Introduction and Episode Overview

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 569

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Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:38] Come, come ye saints, nor toil, nor labor fear. Hello everyone, this is Dan Wotherspoon of the Mormon Matters Podcast welcoming you to the third section of a cooperative endeavor between Mormon Stories, A Thoughtful Faith and Mormon Matters Section one We're kind of calling Section one is an interview that Gina Colvin did with John Dehlin. Really did a nice, wonderful job of taking John all the way through his journey in life, as well as with Mormon Stories and his plans and things like that. And so it's really great to have that out there along with what Lindsay Hanson park did with John at the Sunstone Symposium.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:28] So I so if anybody who wants to really dive into John Dehlin and his life, I highly recommend you go to Mormon Stories to get the Lindsay and the Gina one, or just to go to Gina's a Thoughtful Faith Podcast and get that one.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:43] What John then did was interview me about a week prior to when we're talking now about my journey and my way of putting the world together and my sort of approach to Mormonism. It was another typical long, fun interview, not a always comfortable to field every question that sometimes comes from a place of asking or something that is such a different worldview or whatever than what I'm thinking. But I was glad to do it and appreciate John putting that out there in the world as a way of helping me in my journey and why Mormonism still feels like a comfortable enough home for me. Good to have that out there.

John Dehlin [00:02:33] So I just felt like you really represented your side in many good ways. So I love that interview.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:02:38] Well, thank you. And it was fun, but also not fun to do, like I said. And I think some of the ways that I'll phrase questions or something, you'll kind of feel the dynamic of all these kind of clarifying and stuff here and there as we converse. So really what this third section we're imagining is because we have John's story, we're going to kind of skip over that. I will reference to certain things that Gina and Lindsay asked him as we go. So this will be my chance to ask John a bit more specifics about his own beliefs the own way that he weighs his role as a leader, as an influencer in the world.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:03:21] I just want to hear a lot more about his Mormonism, about his own personal beliefs and things like that. And then I think what we'll be able to do is share with each other a little bit more about places where we agree and disagree and things like that. So welcome. Thanks for joining me for this. I'm really excited to interview you now.

John Dehlin [00:03:40] Thanks, Dan. I've been wanting to have a bit of a back and forth for a while, and I'm happy to be here again.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:03:46] Great. Thanks, brother. So, John, I don't know if you remember exactly this one little moment during your interview of me where I kind of compared our temperaments, and I kind of said that you seem to me to have an activist temperament. And there's no judgment involved when it comes to temperament. Some people are naturally extroverted or introverted. Introverted or, you know, there's all sorts of different things, and there's. There's gifts and there's drawbacks with each one. But I was wondering how well you related to me kind of saying that whatever John Dehlin is, when he feels something, whether it's enthusiasm or disgust or, you know, like, feels somebody's pain or something like that, that it's almost impossible for you to.

John Dehlin's Temperament and Approach to Mormonism

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:33] To do anything but kind of come at it, like at 90 miles per hour, you know what I mean? It's like, I've got to do something about this. You know, I'm feeling it. I'm either I love it or I hate it, and somehow or other, I can't be silent. Does that fit comfortably with you? Does that describe you?

John Dehlin [00:04:51] I noted that, and I remember feeling mixed about it. You know, on a superficial level, I think it is true that I'm a very passionate person, that I probably have a temperament. Like when I think about Peter in the New Testament jumping out and trying to walk on water or cutting off the ear of the soldier.

John Dehlin [00:05:17] I do think that I sometimes have that temperament. And I also agree, Dan, that a big difference maybe between me and others, and maybe it is not a difference, but. But the fact that, you know, 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, I started really tapping in to the pain side of, you know, of. Of people's struggle in their LDS and Mormon journeys. And then as a therapist, where I'm sitting across the room, you know, therapy room, from people contemplating suicide, of having their marriages, end of. Of dealing with masturbation or homosexuality or eating disorders, you know, difficulties that they associate with their Mormon Upbringing that, you know, that, that what that does is it makes me feel like if I'm just to say, well, the church works for me, you know, and as a white heterosexual, you know, we talked about this in your interview.

John Dehlin [00:06:18] As a white, tall, you know, middle aged, upper, you know, sort of middle class, you know, white male, I'm forgetting all my Straight. Straight. Yeah, it's really easy for me to say, well, the church works for me. But as I, as I tap in so regularly now as a therapist to all the ways that the church really hurts people in meaningful ways, then I feel like I have to be vocal about that or else I fear that I'm being complicit in their pain and suffering and just sort of saying, well, it works for me and I enjoy it, but it's painful for other people. And so I do think that that pressures me.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] But the thing is, I know that you also talk to a lot of people all the time and have a strong sense and care for that pain as well. So I don't know, temperament certainly comes into play here. But I'll also just say that, you know, one of the references that you made is one of a long game versus a short game. And what I, what I heard from that is sort of like, you know, my defensive part of me hears you say, oh, well, you're impetuous, you're impatient, and you're just playing the short game.

