Introduction to Mormon Stories and John Dehlin

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Sa.

Rob [00:00:26] On today's episode. Our guest is John Dehlin. John is a blogger and longtime host of the Mormon Stories podcast, which he has hosted since 2005. Back in the dizzle, folks, a long time ago, I didn't even know. What were you doing in 2005? I sure as hell wasn't listening to podcasts. No, no. I was walking the halls of my junior high school. I was a seventh grade kid walking the halls. Probably had a puka shell necklace, maybe a shag haircut, maybe the cargo shorts with all the pockets.

Rob [00:00:57] No doubt. I had a pair of Iversons on my feet. I was probably passing love notes, talking to girls, discovering how hot they were. And I was suffering from NRBS every time I stood up from a classroom chair. So, in other words, John's been in the game for a while.

Rob [00:01:12] He's done over a thousand episodes. And there's a lot of controversy behind John Dehlin, a lot of controversy behind him, because about five or six years ago, he was excommunicated from the church for his opposition to the church, his stance on gay marriage.

Rob [00:01:28] And there are a lot of those out there that think his excommunication was a good call. There's a lot of those out there that think it wasn't a good call. And I think either opinion's okay. You know, in the last five or 10 years, there's certainly been a lot of changes in society or in opinions, particularly to the topic of gay marriage, whether it's within this religion or any other religion, or politically or legally.

Rob [00:01:53] And I think it's interesting to see how things move. You can call it being, you know, things progress, you can call it digress, I don't care. Everybody's entitled to their opinion, and that's kind of what this show's about. We don't really back away from any topic, and I don't think we discourage any type of opinion on this show. And so I had a really nice conversation with John Dehlin. I think he's a really nice guy. I don't necessarily agree with everything he said.

Rob [00:02:24] There are certainly some things I definitely agree with to a very high degree. And so I think it was an important thing to talk with him. And I think it's important for everybody to be heard, no matter what their opinion is, no matter what their story is. And so you can take it for what it's worth. Now, if listening to someone else talk about opinions they may have that are different than the things you might believe, then maybe this episode's not Your cup of tea, and that's okay, But I think it was important conversation. Now, just a disclaimer. This interview was done in, geez, like March or April of last year.

Rob [00:03:01] We haven't got around to releasing it, but we felt it's a good time. I personally think it's an important topic. Now. The whole episode isn't about the topic of gay marriage or homosexuality, but there's a good deal about that. And I, you know, for me personally, I've got friends and family that have dealt with the same thing, and I've at times kind of been in a. In a difficult spot of wondering how to tackle the whole issue. And I think there's a lot of people out there in the same situation. And if there are changes in the church or in any organization or in any legal situation, I think it's probably a good thing.

Rob [00:03:35] If it involves, you know, love and acceptance. Now, it can obviously go too far. Any situation can go too far and the pendulum can swing and then it's craziness.

Rob [00:03:45] Right?

Rob [00:03:47] So that's why I think talking about things, especially talking about things amongst people who disagree with each other, or listening to one side of an opinion and listening to another and then formulating your own, I think is always a good thing to do. So I enjoyed my conversation with him. I hope you will as well. Here he is, John Dehlin.

John Dehlin [00:04:09] What is wrong with these people? They have no willpower. The show goes on. This is my home.

Rob [00:04:16] Well, we're not participating in that.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] We have no impact.

Rob [00:04:19] We can't have anyone freak out out there. Okay? We gotta keep our composure.

John Dehlin [00:04:24] Go too far.

Rob [00:04:25] There's too much to lose. We gotta just keep our composure.

Rob [00:04:32] John, thanks for coming on.

John Dehlin [00:04:33] My pleasure.

Rob [00:04:35] Founder and host of the Mormon Stories podcast. You're doing a bunch of other things now. How many episodes have you done?

John Dehlin [00:04:44] We're almost at about 1100.

Rob [00:04:46] Okay. And you've been doing that since 2000?

John Dehlin [00:04:48] 2005.

Rob [00:04:49] Geez. What did I mean? People had to go to a desktop to listen to a podcast at that time, right?

John Dehlin [00:04:55] No, the ipod.

Rob [00:04:57] Ipods.

John Dehlin [00:04:58] The ipods existed before 2005. I think the iPhone came out around 2005, 2006, something like that. But it was right there at the end of the ipod era. The beginning of the iPhone era. Wow. Well, can you imagine there was a time when there wasn't an iPhone. I bet you can't even remember.

Rob [00:05:17] It's wild.

John Dehlin [00:05:19] Pre iPhone. How old were you in 2004?

Rob [00:05:22] Well, in 2004, I was 13, 14 years old. So But I mean, just the way technology's changed is, is insane. I mean, I didn't have a smartphone till after my mission 2012, you know, but it's, it's now, it's like it's the main source of media. It seems there's more people listening to podcasts and watching network television, and it's where people get their info from. So you've done, you've done a bunch now. This is, on this podcast. We, we don't really hide back from anything. And our audience is pretty unique. We have.

John Dehlin [00:05:56] Who's your audience?

Rob [00:05:57] We have everybody in our audience from active stake presidents to anti Mormons and everybody in between. So it's unique, but we're also about being open about stuff and getting to the bottom of things. And so, truth be told, one of the reasons one of my guys isn't here today is because he felt a little apprehensive. Not because he didn't want to talk about some of the things, but because he was a little worried participating in talking about some of the controversial things and how it would be perceived by friends or family, which is, you know all about this. It won't be new to you.

John Dehlin [00:06:33] That's why they excommunicate you, right? So that people are uncomfortable communicating with you.

Rob [00:06:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:06:38] So that's why they do it.

Rob [00:06:40] So that's why I will apologize that one of. One of my guys isn't here. But you can't blame him because you, you know, I get it, how he feels. You've been there.

John Dehlin [00:06:47] So I live it every day.

Rob [00:06:49] I'm sure, I'm sure. One of the things. So I've been, I've been watching your stuff off and on since I'd say probably 2012. And the first thing before we kind of get into your background and why you started and kind of your story with that, I guess one of the first things, the first thing I remember ever seeing of yours was a TED Talk that you gave.

A Personal Shift on LGBTQ Issues

Rob [00:07:12] And it was your TED Talk about gay marriage. And it completely changed my perspective on the issue. I was always just standard, run of the mill, very conservative, which I still lean conservatively on most issues. But social issues, I've really changed my tune. And that was one of the beginning things was your TED Talk that you gave on that. And I kind of, I'd like to play the questions you posed and then kind of talk a little bit about that. But first you started out your, your TED Talk. Where'd you give this, by the way?

John Dehlin [00:07:43] Was this Utah State University.

Rob [00:07:45] And that's where you're from.

John Dehlin [00:07:46] Correct. I grew up in Texas, but I got my PhD. I got two masters and a PhD at Utah State.

Rob [00:07:53] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:07:53] So I lived there for like 14 years.

Rob [00:07:56] Okay, so I'm going to play a little bit of this. And you started out talking about revered people. You know, people that have invoked really important social change. We put them on the back of monies money, we make movies about them, we write books about them. And then you ask some questions to the audience. And I'll just kind of play it from here. Great pants in this, by the way. 2013.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] My wife dressed.

Rob [00:08:16] You've upgraded in your. In your fit.

Rob [00:08:18] They're more.

John Dehlin [00:08:18] You're making fun of me form.

Rob [00:08:19] Hey, hey, you should have seen the pants I came home from my mission in.

John Dehlin [00:08:23] Yeah, but I'm a. I'm a grown man. My wife trusts me. By show of hands, how many of you today oppose slavery? Raise your hand. Excellent. Nice work. All right, next question. You're doing great. How many of you support the right of women and racial minorities to vote? Beautiful. Pat yourselves on the back. All right. Okay, now, next question. Why haven't they made a movie about you? I can think of at least two reasons why. First, pretty much everyone agrees with you. And second, I think it costs you literally nothing to hold these points of view. And to help illustrate now, I have a follow up question ready. How many of you are outspoken advocates or allies for the rights and the well being of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people? Raise your hand. Okay. A lot less hands. And that's okay. It's completely normal in 2013 to not

Rob [00:09:36] be few hands there.

John Dehlin [00:09:39] Right.

Rob [00:09:39] And I bet if you had those same people and you asked that question in 2019, there'd be a different amount of hands still. Still not as many as you'd hope for, I'm sure.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Yeah.

Rob [00:09:48] You kind of seemed ahead of your time in the community there and you were. How was that received as you spoke out about that?

John Dehlin [00:09:57] You know, anytime you take a stand like that, you're gonna have people that make you feel really good because they agree with you. And then a lot of other people that are really uncomfortable and they usually won't say anything. Especially in Utah, there aren't a lot of haters who will come up to you and, and, you know, criticize you or disagree with you. The modus operandi here is just to ignore.

Rob [00:10:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:22] And. And avoid.

Rob [00:10:24] So that's what we do. Yeah, Mormons are very good at that. It's like, no, no, I'm just gonna

Rob [00:10:29] stay out of that.

Rob [00:10:29] And this is my stuff.

John Dehlin [00:10:31] Kind of like your buddy.

Rob [00:10:32] Kind of. Yeah. He's not here.

John Dehlin [00:10:36] That's all right. No, no, no, no. And, and it's, it's, you know, it's fine because we're taught as Mormons that contentions of the devil. Right. That. And so all they're doing is avoiding what they think is evil. And so, so, yeah. So it, it feels good to do something like that because all the professors and administrators and, and community members who agree with you, they'll stop you in the grocery store, they'll patch on the back, they'll stop you and say, hey, that was really courageous. You helped me. Thank you. You voiced what I wanted. So it's all positive, really.

