the head Area authority for Australia comes up and kneels down beside me, says oh Neville, it's good to see you here. I wish we could had you involved in this because you would have got all the right people here. And we've struggled to get the right people so we've invited all these other members along to just fill up the seats. But I was wondering would you speak today?

Neville Rochow [03:00:01] And I said yeah, okay, I'll speak. And so I did. And I explained how dignity works as a constitutional principle to bring about religious freedom, how they interconnect and how I was a signatory to an international document that supported dignity as something that should be promoted worldwide in connection with the anniversary of the universal Universal Declaration of Human Rights and explained how the ICLRs worked, how the symposium worked, what they could expect if they ever went went to one. Then I sat down.

Neville Rochow [03:00:44] Well, from there it just was, it was a complete debacle because no one knew what was going on and no one who's presenting it had any clue what they were doing. They had a video going on over the other side of the room that had President Nelson at one point in it and then some excerpts from a previous symposium.

Neville Rochow [03:01:07] No one could hear it, no one could see it and it's just nonsense and a waste of everybody's time and I could see Suzanne, who has complete equanimity, just getting more and more angry and couldn't wait to get out of it.

Neville Rochow [03:01:27] Anyway, she said to me afterwards, she said, neville, I went to that because I thought you were connected with it somehow. And I thought out of courtesy I'd go, that's one of the worst things I've been to. I never want to have anything to do with the Mormons ever again. I said, well, as it turns out, Suzanne, neither do I. And I had nothing to do with it. And she said, good, you know, and she apparently tore strips over off some church leader about it that she knew, and that's just not her at all. But then what followed?

Gerardo Sumano [03:01:56] So what was, what was the thing that she didn't like about.

Neville Rochow [03:02:00] It's a waste of time. It was a complete waste of time. They didn't do anything on what they said they were going to be doing. It was just, it was a. She was brought there under false pretenses and she's a busy lady. She's also very. And she'd been conned and she was angry about being conned and she had been conned. Anyway, that's one side of it. What happened after that was I started getting these text messages and emails. Oh, Neville, good to see you. You know, we really need your expertise. We need, really need your, your involvement again. And then I had. The area authority called me up and said, look, Neville, we'll have you back on any terms. You write your own ticket, you know, whatever you want to do, you can do. Just come back.

John Dehlin [03:02:52] What do you think? What do you, what do you think that was about, Neville? What were they doing there?

Neville Rochow [03:02:56] Oh, they're trying to get me back into the church, obviously, but they need me. What were they afraid of?

John Dehlin [03:03:01] Were they afraid of something, do you think?

Neville Rochow [03:03:02] Oh, I don't think they were afraid of anything, but I just think they knew that they didn't have the grunt or the intellectual firepower to carry, carry off what they were trying to do in law and religion in Australia. They just don't have anybody that can do it. Well, I mean, there are some people that can do it. That's not fair. There are some very smart people that can. But, but they knew that I'd been very successful and I had the Brussels experience and.

John Dehlin [03:03:26] Right.

Neville Rochow [03:03:26] They just knew that it worked well with me and, and I kept on saying, look, no, I'm not interested in coming back. I'm not interested in being involved. Anyway, in the end they got me to talk to the local director. Who was going to get me involved in the next project. And he, I called him. He said, oh, Neville, I'm glad you called. We're going to get to work straight away. And I said, no, I'm calling you to tell you I'm not going to work with you. Oh, why is that? I said, well, look, there are two basic reasons. First of all, the church has just released a policy statement about HR files, which is a piece of legislation that passed the House of Representatives on civil and political rights, with which I agree, I think it catches America up 40 years by being at, by being passed.

Neville Rochow [03:04:17] It is where you should be to catch up with the rest of the world. I said, I support it, but the church has come out and said that it doesn't. Now, I can't be involved with any organization where people know that the position I'd be adopting in that organization is contrary to what I've published. I'm not going to be involved. And I said, the second reason is this.

Neville Rochow [03:04:40] You do not have the intellectual firepower to carry the weight that you're taking on. You've got no one who can actually talk to these issues in any convincing or compelling ways. And he said, yeah, that's going to be you. And I said, no, it's not for the reasons that I've just explained. I'm not going to carry the burden of this because that's, that's what would end up happening. I'd have to do it. So anyway, that closed it down and since then they haven't bothered me.

Neville Rochow [03:05:11] But that was about the closest I came to having my name officially removed from the records. I thought if they give me any more trouble over this, I will just, I will just remove my name. But I haven't bothered to do that and I probably won't bother to do that. But it's all with. Under the umbrella of my relationship with the church having changed. I don't attend, I don't believe, but I don't. I don't make any trouble either. I don't go out of my way to tell people the things that I believe or know because that's a private matter and I don't want to. I don't see it my role or position to disturb anyone else's faith, but leave me alone is my mantra now.

Losing Faith and Deciding to Leave

John Dehlin [03:05:58] What was that like emotionally and psychologically? You talked about getting depressed with, with watching the church protect a sexual predator. What was it like losing your faith in a church? You know, you start, started talking about how your life wasn't great Then you joined the church, and it gave you meaning and purpose and community. It provided all these benefits and values to your life that you kind of experienced a lot of adversity and made a lot of sacrifices to become a member, putting a lot of intellectual things on the shelf. Fast forward decades, and all of a sudden you come to this conclusion that it isn't true and that it wasn't what you thought and that it's, as you said, a bag of beans. Is that. Is that a term you used earlier?

Neville Rochow [03:06:47] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:06:48] What was that like for you, emotionally and psychologically? Were you, like, exhilarated? Were you thrilled? Were you depressed and sad? Were you relieved? What was that like psychologically to just say, I'm done, John.

Neville Rochow [03:07:01] It's been a journey? I think initially I was pretty. Pretty angry that I'd been lied to as I saw it.

John Dehlin [03:07:08] Yeah.

Neville Rochow [03:07:09] And particularly with me, where I'd raised specifically the rock and the hat issue as a game, as a deal breaker. And they said, no, that's not true. And now it is true all of a sudden. So at first I was a bit angry. But, you know, I've reached, I think, part of the process because I've been in good hands while I've been doing my PhD with good people working with me, and the stuff that I've been reading, the stuff that Penny and I have been studying together, I've reached a point of equanimity where I'm completely at peace.

Neville Rochow [03:07:45] I have no ill feelings whatsoever, no anger, no distress. I'm just. I'm. I'm never been happier in my life. I'm really very happy. I'm calm. I'm at ease with who I am, where I stand on things. I. I really. There's a book that I read by Michael Sandil, you know, doing. About doing the right thing. And that's how I see myself. You know, a person trying in all situations to do the right thing for the right reason. Not for any accolades, certainly not for any report, certainly not to fulfill any statistical criterion, but because it's just in my core to do the right thing for the right reason, for the right motive.

Neville Rochow [03:08:38] So that's where I am. I just. I want to live a good life, and I want to be kind to others. My PhD thesis has, as one of its main themes, human dignity and studying dignity deeply. Human dignity deeply had a profound influence on the way that I see other people and the way I see the world.

Neville Rochow [03:09:01] And I think that everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity. And for that reason, my view on Same sex marriage and homosexuality has changed dramatically. I have nothing like the views that I had when I was an active member of the church.

Neville Rochow [03:09:17] I'm embarrassed by the views that I expressed and advocated for. I, I have, I have no, I'm no respecter of persons if that's a term that we're allowed to use about humans. I and one of my, I go walking with a barrister friend of mine who's a cold colleague and we, we go for a walk for 5,6ks every morning and then we treat ourselves to breakfast and he said, you know, Neville, I've known you for a while but you've changed in recent times. You seem prepared to talk to anyone about anything and treat them so kindly. That wasn't you years ago. And I said, well, you know, first of all, now that I'm no longer an active member of the Church, I don't have the motivation of trying to convert people.