John Dehlin [00:07:39] But maybe I'm Dan, playing the wiser, more patient, more mature, longer game. And I don't know, and I don't mean that that's what you really intended, but that's what my insecure sort of parts heard. And I would say that sort of assumes that there's one right end, you know what I mean? And I think for some people it is probably right for them to try and stay and make it work.

John Dehlin [00:08:08] And I think for others, it's just really right for them to leave the church. And so I don't think there's one end for every person. I think it's the short game for some, the long game for others, and vice versa.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:21] Yeah, yeah, I hear that critique and I hear that you might have heard that that way. I guess another area, let's kind of fold two things that I had to ask you, another area that I would reference quite a bit. And I seemed like I was trying to draw you into a conversation with me when you were, you know, really more on the mode of interviewing me as I kept talking about, you know, developmental theory and Fowler and stages of faith and things like that. And I. And I wanted to hear your take on, you know, either Fowler itself or just, you know, as a.

Developmental Psychology and Stages of Faith

Dan Wotherspoon [00:08:57] As a doctor having a doctorate in psychology, I'm sure you've, you know, gone into Piaget and Erickson and Kohlberg and, you know, Gilligan and everybody who's a developmental theorist and stuff like that. And of course, in that there is sort of an assumption, and this is where maybe part of your critique is that everyone, if the human journey proceeds in a way where certain tasks are hid at certain times and things like that, that person has a better chance for a fully flourishing life. And so take the faith stuff out of it. That's kind of a developmental model that simply says pathologies can be avoided if you good things happen at the right points.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:09:41] But I guess I'm trying to get you to suggest, because it's part of this answer of the long game versus the short game. Are you at all a fan of developmental theory? Do you think that there's something to it? Because in some ways it is a long game theory.

John Dehlin [00:10:00] Yeah, so I definitely have had sort of a base level, you know, training and trying to understand Piaget and Kohlberg and Erickson. Fowler, actually, I don't think was ever mentioned in my six years of psychology training just because generally I find psychology faculty uncomfortable discussing religion, even at Utah State.

John Dehlin [00:10:31] So. So, yeah, I certainly respect just the idea of, you know, sort of the discipline of developmental psychology, the idea that. That there are common sort of developmental milestones that we progress through. And, yeah, there's no way that I would want to deny that because I think we're all human and we all share 99% of our DNA, and a lot of our experiences and journeys are very similar.

John Dehlin [00:11:04] So I do respect developmental psychology, and I do have a respect for Fowler in the sense that I think. I don't think Fowler would even claim to represent everyone's experience, but I think most people are religious. Even today, 80% of the world maybe, or more would claim to be religious or spiritual in some way. And I think Fowler does a really good job of describing a very common developmental trajectory for many people.

John Dehlin [00:11:40] So I'm with you all the way through that. And I would even say that there were times where my interview with you and Tom Kimball was really, really important and meaningful to me as I was trying to make the church work. And I think Fowler is a very, very useful sort of paradigm for people who have decided that they either need or want to make, for example, Mormonism work, and they're trying to move out of stage four, which I kind of associate with anger and with confusion and with doubt and with feelings of darkness, kind of that dark night of the soul thing.

John Dehlin [00:12:20] They're trying to transition away from literalism and simplicity and dogmatic binary thinking. And four represents sort of that difficult journey. And then five on the other side represents sort of this mature, symbolic, metaphorical, deeper, wiser, more patient, more loving, more expansive sort of view of their Mormonism and their spirituality. I don't.

John Dehlin [00:12:49] I love. I love those ideas and that frame for. For many people, I guess. I guess, you know, where everything kind of falls short. Both just LDS church participation and Fowler is, you know, what do we do for the people for whom those models just don't work? You know, and we've talked a little bit about. Oh, go ahead.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:15] I was gonna say, even when the model itself says you're looking at decades worth of transition here.

John Dehlin [00:13:22] Well, I just.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:13:23] So.

John Dehlin [00:13:24] So, you know, I think we'd have to dig more into what we mean by Fowler. But let me just try and give a really, you know, short answer just to make sure we don't take too long on this. Sure. And that's that, you know, when I think about Fowler, you know, I kind of. Fowler Stage five, I kind of think about, you know. You know, and not that you would claim stage five status, but just this idea that let's be big, let's be expansive, let's be charitable, let's be wise, let's be patient, let's find the symbolic, metaphorical value. I think that's all laudable and worthy for someone staying engaged.

John Dehlin [00:14:04] And I think that's a fine trajectory for somebody who still values sort of a spiritual and. Or a religious paradigm. Where Fowler. Where I don't know if Fowler really fits is with the people that sort of say something to the effect of either I don't believe in a spiritual realm.

John Dehlin [00:14:27] I don't believe in sort of a dualistic realm. I think that this is probably the only life we get. I think that this is our only existence. I don't know that there's probably not a God or if there is, nobody knows. I don't think there's a true church.