Rob [00:11:12] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:13] Except when, except when you have to talk to the bishop.

Rob [00:11:16] Right, right.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] And it was just a few months after I gave this talk where the bishop called me in to begin my disciplinary council.

Rob [00:11:23] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:11:23] To excommunicate me.

Rob [00:11:25] That began in 2014. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] No, sorry. Yeah. I gave this talk in 2013. Fall Bishop called me in January ish, 2014. And because of all the national uproar, the excommunication got delayed and I was excommunicated in February 2015. So it took about a year.

Rob [00:11:49] And that was back then. Do you think that it would have been any different now?

John Dehlin [00:11:53] Yeah, I don't think the church would have excommunicated me for that now. No way. In fact, you've got Jersey of Steve Young up there. Steve Young and his wife Barbara are total LGBT allies. They, they came out on the stage of Love Loud with Dan Reynolds and Imagine Dragons just a few months back here in Rice Eckle Stadium.

Rob [00:12:16] They're going to give him a disciplinary council then?

John Dehlin [00:12:18] No, it's. The point is that, is that I, you know, I did it back when it was controversial and, and, and maybe that led the way for others to be able to feel more comfortable being outspoken. But you kind of pay the price when you lead out on something like that. Right.

Rob [00:12:35] Which, you know, which is a good thing. There's, there's negatives.

John Dehlin [00:12:39] Depends on your beliefs. I think right there. There's still a lot of people that don't support same sex marriage, of course.

Rob [00:12:46] Well, and it's hard, I think in Christianity it's always going to be a tough question. It's going to be hard for Christians to support it. I mean, don't you think doctrinally it would be, it would be kind of tough for that.

John Dehlin [00:12:56] Yeah. More and more. Yeah, I, I think, I think overall.

Rob [00:13:01] So was This.

John Dehlin [00:13:03] I mean, it depends if Protestant Christians are cool with it. So if you go to a lot of Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, even liberal Catholics, you know, there are religions that are more progressive, and they're going to be totally. They're going to have lesbian priests and they're going to perform gay marriages. But there's going to be more conservative religions like Jehovah's Witness and Mormons and Orthodox Catholics and Evangelical Christians and Muslims that are going to be not supportive. So you can't say all religions or even all Christian religions are the same on that score.

Rob [00:13:39] Right.

John Dehlin [00:13:40] Interestingly, the ones that are more affirming, LGBT affirming, are dying. And that's its own kind of.

Rob [00:13:46] Really?

John Dehlin [00:13:47] Yeah. For the most part.

Rob [00:13:49] You were saying Protestants are more into.

John Dehlin [00:13:52] Or Presbyterian and Protestant Christianity is kind of dying.

Rob [00:13:56] Right?

John Dehlin [00:13:56] Yeah.

Rob [00:13:57] So with, with. What was your big reason for doing this? You talk in this TED Talk, which people should go watch it a lot, about some personal experiences you had, your upbringing, and how your opinion of homosexual marriage and the LGBT community changed. Talk a little bit about why that occurred and why you wanted to give that message.

John Dehlin [00:14:17] So I, you know, I graduated from byu, really conservative. You know, I was a Republican. I loved Rush Limbaugh. He was really popular at the time. And I grew up very uncomfortable with homosexuals. There's some kids who I figured were gay in high school, and they always made me uncomfortable. And so, you know, I had a pretty normal life that way in terms of, like, what the 80s and 90s would have produced. But what happened was I met a few of them and actually had conversations. So I had a couple cousins come out. I talk about this, I think, in the TED Talk, I had a couple cousins come out as gay.

John Dehlin [00:14:58] And that was a little bit shocking. And then as I talked about in the TED Talk, I met a guy when I was working in Chicago who I, for months, I didn't know he was gay. And he just really helped me and was super kind and honest and loving.

John Dehlin [00:15:16] And again, I had no clue because there was no he wasn't effeminate in any stereotypical way. So that was sort of a little bit subversive because I got to know him, got to love him, got to really appreciate him, really respect him. And then I found out by making a gaffe and sort of making a derogatory comment about gay people, and he's like, hey, I got something to tell you.

John Dehlin [00:15:41] And that was the first time I had really had to confront my bigotry. But then later, as I was starting to question, you know, struggle with Mormonism. Right around that same time, my wife's cousin, Scott, who grew up Catholic, he.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] He came out to us as gay. And again, no. No signs. He was an NCAA athlete, brilliant artist, guitarist, smart guy. He could wipe me. Wipe me on the tennis court, like, and I was a good tennis player, and he could mop the floor with me. And when he came out as gay and told us he almost killed. Almost killed himself, that was like a second. Or if you count my cousins, a third and a fourth time, where I'm like, whoa.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] And when you talk to them and you actually get to know them, instead of just, like, tell them they're doing what's wrong and tell them how they should live and tell them to follow your views of religion, when you actually talk to them, you find out they would have never chosen it. Who would choose it?

John Dehlin [00:16:45] I mean, society's built for heterosexual marriage and families. It's glorified everywhere. It's supported everywhere. And so it makes sense. Once you're open and you have to be cracked open, because if you're an orthodox religious person, you're not open. But if you get cracked open for some reason and then you actually sit down with them, look them in the eye and have them tell you their story, then you're like, oh, my gosh, you didn't choose this. You tried for years to try and change it. Trying to change it killed. Almost killed you.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] And you've known that you were this way since you were 13. And when you hear that story over and over and over again, and then you start learning about the suicides, which, by the time I was at Microsoft in 2000, there was a young man named Stuart Mattis who drove up to the steps of his local ward building, pinned a note to his chest that said, do not resuscitate, and he shot himself on the steps of the. Of the church building.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] And that. That came out around 2000, while I was working at Microsoft, having a bit of a faith crisis, met Scott, and I'm like, there's something wrong here. So it was just life experience and being open.

Rob [00:18:01] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:02] And you're not really open until it happens to you. So the. The cliche is you're an orthodox Mormon conservative couple with kids, and then your kid comes out as gay. And before your kid comes out as gay, you could care less about gay people. But as soon as it's your child, if you happen to love your child more than your beliefs, which you.

Rob [00:18:22] Which you should. Which you, you know, not Always the case, it seems.

John Dehlin [00:18:25] If you happen to love your kid more than your beliefs, then all of a sudden the issue matters. And so that makes all the difference, is just being open and getting to know someone and learning.

Understanding Sexual Orientation and Mormon Surveys

Rob [00:18:36] I think you mentioned a couple important things. One of which you said your thought process was, well, you didn't choose this. And I think that's the biggest thing that kind of instilled the whole bigotry towards gay people was because I don't know who in the past said that it was a choice. And I do know they tried to change that. You talked. You've spoken about electroshock therapy. Is that a thing they would do?

John Dehlin [00:18:56] Yeah. Yeah.

Rob [00:18:58] So what, they just shock them and,

John Dehlin [00:18:59] like, they would show them? So this came from the work of, like, Pavlov and Skinner behaviorism that was really popular in the 50s, where it's a type of psychology that they started with dogs and rats and pigeons, where they learned that you could positively and negatively reinforce behavior or punish behavior. And it's really simple. You give a reward to encourage behavior, and you take away the reward to discourage behavior. And you can punish someone to encourage or discourage a behavior, and you can take away the punishment to encourage or discourage a behavior.

John Dehlin [00:19:36] And, you know, it works with the rats and the pellet. You know, it works with the pigeons. And. And so they basically were able to, you know, like with Pavlov, that. If you study Pavlov, he basically had a dog, and he had a bell, and he had some food, and he would ring the bell, and nothing would happen with the dog, but then he would introduce the food, and every time the dog would eat the food, he would ring the bell.

John Dehlin [00:20:02] And because when you introduce the food, the dog salivates. So over time, if you pair the ringing of the bell with the dog, seeing the food and salivating, ultimately that conditioning gets to the point where you can pull the food away, ring the bell, and guess what the dog does? Salivates.

Rob [00:20:23] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:23] So that's classic conditioning. And so they applied that to gay people. They said, all right, so gay people. And this is a faulty assumption, gay people are gay because they didn't have the right relationship with their dad or they were sexually abused or whatever theory they had that had no basis in reality.

John Dehlin [00:20:41] So whatever messed you up to make you gay, we're gonna condition you to, if you're a guy, to like women instead of men. So what they would do is they would try and use what they call aversion therapy, which is they show you gay porn, which will arouse your Genitals. And then they'll put little electrodes on your genitals and shock you.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] Deliver you an electronic shock every time you got an erection. And the theory was, if you distributed enough electronic shock to their genitals every time he showed them porn, male porn, over time, you would recondition their brain to no longer be attracted to men.

Rob [00:21:25] Jeez. Was it effective in any way?

John Dehlin [00:21:28] It drove them suicidal. And there are several instances of. Of patients of. Of this study that ended up killing themselves.

Rob [00:21:36] Oh, geez. That's terrible. Yeah, I. I had no idea that that was. That was a thing. And they didn't choose it because everyone I knew in, like, elementary school that I thought was gay or anyone that's come out as gay since, it's like, oh, that totally makes sense.

John Dehlin [00:21:55] Yeah. So I just. I was chosen to give this TED talk because I did a PhD in the LGBT Mormon experience, and I surveyed 16, 12 gay people, LGBT people for my study. On average, they knew by the time they were 13 that they were. That they were gay or lesbian.

Rob [00:22:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] And that's not just 10 people.