Neville Rochow [03:10:11] So therefore I feel like it can be honest in my relationships. Secondly, I think that everyone should be treated with dignity and they should be treated kindly and if I can make their day better by a kindly word or act, I'd rather do that than do nothing. And so I enjoy it. And he, he liked that. He thought that was a fair expression, explanation but that that was interesting for him to observe that contrast in the way that I, I approach things and do things. I remember people's names, I call them by their name. I, I just love people, but I love them from something that's in my core and not from some teaching.

John Dehlin [03:10:51] And if you had to just restate why you talk about doing the right thing for the right reasons, if you had to state why it was the right thing for you to do to no longer attend the Mormon Church, why was that the right thing to do? What were your reasons?

Neville Rochow [03:11:08] Because as a matter of integrity, I can't profess by outward actions, namely attendance or any sort of involvement. I can't profess by those actions something to be true that I know thoroughgoingly know is a falsehood and is based upon a sham, a fraud and lies. I cannot do it even if there's good coming out of it. There are other ways in which I can achieve good than going through that sham.

John Dehlin [03:11:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was hard. It's taken you some years, but now you're saying you're happier than you've ever been.

Neville Rochow [03:11:57] Yeah, I can honestly say that I've got an equanimity that I just can't remember having possessed before. I don't have any Guilt about either doing or not doing things. And I'm not doing anything that would really get me in trouble with the Mormon Church anyway.

Neville Rochow [03:12:20] I mean, you know, I live a pretty good life. I mean, we live a very quiet life, so the, the chance to get involved in an egregious sin is pretty limited for me. But I. I just. I don't feel guilty that I'm not doing enough, that I'm not living up to the standards, that I'm not, you know, striving for perfection. I see perfection as a ridiculous objective for this life.

Neville Rochow [03:12:50] And to be perfect in anything is silly because that's to refuse our humanity, our. In fact, I think it is a denial of our human dignity because we tend to judge others by the. The extent to which they are prepared to strive for perfection as well. And whether we say it or whether we're conscious of it or not, we are judging people by a standard that is inculcated into us that we ought not to use for them.

John Dehlin [03:13:19] Yeah. Yeah. Well, not everyone arrives at that conclusion, but that's the conclusion you've arrived at. And I think it's a. It's one many of our listeners and viewers are going to respect. Respect.

Neville Rochow [03:13:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:13:35] I have. I have to ask, what's it like to receive a cancer diagnosis where you're starting, like, there's a. Okay. There's a lot of Mormons that don't reach the conclusion you do. They're like, man, I've invested 40, 50, 60 years in this. Why would I leave it now? Oh, I don't want to disrupt my kids or my grandkids. There's this term that's developed recently, people chemo, pimo, physically in, mentally out. And it represents all these Mormons that. Yeah, just like you, they're like, of course, I don't really believe it's true, Neville. Of course the Book of Mormon isn't historical. Of course, the Book of Abraham is not a translation.

John Dehlin [03:14:12] Of course, Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet. But, like, it's my tribe, it's my people. This is my heritage. I don't want to disrupt my kids, my grandkids. Maybe it's. It'll. Maybe my kids and grandkids will ostracize or marginalize me. Maybe it could affect my business.

John Dehlin [03:14:29] And so I'm going to stay in because there are more benefits to staying in and more costs for leaving. I. I better just stay.

Neville Rochow [03:14:39] Yeah, that's. That's a very good thing to raise. And I've got a couple of answers to it. The first answer, I think, is this, that the default position for a Mormon. For a Mormon in Australia is to be secular.

Neville Rochow [03:14:53] It's odd to be in the church. And so to no longer believe it, it's. The default position would be to go out of it. Whereas if you're in, you know, the wasach front and the church is no longer true in your mind, the default position is not leaving because. Because the sociality is so.

Neville Rochow [03:15:18] It's so shot through with Mormonism that the default position is just to stay in that social media. So I think that's a cultural difference that comes about by being a member of the church outside of the stronghold of Mormonism, compared. Compared with Australia, where it's not a stronghold anywhere.

Neville Rochow [03:15:44] So that's the first answer. The second answer is this, and I think you were implying this about the cancer diagnosis. I remember it very clearly because I was in a hospital bed in Royal Perth Hospital, and the specialist came in and said, look, we've got a diagnosis and not only have your kidneys failed, but they, They've. They've failed because you've got multiple myoma and there is no cure, but there are ways in which we can treat.

Neville Rochow [03:16:15] And as soon as, as soon as he said that, Penny started to cry and I said, don't cry. It's going to be okay. It. It's just a thing through which we have to pass. It's just one more thing that you and I have to do. And we've done lots of things in the past. We can do this.

Neville Rochow [03:16:38] So she. She served it up and straightened it back and said, yep, okay, let's do that. And so as much pain and suffering as I've been through over the last few years, I've never thought for one day to complain because it's just another thing. It's just something I've got to pass through.

Neville Rochow [03:16:59] It's great to be alive. I'm happy to be alive on any terms. But that's not a faith position. That's not. God has sent this to me, so therefore I've got to endure it. It's just a life position. And if anything, I probably owe more to Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics for adopting that sort of stance where we just live life one day at a time, living in the moment, accepting things that come to us without complaint. And I'm very comfortable with that. The.

Neville Rochow [03:17:35] The other philosopher that helps me a lot, I think, is Emmanuel Kant. Just where, you know, that. That he's defined a way in which we can see others in their right faith frame with that dignity that I was talking about before. But I've found a lot of comfort, a lot of consolation in philosophy, not as a new religion or a substitution for it, but just giving me insights that are available and that others have adopted previously. So I don't need any divine intervention or any blessings or prayers or anything.

Neville Rochow [03:18:17] All we need is right here in us. And I found that inner strength when I was getting out of. Out of Mannheim, when I found out that I was really ill and couldn't go on. I had no physical strength whatsoever. But there was some. Something in me that just gave me enough to get myself packed up, get on the plane to London and then from London to Perth to get through.

Neville Rochow [03:18:43] And, and that's just how I see life. I just say it's just another thing. We just have to pass through it. However bad it seems, it. It will either pass or it won't. If it won't pass, well, then we just have to accept that as being the new default position.

John Dehlin [03:19:04] How have you come out in terms of a belief in God and Jesus is. If you want to share that. And then how have you come out in terms of a belief in the afterlife?

Neville Rochow [03:19:14] Okay, can I treat those separately because.

John Dehlin [03:19:17] Yeah, please.

Neville Rochow [03:19:18] For me, that, for me, they are quite distinct. I think. I think the true position where I am regarding God is I just don't know. And so in that sense, I'm a true agnostic. I think probably, probably I lean towards there being some sort of organizing principle, some sort of.

Neville Rochow [03:19:40] Some sort of something that would explain where the big bang came from. But of course, then there are the interior questions, where did that come from, etc. Etc. Got all that. Understand it. That's why I don't take it as a dogmatic position. I just don't know. But I'm open to all possibilities.

Neville Rochow [03:20:03] Do I think there's a big man in the sky that looks like one of the cutout cardboard deities that Mormons worship? No, I don't think that's the answer. As far as Jesus goes, I, I believe in a historical Jesus, but I don't think I can really subscribe to the resurrection. I don't think I can believe in an atonement. I don't believe that we actually need an atonement. I think we come into this world innocent but imperfect. We live this life the best we can and then we go out of it.

Neville Rochow [03:20:42] But I don't think we need to be genuflecting before, before some superior authority that claims they've got Some sort of revelation from God that puts them in charge of us. I can't accept that at all. That's just. No, that. That's not where I am anymore. But now, in terms of an afterlife, I think.

Neville Rochow [03:21:13] I think there are so many things we can't explain that we can't preclude it. Whether it's a Greek shades type of afterlife where we're in the Elysian Fields, or whether it's, you know, a Roman afterlife. We've got to go across the river sticks to. To Hades. Whether it's a.

Neville Rochow [03:21:40] A north Northern European type of afterlife where we hope to go to Valhalla, I just. I just don't know. But this. This. I can say that we've had both Penny and I've had some experiences where there's enough evidence for us to doubt when somebody says there is no afterlife because no one's come back and told us whether there is or isn't. And anyone who says that they have is either deluded or lying. But we have had experiences, and one is where Penny had a. A very close relationship with the young man when she was a young adult. And he was.