John Dehlin [00:14:43] And, you know, my emphasis is going to be just living the best life that I can. And, you know, they sort of look at religion, you know, I think it's a reasonable conclusion to make that religion is worth keeping and engaging in. I also think it's a very reasonable conclusion to reach to say, too much baggage, a fraudulent foundation, too much for

Dan Wotherspoon [00:15:11] all religion or for a particular religion,

John Dehlin [00:15:13] that I think if someone concludes this about Catholicism or evangelical Christianity or Jehovah's Witness or Scientology or Mormonism or Orthodox Judaism, I could see someone just saying, look, it's not what it claims to be. It is an inefficient way to be good in the world. There's plenty of ways to be good without having to be religious.

John Dehlin [00:15:39] The religion hurts too many people. And I can't justify my participation just based on how many people are being hurt. The leaders are not what they claim to be. They're. They're actually bad leaders. And the teachings are often really harmful. And then in my case, they kick me out. And so I think that someone can kind of look at, look at our religion and say, hey, this is worth preserving. And I think it's equally legitimate to say, you know what? This is too, too damaging and inefficient, and it's at its core, not true. And so it's. It's not worth trying to preserve. Engagement. Now, if Fowler allows for someone to become sort of post Mormon and leave the church behind, then, then we can both say we still embrace Fowler.

John Dehlin [00:16:29] But if, if what we mean by stage five Fowler is it necessitates a clinging to sort of, you know, LDS Church participation, then I would say I don't think there's one path there. I think there's two paths. And this is the thing that when you and I have struggled, even in the past few months, it's that I feel like, you know, through my support of Stale Diaz, through my support of Mormon matters, through a thoughtful faith, I think I've been really clear in saying, hey, staying is legitimate and I want to support those who stay. And I don't want to talk down to them. And maybe I have, but I don't want to.

John Dehlin [00:17:07] And I want to say there needs to be this path for people. And sometimes, sometimes when I've been a little bit less patient or frustrated in my dialogues with you, it's when I felt either you condescending about people who decide to leave or sort of, you know, saying that it's the higher path or saying that, you know, that sort of challenging people who make that decision. And I don't want to challenge someone who decides to stay, but I also don't want to hear you challenge someone who's really been thoughtful about this and has decided that they want to leave. I don't want them to feel like they're taking the short game or have a bad temperament or quitting Too early or less deep or less wise or less noble?

John Dehlin [00:17:55] Because I think you can leave and have it be very noble, very wise, very deep and very much a short and a long game as well, you know what I'm saying?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:05] There's a lot to respond to there.

John Dehlin [00:18:08] I'm sorry, I didn't mean to monologue.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:10] I guess what I want to say is I do remember that section of your interview with me. It seemed like it was a theme probably 20, 30 minutes. And it was an uncomfortable time for me when you were kept talking about coming across as more mature or this is better and this, you know, I spoke about feelings of people can feel judged by that and you know that I recognize that and I appreciate always hearing those kinds of things there. But it's such a difficult thing to respond to because it certainly doesn't feel that same way within my own head. So, for instance, on the key issue I think that we just were getting at in kind of your time before I take my long term to respond, is this issue of, you know, fast versus slow decisions.

Making Major Life Decisions During Faith Crisis

Dan Wotherspoon [00:19:00] The general point that I would always want to make is I'm not sure it's smart to make any kind of decision, major life decision when you're in the middle of the stress or when you finally realize that you've just been under this great burden and you know, anyway, when you're traumatized or something like that, you know, they talk about don't get divorced or you know, don't make these major life decisions after the death of a loved ones or a job change or something like that. That's sort of the level to me why I can't quite give you. It's just as valid to leave fast as it is to leave slow.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:19:36] That's it. But in individual cases, golf, there's obviously going to be circumstances where that is probably the right decision. But then there's the whole Fowler section that. I think that in many ways you do misunderstand Fowler because of course he would say post Mormon paths are fine. He would also claim that his whole paradigm fits the atheist world because it really isn't anything to do with beliefs. It's more how you center in the universe. However it is that you view your connection with centers of value and power and things like this. So for instance, by stage three, we've mostly all of us, you know, by adulthood we've inherited a worldview and it's been the story that we were told.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:20:22] And now we are able at this point in our late adolescence or early adulthood to basically tell A story, but it wasn't our story. It was the story that was presented to us. It's the story that mostly relies upon authority granted to teachers, parents, church leaders, etc. So the stage four is not so much an angry stage or something like that. It's that stage that moves from somebody else's authority to you weighing it for yourself and you really, truly owning your decisions. And so that involves a lot of exploration, that involves a questioning of one by one, all the assumptions. And we do this with everything.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:21:05] I mean, all of us grew up with a naive view of American history and, you know, American exceptionalism and all those different things. We all grew up with a naive view of our family because our family has a story about who we delins are or who we weatherspoons are. And slowly but surely as we enter into these adulthood stages, we start to see that these are far, far more complex and things like that. And we begin to shift from taking somebody else's word to it to where I'm really wrestling with it myself. And so I tend to want to think that those periods of shifting from others as authoritative to ourselves.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:21:45] I do think, John, to be healthy, it has to take a long time and it has to be one of constant back and forth and things like this. And so sometimes I feel like those who do shift and again, this isn't like a value judgment or anything. I think it's just like we do that. And I tried on things for size all the time. Luckily I was in grad school where I kind of had, you know, both sides presented to me all the time. But I would try things on that were quite rejecting and quite, you know, what do you call it, going to extreme rhetoric or something and making claims.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:22:18] And it felt good. And it was a powerful move to say, I am no longer, you know, in the group think or however you want to say it, but it takes a long time. And so I worry sometimes when somebody makes the decision or the choice to shift that they're just shifting one authority for another. The authority of religion and authority of their parents and authority of their upbringing for the authority of Sam Harris and Dawkins and science as able to do it. So for instance, when somebody like Sam Harris says religion, the space for religion is getting smaller and smaller and smaller because science is going around and it's showing that all these things that you thought were a spiritual experience were really just neurons firing and chemicals flooding.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:07] And science has explained all these things away. So there's hardly any room for God left. That's an assumption that, to me, needs to be challenged. And yet I don't think that sometimes people do it. Now, we did spend some time in our podcast together when you were talking to me about those who haven't had true, you know, haven't had genuine spiritual experiences. I do want to ask you in a minute about the one that you shared with Gina about the Holy Ghost, feeling so strong at that stake conference and things. But I guess what I want to say is I don't want people to go too quickly into saying, Sam Harris has it figured out and science has it all figured out, because I think that there's fundamentally.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:49] And again, until you can taste it for yourself, I'm not sure, you know, there's a way to really win this argument, you know, But I would just say I always think slowly staying in the question is the best. And that's going to be some of the areas I want to talk with you. How is it that you're staying in the question versus kind of closing things down? So that was my long response. So go for it. Go back.