Rob [00:22:16] Puberty right there.

John Dehlin [00:22:17] But that. Yeah, it's 1600 people. And it's not until you get the hormones coursing through your veins where you kind of realize who you're attracted to and you didn't. You know, the. The cliche. That's true. Did you choose to. To. I assume you. You're attracted to women. Are you married?

Rob [00:22:33] I am attracted to women. I'm not married.

Rob [00:22:35] No.

John Dehlin [00:22:35] Did you choose to be attracted to women?

Rob [00:22:36] No.

John Dehlin [00:22:37] Did you, like.

Rob [00:22:38] I've been attracted to women.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] Did you, like, sit there and you go, okay, I'm gonna look around the classroom. There's boys and girls. I think I'll be attracted to girls. Let me see. I could go either way.

Rob [00:22:48] No, it's something that happens. In fact, one of our traditions, when we have men on the show, is we ask them their first childhood boners. Mine was Carmen Sandiego, and I was, like, 7 years old.

John Dehlin [00:22:58] Mine was. Mine was Ginger and Marianne on Gilligan's Island. I'm older than you.

Rob [00:23:04] Right. I saw that sometime.

John Dehlin [00:23:07] Look them up sometime.

Rob [00:23:08] I didn't think I would ask you your first boner story, but there it is.

Rob [00:23:11] John.

Rob [00:23:12] Ginger, Gilligan's Island.

John Dehlin [00:23:14] Yeah.

Rob [00:23:14] You know, that's interesting because that is. And it's funny because I discovered this TED Talk of yours, and, you know, a couple years later, I had extended and close family members, without going into detail, you know, deal with the same thing. And I watched that affect My family, and there were wedges driven because of it. And I was kind of a voice, and I kind of just took what you said. I said, look, at the end of the day, if we love our family members and we love our friends, we want them to be happy. We want them to feel accepted. If we can't make sense of why someone is the way they are, who are we to cause that to drive a wedge between us and affect their happiness ultimately?

Rob [00:23:54] So I think what you did is a good thing. I also think. And you can tell me if you disagree. I also think that there's probably a balance, and I think the pendulum swing can go too far in any direction on any issue.

Rob [00:24:08] And we definitely shouldn't make people think that gay people are bad. But do you also think, well, this is an interesting topic because you surveyed how many people, they all knew they were gay by the age of 13 on average. Cool.

John Dehlin [00:24:21] Yeah.

Rob [00:24:22] Do you think that someone could be convinced otherwise, though? Like, what if I was raised to be gay? Do you think that could have happened?

John Dehlin [00:24:30] Can someone be raised to be gay?

Rob [00:24:33] Right. And the reason I'm asking this is because there's a lot going on now. Like, in California, there's a lot of people that are wanting to be able to give their children sex changes at the ages of under 10. There's a lot of people wanting to basically choose the gender of their child, even if they say it's the child's choice. Have you heard about this being talked about?

John Dehlin [00:24:55] I mean, I've studied a little bit about it. Yeah.

Rob [00:24:58] I think that's a dangerous thing as well, because I think people can change a lot in their. In their process of maturity.

John Dehlin [00:25:05] My. My understanding is most doctors don't encourage any type of surgery until. Until later. That. That. My understanding is you don't do surgery on kids for transgender sort of stuff, But I'm not an expert on that, but.

Rob [00:25:22] Right.

John Dehlin [00:25:23] Anyway.

Rob [00:25:24] And it's an interesting concept, though, because I was in Fiji this last year, and there's a lot of gay men in Fiji. And I got researching. And I guess in certain Polynesian cultures, it's. It's custom to raise the third son of a family. I think it's the third son to raise him as a woman to, like, help out with the mom around the house, and almost always they end up being gay. So, again, it's something to think about if the other side is possible, if it's possible to be convinced to be.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] So the research that I'm familiar with, and Lisa diamond is a really Good expert here locally at the University of Utah. It is true, and this is a little bit complicated, it is true that sexuality can be fluid. In other words, it can be possible for a woman to, you know, like men, like men be attracted to men, only date men. And then when she's 22, in college, all of a sudden develop feelings for a female roommate and even have a fling, you know, or whatever. When you would have asked her, you know, where are you on the Kinsey scale? And she would have said a zero, meaning I have zero attraction to women.

John Dehlin [00:26:35] Or it's possible that someone just, you know, it's possible that someone just midlife or somewhere in their life all of a sudden has feelings that they didn't remember having before. Right. What, what the research seems to suggest is nobody can choose that, that it happens to you, but you don't just all of a sudden say, I'm going to be aroused by. By men. And so I could just ask you what. What could I do to make you aroused by dudes?

John Dehlin [00:27:09] Like, could I give you a banana and make you aroused by dudes? Could I show you lots of naked dudes dancing around? And is that gonna, over time, make you aroused by dudes?

Rob [00:27:22] I would tell you no. I would say no.

John Dehlin [00:27:25] Right. And so that's. I mean, it is true that if. Well, I mean, there is a sense to which your body is going to respond to touch. Yeah. So, you know, I guess in theory that someone. Someone could have experiences that others don't have and find out more information about what does and doesn't arouse them. And there are a decent amount of people that are bisexual and they would never know that until they experimented. Okay. So, like there. Let's just say there's a woman that grows up and she just thinks I'm not, you know, I like guys because I'm conditioned to like guys. And I'm supposed to get married because I'm Mormon to a guy.

John Dehlin [00:28:07] But, you know, when I kiss this guy, okay, it's okay, but it's not great. And I get married to him. And when we start to have sex, it's like, you know, sex is okay. I'm not really into it, but I'll do it for him. Right. So you can go this whole time and to everyone and to yourself, you appear heterosexual, but in reality you've never, ever experimented with the same sex to know what might be arousing to you. Right, right. And so you can get to the point where, you know, you're not. You're never sleeping with Your husband, sex just isn't important to you. He just thinks you're not interested.

John Dehlin [00:28:46] You may think you're asexual or just don't like sex. And then let's just say the marriage blows up and you're on your own. And then one day you just have a chance to date a woman and you're that woman.

John Dehlin [00:28:59] All of a sudden. You may find, whoa, fireworks. Now does that, you know, what does that mean? Does that mean that she was somehow changed? The divorce caused her to be lesbian? Or could it be possible that she never had the experience to begin with, so never had a chance to find out what was truly arousing to her? And it wasn't until she had that experience where she realized, I'm not asexual.

John Dehlin [00:29:27] I'm just. I. I like women, but I never had the chance to ever really explore it. So life's complicated and, and the experiences can influence your awareness and sexuality can be fluid. But all the research that I've shown supports the idea that someone can't be turned. Their sexuality can't be overtly controlled or manipulated, and that a person can't choose who they're attracted to. And I can just tell you, I've never once been attracted to a guy. And I. I'm a zero.

Church Policies on Same-Sex Relationships

Rob [00:30:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:04] And I don't think there's anything anyone could do to make me attracted to guys.

Rob [00:30:09] I would say the same thing, but there's some men, like Cristiano Ronaldo. I'm zero as well. I'm a zero. But I would probably rather do something sexual with him than certain women. What does that mean?

John Dehlin [00:30:20] I don't know.

Rob [00:30:21] What does that mean?

John Dehlin [00:30:21] With the scale of things, you ought to go find out what that means.

Rob [00:30:24] But I think I'm a zero.

John Dehlin [00:30:26] Yeah. So if somebody, if, If a life experience can make someone open to something they weren't before, it could be they were just bisexual all along. But until life presented them with an opportunity, they would have. They would have never had a way to discover it. And sometimes we can interpret that as them changing their sexual orientation, but in reality, they're just discovering it truly for the first time because they never had the chance to before. I don't know if I'm making sense.

Rob [00:30:53] No, you are.

John Dehlin [00:30:54] I'm not. This isn't like my field of expertise right now. It's something I studied. But I'm giving you my best explanation.

Rob [00:31:02] So what do you think of the policy change so with the children of gay couples can now be bad. They couldn't three years ago they invoked

John Dehlin [00:31:11] it three and a half. Yeah.

Rob [00:31:12] Okay. Now they're taking it back, which is a good thing. Right.

John Dehlin [00:31:16] So it's mixed. It's mixed. I. I'm. You know, the number one concern, I think, for people who really care about people is that Utah, like, is twice or three times the national average for LGBT youth suicides.

Rob [00:31:33] Jeez.

John Dehlin [00:31:34] So, yeah, Utahns who are between the ages of 15 and 24, who are LGBT, are something between two and three times more likely to kill themselves than youth outside of Utah. So.

Rob [00:31:47] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:31:47] And that's risen since 2008. What happened in 2008? Proposition 8, where the church fought gay marriage in California. So I'm not saying that that's the only thing that's going on. There are lots of factors to suicide and to cultural influences, but the November 2015 policy was heinous by any account.

John Dehlin [00:32:10] There are Mormon apostles who would tell you if you sat with them in private, that they hated that policy. And there's no question that it's led to multiple suicides. That policy alone. Because when you tell. Imagine if you're a boy, right. And they were to tell you, you know those cute girls and you know those happy families and you know those fathers that get to have kids, you're never going to be able to marry that cute girl, and you're never going to be able to be that dad to those kids. And your life is going to be being alone without any love or intimacy, just working, paying the bills, and being alone. That's basically what you tell a young kid when you tell them to be celibate.

Rob [00:32:57] Right, Right.

John Dehlin [00:32:58] And who wants to. You know, I don't know if you've ever tried being alone, if you've ever tried being alone for an extended period of time without any touch or intimacy.