John Dehlin [03:22:20] He.

Neville Rochow [03:22:21] He formed a special bond with her. I won't go into the details of it, but he was a. He was a lat day saint who became inactive, followed a certain lifestyle that the church would definitely frown upon. And one day Penny heard him call all out, where he just said, penny. And she looked around, she thought he was in the room, she was in the kitchen, and he wasn't there. And she looked around and he wasn't there. The next day his mother called and said that at that time he'd passed away in Sydney, you know, several thousand kilometers from here or 1800 kilometers from here. So on that evidence and various other, excuse me, pieces of evidence, we can't preclude the idea of an afterlife. But believing what it is or knowing what it is, I'm not so arrogant as to say that. I just don't know.

John Dehlin [03:23:22] Okay. Makes sense. Neville, I'm. I'm reading through your outline and there are several things that you put up there that you may have wanted to touch on. You can decline to touch on any of these, or you can just say briefly, but I'm going to just go through and read some of the ones I think we may have not touched on and just give you a chance to kind of weigh in. Is that okay?

Neville Rochow [03:23:46] Sure. Sure. Yeah.

Polygamy, Joseph Smith, and the Historical Problems

John Dehlin [03:23:47] All right. So you talked about the essays. You're not a fan of the essays? Talked about the Book of Abraham. You did. I don't, I don't believe you talked about the first vision accounts. Is that right?

Neville Rochow [03:23:57] Yeah, I mean that's, that's more of the same. I, as a lawyer, I can't see how anyone can have God the Father and the Son appear to them. That would be a life changing experience. And not to have that clearly emblazoned upon your memory so that you can remember and relate every detail whenever you're called upon to do so. I mean, I've cross examined a number of things people over the years, and I've cross examined enough to know that if you can't get your story straight, then probably your story isn't straight at all.

John Dehlin [03:24:32] Okay, so you're referring to Joseph Smith changing his first vision accounts with time.

Neville Rochow [03:24:37] Look, I've, I've heard the, the historical apologist saying, oh, the fact that there are different accounts actually solidifies the veracity of it all. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. There, there isn't one forensically trained person in the world that could genuinely believe that is. So it's usually an indication of a liar. And judges usually rely upon exactly that to find against somebody's credibility. That's, that's just complete fiction when they come up with this sort of new forensic theory that only historians are privy to. I just can't believe it. I don't believe that historians genuinely subscribe to it either.

John Dehlin [03:25:24] Okay.

Gerardo Sumano [03:25:25] Yeah, I think it's, it just reminds me to when John was interviewing Dan Vogel and he was relating, I think John asked him about Emma Smith lying about polygamy. And, and doesn't that means that Emma could have lied about anything else and something that Vogel said? Well, that's not how historians see this. That's how a lawyer would see it. Like if you lie about one thing, you lie about everything else.

Neville Rochow [03:25:53] Yeah, yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:25:54] It's just kind of interesting that you as a, like having a lawyer mind how you, you can see through the first vision, different accounts.

Neville Rochow [03:26:05] Well, well, look, look, just, just to follow up on that, look, if he had two accounts that were slightly different.

Gerardo Sumano [03:26:13] Right?

Neville Rochow [03:26:13] Sure. But the, the details of these several accounts differ so fundamentally that it all looks like invention. And I think even Dan would say that no historian that is genuine in their craft would think that's okay.

John Dehlin [03:26:31] Right? Yeah. So you, you, you have a bullet that says Joseph Smith as a scoundrel. Is there anything you want to say about what you mean by that?

Neville Rochow [03:26:42] Well, I think that both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were utter scoundrels. And the whole polygamy story, the, the propositioning of young women on the basis of their salvation depends depending upon it. And, you know, an angel appearing with the sword. Why didn't he just let the, the angel slay him then? Big deal. Who cares? It's, it's all such, such. It's a way of manipulating a believing mind to get what you want. And it's. That's, that's scurrilous. I think that's just terrible.

John Dehlin [03:27:22] Yeah. Not a big fan of Joseph and Brigham. You have a bullet that says. Well, you say Young is a scoundrel on a frolic.

Neville Rochow [03:27:36] What I mean by that is once he didn't have to worry about anyone tarring and feathering him once he was in Utah territory or desert territory and he was governor and prophet and had absolute power. I mean, the things that he got up to, and we don't need to go through those, but, you know, he just, he went off on a frolic. He probably did the things that Joseph Smith would dream of but never was able to because he was in the United States and had a lot of local pressure stopping him. Principle among those being the law.

Gerardo Sumano [03:28:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:28:12] Yeah. Okay, so not a big fan of Brigham Young. What about you have Russell and Nelson as a walking embarrassment. So that's the current Mormon church prophet for those who don't know. And you've got him described as a walking embarrassment. What do you mean by that?

Neville Rochow [03:28:32] Well, he is embarrassing. I mean, he's just terrible.

John Dehlin [03:28:37] But why? So for those who don't know who he is.

Neville Rochow [03:28:42] Let me, let me start with. And this is when we're still, you know, card carrying members of the church. We were watching his being called as the, the new president and he holds his press conference. That press conference is utterly embarrassing. I mean, it's, it's folksy, it's scripted, and it's clear that there's been a change of the guard in the church public affairs because there's no way that the previous guard under which we worked would have let anything so folksy and stupid as that ever pass as an international press conference. Even Dallin Oaks mouthing the things that Nelson was supposed to say because they'd learned it all off by heart.

Neville Rochow [03:29:37] It was just ridiculous. And then, then, you know, his, his having the notebook by his bedside waiting for the inspiration. What, what, what's, what's the inspiration he gets? Oh, I know, I know. It's. I know. God, you want me to talk about gratitude? Just about the time we're about to have Thanksgiving In America. Great. Yeah, we'll do that. God, that's just so silly. It's just silly. I could go on, but he, no one takes him seriously outside of the church. He just, he can't be regarded with any seriousness.

Church Finances, American Culture, and Institutional Critiques

John Dehlin [03:30:14] He's not seen as a great world leader in Australia, as a great religious.

Neville Rochow [03:30:20] I don't think anyone knows who he is. And those who do couldn't care less about him.

John Dehlin [03:30:26] I mean, I don't think we, any of us really want to be mean,

Neville Rochow [03:30:29] but it, I don't want to be mean either, but, but I really don't. I mean having said all the things that I said about dignity, but when somebody sets themselves up as being, having this special conduit to God where they've got a direct telephone line and the bat phone rings every night and you know, he's got to jot it all down. What is the one thing that he's done? Done to help with COVID to help with world hunger, to help with world disease. And he's sitting on a pot of several billion dollars where he could do just about anything he likes. What are they doing?

Neville Rochow [03:31:04] And just looking at it objectively now in ways that I wouldn't have done years ago, I just think there's so much good that he could do that in his, his floundering way he just doesn't get around to. Yeah, sorry. And I, I'm sorry. That's going to offend some people. I know that and I, I, I really didn't want to quite go to that extent, but. No, it's just embarrassing.

John Dehlin [03:31:34] Well, I'll just say, not to pile on, but when you think about how much money, hundreds of billions of dollars just in assets, in investments. It's a trillion dollar church with so much power, with, you know, with U.S. senators and U.S. congressmen and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies all over the world with all of the church's wealth and money, empowered with all the power that Russell M. Nelson has as president, just take any major world problem. Hunger, starvation, you know, take your pick. Take your pick. Sanitation, disease, natural disasters, sex trafficking, like pick your pick your poison.

John Dehlin [03:32:15] Russell M. Nelson and, or the Mormon Church could just make huge inroads. And it just seems like all they care about is meddling in, in governmental affairs to make sure people like Gerardo can't marry people like Gerardo's husband Zach. And that's literally all the church is going to use its money and power for. Outside of maintaining its money and power.