John Dehlin [00:24:10] Okay. No, no, no. And let me just do a quick counter response. It'll be super quick. First of all, I want to acknowledge that I am, no way, even an intermediate Fowler sort of scholar. I just have a very cursory understanding of Fowler, so I'm going to concede that. But I also am going to say that I do know that Fowler can accommodate an atheistic or a post Mormon worldview.

John Dehlin [00:24:36] So I will say that I know enough to say that. And so I do think that there. And so this may have something to do with how Fowler is often discussed, but I do also know that Fowler Stage 3 versus Stage 4 has to do with developing your own intrinsic authority versus relying on the authority of others. I am aware of all that. But I do think that in the short change of sort of common Mormon Internet discourse, Stage three, Fowler is associated with tbm. Stage four, Fowler is often associated with sort of the doubting, questioning, sort of faith crisis kind of stuff. And then stage five is often associated with sort of the Phil Barlow, Richard Bushman, Dan Wotherspoon, Terrell and Fiona Gibbons.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] We found a way to make it work. Now, maybe that's just a complete disservice to what Fowler tried to say, but when I hear. But I think it's helpful for you to make the distinction between, you know, you're saying the pace that you go, right, and the destination. And I just, I think sometimes maybe that's lost in how you carry forth your Message, because to me, when I, when I off, and this may be my confirmation bias, right? But when I hear Dan Wotherspoon talk, what often comes into my ears is stay, stay, stay, don't give up, keep in it, stay with it, stay active, go to church, you know, stay engaged.

John Dehlin [00:26:15] And what I'm hearing you say is you're actually trying to articulate something deeper, which is stay in the question, don't move too quickly, slow down.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:27] Or to me, really it's more, don't write off the idea that you might have a spirit, that it might be types of information that can lead to a fully flourishing life that are not necessarily, you know, access through scientific or rationality. So that's what I'm more interested in than stay Mormon is like if you'd leave Mormonism, leave healthy and leave it, leave a version of Mormonism that is as rich a version as you can possibly. In other words, be fair to both sides of the Mormon thing and not just the pain side.

John Dehlin [00:27:04] No, and I do hear you say that too. So I'm not trying to say that you're not supportive of people who leave. I would just say that. And this is going to be a bit repetitive sometimes when I hear you speak, the message that I take away, whether you intend it or not, is don't leave the church, stay and stick it out. And even though either I miss hearing you or what you're really saying is stay in the question, go slowly, take a deeper approach. That's just what I take away. Now, maybe others don't hear that, but I do hear that a little.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:41] It's there, but it would be tied more to me. Like, you know, as you journey with your own spirit and as you gain the confidence in your own choices and decision, you can engage Mormonism from more of a place of good health, of security, within your own heart and mind, and therefore the things that trigger, the things that are so painful and things like that, you're able to in some ways embrace, not embrace them, but you're able to kind of meet them with grace, with love, compassion, with a memory of when you were that person, all those kinds of things.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:28:17] And what I think you'll find is the thing when you mentioned, you know, the Givens I just released for Mormon Matters, this talk that Carol Givens gave at a museum in New York as my last Mormon Matters. But when there's these powerful, huge, ridiculously empowering and nobling ideas in Mormonism that again, you can start to see again, and all the low level ways, all the retrograde ways, all the ways that culture crushes creative thinking and stick with the brethren and all these different ways that Mormonism.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:00] So the more that you're comfortable with in your own spirit and stuff like that, to me, it's like you can see through both eyes. You can see those. Those expansive things. At the same time, you see all the retrograde things. And again, ultimately, that leads for a healthy spiritual life. And so the reason I would actually say stay, though, John, more than anything else is if you were not a convert, in other words, if you were grown into this religion and you have all these family relationships and you have all these friendships and everything's been built around it, I think ultimately, you know, again, time will have to prove this.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:36] I think ultimately, if you can push through to that place of confidence within yourself and meeting Mormonism to where it's not running you, but you have your own choice, and you're always able to kind of see the forces that are, you know, trying to get you to be this way or that way. I think ultimately you're going to have much, you know, you're going to have a much richer life when you've kept all those family connections and things like that and just sort of felt spiritually independent of all the bull crap.