Rob [00:33:07] It's tough.

John Dehlin [00:33:08] It kills you. Yeah, it kills you. It's. It's actually lethal.

Rob [00:33:12] Well, it's hard for me for a stretch of time, is what I'm saying, but I can't imagine living your life.

John Dehlin [00:33:16] Go seven days. You can't go seven days. Maybe you can't go three. I don't know.

Rob [00:33:21] Right.

John Dehlin [00:33:22] But some. But imagine telling the kid, you'll never have that. It makes you want to kill yourself. So. Because.

Rob [00:33:27] Yeah. What do you look forward to? It's just. It's loneliness.

John Dehlin [00:33:30] It's. You make. You make money to come home to be lonely. Like, what's the point? So when they did that policy, they're basically saying, and this was outrageous, they're saying to get married to someone, you Love, legally married to someone you love and are attracted to is worse than murder, rape, and pedophilia. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought of it that way, but that November 2015 policy declared same sex marriage an immediate act of apostasy, immediately triggering a disciplinary council.

Rob [00:34:06] Because you're saying that children of gay kids could not get baptized. But children of.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] No, no, no. It started with the couple itself. So the kids was a second part to the policy. The first part of the policy was categorizing same sex marriage as worse than murder, rape, incest, and child molestation. Because you know what? There are hundreds and even thousands of men running around Mormon churches who have molested children who were not excommunicated. They were disfellowshipped, or maybe they were quietly disciplined. But it is not mandatory in the Mormon Church to excommunicate a pedophile.

Rob [00:34:46] Wow.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] It is not mandatory in the Mormon Church to excommunicate a murder. It is not mandatory in the Mormon Church to excommunicate someone who, who sleeps with their own child. It is that. That November 2015 policy made it mandatory to hold a disciplinary council and excommunicate someone who got. Who married the love of their life. And oddly, that's crazy.

Rob [00:35:13] I didn't know that. I just heard about the children.

John Dehlin [00:35:15] 100% true. 100. And the, the really weird, twisted thing is if that same gay kid in 2015, instead of marrying the love of their life and being monogamous and settling down to have a healthy, committed, loving, you know, relationship, were to not get married and just sleep with anything that they could sleep with, they don't get excommunication.

Rob [00:35:38] No.

John Dehlin [00:35:38] Excommunication.

Rob [00:35:39] Yeah, it's tough.

John Dehlin [00:35:40] So. So that along with the kids thing, was, was causing people to kill themselves. It's like the church is. The church thinks I'm worse than a rapist, worse than a pedophile, worse than a murderer. So is there any, is there any doubt why that was a major factor to suicide? So in Utah. So, yeah, repealing that policy is going to cause less kids to kill themselves. That's a positive thing. Now why is it not just an unambiguous good?

John Dehlin [00:36:15] Because, number one, LGBT people are still told in Mormonism that their nature is evil, that their nature is wicked, that who they love, who they are oriented to, love, their same sex orientation is 100% as natural and as non chosen as yours is. That's what all the scientific evidence shows. If you believe in gravity, if you believe in, you know, Pick your scientific principle. Science. And even the church now is acknowledging that people do not change their, they do not choose their sexual orientation. So if they don't choose it and you're condemning it so that they have to live a life of solitude, that part hasn't been fixed.

John Dehlin [00:36:59] So yes, it's nice that they've repealed it. It's not nice that they haven't gone and actually said that you're God loves you. God made you this way. You deserve love. Go find committed, monogamous, healthy love and live a happy, fulfilled, meaningful life and adopt kids if you want, or have kids in surrogate. Why should they be, why shouldn't we be encouraging. If we believe in monogamous, committed love as a church, why shouldn't we want that for them?

John Dehlin [00:37:31] Why do they have to live a life of. So that's a problem that hasn't been fixed. The other problem is there's no apology. The brethren didn't say, we're so sorry for all the families that were ripped apart. You know, we're so sorry that this mistake has caused so much damage.

John Dehlin [00:37:50] Tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of Mormons have left the church over this issue. Three, three and a half years later, oops, our bad. We take it back. And then they claim it was a revelation then. So Russell M. Nelson, within a few months of that policy, gave a speech at byu, Idaho saying that the policy was a revelation from God.

John Dehlin [00:38:12] Does it make any sense to anyone that three and a half years ago God made Revelation X and then three and a half years later he makes revelation, Revelation, why? That undoes the previous revelation 100% that's. Why would God do that?

Rob [00:38:29] I see what you're saying and I think it's a good point just to play devil, devil's advocate a little bit. I think, I think the same point can be made on both sides because for the active members, the prophet can never make a mistake because whatever happens at that time they believe divinely should have happened that time. Even if three and a half years later they're like, yeah, let's get this out of there. That wasn't a good thing. They think, oh, for some divine purpose it was. And now it's not. It's a good gig to be the prophet and have believers because they're always going to, they're always going to take what you say. Oh, it must be.

John Dehlin [00:39:00] How do you know? How do you know the prophet is speaking doctrine? His mouth is moving.

Rob [00:39:05] Well, has someone said that?

John Dehlin [00:39:07] No, I'm just. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of a. I don't know. It's a, it's a saying. I mean, it doesn't matter if. If the First Presidency signs a declaration in the mid-1950s saying blacks will never hold the priesthood until after the millennium. And this is doctrine signed by the First Presidency. If over time it gets politically or socially expedient to get rid of that doctrine. And we do fast forward to when the Gospel Topics essays comes out. The essay says, oh, they were just speaking as men, or, oh, those were just the opinions of men. And everybody's like, okay, so it doesn't matter if prophets y contradict explicitly prophets.

John Dehlin [00:39:51] You know, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P. Right. Mormons only care about what the current prophet is saying and don't hold them responsible if what they're teaching contradicts past prophets. And it's fine. It's fine. It's the way to.

Rob [00:40:07] They don't. But then on the other side isn't healthy. On the anti side, it's like they can never do anything right because whatever they do, someone's going to find a problem with it somehow, even if they're doing a good thing. Would you not say that?

John Dehlin [00:40:18] I don't like those types of people. I explicitly condemn any person that only sees bad in church leaders or only sees bad things in the church. I think that's evil and wicked. So I will tell you, I think the church does more good than harm. I think the church helps families, helps marriages, it helps raise good kids, it helps raise moral, healthy individuals for the most part. It contributes to society in super important ways. And I could list a thousand good things that the church has done in my life and it does in people's lives. And I'll tell you, I think undoing the November 2000 policy was a good decision and it showed a lot of courage for them to do that.

John Dehlin [00:41:03] Now, did they do it because, you know, they were worried about LGBT suicides and they realized they were wrong? Did they do it because so many people have left the church since then that they were seeing the, the attendance roles slump and the millennials defecting en masse and the tithing roles? You know, I'm sure it was a lot of things. So I'm not saying it was pure, the decision, like altruistically pure, but I'm willing to say it was a good thing that they undid that.

Rob [00:41:30] And then who knows the real motives? We can have our opinions of what it was.

John Dehlin [00:41:34] We're making it up Right, but. But I'm just going to tell you, I agree with you. I condemn any ex Mormon or critic of the church that's unwilling to acknowledge the good that the leaders do and that the church does.

Rob [00:41:46] Yeah, I think you make a good point with that. And you also.

John Dehlin [00:41:51] But I also condemn orthodox Mormons that see no bad.

Rob [00:41:54] Right. Because it's sweeping under the table and you can never. It's a great audience. Right. If you're one of the brethren, it's a great audience because whatever you say or do, they're gonna give you the benefit of the doubt.

John Dehlin [00:42:06] The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, started out as a fiction writer. He just wrote science fiction.

Rob [00:42:13] Yeah, that's right.

John Dehlin [00:42:14] And he made some money off of that, but then he. He started turning it into a religion and he realized by looking around, and he has this quote, if you want to make. If you want to make money, start a business. If you want to make really good money, start a religion.

Rob [00:42:27] Religion. Yeah, I've heard the quote.

John Dehlin [00:42:29] And it's true. Because people have these needs. What happens when I die? What's the purpose of life? How do I live a moral life? How do I be happy? And religions just plug into that and they say, okay, I'll tell you what your purpose is. I'll tell you what happens when you die. I'll tell you what's meaningful. I'll tell you how to live. And all it's going to cost you is 10% of your income, three to five hours a week, your exact obedience, and I'll help you be happy. And you know what? For many people, they say, sign me up. That's a great deal. And I actually, I think for many people, it is a really good deal. And overall, again, I think religions help a lot of people. So. But. But let's just be clear. It's a good gig, right?

Rob [00:43:14] No, it is.

John Dehlin [00:43:14] Being a prophet of a religion or a guru or a priest or a pastor is a good gig.

Origins and Evolution of Mormon Stories Podcast

Rob [00:43:20] Yeah. Your purpose for starting the podcast is kind of divert. You started in 2005. That obviously is your. Your why behind that has probably changed.

Rob [00:43:31] Right?

Rob [00:43:31] Why did you originally start it?

John Dehlin [00:43:34] So when I started it, there were all these issues that were problems within the church. So I lost. I lost my orthodox faith in. So I grew up. I grew up very orthodox. Like, to this day, I've never tried alcohol, never tried a cigarette.

Rob [00:43:51] Even. Even after the. Never excommunication.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] Now even that.

Rob [00:43:55] What you're supposed to do, just go. Go rage it after.

John Dehlin [00:43:57] To this date, I've had Sex with one woman. Like, I'm. I'm as Mormon. I'm the most Mormon ex Mormon on the planet. But I'm just telling you, I was super Mormon. Okay. Seminary president.