Gerardo Sumano [03:32:38] There's also, there's a A good argument to be made about some, some of the stuff that Neville is saying. It's, it's, it really looks like to me at least that Russell M. Nelson has this somewhat of a God complex where he, he wants to be the savior of the, of the church, the savior of the name of Jesus. Even if you just look at his talks and just analyze them, one of the ones that comes to my mind is when the November 15 policy, the gay exclusion policy was reversed. He went to, to BYU and gave this talk. If you read it and anyone that analyzes that, that objectively, you can tell that he, what he's saying is that he was the one that pleaded to God

Neville Rochow [03:33:36] him to change his mind.

Gerardo Sumano [03:33:37] Right? Yeah, yeah. That God put this policy in place and, and he was the one that had to go and plead to God to, to help these LGBT people and their children who were suffering and to change his mind about the policy.

Neville Rochow [03:33:53] That, that, that has been the source of so much private mirth that me. Hey, hey, God, you know, I think you need to get this right. You probably made a mistake with us back then and you know, really help us get this right. Would you just think about it again? I mean, I know you're all knowing, all powerful, all loving, but I just.

John Dehlin [03:34:15] The creator of all, the creator of all things.

Neville Rochow [03:34:18] You know, you're such a cool guy. I know you don't want this to go down in history that you're so cool rule. So look, I'm happy to take the hit. You know, I'll announce that you've changed your mind.

John Dehlin [03:34:30] God's like, good idea, Russell.

Neville Rochow [03:34:34] Good idea that I didn't even, I couldn't see into the future. You know, I had my, I had my crystal ball of my urim and thumb and it's, it's on the blink.

Gerardo Sumano [03:34:45] Yeah. Yeah, but it's just, it's kind of infuriating, you know, like why he, I, when, when that, when that talk came, came, came out. My husband was kind of coming out to his family as a non believing believer and one of the, his mom came to him and asked him like, did you, did you listen to Russell M. Nelson's talk at byu? Do you think he's lying? You know, about, about. And my, I don't know. My, my, my, my husband's response was like, I don't think he thinks he's lying, but it's just, it's just this, it was ridiculous how he was blaming God for this policy and, and, and that, and that, and this is not the only one he's done this several times and then.

Neville Rochow [03:35:41] Exactly.

Gerardo Sumano [03:35:41] You count. You know, Radio Free Mormon and others have. Have talked about how Russell M. Nelson has. Has lied several times about his. His spiritual experiences. Wendy Nelson, his wife, has lied. And, and we know about. About experiences that they've been. They've told in his biography that had to be reversed. Like, it's just that. That just brought him up as, like, someone that's so close to God and so in touch with him. And like you're saying Neville, like, he talks to him every night and. And he wakes him up so he can write in his notebook what God is telling him that wants him to do with his church. Yeah, just really interesting. We're a really interesting prophet we have right now.

John Dehlin [03:36:34] Yeah, that's fun. All right. Do you want to. Do you want to say anything about the churches and his finances, or have you said everything you want to say?

Neville Rochow [03:36:42] I don't like to go there because, look, I'm not an accountant. I'm not a tax lawyer. It looks sufficiently suspicious to warrant some inquiry. But see, we don't have that sort of problem here in Australia because we have a charities commission that requires a return to be filed every year from every charity that gets a tax deduction. It's an open book and inquiries can be demanded and the like. But I think things work pretty differently to the advantage of churches in America, where they don't have to be open, they don't have to be honest with people about the financing. And the church has got more and more reclusive and more and more secretive about the way that it runs its finances.

Gerardo Sumano [03:37:28] A lot of my songs.

John Dehlin [03:37:30] Sorry about that.

Neville Rochow [03:37:31] Yeah, it's got more and more secretive and. And cloak and dagger about all this ever since, I guess, an Eldrin Tanner took over. But certainly in recent years where there's just no financial report of any kind at all, and yet we're expected to deposit huge sums of money into this pot of money that they hold very close to themselves with no idea where it goes. It's just, trust me. And I don't see a lot of reason to trust anybody, really.

John Dehlin [03:38:03] Sure. You mentioned a double standard on use and abuse of prominent members. Did you. Did you have anything you want to say about that?

Neville Rochow [03:38:16] I think I. I think. I think we've covered that in. You know, obviously I. I've been. Been prominent at some level from the church's perspective, but, you know, they can give you a hard time privately, but when they need you publicly, they'll. They'll sing your Praises and, and wheel you out and say, now go off and impress these people. It's, it's, there's a, there's a schizoid approach to things there.

John Dehlin [03:38:40] I mean, yeah, like I would hope that if they were okay using your power and influence and money and reputation to advance the causes of the church, in an ideal world, if you had questions or concerns about the church, they would be equally as interested and concerned about you as they were when they needed you. That it would be reciprocal. And I know that that's naive and idealistic to hope that, but my guess is they drop you and forget about you as soon as they have no use for you. Is that extreme?

Neville Rochow [03:39:16] There's, there's no, there's no good PR in me anymore. I've, I can do nothing to help their pr. And in fact that was quite clear from BYU when I, when I, when I resigned as a senior fellow at the, at the center because I said I, I can't have a public position with the, with the center when it's sponsor church is taking a position that I fundamentally disagree with. Well, the, I haven't heard anything since then from the director of the center. I've heard from other good friends in the center who have been just wonderful. But, but, you know, just, yeah. Dropped like a hot potato. Yeah. And I don't care, just that's the way it is. I mean, you know, I'm, I'm not insecure or depending upon anyone's approval for anything. I don't have to prove anything to anyone. But it was just an interesting thing.

John Dehlin [03:40:18] Yeah. Anything you want to say about Mormon missions and their value to the world or their, you know, I, I hope,

Neville Rochow [03:40:28] I hope that one day they stop sending missionaries out to proselytize. I think that's just wrong. And if they sent them out to serve and to do good and to help people, I think that would be a much better use of this tremendous human resource that they have now. At one stage it was 80,000 missionaries. I think now it's dropped back to 50 or 60. I'm not sure, I haven't checked the numbers. But 50 or 60 young, able bodied people, people going out to do good things that benefit communities rather than advance a church that is after money would be really a very positive outcome for the world.

Neville Rochow [03:41:15] And I, I would hope that at some stage that that sense is, is seen and acted upon. But I just, I, I'm, I'm, I'm fiercely opposed to proselytization. I don't agree with it. I don't think you should be doing it, and certainly not without making full disclosure as to exactly what they're getting into.

Neville Rochow [03:41:37] So rather than just the sanitized discussions that tell you enough to think this is a good thing, just saying, well, look, you know, we've got a history and it's not pretty if you look at it. And we have to be open and honest with you about that. And by the way, you'll be on your very thin sliver of knowledge about the church. You'll be committed to paying tithing for the rest of your life, but we're not going to tell you how that's spent. And you'll just have to take that on faith. You know, you can't, you can't just have one side of the ledger being

John Dehlin [03:42:12] presented as a check in. How is the. And I've got some more questions, but just as a check in. How is the church doing in Australia? What's your sense for activity rates? Is the church growing leaps and bounds? Is it stagnated? Is it shrinking and they're closing missions and branches and wards and shutting down buildings? What's the health of the Mormon Church in Australia in 2022?

Neville Rochow [03:42:37] I'm, I'm relying upon hearsay for that because I, I don't have access to those, those data anymore. But my good friend Simon Southerton has done a lot of work in this area and I've also got some friends in England whom I think you've had on your show that have shared some things with me that indicate that it's really shrinking fairly rapidly. They are worried about people like me and other prominent members leaving.

Neville Rochow [03:43:09] And I think there is a lot of shutting down or rationalization that's going on. Quite what the details of that are, I don't know. But I don't think it's growing in any way that is, relative to the population. I think it's going backwards in relation to the population. I also think that Covid has given a lot of people a furlough from church where they've taken the opportunity to look at a lot of the things like, like I've done and like others have done and probably ain't coming back no more.

Neville Rochow [03:43:42] I, I was told by some friends at the ward of which I was bishop, which used to have an attendance of about 130 to 150, which is considered good, is now down to about 30 or 40 each week.

Neville Rochow [03:44:01] I don't know. That's, like I said, that's hearsay. And I, I wouldn't attest to it. But my impression is that it's going backwards pretty rapidly.