John Dehlin [00:30:06] And I'll just. And I'll just say that I, you know, there are people who have found a way to, let's just say, become Stage five Mormons. Let's just say Bill Bradshaw. Okay. Okay. I. These are some of the people that I respect most in the world. Like, I love these people and. Or Toby Pingree, you know, whoever.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:30:28] Right.

John Dehlin [00:30:28] And there's females, you know, I. Molly Benion or Jana Reese or Carolyn Pearson. Right, right. Yeah. So Jana Reese. Absolutely. So I. I want to. I want to say sort of both, and I want to say that. That for some, there's incredible rewards to be made by becoming that deeper, wiser self. And it's the whole why the Church is As True as the Gospel essay by Eugene England. And I think that's a valid. That's a totally valid approach. And the only two things I just want to sort of reinforce again is, number one, what I'm sensitive to is any language that it's one thing to say, hey, you know, this is worth considering, which I think you do.

John Dehlin [00:31:19] Right. Anytime I feel the language goes over to. This is what the deeper and the wiser people do. This is the superior path. The other path is short or cheap or lesser than. That's when I get sensitive because I. I Think on the flip side, and this is going to be me being a tiny bit repetitive. I think it's also so perfectly legitimate for someone to say, you know, they find out immediately that the Book of Abraham isn't a translation, the Book of Mormon isn't historical, to just say, look, I want to go on this journey of wisdom, but the church is based on fraud.

John Dehlin [00:32:01] And if that's the case, then I don't want to be connected with it because it's not true and it's based on deception. And I think that that is a legitimate path. Now would I also agree with you that then they should seek to become a deep and a wise and a patient and a loving and an expansive person. Absolutely. You and I and Fowler are sort of all in agreement on if that's what stage five means. We're all in agreement, but I just, I think it's a equally legitimate decision to just say, no, the church is too harmful to people, too inefficient, not what it claims to be.

John Dehlin [00:32:46] Brethren are too messed up. This is not worth staying in. It's too harmful to me, too harmful to others. Waste of time. And I don't think that's in any way necessarily an inferior or less wise path. Even if they make that decision in the matter of weeks. For me, the bigger question is do they go on the journey of soul expansion versus whether or not they stay in the church?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:10] Right. And whether, again, the issue of can it be done within Mormonism as easily as it can be done without Mormonism? Right.

John Dehlin [00:33:19] Okay. And that, and that is just a matter. That's kind of where the pioneer thing comes in, because absolutely, there are convenient things about staying. I mean, you're talking to somebody who, you know, after a 15 year faith crisis. Right. Would still be active in the church at some level if they hadn't have excommunicated me. I mean, I and my family were active in June of 2014 when I, when we received those letters. And so I, I see that, you know, but at this, but at the same time. Oh, I've kind of lost my train of thought. Tell me what your prompt was again.

The Difficulty of Leaving or Staying in the Church

Dan Wotherspoon [00:33:58] Well, I was just like, you know, closing that section by simply saying that the question is whether or not it's okay.

John Dehlin [00:34:05] Easier ye.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:34:06] Without.

John Dehlin [00:34:06] Yeah. And I would just say that for some, for some, it's totally like a cost benefit analysis. You can look at utility and just say, oh man, if I leave, I lose my spouse, I lose my kids, I, you know, have no friends. I, maybe I lose my job.

John Dehlin [00:34:27] Maybe I'm mentally ill or really depressed and I lose the support of the church. Like, like I can see a cost benefit analysis where staying is absolutely the best and wisest and easiest and smartest choice. But I know a lot of people who really would have liked to have stayed. And yes, it would have been easier, right?

John Dehlin [00:34:50] But for them it wasn't a matter of being weak or wanting to sin or any of that stuff. It was just purely a matter of I can't do it. I, it, I feel like I'm lying. I feel like I'm deceptive. I feel like I'm, you know, either a second class citizen or I have to deceive them with the temple recommend questions to stay. And I feel like to hide who I am, I have to stay silent in church and really miscommunicate who I am or hide who I am to my leaders.

John Dehlin [00:35:22] I can't pay the money. And ultimately I just feel complicit in the harm. And for those people, yeah, it can be excruciatingly hard to leave. Not for all. For some they leave and it's just amazing. But yeah, for some it's super painful to leave. But that doesn't mean that, that the easier choice is the best choice. You know what I'm saying?