Rob [00:44:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:07] You know, zone leader on my mission, full ride, scholarship to byu. Peter Priesthood. Right. Didn't swear. Had lots of opportunities to have sex with girls in high school. There's no way I would have done it. You know, I didn't even masturbate before I got married. Wow. Not one time. So anyway, I was.

Rob [00:44:25] See, that's something I just discovered as like a nine year old. And it just happened.

John Dehlin [00:44:28] I know.

Rob [00:44:29] Just figured it out. No one told me that I was a freak.

John Dehlin [00:44:31] I was a freak. So anyway, I loved the church. The church was amazing in my life. It was amazing. But I was taught all this stuff that wasn't true. I was taught that Joseph Smith had one wife. I was taught that Native Americans are, you know, descendants of Israelites. Right. I was taught that the book of Abraham was a translation of ancient Egyptian papyrus. I was taught that Joseph Smith was the most righteous man next to Jesus, whoever walked the face of the earth. I was taught all these things that I just assumed were true up until I was 31. And while I was working at Microsoft, I was called as a seminary teacher.

John Dehlin [00:45:13] And this is before the Internet. This is before CES Letter. This is before the Gospel topics essays or Mormon Stories podcast. And I. And I started having just a few questions. I'm like, I want to be a really good seminary. I never understood that polygamy thing. Now I'm going to really try and understand it. Never really understood some of these other issues. I want to understand it. And I started reading some books that I was always told never to read because they were anti Mormon. It turns out that the books only said the things that are now said in the Gospel Topics essays. In other words, you know, last sent.

John Dehlin [00:45:45] Last century's anti Mormon literature is this century's gospel topics essays. But I just. I learned those before the Gospel topics essays come out. So I learned all this history that the church wasn't what it claims to be. And I learned that LGBT people were. LGBT people were killing themselves. And I realized that the Book of Mormon was super racist and that we had a really racist past.

John Dehlin [00:46:11] And I realized that we didn't treat women very well. And so I thought, oh. And I. And I tried to talk to my bishop. He. He didn't want to talk about it. Didn't know any of this stuff. Tried to talk to my parents. They didn't know the stuff they didn't want to talk about. Tried to talk to my siblings, tried to talk to my elders quorum president. Nobody knew this stuff and nobody wanted to talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:46:30] So I started Mormon Stories because I thought it can't be good that we just sweep all these things under the rug if they're racist, sexist, homophobic, untrue, causing people to wreck their lives, causing people to develop addictions, causing marriages to dissolve because of the stress and sadness and problems that were all under the surface, just bubbling that no one could ever talk about. So I started Mormon stories in 2005 with the intent of opening up the conversation, educating people about the problems and bringing on the best minds, pro and con, so that they could be discussed openly. And my hope was we could become a more open minded, knowledgeable, progressive church.

Rob [00:47:19] So at that point you weren't necessarily against the church. I was actually part of it. You were active.

John Dehlin [00:47:23] I was temporal, recommend, holy, active, faithful, committed. I wasn't an orthodox believer because you can't study the origins of the Book of Mormon or the origins of the Book of Abraham and believe that they were translations. Those two books are not translations. You can call them lots of things. You can't call those two books translations. And we were taught that they were translations. So that changes you forever. And you can't learn that Joseph Smith married 14 year olds, 16 year olds, nine wives of other men and ever look at him the same way again in knowing that he lied to Emma about it and that Emma was like the 22nd wife that he was sealed to and he lied to her for the first 21 wives.

Rob [00:48:04] Yeah, it's an uncomfortable thing. It is for sure. But polygamy was a thing in the Bible. God gave wives to, to David. He gave wives to many different people.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] They took wives. Are you sure he gave them to them?

Rob [00:48:17] If you believe in the Bible you can, you can make the argument. That's why I say it's so strange. Well, I don't believe polygamy is a good thing. I actually personally don't believe it's something that was that necessary. I probably don't even believe God commanded it for us. Yeah, but just to say as a disclaimer, it is something that is in the Bible, but Christians aren't up in arms about that.

John Dehlin [00:48:40] Well, it's in the Old Testament. Christians would not be in favor of it today. Right, but, but you know, in the Old Testament you got killed if you didn't, you know, if you didn't do the right thing. On Saturday, or if you.

Rob [00:48:54] Right. If a woman is a different guy,

John Dehlin [00:48:56] handled her menstruation in the wrong way, or if you ate the wrong animal, you could be killed and stoned. Like, you can't use the Old Testament as a standard for anything, right?

Rob [00:49:05] So.

John Dehlin [00:49:06] So anyway, I started Mormon Stories to open up the discussion, to try and make people aware and to try and build a culture where we could talk openly about things in a time where the Church had a history of excommunicating people who. Who discussed anything controversial. So I went to BYU in 88 to 93, and at 93, they excommunicated six scholars for talking about feminism, for talking about polygamy, for talking about Joseph's use of folk magic and treasure digging and peep stones and in a hat to find buried treasure. The church is like, nobody should be talking about this stuff because it's going to cause members to lose their faith.

John Dehlin [00:49:44] So we're going to excommunicate everyone who talks about this stuff. And that happened my senior year at BYU. And so for that next 10 years, 11, 12 years, there was this huge chill where everyone was scared to talk about anything, everyone was scared to learn anything, everyone was scared to open up. And I just said, that's, you know, you don't. Things don't get better by burying them. So I started Mormon Stories to say, no, no, no, we got to talk about this stuff. And you Fast forward to 2013.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] The church is not, you know, you know, not only not excommunicating people for talking about this stuff, they're publishing these essays that admit all the stuff in 2013 that they were excommunicating people for talking about in 1993. If you look at Richard Bushman's book Rough Stone Rolling, there's nothing in there that Fawn Brody didn't write in 1945 of any consequence. Fawn Brody was David O. McKay's niece. She was excommunicated. Richard Bushman in 2005 quotes Fawn Brody as his primary source for Rough Stone Rolling. And he's celebrated as the greatest scholar in Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:50:53] Facts were the same. He just spun it in a faithful way. But we've changed over the past 14 years. We've changed Mormon discourse where now the Church realizes it can no longer punish and excommunicate people for talking openly about factual things, and that that was the main objective for Mormon stories. And I think we accomplished it.

Rob [00:51:14] Yeah, but your guests, it didn't seem that that was always the theme. Wasn't it just people Telling their. Were all of your guests people who have left the church or were. No, no, no active.

John Dehlin [00:51:24] The strategy was number one to, to be the only podcast in Mormonism. And I, I think we're still this way. That interviews faithful and non faithful people.

Rob [00:51:35] Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:35] So we've interviewed on the faithful side, Daniel Peterson, you know, professor, BYU chief apologist for the Mormon Church. We've interviewed Terrell Givens. Terrell and Fiona Givens, authors of, of several faithful books to keep people in the church. We, we interviewed Richard Bushman. We've interviewed the son of Spencer W. Kimball, Ed Kimball. I could list you 40 faithful Mormons that we've interviewed on Mormon stories. And we've interviewed just regular Mormons and we've interviewed people who've left the church, scholars, scientists. We tried to be a place where it didn't matter whether you're in or out, believed or didn't. We just wanted to let people tell their stories and, and get to the bottom of, of things that are true and stop believing things that are false.

Rob [00:52:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:22] So yeah, the intent was never even to this day, the intent is not to lead people out of the church. The intent is to educate people, to help them feel like they're not crazy, to help them feel like they're not alone. To model the open discussion of difficult issues and to get the church to be more open and honest and to get Mormons to become more aware of their religion and to be able to feel comfortable talking about it. And guess what? In 2019, there's never been a time in Mormonism where Mormons are more comfortable talking about difficult things.

Rob [00:52:54] It's probably just because the information's everywhere now. Wouldn't you say so? I mean, it coincided with.

John Dehlin [00:53:00] But it took people like, let's just say the September six or the Mormon History association or Grant Palmer or Simon Southerton or, you know, Mormon Stories podcast or Jeremy Runnels. It took people who are willing to publish things on the Internet or publish podcasts on the Internet. John Larsen, Bill Real, Lindsay Hanson Park. Whoever it is, it took courageous Mormons willing to openly write about and discuss these things for it to actually penetrate Mormon consciousness. Because it, because Fawn Brody's book has been there since 1945. But guess what? No one read it because they were.

Rob [00:53:37] All

John Dehlin [00:53:39] the Tanners have been there since the 60s and 70s. Well, guess what? All the stuff that now the Church is admitting was the stuff that Sandra Tanner and Grant Palmer and Fawn Brody was writing about. There's no difference. What did Fon Brody say that Joseph smith married over 30 women. Is that true? It's true. Did he have sex with some of those women? Yes. Did he marry other people's wives? Yes. Is there a problem that Native American DNA doesn't trace back to Israel, but instead tracks back to Asia? Yes. That's a fact. It's a fact that the Book of Mormon. It's a fact that the Book of Abraham claims to be a translation of a papyra, but when Egyptologists study the papyru, the word Abraham doesn't even appear anywhere in the papyra, not even once.

Rob [00:54:23] Isn't there an argument that it was lost in the Chicago fire or something like that? Part of it, or is that just something I heard?

John Dehlin [00:54:30] No. Part of the. Part of the scroll was burned, but not the part that Joseph Smith translated because he made photocopies and put in the newspaper and, you know, and we published in our Book of Mormon the hieroglyphs, and those were the facsimiles. That's all stuff that remains in the papyrus that we have. The church admits all this now, but I'm just saying 20 years ago, they would excommunicate if you talked openly about it.