John Dehlin [03:44:12] Yeah, that, I mean that's true all over. Only Utah seems to be growing in some ways and not in Salt Lake county, but in Utah County. And that's because so many people are abandoning outside of the United, outside of Utah. They're abandoning their places of residence and moving to Zion so that they can have their kids raised around other Mormons. But yeah, yeah, it seems like that's just not Mormonism. It seems like religions in decline in, in the developed world, in Europe, in Asia, in Canada, Latin America, like religion's on the ropes and Mormonism is no exception. Yeah, talk, talk briefly. Neville, you've talked a little bit about American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny and, and kind of like the problems of being living outside of the United States but being part of a, of a US Church that seems to view the US Church as the United States, as the best of all countries.

John Dehlin [03:45:17] You know, you, you, you list some bullets here about never really feeling like those general authorities that are largely from Utah and Idaho, never really feeling like they really cared much to learn about Australia, to learn from the Australian members to, to really draw wisdom from, from your, from your people. Do you want to talk anything about.

Neville Rochow [03:45:41] Yeah, can I. I'll just touch on that briefly if I can because I again, I don't want to come across as being in any way anti American. But the truth of it is simply this, that it's very hard. If you're an informed intellectual Mormon who knows something about constitutions, about political systems and about social systems, if you know anything about that and you keep abreast of public officials affairs, it's very hard to swallow this thing of, you know, America is the best and you know, you guys are all just second rate citizens which comes across quite a bit.

Neville Rochow [03:46:25] Sometimes it manifests itself in fairly ugly and embarrassing ways. I mean, one example might be, I mean one has to bear this in mind that a lot of Australian universities are in the top 100 or 200 in the world. The university quality, the quality of university education here is extremely high.

Neville Rochow [03:46:48] If you go here and you do well at university, then you can walk in for your postgraduate work to Harvard, Oxford to Stanford because they're well recognized schools. So you know, it, it, it's, we've got a good educational system and reputation. But you know, I remember sitting in a meeting where these two ne do well academics from byu, Idaho came out here and were trying to convince people to get involved in what they call the Pathways program, which would give them pathways into higher education for paying a small fee to this church sponsored thing. And they're using up church time to sell this. Well, they didn't, they didn't question for a moment that there were some university teachers sitting in the congregation listening to this palaver.

Neville Rochow [03:47:47] They didn't recognize that BYU Idaho ranks about 8 or 900among the universities in the world. And they didn't realize that free of charge you can do the same thing in Australia by getting entry pathways that are going to cost you at the very most 50 bucks a year to, to get back into those pathways that are already well established by the government. You don't need the church for it, but instead they're taking their, what I think are exorbitant fees to get Australians involved in this thing because they're faithful Mormons and don't know any better. That's just one example. If they'd done their homework, they wouldn't have got on the plane.

Neville Rochow [03:48:29] They're wasting everyone's time and money. You know, there have been a number of other examples, but you know, they're balanced out by my good experiences, I have to say. But sometimes it's just a little bit hard. But I think the hardest thing for me recently was when Dallin Oaks waxed lyrical about the inspired constitution in General Conference.

Neville Rochow [03:48:54] I know there are a few versions of that talk and it seems to have been edited to take out some of his mistakes that he made the first time round. But I can tell you not one of his reasons stacks up to anyone who's well versed constitutionally and particularly somebody like me who stuck a bit of comparative constitutional law. In fact, every one of those things. If I could sit down with him and I, I know Down Oaks, I mean, I, I hope I could still talk to him. But if I could sit down with him and say, well, out of your five reasons, not one of them stacks up either historically or logically and certainly not legally. So, you know, there was this, that

Gerardo Sumano [03:49:37] was a talk that he gave at a general conference, right?

Neville Rochow [03:49:40] Yeah, that's right. The last talk of the last session.

Gerardo Sumano [03:49:42] Yeah.

Neville Rochow [03:49:44] Anyway, the short of it is this, that anyone who's well versed would know that that was wrong. But also they would have great difficulty accepting what he was trying to say, which is there's not just an inspired constitution for Americans, it's a con. It's an inspired constitution for the entire church. And everyone in the church needs to get behind this concept that it is inspired. It's not, it can't be I mean, I'm not going to bore your, your audience with a number of the constitutional quirks and problems that the American Constitution has. It's a great document, it was groundbreaking and it is built on a number of previously will regarded and groundbreaking documents. But it has its ambitions, it has its failings. And no one in their right mind other than somebody who's a dogmatist or an apologist could say that it's inspired.

John Dehlin [03:50:49] Right. It's just part of the historical unfolding,

Neville Rochow [03:50:53] a great, great historical unfolding, great respect for it, don't get me wrong. And our Constitution borrowed some of the best of that then borrowed the best of the English, English constitutional system. And I think we've come up with a very good hybrid that, dare I say, is superior to the American constitutional system. Am I allowed to say that without, you know, being tarred and feathered? And that's the problem, you know, I mean, knowing stuff gets in the way of being a good Mormon quite often.

John Dehlin [03:51:28] That's a good quote her arter. Write that down. Knowing stuff gets in the way of being a good Mormon. That should be quote of the year. Write that down. That's really good. Neville. What do you mean, Neville, by selling coal. Forgive me if you've already answered this, but you've got selling coals to Newcastle.

Neville Rochow [03:51:47] That was the Idaho example. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was that. I mean anyone, anybody who'd done their homework would not send two. Also ran fairly lackluster academics out here to try and sell their wares. They wouldn't bother. It's a waste of money and time

John Dehlin [03:52:06] trying to sell BYU pathways to Australians who have a really good education system.

Neville Rochow [03:52:12] Yeah, yeah, okay.

Reflections on Same-Sex Marriage, Missions, and Moving Forward

John Dehlin [03:52:17] Do you, you know, as someone who worked hard with your reputation and intellect to prevent same sex marriage, maybe not just in Australia, but in other countries, do you have anything to say now that you're kind of in a different position both about your efforts previously and about the church's ongoing efforts to prevent same sex marriage or to punish people who have been same sex married?

Neville Rochow [03:52:46] Look, I, I, I'm, I'm deeply ashamed of the way in which I applied my craft to achieve what I did. In that regard, I, if, if there's anything about which I carry a guilt, it is that I was wrong. I was wrong to do that and I was wrong in the way that I was able to persuade others to agree with me.

Neville Rochow [03:53:11] I wish I had never ever done that. I wish I could have seen things more clearly much earlier. But being the faithful member that I was and being in the position I was, there was no opportunity for me to step back and say, well, is this okay?

Neville Rochow [03:53:29] It's not okay. It wasn't okay and never can be okay. And I would hope that one day the Mormon Church can see that and can say, well, look, maybe in terms of our orthodoxy and our doctrine, we can't do much about temple marriage for same sex couples, but certainly if a couple is same sex married, according to the laws of the state country, we can accept them as full card carrying members for all other purposes than Temple ordinances related to marriage.

Neville Rochow [03:54:08] I, I just don't see why. I don't see how they'd lose any skin in that game. And so that's something that I've concluded more recently, of course, but now I see it, I just see it with that clarion lucidity that I just didn't have because before. So that's, that's what I'd like to say about same sex marriage.

John Dehlin [03:54:32] Well, what's wrong, what's wrong with opposing same sex marriage? Just say it. What's right with same sex marriage? Or what's wrong with opposing it, if you don't mind just stating it for

Neville Rochow [03:54:42] it is it, it is an in. It's an insult to a person's human dignity not to permit them to live their life as they see fit and to love and have a relationship, relationship with a person as their, as their conscience and their heart dictates. I just don't see it. Now, whether you want to call it a sinful relationship or not is to me an Old Testament artifact. And I just can't do that anymore. I can't. I see. The Old Testament has got so many problems for me because there's not only the genocide, but there are the murders of people. People for small infractions of ridiculous laws like Sabbath breaking or wearing the wrong combination of clothing or whatever.