John Dehlin [00:35:45] Sometimes the, the harder choice, even if it's, even if it's painful and more difficult, is still the right one for some people, you know.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:35:54] Yeah, yeah. And, and again, partly we can't escape our own autobiographies and things like that. For me, I felt like I was so in that question for at least a four year period. It was the period when my son was about ages 11 to 15 that, that was such a wrestle for me. But I'm so glad that I had that wrestle. I'm so glad that I stuck through that, that I guess in some ways I hear you, but I'm still thinking for those that in a matter of weeks make these decisions and you know, you use the word because it's a fraud or there's a deception here.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:35] And I definitely have that on my list to talk with you about, you know, using words like that and exactly how fair those are because those, those are rhetorical words as much as they are, you know, describing some factual thing.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:51] But I guess what, I'm just, I guess I'm just moving, maybe let's move out of this particular one easier or something like that. My rhetoric has always been all things being equal, if you're going to at some point, if you desire a rich and Full spiritual life. I'm always trying to just simply say, I think Mormonism has the richness. It's got scriptures, it's got ritual, it's got community, it's got everything that can serve you well in that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:20] But again, and that stage four, what it is, John, it's becoming spiritually independent, it's becoming emotionally independent. You talk about it, is it differentiation between you and your parents is one of those healthy psychological steps? Well, it's differentiation between you and everything else. And when you've got that healthiness and of course you're going to be going through that, if you're sticking in with the Mormon game and all, you're going to have that there. But once you've differentiated to where you own your own relationship with God, your own relationship with your parents, your own decision making about who I want to become and here are my values and things like that, then it's so much easier than I think you can imagine on this side of the question.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:06] It's so much easier on that side of that wrestle to simply say Mormonism. I'm going to live it on my own terms and you know, I'm going to be sad when my tradition isn't as expansive as I know it can be and things like that. I'm going to rejoice when it is on all those, you know, on all those things. And I guess that to me, the ultimately staying or something. It's not a question of I do it because it's easier. I do it because it's part of my joy. And I think I mentioned that in the podcast and I just want that language to come through too.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:43] I found the joy of connection with God that makes all the crap not always joyful, but at least it's not just. It's not like I'm making it work. So go for it.

John Dehlin [00:39:01] I would just say just to kind of close out this section from my point of view. I do not have the position that people who stay and make it work are weak or, you know, selling out or, you know, purely acting on privilege or, you know, living in drudgery through something that they hate. I. These people that I know who sort of really stick it out, many of them are some of the most wise, deep, joyful, healthy, happy people I've ever met. And so I, I just, I really validate what your.

John Dehlin [00:39:39] So sort of what you stand for and what you represent. I want you to know that. And, and the only sort of small point I'm trying to make is the, the people that I Respect Most, I think, are the ones who can say, hey, there's a couple paths here. There's the staying path and the leaving path. They're both awesome, they're both amazing. And if you want to stay, here's how to do it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:04] It.

John Dehlin [00:40:05] But if you need to leave, here's how to do it. And you can find awesomeness and joy either way. And I'm not even going to steer you in one direction or the other. I just want, I want you to know that both options are available and which one feels right to you, because I do know plenty of deep and wise and amazing people who left and even some who left quickly. And I know many people who stayed way too long, sometimes 10, 20 years, and still felt like it was damaging to them. Wasted time, wasted money, wasted effort. And so I do think that for some, staying even a year or two can be too long again, depending on their personal situation, their cost benefit ratio and what their situation is.

John Dehlin [00:40:54] So that's the only point I want to make is I would love for us both to develop language that's empowering to both sides, that shows each side is equally legitimate and that encourages people to find what works for them, not seeks to entice towards one or the other.

Spirituality and Growth Outside the Church

Dan Wotherspoon [00:41:12] Right now, would your healthy path outside the church still have language like a spiritual path or a growth path or life more abundant, some sense of you being larger than your body, than your mind, than the chemicals in your body? Do you feel like somebody can have a rich and powerful life without at least some kind of playing in things beyond what your normal day to day experience says about you in life?

John Dehlin [00:41:50] Yeah, that's a great question. Margi and I, I've been developing this project called the Mormon Transitions Project and I was talking to Margi this weekend about sort of a tagline for the site and what we settled on was connection, healing and growth for transitioning in post Mormons. And the only reason I mentioned that is because growth is right there in the title. Now, as far as sort of, let's just say spirituality or a belief in something bigger or, you know, something meaningful outside of what science could really observe and describe. I don't, I.

John Dehlin [00:42:35] So there's sort of how I view the world and other people and then how I think myself and I absolutely believe, you know, there's lots of people who consider themselves spiritual and not religious and, and there's a lot of people that I really respect that still believe in God or still believe in some sort of spirituality or just power or force in nature that Acknowledge, I think science. One of the things honestly that I love about science is how it's got built into it, this humility. You know, science that's behaving properly. I'm not talking about Hitchens and Dawkins here, but science that's behaving properly is the first to acknowledge its own limits.