Rob [00:54:54] Well, I think truth is important. I think getting to the bottom of things is important. And just to kind of clarify, because, again, our listeners are. There's active listeners, there's inactive ones. I don't want people to think that where to. I think whatever it is, the truth is good. But whether that is supposed to leave people in the sense of, again, is your goal changed since you've been excommunicated, that your goal is these are the facts, Therefore, you should isolate yourself from the church. You should stay within the church. What's your. What's your.

John Dehlin [00:55:27] I counsel people all the time to stay in the church. I think if you can. Okay, first of all, there's a whole bunch of people who are never going to want to learn any of this stuff. They're never going to care about LGBT people, they're never going to care about racism, they're never going to care about feminism, and they're never going to want to learn controversial things about Joseph Smith. They're happy in the church. It makes them happy. My opinion about them is they should stay happy, stay in the church. So I have no desire to hurt them. Okay. There are people who the church is hurting, so I would say the church is hurting LGBT people.

John Dehlin [00:56:05] Right. In that case, I want those LGBT people to find a church or an organization or a worldview where that doesn't make them Want to kill themselves, that teaches them that they can find love, committed love, raise a family, and have all the happiness that you or I want to have. So I do wish that for them. Now, am I opposed to gay people staying in the church? No. But I want them to at least know that they have options separate from suicide.

John Dehlin [00:56:35] Now, there's another group of people in between who aren't those, you know, and these are the people that don't know the truth about the church, right? Because they never learned it, like me, and they're happy in it, but their allegiance is the truth. In other words, if they were to find out the church isn't what it claims to be, they would want to know. And even if it was inconvenient, even if it was, oh, this may affect my marriage or, oh, this may. I may lose some friends over this, or my mom and dad may not be happy with, or this may hurt my income.

John Dehlin [00:57:10] But they're like, but truth matters. And I want to base my life on truth, not whitewashed sort of fraud or manipulation, right? I want those people who would want to know the truth to learn all the truth about what the church really is and how the church helps and harms people. And then if they've learned it, so that they're like, okay, now I know what I'm a member of, right? And then they say, but I'm still good with it. It makes me happy. My feeling is, stay in the church because overall, your life is going to be healthier and happier if you stay in the church.

John Dehlin [00:57:49] As long as you do it knowing exactly what you're a member of, right? So that there's no surprises, you know, what you're a part of, and you engage it with sort of full consent, right? But what I also think is there's going to be some people that are like, I'm in this thing. There's some people who are in the church because it's good, right? It helps their marriage, it helps them raise kids.

John Dehlin [00:58:15] It gives them a sense of community and identity. It makes them feel good. Those people are probably going to stay in the church no matter what. There are other people who are in the church because they believe it's true.

John Dehlin [00:58:27] And if it's not true, or if it's not true in the way they were taught, they want to know that because they would be okay losing some of those benefits because they'd rather build their lives on what's true than on what's convenient or comfortable or easy. And not everyone's the same that way. But I know a lot of people who are willing to face the fire of social rejection or stress or pain because they have a real allegiance to truth.

Rob [00:58:58] Right?

John Dehlin [00:58:58] And those people deserve to know exactly what they're a member of so they can make choices about how they spend their money, how they spend their time, what they give their reputation and time to. And they can do that with full consent versus having been conditioned as a child to blindly follow something that isn't what they were told it actually was. So that's, that's really it. I love the church. I want as many people to stay in the church who are happy and healthy and thriving, who, who do so with full consent and full knowledge of what they're a part of.

Faith Crises, Doubt, and Staying or Leaving

Rob [00:59:31] You talk a lot about faith crises as well. And that's one of the reasons why, I mean, whether the church is true or not true, I mean, because it's a possibility, John, that these things you're talking about are true, but the church still is true. I think it's still possible that there could be mistakes and people can screw up because it is run by men. And there is that argument. But that being said, I think a lot of people are better left in the church than out.

John Dehlin [00:59:59] Can't argue with that. I do not believe that if churches and religion went away that the world would be better. I think religion has been an inextricably positive part of human advancement. It's what's made families more healthy, more functional. It's what civilized savage men from being warriors and hunter gatherers to like good fathers and good husbands. I think religion has played a really important role of civilizing humanity and making them a little more ethical, a little more civilized, a little more, you know, in spite of all the carnage. Because there has been carnage right over

Rob [01:00:39] religion in the name of God. Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:41] And you know, abuse of, you know, religious abuse and religious fraud. I mean, just pick any other religion. There's been fraud, there's been corruption, there's been abuse, but that's just part of humanity.

Rob [01:00:55] Any form of power, whether it's religious or not, any form of power could be.

John Dehlin [01:00:58] You put a bunch of atheists together in a big thousand person group, you're going to get abuse and pedophilia and you're going to get financial scandals and, and crazy fraud and you're going to get that too. Like it is part of the human experience. I don't blame religion for that. So I agree with you that religion has been a net positive contributing force to the evolution of mankind. No question. Right. And Mormonism is a part of that.

Rob [01:01:24] And that being said, but it's never a reason to shy away from truth and to hide things. And so that's why I think this day and age, it's a lot of good things.

John Dehlin [01:01:34] But the point is, for me is that religions have to. It's kind of grow or die, you know, you can't just stay how you are and thrive. And when Mormon leaders were able to limit people's access to information and punish them for reading no Man Knows My History or reading the Tanners and make them so scared that they wouldn't learn about Joseph Smith and the Book of Abraham, the Book of Mormon, that was fine, you know, but in the Internet age, those techniques don't work anymore. And so all these skeletons have to come out of the closet and we have to deal with them. And it's really, you know, testing the church's mettle of what the church really is, because the church can't just stay as it was and thrive.

John Dehlin [01:02:21] And I think the number one reason that they changed the November 2015 policy three and a half years after they implemented it was because they were hemorrhaging members. The stats are that over half of returned missionaries who have come home over the past, let's just say five or ten years have left the church.

John Dehlin [01:02:41] You know, two thirds of all people baptized into the church have left the church. We claim 16 million members. There's only 4 or 5 million people in the world who actually identify as Mormon. And the church is shrinking in Europe, it's shrinking in Japan, it's shrinking in Korea. And the only thing that's keeping it growing in the United States is the birth rate, because Mormons have, on average, three kids. So that helps offset all the people who are leaving and the missionary program in the United States coming to a virtual screeching halt.

John Dehlin [01:03:18] So the church is, you know, realizing that the old ways aren't going to work. And huge credit to Russell M. Nelson for these changes. If you look at the common theme of all the changes he's made over the past year, church is two hours instead of three. Missionaries can call home, get rid of the home teaching program. You know, what are some of the, you know, getting rid of the November 2015 policy. What are some of the other big changes they've made?

Rob [01:03:46] Those are the ones I can think of.

John Dehlin [01:03:48] What do they all have in common? They make it easier to be a Mormon. They take stress away. They take some of the pain and some of the difficulty away, and they make it just a Little bit easier to be Mormon. And that's smart because if you don't change, you're going to die. So credit to Russell M. Nelson for realizing that we have to change or we're going to die. Because all the other religions are dying, right? Not all, but.

Rob [01:04:15] And that's one thing that's fair. Religion as a whole, I think, in society is becoming less popular.

John Dehlin [01:04:20] In the United States, the largest and the fastest growing religious group is those who no longer affiliate with any religious tradition. It is now past 25%. There's no other religious group that's 25% of the population. And what should be startling to people is the growth rate. If you look at the growth rate of. It's called the rise of the nones. No N E S people who put none. When they're asked what religion they are, they put none. That group is, has had like geometric growth, like a 45 degree growth curve, right? You want a 45 degree growth curve. I don't care what you want to grow.

John Dehlin [01:04:58] A 45 degree growth curve is a good curve. Right. And that's, that's the rise of this group in, in 50 to 100 years, that, that's going to be 50, 60, 70% of the population if projections hold. Unless there's some famine or war that like puts everybody back into sort of this orthodox mentality. And you just have to look at Europe. We're going the way of Western Europe, which is highly secular. And so religions have to either change or die. So kudos to Russell Nelson.

Rob [01:05:29] Yeah, no, and I think it's a good thing again, whether it's the church is completely true or not true or completely outright false. I think it's a good thing because you've talked about how there's different types of Jews, right? There's Orthodox, there's. What is the new term?

John Dehlin [01:05:45] So there's Hasidic, ultra Orthodox Jews, then there's Orthodox Jews, then there's Conservative Jews and then there's Reformed Jews and then there's Reconstructionist Jews. But think of it as a spectrum.

Rob [01:05:58] There's also Messianic Jews, which I've read about, which believe that Christ was the Messiah. But that's something you should look into. It's interesting. It's growing very.

John Dehlin [01:06:05] Yeah, yeah.

Rob [01:06:05] But anyways.

John Dehlin [01:06:06] But the point is you've got everything from these Jews who live in their own clustered groups. They speak Yiddish, they don't let any outsiders in. They're super strict on other rules. You've got a spectrum from that all the way to Jews that don't believe in God, that have lesbian rabbis, that don't care if you. If you ever believe that Moses existed, who's the founder of their religion. And it's like, if you want to be a Jew, be a Jew. They don't care because it's not about your beliefs. It's just about being part of a community. You've got this wide variety and then all sorts of stuff in the middle. Ones who keep kosher, ones who don't, ones who follow the rituals, ones who don't. And it's even okay to.

Rob [01:06:47] And they all take care of each other.