Neville Rochow [03:55:29] So the Old Testament to me is not a good basis upon which to draw upon for any sort of moral code in relation to same sex marriage or homosexuality. So if you're without that, and if you're only left with some vague allusions to it in the writings of Paul, that's a pretty weak basis to go into bat so heavily as the Church does, to make sure it doesn't become part of it. And the reality is that marriage in its nature has changed several times over the millennia. Sure. The preponderance of time, one might say that it's been monogamous. Monogamous heterosexual relationships. Yeah.

Gerardo Sumano [03:56:11] Yep.

Neville Rochow [03:56:12] Okay. But it hasn't always been that and if you look at Greek and Roman culture, there was no embargo, even with pedophilia.

Gerardo Sumano [03:56:22] Really?

Neville Rochow [03:56:22] Now, that's something that probably crosses my moral line. But. But they certainly didn't have the aversion to homosexual relationships that our society seems to have. And yet for millennia, we've been having homosexual relationships in the dark, as it were, in the shadows. And we've. We've got to start being honest about what our moral, our mores are in morality and in sociality.

John Dehlin [03:56:56] I love it. Gerardo, what'd you think? You like that? Oh, her.

Gerardo Sumano [03:57:03] There you go. Yeah, I like that.

John Dehlin [03:57:05] All right, well, thanks for spelling that out for us. Neville. Neville, you've got a section on cultural smuggling where you mentioned Halloween and dress and grooming standards.

Neville Rochow [03:57:13] Yeah, that's that. I think that speaks for itself. You know, even before, even before commercialization of Halloween started to become a thing here, it was almost like, you know, the, the church, every October would be turned by the missionaries into this horror house, this scary place for kids to go, which was just. Just culturally in apt for Australians. We've never had Halloween until the last 10 years, I would say, but the church has been trying to sneak it in for a long time. When I say the church, I mean, obviously it's missionaries and American leaders and the like, because they just can't see anything wrong with it.

Neville Rochow [03:57:54] Personally, I can't see anything right with it. I think it's a stupid holiday, but. But I know that's going to offend a lot of people, but I just think it's ridiculous that a religious person would think it's okay to dress up as a devil or, or a demon or a witch or whatever to celebrate a holiday that doesn't really signify anything at all.

John Dehlin [03:58:14] Yeah, yeah. And I guess the, you know, the United States dress and grooming standards, it seems like the church, the Mormon Church, is realizing that the IBM way of dressing with white shirts and ties is not. Is not gonna. Is not the future. Not only. Yeah, yeah.

Neville Rochow [03:58:32] I mean, look, when I go to other people's churches, I don't see a tie anywhere because it's not the way Australians dress to go to church. It's not the way. I mean, people, you know, women will wear slacks, they'll wear sundresses. They'll wear things without sleeves, though. Men will wear casual attire. They'll. They'll be reasonably dressed, but they won't be, they won't be executive style. And some people can't afford that anyway. And it's hardly a Way to include people to say. Now the first thing you do is buy a jacket, a jacket and a tie so you can pass the sacrament. But I can't even afford to put bread on the table. Well, you know, pay your tithing. It'll work out. It's, it's just over. Wrong. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [03:59:21] Neville, let me ask you, you, you write in here open condemnation and mockery of the Australian way of life that's happened. When do Australians feel mocked and in what ways Mormons feel mocked?

Neville Rochow [03:59:36] The biggest, the biggest offenders of that are American military commission presidents. You know, when I was in stake presidency, when I've been a bishop, I mean they've behaved absolutely abominably in saying, well, you just don't know how to do it here. You've got no idea. You're not Americans. You, you know, they're quite express about it and they've made fun of our way of doing things and just, you know, they exploit the cultural differences to their own benefit and to use it as a source of derision of this. And it, it has happened, it happens less and less now. But it's mainly been American mission presidents, not so much general authorities, I guess, and missionaries. You know, missionaries complain about the culture, the food, the way that we speak, way we do things. Shut up. We've given you a visa. Be happy. Just look at Djokovic,

John Dehlin [04:00:42] the tennis player.

Neville Rochow [04:00:44] Yeah, yeah, we'll take it away from you. Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:00:50] So you, you, you talked a little bit about when you left and wanting to be left alone. I just wanted to give you a last. By, by the church. Left alone by the church. You have as kind of a last bullet, pathetically ham fisted reclaim efforts.

Neville Rochow [04:01:05] That, that was really the ICLRS thing at the cricket ground. That, that was okay, that was ridiculous. But I've also had these things where I've had text messages. But I'm your friend. Why won't you, why would you let me come around and visit you and look after you? You know, I think I could add something to your family. Well, you know, where have you been the last 20 years? I don't know you and frankly I don't think I want to. You're a nice person and all that, but let's just leave it there.

John Dehlin [04:01:41] Are you, you know, I, I often ask people this, like given the amount of time and money and reputation and effort that you spent serving in all the callings, bishop and stake presidencies, mission presidencies, you know, in Belgium, all that stuff, given the giving, all the sacrifices and commitments, you've made to the church? Was it how. What has been people's interests, what has been Mormons interests in finding out what happened, in finding out why you left and in trying to maintain a relationship with you as a human, as someone who served them and helped them for so long. To what extent have people, Mormons made an effort who you knew and who you cared about and who you loved, to what extent have they made an effort to number one, figure out why you left and number two, to. To maintain a relationship with you?

Neville Rochow [04:02:42] Look, I'm not going to be critical of anyone because I've been pretty, I've been pretty solid in refusing them access. So even if they had good motives or whatever they wanted to say, I've never done it. I've had a couple come around and, you know, unannounced. I had one High Council come around unannounced and try to bury his testimony to me. And I said, look, stop right there. I'm not interested in your testimony. I've heard it a million times.

Neville Rochow [04:03:14] Keep it to yourself. I, I'm not coming back. I don't want to go through the reasons. Just leave me alone. So the, the leave me alone mantra has had left people, I guess, puzzled. But I haven't given the. Them the chance to do the good. The friends that I've had, the friends that I, that I was close to before I distanced myself, I'm still friends with them and I still talk with them and I've given them where it's appropriate reasons and they accept me as I am. And so they've been good and I have no problems with that. But as far as just members that I was associated with, but not particularly friendly, I've given them no chance to do those good things that they might want to do, to inquire. So in fairness to them, I just think the fact that there's been zero, zero effort is probably my fault rather than this.

John Dehlin [04:04:17] Okay, so you're not one that says, I can't believe I gave all these decades of service and why aren't they asking me why aren't. Why did I lose all my friends? You're just happy to be left alone and to live.

Neville Rochow [04:04:30] Very happy.

John Dehlin [04:04:31] Yeah. Okay.

Neville Rochow [04:04:32] This, where I am suits me completely. I'm. Like I said to you, I'm perfectly happy, perfectly adjusted. I love being with Penny all the time. You know, we spend a lot of time having a lot of fun. I don't need anybody else enough. I mean, I, I have, I have regular luncheon dates and outings. With friends, I'm very socially connected, but just for an hour or two every time so that I don't take up too much of their time and so that I can get on with things that I'm interested as well. So I'm not socially deprived, and where there's a member that I trust, I'm still friends with them, and they're still friends with me.

Neville Rochow [04:05:15] But, you know, I. I've just. I do what I think is psychically appropriate for me, what I need, and I. I don't want to waste any time because I. Who knows how much time I've got? I mean, I'll never get rid of this disease. It's controlled. And I might have a year. I might have 10 years. I might have 20 years. I. No one knows. They can't tell. But I'm trying to spend every moment with the best quality that I possibly can, with the best people that I can possibly associate with and. Or be kind to people that maybe I can help out with to make them a better person, if that's what they want to do.

John Dehlin [04:05:59] Love it. Really quickly, just a couple more questions, Gerardo, and I want you to be able to ask any more questions. I know you've been really generous with your time. I have a dear friend named Dr. Dave Christian that served a mission in. In Australia, the Australia Sydney mission, from 1979 to 1981. And it was there that his mission president, Orson Wright, called several of his sister missionaries to be polygamous wives.

Neville Rochow [04:06:30] That's right.