John Dehlin [00:43:20] And, you know, science rarely says, we've proven anything. For me, the humility of proper scientific discourse is really impressive because it basically says, here's what the data have shown us so far and if new data come, then we'll revise. And let's not speak outside of what you know, of what we're able to claim. So in other words, a good scientist is never going to say science proves that there is no God, right?

John Dehlin [00:43:51] The best a good scientist would be able to say, observing good science would be, hey, we haven't found any data that proves that there's a God. But you know, who knows, maybe someday. Or they'd say, I personally have concluded that there's no God. But it wouldn't be ever good science to say there's no spiritual world, there's no afterlife, there's no God, because science could never really prove a negative. You know what I'm saying?

John Dehlin [00:44:16] So I understand your concerns about Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris and others when it comes to those sorts of things. And I also agree that it's very easy for us who have been conditioned to follow prophets and scriptural texts and to give our unwavering devotion to an organized church once we leave to sort of just swap out Monson for Hitchens and Book of Mormon for.

John Dehlin [00:44:45] Pick your atheist sort of book and just sort of, again, not doing the deeper work of finding your own center and your own sense of orienting towards the universe. So I, and honestly, most of the wise people that I know that are atheists or agnostic would agree with this. They would say, yeah, don't dogmatically follow Monson or the Book of Mormon. Don't dogmatically follow Harris or Hitchens or Dawkins or any of that stuff. Like, you know, become your own person and use your own understanding of emotion and intellect and data and life experience to orient your world, world. And so I'm with you on that.

John Dehlin [00:45:33] And then as far as there being sort of another realm or spiritual realm, you know, I personally, I still am attracted to the idea that there's meaning and purpose in this existence. I'm still attracted to the idea that I can feel vibes or energy or influence that sort of that that's outside of, of what I can really explain, that can sometimes influence or guide or inspire me. You know, when, when Bach or Beethoven or, you know, a writer or whoever claims that a songwriter, that a poet, that, that they've received just some channeling of inspiration. Like I, I resonate with feeling that.

John Dehlin [00:46:21] Because I feel like whatever spirit, you know, I used to feel was telling me the church was true when I was a devout orthodox believing Mormon. I feel like that same sort of inspiration led me to do Mormon stories and all the other things I've done. And I don't jump to some conclusion that it's necessarily all my chemicals and neurons and just what's inside my brain. I guess I'm open to the idea that there are our energies or powers or influences or forces or meaning or purpose outside of my own realm of existence. But I guess I temper that with an equal sort of awareness that it very well could be just me making meaning that I manufacture and that there isn't really necessarily any identifiable meaning or purpose.

John Dehlin [00:47:13] And so for me, that's where faith comes back into play. But just in a very loose sense where I'm like, yeah, I hope there's an afterlife. I hope that there's some meaning and purpose. I'm going to live as though there's meaning and purpose and some sort of design or end or sort of after purpose that this doesn't, you know, that someday the earth and the universe isn't just going to explode and everything that we did as a human race is just going to, you know, become, be reduced to atoms again. Like I really am in this because I feel like I'm working towards something that's going to continue building and that for me, that's what God is now.

John Dehlin [00:47:51] That's what spirituality is. That's what faith is. That's what hope is. It's just sort of this optimistic, you know, sort of hope that everything we're doing here is going to keep making some type of meaningful difference in the future. And I guess the only thing I'd add is just to say I could be totally wrong. I think I'm just totally guessing and it could be manufactured.

John Dehlin [00:48:13] But I'm not gonna like poo poo that and tell everybody they're stupid if they believe that. But I'm also gonna be really humble about it and say I could be totally wrong, you know?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:48:24] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:48:25] Yeah. And I bet we're pretty similar on some of those things.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:48:29] Yeah, no, I resonate with that. And honestly, even the fact that there may be A no ultimate meaning, there may be no plan and things like that. I just became comfortable with that as a possibility. And so the way I interact with ideas that are powerful or something like that is like, how are these things playing in my chest? How are these things playing in my heart? Do these things open up compassion within me? Do these things open up energy sources that make me say I want to be bigger than I am now? And so even if they ultimately are just nothing from God or some source, the fact that they act on me is plenty for my saying I'm having a flourishing life.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:22] I just try to feel ideas in my heart. And that's why when I say about Givens and these Mormon ideas that obviously captivate him and captivate me, they may not be true in any kind of ultimate sense other than. And, man, they have woken me up to not just live my life about exactly what's surrounding me every day, just my own problems and things like that. It added a sense of significance to my journey.

John Dehlin [00:49:55] Yeah. And I just want you to know that I. When I think about Mormonism, I think about Christ and his call towards being loving and compassionate and service and charity and forgiveness and love and the fruits of the Spirit. And to this day, when I, let's just say, watch General Conference, there's a part of me that when I hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing or I hear a really good talk, I feel that expansiveness still.