John Dehlin [01:06:50] They're actually competition and animosity between some of the groups. But the point is, if you want to be a Jew, you can find your group, right? And if somebody says, I'm a secular Jew or I'm an atheist Jew, nobody questions your Jew. You're a Jew because you say you're a Jew and you've got that heritage. And I think it would be good for Mormonism to be flexible enough to have liberal Mormons and progressive Mormons and secular Mormons, because otherwise you just have ex Mormons.

Rob [01:07:21] Right? Well, I think that's a good thing. And that's why I said I think a lot of people are best left in the church. Than leaving is because you do one thing that's against and you kind of feel like you need to isolate yourself from the church. Let's say a guy, a young guy, goes out and parties with some friends that aren't Mormon, and then he feels bad and doesn't want to go to church because he's embarrassed, he's ashamed, and then he just leaves altogether. Was that the best thing for him to do in his life when the church could have brought him all this other good, or it could be the best thing.

Rob [01:07:47] I don't know. I think it's situational with every person because there's a hell of a lot of people that leave and don't end up in a better place. Whether that means that, see, the church is true because they left and they're sad now they're not happy in their life, or whether that's just because they felt lost because what they thought was true.

John Dehlin [01:08:02] Yeah, that's tricky. I know tens of thousands of ex Mormons who are super happy and healthy and functional and thriving. And I know a lot of people who had anxiety or depression or obsessive compulsive disorder or really bad marriage or whatever it was where leaving the church was an important part of them becoming well and they become better parents, they have a better marriage. Like we can show both sides and I can show you a thousand people who left the church and wrecked their lives. So, you know, a lot of that's confirmation bias where you, you see the evidence that supports your point of view.

John Dehlin [01:08:40] And I don't like operating that way. We all do it, but I try not to. I think you can wreck your life leaving Mormonism and I think you can upgrade your life leaving Mormonism and there's everything in between. But I will say this, there's a couple complexity things to that factor.

John Dehlin [01:08:58] Sometimes when someone leaves Mormonism, their parents are disappointed in them, their, their community rejects them, their friends abandon them, and guess what happens when your parents reject you, your community rejects you, your friends abandon you, and they all think you're a bad person. Guess what that does?

Rob [01:09:15] It takes a toll on you either way.

John Dehlin [01:09:17] You all of a sudden start developing addictive behaviors to anesthetize the depression and the anxiety that you're feeling by having been rejected by everybody that you loved and cared about. Right? So we, that, that's a self fulfilling prophecy that we inflict on people because we, we can make people feel so judged and marginalized and bad about themselves that we actually create the dysfunction that we want to see to make us feel better about our choices. So if we can make it really bad for people who leave the church so that their lives are wrecked, then we can say, look, see what happens when you leave the church?

John Dehlin [01:09:56] Your life gets wrecked when in reality we contributed to that self destruction. Now there are other people that are loved by their Mormon family and friends and they just make stupid choices and wreck their lives. That's a tragedy too. And I know plenty of Mormons that would have been better, plenty of ex Mormons that would have been better staying in the church. No question. Right. But it's not. There are also a lot of people who were dying inside the church. There are people who were clinically depressed inside the church. They were, you know, let's just say some kid like you, you know, like you said, you know, started masturbating.

John Dehlin [01:10:32] But instead of having a loving bishop, they had some bishop that made them feel like they were a pervert and evil and dark. And so what they did is they learned how to lie. Right?

Rob [01:10:44] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:10:45] So when they talk to the bishop or their mission president or their girlfriend or their parents or their in laws, it's like, no, I don't do that. And then privately they're doing it and sometimes they're doing it more because it feels good. And they're anesthetizing all the guilt and shame that the religion put upon them.

Rob [01:11:01] Yeah. What's the saying, 99% of kids, young boys, masturbate. The other, the 1, the 1% of liars or John de Lynn, who didn't till later and later until after I got married.

John Dehlin [01:11:12] That's another story. But the point is that there are some people. Let's just say you've been raped by your bishop and that's happened. Let's just say that you feel betrayed by the church. Let's just say you wanted to be a working woman, but the church taught you that your only role was to be a housewife. Right. Let's say you're a person of color and you were told your whole life that your dark skin is the result of a curse that some dude made of some choice some dude made 20 generations ago, and it made you feel really bad about yourself. There are lots of people or you're gay, Right.

John Dehlin [01:11:46] There are lots of people who are kind of on the margins where the church works for a certain group of people, but for a certain subset of people, what, what's healthy and life giving for 70% of the people is actually toxic and destructive for 30% of the people. You cannot make the argument that Mormonism is awesome for everyone who's in it. Yeah. Because for some people it's deadly. And that's why Utah has two to three times the suicide rates of other states. Partly because there are some people trapped in this religion. And it's not just gay people who are actually miserable and suicidal because the religion triggers in them guilt and shame or self loathing or perfectionism that becomes toxic.

Excommunication, Joy, and Life After the Church

Rob [01:12:34] It's a tough, it's a tough subject. You know, I think people need to do what bring not, not makes them happy, but brings them joy. There's a difference between joy and happiness because some, that's where some people can, you know, lose their faith and then say, I'm going to go party. I'm going to do all this other, these other things. But it's not true happiness for some people. Maybe it is. Right.

Rob [01:12:54] Who knows? But, but people need to find joy and be fulfilled in life. And because, but, but also on the other side is it's tough because I don't want to overlook the good that comes from the church and the good that the members are doing for themselves by living the gospel or what they believe it to be. And, and I, you know, that's where I land in an interesting spot, because I'll Talk about the controversial stuff, and I'll admit that it's very flawed, but I've also seen miracles. You know, as a missionary, I saw plenty of miracles that I have no idea how they happened.

Rob [01:13:28] And I believe it was God. Whether that was God acting through me, and he would have acted through a Baptist missionary and a, you know, Buddhist monk could have experienced the same godly thing, I don't know. But I do believe that there is God and goodness in it and I don't think that should be overlooked.

Rob [01:13:52] And for you, it's got to be tough though, because what happened with you getting excommunicated, I don't think it was a, a good reason to be excommunicated. And so you're left probably in that situation. I'd feel the same because I don't agree with the reason. You were excommunicated.

John Dehlin [01:14:09] Yeah, I mean I, I was just a little bit, a little bit early and came in a little bit hard. And I don't fault the church for excommunicating me. I mean, you know, they're just. First of all, it's not fair that 90 year old men are asked to run multi billion dollar organizations. There's no corporation our size in the world that has 90 year olds running it. Why? Because, because that's not necessarily easy for 90 year old people to do. And I'm not saying that they, they don't have good qualities about them, but I'm just saying they have really hard jobs, especially given how freaking old they are.

John Dehlin [01:14:51] So, so they're, what do they do with John de Lind who's given TED talks and doing podcasts and getting exposure on Good Morning America and VH1 and the Wall Street Journal? Like they don't know what to do and so they just do what, what, what comes natural, which is like, oh, well, they excommunicated those guys a couple decades ago. Let's try that. You know, because they don't know what to do. And they, you know, they didn't realize that excommunicate people like Kate Kelly and Bill Real and me and Sam Young and others was actually going to make the problem worse. You know, they, they didn't have the right advisors around them to see, you know, what the, the Barbra Streisand effect, which is when you try and squelch, you know, press or information, it's just like burning books.

John Dehlin [01:15:37] What's the, what's the best way to create an international bestseller? You condemn a book to be burned. You condemn a book to be burned.

Rob [01:15:44] And people want to find out why.

John Dehlin [01:15:45] People want to buy it. You excommunicate a bunch of people who are talking and getting a big audience, they're going to go, hey, wonder why that guy's got an audience. I wonder why they're excommunicating him. And you know, they just, I to the, you know, unfortunately they just didn't have the wisdom to see that. But you know, they're learning and that's a good thing.

Rob [01:16:05] They're learning. But I hope that we come on this path of, of reconciliation, reconciliation and acceptance too. Instead of ostracizing people like you more accepting and being like this is just one way to think. And we're all kind of part of this group. I mean you're not part of it anymore. But I think that's, that's more of where we're going to land.

John Dehlin [01:16:24] The good news is we're 100% moving in that direction. Every, you know, Kate Kelly gets excommunicated for trying to get women ordained. That's unfortunate. But now all of a sudden women have a lot more prominent role in the church. And I get excommunicated for talking about LGBT problems in the church and the church's lack of honesty.

John Dehlin [01:16:47] That's sad. But now the church comes out with its essays and the church is more open about the foibles of Joseph Smith and its leaders. And so the church moves forward. So there's always got to be these kind of sacrificial lamps. Sam Young makes it makes it known to the church that children are being abused. The children are being, you know, asked really gross, inappropriate, sexually explicit questions with a 12 year old girl, with a man behind a closed door and asking her where she touches herself, how often. The church just kind of didn't realize how inappropriate that was because they'd always done it. And they've got 90 year leaders.

John Dehlin [01:17:23] They excommunicate Sam Young. But what do they also do? They change the standards and allow parents to be in those interviews with the kids. And it's just going to keep going forward. The it takes, it always takes. Just like that TED Talk. We'll come right back to it. It takes Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, Bob F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, whoever. Pick your social justice warrior, Mahatma Gandhi. It takes those leaders who come out front, stick their head out, get it head chopped off, fighting for a cause, for then the social progress to kind of follow and it's okay, I'm alive, I'm married, I'm happily married 25 years.

John Dehlin [01:18:01] I've got four beautiful kids. I'm able to scratch out a living, and a lot of people are grateful for what I do. So I, you know, and I don't mean to compare myself to Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Gandhi, you know, don't. Don't misunderstand. But the effect. The effect is similar in our little world.