John Dehlin [04:06:30] And I'm wondering if you. If you learned about that, you would have joined the church by then, and I'm wondering if that would have been kept from. From you or if you would have heard about that at the time it was happening or if you would have learned about it since.

Neville Rochow [04:06:43] I've. I've learned about it in recent years. I knew nothing about it.

John Dehlin [04:06:48] Isn't that. Isn't that fun that they. That. Well, I mean, it's horrible that that happened. Isn't it interesting that it was kept from the members forever?

Neville Rochow [04:06:57] Yeah, I. I knew. In fact, I was on my mission in Germany at that time, so I was probably out of any loop that might have been open to me.

John Dehlin [04:07:05] Yeah. Okay. And then also, do you. Do you have any. You know, we. We all share in common the. The friend Simon Southerton, who. For those who don't know, because they're joining us for the first time or new. Simon Southerton was a geneticist and a Mormon bishop in Australia back in the. I'm gonna Say, oh, let's just say late 90s, early 2000s, when he starts studying Native American DNA and discovers that Book of Mormon, that the, the Native Americans were not descendants of Israeli origin like the Book of Mormon teaches, but instead came from Asia. And this caused Simon Southerton, an Australian, to lose his faith and then to go on to write a book called Losing a Lost Tribe, which was highly influential in my faith journey while I was living in Seattle working for Microsoft back in the early 2000s.

John Dehlin [04:08:01] I'm just curious whether you knew anything about Simon Southerton or this happening as a fellow Australian while that was happening. And, and if there's anything you want to say about Simon Southerton now.

Neville Rochow [04:08:14] Well, well, Simon Southerton is a good friend, but that's only since recent times, very recent times when I was in the church and particularly when I was in leadership, there was a lot of press within the church about Simon Southerton and how he was a liar, he was an adulterer, he was a cheat, he was, he couldn't be trusted that his DNA stuff didn't stack up. A huge propaganda campaign.

Gerardo Sumano [04:08:47] Wow.

Neville Rochow [04:08:48] Had been set up to absolutely denigrate him in the minds of anybody that might, might have wanted to talk with him. So I didn't know him from Adam and I, I didn't make any contact at that time and neither did I have reason to. But he certainly, there were certainly in the same with, with foreign Brody's book, there were absolute barriers erected in terms of any, any communication with him. And maybe there will be some barriers erected around me now. I don't know. Don't talk to Neville Rocco. But yeah, I, I, I didn't know Simon then. I've since read his work. I, I find his scholarship great and we've talked about and collaborated on a lot of small projects here and there.

Neville Rochow [04:09:37] But I, I, I think he and I differ in one way in that I'm, I'm okay where I am now. You know, I, I don't need to pick any more stuff up and take the church to pieces. I think I could, but I just don't, I don't, I've, I don't know how long I've got, so I'm not gonna, you know, I'm not going to waste energy on things that bring me no joy.

John Dehlin [04:10:06] Well, shout out to Simon. We love you, Simon.

Neville Rochow [04:10:09] Yeah, we do love you, Simon.

John Dehlin [04:10:11] And, and Neville, I do want to say I, I would love to read that book of your analysis of the Book of Mormon. I there selfishly, it's not going to be written, obviously. I do wish that you had finished that book.

Neville Rochow [04:10:24] It's never going to be. It's never going to see the light of day.

John Dehlin [04:10:27] But I mean, if you're literally saying one to 10 years left of life, is that really how you want to spend your last one to ten years?

Neville Rochow [04:10:34] Exactly. That's. That's exactly my problem. That I. I mean, look, I think. I think I've actually got decades to go. All the. All the indicators are that I'm fine, you know, but that could change at any moment, and I'm ready for that. I don't care if. If today is my last day on earth. That doesn't bother me at all. I'm. I have no fear of death. I have no concern about it. I'm not worried about the big father figure holding me over the coals or throwing me under the coals at the end of it. I don't believe in a hell. I'm not sure I believe in a heaven, But I certainly don't want to be in heaven with the sort of God that is a monster that we see in the scriptures and, and in Mormon teaching and the like.

John Dehlin [04:11:25] And if there is no afterlife and if this is it, and. And then when you die, that's it. What do you have to say about that?

Neville Rochow [04:11:32] Doesn't bother me. That's fine.

John Dehlin [04:11:36] Love it. Gerardo, do you have any final questions for Neville? No.

Gerardo Sumano [04:11:41] Yeah, I love it. I love everything he said. I agree with a lot of stuff he said. I can relate in. In. In a lot of levels as to, like, an outsider being and being raised a Mormon outside of the United States. And this has been a great interview. Thank you, Neville, for your time.

Neville Rochow [04:12:03] You. Well, I want to thank you both. And. And I really love the work you're doing. I mean, just. Just the same as Simon, you, John, get a lot of undeserved bad press within the church. I think you're making a. A very positive contribution that benefits us all. And I hope you continue to do the great work you're doing. And I'm just grateful. I'm just very grateful for what you do and who you are and your integrity and the way you stand for. For good things for you. For very good things. I. I just salute you and pay you my respect.

John Dehlin [04:12:41] Wow. Neville, that means a lot. That means a lot coming from you. And I want to come. Maybe I'll come visit you one of these days. It'd be fun to meet you, and

Neville Rochow [04:12:48] I hope you do, and you're welcome anytime. And we've got, we've got some rooms upstairs you can stay in if you want to.

John Dehlin [04:12:56] And what part again? What part of Australia are you in?

Neville Rochow [04:12:58] I'm in Adelaide.

John Dehlin [04:13:00] Adelaide. And where is that?

Neville Rochow [04:13:01] It's in this. It's on the coast in the center. So right, right smack between Perth and Sydney, that equidistant east coast, southern coast. It's right between Sydney and Melbourne. So Sydney's on the east coast coast. Perth's on the west. We're right in the center on the coast. And voted the second most livable city in the world.

John Dehlin [04:13:26] Oh, the beach is nice.

Neville Rochow [04:13:28] The beaches are impeccable. They're fantastic.

John Dehlin [04:13:31] Gerardo, it sounds like we need a thrive. Thrive. What do you think?

Gerardo Sumano [04:13:36] That would be awesome.

Neville Rochow [04:13:37] Well, you know, we're, we're, we're 15 minutes from the beach. We're 15 minutes from the hills. We're where it's just a beautiful city to live in. We love it.

John Dehlin [04:13:48] We have a very important question from Richard Jones. He's saying, can anyone ask Neville what his favorite beer is? And that's assuming you drink beer.

Neville Rochow [04:13:56] I actually don't like beer. I tried it after I came out of the church and I didn't like it and so pretty. Well, I don't drink alcohol at all now. I experimented with it, with it for about six months, just taking tastes, never really drinking it and it just didn't gel with me. It just didn't work. So I don't, I don't drink anything other than, other than just soft drinks and sparkling water.

John Dehlin [04:14:27] I love it.

Neville Rochow [04:14:28] Sorry. Sorry about that. I'm not very exciting.

John Dehlin [04:14:32] I've never tried beer or alcohol of any kind.

Neville Rochow [04:14:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:14:35] Yeah. All right, well. Oh, okay. One last question. Neville, I. You're a modest, you're a humble guy, especially for how experienced and knowledgeable and educated you are. On the one hand, I'm like, oh my gosh, man, if we, if we interview Neville, that's going to send lightning through the church in Australia. Part of me wondered if that's what would happen. And then another part of me is like, well, there were Neville's before Neville and Mormons. Mormon belief is resilient and so many Mormons are in the bubble. Australia, Mormonism is just going to yawn and it's going to be business as usual. Even though Neville comes on Mormon stories. What. Do you have any thoughts about what, what's most likely in terms of the impact of your word getting around about your interview?

Neville Rochow [04:15:22] I don't know. I, I've been interviewed by Gina Colvin. And, and I think that was my dipping my toe into the water just to see how they'd react. I got no real hierarchical reaction at all. And I think a couple of years ago, when we were first talking about maybe coming on your show, Penny was a little bit worried about the implications it might have for the chur, for the family, you know, and how I might be excommunicated and all that sort of thing. Think we're all past it and we couldn't care less. They can, they can do what they like.

Neville Rochow [04:15:56] I don't think anything will happen. But if it does. Well, what have I said today that would be, would be terrible? Apart from thinking that Nelson is a fool? Well, that's, that's verifiable fact. Apart from that, what, what have I, what have I said that is going to get anyone too upset so that they want to go through a, a show trial of excommunicating me? They can do what they like. I don't care.

John Dehlin [04:16:24] But you're still a member of record.

Neville Rochow [04:16:27] Yeah, and they can. And, and if they don't want me as a member of record, then maybe I'll feel lit off the leash and I'll really let some stuff go. But no, look, I, I, I, I'm grateful for the church, for what it's done for me. I love the members. I think that it's based on false claims, and that's about as far as I need to go.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [04:16:49] And if someone would ask you if you were, if you were ever invited to participate in the second anointing, do you, would you have an answer?

Gerardo Sumano [04:16:57] No.

Neville Rochow [04:17:00] No.

John Dehlin [04:17:01] Okay. No. No, you don't have an answer, or

Neville Rochow [04:17:03] no, you no, no, I do have an answer? The answer is no, you weren't invited. No, I wasn't invited. No, I, I think it's poppycock. It's just ridiculous.

John Dehlin [04:17:14] Yeah. Yeah. Really quickly. What, Go a little bit more detail. What's your opinion on the second anointing?

Neville Rochow [04:17:20] Look, when I, when I was, when I was young and a real scriptorian and really invested and immersed in scriptures, I understood that the second anointing was something where the Savior appeared to you and you received him as the second comforter. I don't think it was some sort of sham little ritual where your wife washes your feet and, you know, you get anointed and all that sort of thing. I, that just can't be what the scriptures intend. So I, I think it's just something they've cobbled together so they've got something to, to offer The. The really good, good members of the church. But no, I think it's. I think it's an utter jerk.

John Dehlin [04:18:07] Tell us what you really think, Neville.

Neville Rochow [04:18:08] Oh, okay. Don't mean to hold back.

John Dehlin [04:18:14] Neville, you're delightful. And we had one. One viewer say you're the best dressed Mormon stories interviewee we've. That. That's ever come on the show.

Neville Rochow [04:18:23] I'm glad I didn't wear my tux. I would have wear them away.

John Dehlin [04:18:28] Somebody else said you look like Colonel. You look like an Australian Colonel Sanders. Do you know?

Neville Rochow [04:18:31] Yeah, I'll be. I've been. I've been ch. Channeling my inner Colonel Sanders for a while now. This actually, I actually grew this for two reasons. There are two reasons for it. The first is a reminder that I've recovered from cancer because I lost all my hair. And the fact that I can grow a beard again is just a reminder I'm a survivor. But also, it's something that I never grew, ever, when I was active in the church because the church said, don't grow beards. So I didn't. Well, that doesn't apply to me anymore as far as I'm concerned. So I grew it. So, yeah, that's.

Neville Rochow [04:19:03] That's the. That's what it says to me every morning when I get up and look at myself in the mirror. Not, who's this old guy with the beard? But it's, you have recovered and you're doing okay, and no one is telling you how to dress or how to behave.

Gerardo Sumano [04:19:22] That's a powerful statement.

John Dehlin [04:19:24] Sounds like bliss.

Gerardo Sumano [04:19:26] Yeah.

John Dehlin [04:19:26] All right, Neville. Well, you're lovely. You're delightful. We want to welcome you back to Mormon Stories. Anytime you want to share your opinion about everything.

Neville Rochow [04:19:35] I don't think you'll ever want me back for that. But look, I've enjoyed it very much. It's been delightful with you, too. Lovely to meet you both in this way. I feel very privileged to have spent some time with you.

Gerardo Sumano [04:19:49] Thanks.

John Dehlin [04:19:49] This is all ours, and a lot of our viewers and listeners are saying thank you because people loved our time together. So thank you, Neville. It's been great.

Neville Rochow [04:19:58] Thank you. I. I love you all, too. And I love your audience. They're great people. Okay, see you later.

John Dehlin [04:20:03] All right, Neville, thank you so much. You're great. Gerardo, thanks so much for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Gerardo. And thanks for helping make this happen. Your relationship with Simon has been really valuable to Mormon Stories, and I just appreciate all you do, both cinematography and just as a friend and as a colleague, this Year has been amazing and you've been a big part of it. So thank you.

Gerardo Sumano [04:20:27] Thank you, John. Thank you. I enjoy it.

John Dehlin [04:20:29] All right. Stay in touch, Gerardo.

Gerardo Sumano [04:20:31] Right.

John Dehlin [04:20:33] And listeners and viewers, thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. Thanks to Simon Southerton and all you do. And thanks to everyone who makes Mormon Stories podcast possible. We exist on the generosity of our donors. We have about a thousand to fifteen hundred donors that, that make up our revenue and we couldn't do it without you. We don't pay for sponsorships.

John Dehlin [04:20:58] We, you know, we don't do product placement. We don't even really fundraise. All we do is, is those of you who value what we do, you guys click the donate button and you become monthly donors. And that's what pays the bills. So thanks to everyone who donates. If you don't donate, but you take value from, you know, this program, if you can't afford to support us, don't feel guilty for a second. We do this, we give this away for free, literally so everyone can benefit. So don't lose any sleep over not supporting us. But if you are in a position to pay $10 a month or 20 bucks a month or 100 bucks a month, whatever you can afford, we just want you to know that we lose 10 to 12 to 15 donors a month.

John Dehlin [04:21:43] And you know, whether it's people lose interest or they move on or they believe some sort of smear that's been said or they go to support another podcast or they fall on financial hard times, we, we are always losing donors and if we don't replace those donors, then we, our budget drops and then we have to start firing people or letting people go or cutting services. So if you do value this content and if you want to see it continue, we need you to step up. Less than one out of a thousand of our, of our viewers or listeners actually donate.

John Dehlin [04:22:16] And, and if we could just make two or three of, of a thousand donate or become contributors, that would transform us and allow us to really help a lot more people. So thanks for the support. Please support us if you can.

John Dehlin [04:22:29] Thanks for everyone who makes this possible. One really big way you can support us is by going on the Apple podcast app and giving us a positive review. We have so many haters there that don't even listen to the podcast, but they, they, they just hate that what we stand for. So they go and write one star reviews and bring our ratings down. I think our ratings are down on Apple podcasts to like 3.6, no 4.6 out of 5 we used to have a 4.9 rating on Apple Podcasts. So we could really use support to up our our average rating. Because I've read those negative reviews and it's just like I hate John Dehlin because he hates the church and I don't even think those people even watch or listen to the podcast.

John Dehlin [04:23:13] So if you can please go to Apple Podcast, give us a positive review, go to Spotify and give us a positive review. And that's needed to keep our to keep our reviews high so that people don't think it's a bad podcast. You can also rate us on the Facebook Mormon Stories podcast page. You can follow us on Tick Tock at Mormon Stories Podcast. You can follow us on Instagram at Mormon Stories and you can follow us on on YouTube or on Facebook. All of that helps with the algorithms. Please share these episodes. Please spread the word and if you have good ideas for episodes or feedback, we always welcome your feedback@mormonstoriesmail.com we welcome constructive criticism as well as compliments.

John Dehlin [04:23:58] I love constructive feedback, so please share it. We love you guys. Thanks to all the staff at the Open Storage foundation that make all this possible. Gerardo Cara Burrell, Brooklyn Alden, Jennifer, Jen. Camp just started with us and of course Clint Martin and Kerry Whitbeck on our board. There are so many people that make all this possible. Thanks to everyone who makes this possible. Thanks for our viewers and thanks to all our interviewees. Again, we couldn't do it as well. Love you guys. Thanks for everything. Please stay tuned and we'll see. Be good to each other. Most importantly, be loving and kind and good to each other. Find truth, find goodness. And we'll see you guys all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Take care, everybody.

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