John Dehlin [01:18:18] There are a group of us, Bill Real, Sam Young, Kate Kelly, you know, me, others who have taken the bullet so that Mormon culture can advance. And it's not just us. We stand on the Giants of Mormon History Association, Dialogue Foundation, Sunstone, you know, all sorts of. Of leaders. B.H. roberts, Fawn Brody, the Tanners. Like, we stand on their shoulders, but. But we were able to kind of move the needle, and I don't think anybody can question that. We did move the needle.

John Dehlin [01:18:47] And, yeah, it sucks that the church has to chop off the heads of the people that lead to the social change, but at the same time, it's becoming less and less painful to be excommunicated, and it's almost becoming a badge of honor. Because if you look at the people who've been excommunicated in the past decade, it's been people that, I mean, just look at the LGBT stuff. I get excommunicated for fighting for LGBT rights. Now the church is admitting people don't choose to be gay. They're admitting that it's not a sin to have gay feelings. They're admitting that celibacy is fraught.

John Dehlin [01:19:20] They're admitting that mixed faith, mixed orientation marriages are problematic. They're stopping reparative therapy and conversion therapy. You know, so we're vindicated. And that feels really good. Yeah, and I think it's just super good.

Rob [01:19:35] I think it's vindicated. Gonna get better and better. And, yeah, you can't argue that that wasn't a pleasant experience for you. But again, I think we're moving forward and. And folks are gonna. Gonna keep realizing that. So I really appreciate what you do, and I appreciate you coming on.

Legacy, Influence, and Upcoming Community Events

John Dehlin [01:19:50] Dude, you're Mormonism's Joe Rogan. What do you mean you don't know Joe Rogan is.

Rob [01:19:55] Yeah, I do.

John Dehlin [01:19:55] Your Mormonism's Joe Rogan.

Rob [01:19:58] In what way?

John Dehlin [01:19:58] You're just like. You're running a podcast that's kind of like just an open conversation.

Rob [01:20:02] It is, it is. Which you got.

John Dehlin [01:20:06] You got a little bit of a Joe Rogan vibe. You've got like a Mormon Joe Rogan vibe.

Rob [01:20:09] I take that as a compliment.

John Dehlin [01:20:11] Yeah, you should.

Rob [01:20:11] So.

Rob [01:20:12] So thank you.

John Dehlin [01:20:12] I mean, it is a Compliment.

Rob [01:20:14] Are you. I wanted to ask you this earlier.

Rob [01:20:16] Are you.

Rob [01:20:16] Do you have like psychology in your background? Did you study field?

John Dehlin [01:20:20] I have a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology.

Rob [01:20:22] But you worked in tech, did you?

John Dehlin [01:20:24] I started out at Microsoft and MIT and Bain and, you know, I did tech for about 15 years and then I eventually switched to psychology and got a PhD.

Rob [01:20:34] Okay. Because that, I didn't know that about you, but in talking with you, I was like, this guy just, he knows how people think. He gets the emotional side of things. Do you? Do you? Because I did hear you in an interview talking about counseling couples.

John Dehlin [01:20:48] Yeah, I do. I do. I. I call it coaching because I don't treat depression or anxiety, even though I'm trained to do that. I'm an expert in it. What I like to do is when someone's in a faith crisis, when a marriage is in peril because one person lose their faith or the couple's really disoriented, I love helping them find their way to health and happiness. And by the way, I am my advice always to someone who is asking me if they should leave the church. My advice is always, don't leave it unless you can't stay. Because I think you're always better with the church and religion in your life if it's working for you. Right. The only people that you leave are the ones who are literally dying by staying in.

Rob [01:21:32] And what about for a couple who one is opposed to the church and one still believes it? What do you recommend for them?

John Dehlin [01:21:41] That it can be an incredible opportunity for, for growth and maturation of the marriage. That, that really they have a lot more in common than they think it to the non believer, to the believer, when, when, when their spouse loses their faith, it's like, well, we don't have nothing in common. Now all of a sudden there, there's something different than what I married. But the truth is they both still believe in honesty, they both still believe in integrity. They both still believe in marriage. Usually they both still believe in raising good kids, in serving.

John Dehlin [01:22:13] Their values are all still the same. Yeah, it's just a little bit scary and it's a bit of a change. But what I help help people see is that religion is not their problem. Their problem is they need what's called emotional intimacy. They need to learn to talk about hard things. They need to learn to see underneath why this person believes and why this person doesn't and come to develop unconditional love.

Rob [01:22:37] Their love can supersede that is what you're saying.

John Dehlin [01:22:39] Because people should Always come before beliefs. Right. Beliefs should never come before relationships. And I think Christ would agree with that for sure. Yeah. So you just got to get them to realize that they can, they can totally thrive and, and, and build an amazing life together where one just happens to go to church on Sunday and the other doesn't. One, one gets fulfillment from the church and the other one gets fulfillment from riding their bikes, bikes in the bike trail. Or the nonbeliever can attend the church with the believer sometimes just to show support. And maybe sometimes the believer can stay home and, you know, do something fun with the non believer just to say, hey, I respect you and, and care about your way of life.

John Dehlin [01:23:22] And ultimately, if you've got a compassionate theology as a believer, you don't believe that God's going to keep two loving people apart from each other in the long run. He's not going to split up families because there were 4,000 churches to choose from and you chose one of the 3,999 ones that were wrong. And so I'm going to split your family up. Right. God. Anyone who's got a religious belief that I respect believes that God's much more compassionate and bigger than separating families. Right. And that's the big irony is that sometimes Mormonism claims to be the big protector and guardian of families, but often the way people live out Mormonism is that Mormonism is just dividing families.

John Dehlin [01:24:03] It's dividing the gay kids from the believers, it's dividing the believers from the non believers. It's dividing the Mormons from the rest of the world. And the truth is, if God is successful, if God is loving, if God is compassionate, we're all gonna. He's gonna do everything he can to get us all back with him. And so we need to stop letting religion come between us and just find ways to make sure that if religion has any value, it's going to be in strengthening families and in uniting relationships, not in dividing relationships.

Rob [01:24:36] Wow, that's really brilliant stuff. Which surprises me because you're not a member of the church, so how could you say things that are so good?

John Dehlin [01:24:43] Isn't that weird? You know, sometimes Satan can create the appearance of an angel of light. You know, that's somewhere in the Doctrine and Covenants.

Rob [01:24:54] Yeah, no, my buddies used to joke around. I had a buddy who was not. Who left the church. He wasn't active, and when he would do something good, I'd be like, huh, strange you would do something good since you don't have a testimony in the restored gospel.

John Dehlin [01:25:05] It's Weird. And there's no Mormons that ever do bad things.

Rob [01:25:09] Right, right, right. Well, so anyways, I think that's a really, really important thing, though I'm glad to end with that because I think there's a lot of marriages out there that need to hear that. And is that something you do just on the side or do you. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:25:21] In fact, next weekend I'm having a retreat for mixed. Mixed faith marriage retreat where 20 couples are getting together. I'm doing with Julie Diazevedo Hanks. She's a faithful psychologist whose husband's a bishop. Her dad wrote Saturday's Warrior back in the day.

Rob [01:25:35] Okay.

John Dehlin [01:25:36] And we're co leading a retreat for mixed faith couples to save marriages.

Rob [01:25:41] Wow. Can anyone go to that attend? How do they.

John Dehlin [01:25:43] Yeah, yeah, you just go to mormonfaithcrisis.com events and they can sign up to attend.

Rob [01:25:51] Awesome. Well, what else do you have in the works before we wrap this up? Do you have anything you want to.

John Dehlin [01:25:55] We're doing a conference in June called Thrive, pulling a bunch of people together to learn about how to be better parents, how to have healthier marriages, how to have better mental health, improve your spirituality. We, you know, even if you're the most orthodox Mormon, I would hope that you would want ex Mormons to find healing and health and happiness and good marriages and be good parents, et cetera. And you know, many of us are tired with all the negativity in the ex post Mormon community. I mean, on the one hand, the anger is understandable and in some ways it's very healthy to process your anger. So I'm not condemning that anger, but it's easy to get stuck there and it's easy to kind of focus on the negativity sometimes. And I've done it a lot of. It's just we all do it.

Rob [01:26:41] We all do it and in all sides. Right.

John Dehlin [01:26:44] All sides.

Rob [01:26:46] Active, inactive, or any, any issue in life.

John Dehlin [01:26:49] Yep. So a group of us just got together and said, why don't we create a conference where nothing said about Joseph Smith, nothing's negative said about the church. We're just going to have like marriage experts help people have healthy marriages after they leave the church. Childhood, you know, child experts help you raise good parenting experts help you raise good kids. Spiritual experts help you live the best spiritual life you can. Mental health experts help you with your depression and your anxiety. You know, pick your topic. We're going to have cool people there to just help teach and grow.

Rob [01:27:21] That's something anyone can benefit from.

John Dehlin [01:27:23] Anyone. This is going to be amazing for anybody. And there's going to be no negativity. No, no negativity, no barbs, no criticisms, because it's all about healing and growth. Well, that's great. It's called Thrive. You can check it out again@mormonfaithcrisis.com events. You know, you can check it out.

Rob [01:27:40] Awesome. Well, I hope. Hope a lot of people show up to that. Thanks again for coming on, John. I appreciate it.

John Dehlin [01:27:45] It's fun. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Good luck with your podcast.

Rob [01:27:48] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:27:48] Keep.

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.