John Dehlin [00:50:28] Now, I feel that expansiveness outside of Mormonism in many ways as well, but I still value an emphasis on that and orientation towards that. And the only. The only sort of quick response I have to kind of counter that or provide balance to it is I. I've, you know, I've studied a little bit about emotions as a psychologist, and I can say that, you know, you know, you talk in. In Ephesians or wherever I was raised in Mormonism to. To think about the fruits of the Spirit as love and patience and.

John Dehlin [00:51:04] Yeah, okay. And then. And then, you know, that contention is of the Devil. Right. And that. And that if I feel happy in all those fruits of the Spirit in Galatians, then I'm the Spirit's with me. But if I feel dark or angry or unsettled, then, well, that's Satan or that's bad. You know what I mean? And what I've come to. To start thinking now after six years training in psychology is that when I feel anger. Right. When I feel anger. Yeah. I feel the same things that are associated with Satan in Mormonism. Right.

John Dehlin [00:51:41] But instead of now, seeing that anger or that frustration or whatever as being dark and negative and evil. Now I look at anger as a very important emotion that doesn't make me feel expansive at the time. Right, sure. But what it does is it's sort of alerting me to the fact that I've been exposed to something that's either unhealthy or unjust. And it's basically my emotions saying, hey, this is a problem. And I'm going to let you know it's a problem because you're going to feel awful and angry and you're going to tremble, and then that. That's, like, important. It's not Satan. That's like important information now.

John Dehlin [00:52:25] Not. Not fruits of evil. And so it's not that expansive, enlightened feeling, but it's important information now. And so I can look at that and say, wow, I need to pay attention to that. What's that about? Let me process that. Let me talk about it. Let me explore that. And maybe it'll take a week or a month or a year or five years, but as long as you don't get stuck in that anger, that anger can become a motivation to propel you towards the growth and the expansiveness that you're talking about later. But you had to kind of go through it and process it and make meaning out of it before you're able to get there.

John Dehlin [00:53:02] And so while I want to affirm the expansiveness that you talk about, I also now want to sort of validate and affirm anger and sadness and frustration and. And rage and all the other sorts of things as well. Because, like the Disney movie, the Pixar

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:20] movie, I thought of that as you were talking too. Yeah. Sadness on the opposite side of joy.

John Dehlin [00:53:24] Yeah, I loved that movie because it's basically saying all our emotions are important, not just the warm fuzzy ones, you know? And I know you're not saying that, but I mean, that's just my response.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:37] No, yeah. And the gal. Yeah. There's no Satan in my worldview at all and all that stuff too. So I can't think of a thing you said in this last little section that I disagree with.

John Dehlin [00:53:46] Yeah, well, I'm just saying that expansiveness is great, but there's other emotions that I pay attention to and value now as well.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:53] Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. One of the most powerful books I ever read was called Something. I know there's one word I'm missing out, but it was Despair in the Nuclear Age. And it was basically Joanna Macy who was talking about this feeling of dread and Stuff that so many of us, you know, started to walk around with in the 70s and the 80s as we really realized the nuclear age was on us. And. And she was like, you know, you got. You got to own that despair. You've got to own those feelings. You got to follow them all the way down before you can get healthy again.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:25] And. And that's absolutely. What you're saying is powerful. So, no, I love all that. In fact, when I taught my. When I taught college, you know, even when you're reading an argument, I would just tell your students, you know, if you're just vaguely uncomfortable with somebody's argument, you may not at first be able to see where it is in that person's premises or stuff that don't add up for you, but follow that feeling of discomfort and why is this striking me wrong? Why is this off base and trace it down. And then you can kind of really get to where you'll see the clarity of why that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:58] That doesn't add up for you. So good stuff. Good stuff. Well, in some ways, you've done a lot of. One of the things I planned today was to really talk to you about the particularities of your belief, because you are, you know, kind of.

Public Persona and Thought Leadership

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:11] You wear fairly comfortably this public Persona you wear, you know, you. You know that you're a leader. I don't know if you like the idea that you're a thought leader. I think when you, you know, opened up Mormon stories, you were thinking of it as John Dehlin and his ideas. You were just like, hey, I want stories to be told. Whereas clearly, over the last few years, more and more, we know that John isn't just asking questions on behalf of the audience.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:45] This certain segment, it seemed like when you interviewed me five years ago, it was like many people would want to say, and I suspected that you were part of that. That cohort. But now it's clearer that you've kind of shared what does and what doesn't work for you.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:02] So you are this leader, and I wanted to chase down your own beliefs about God, whether or not you feel like you have a spirit, what is the nature of human beings and things like that. I'm just going to trust that kind of. That came out in what we just talked about. Is there anything you'd want to say about your positive beliefs? Like, I do still affirm this or something like that, or should we just leave what you. What you just said?

John Dehlin [00:56:26] Yeah, no, I'll just say. I'll just say that I still believe in all the virtues of love and kindness and forgiveness and compassion and charity and all that stuff. I still believe in the importance of community. I acknowledge to you that for me, if there's one main ingredient of religion, it's community.

John Dehlin [00:56:49] I think that's probably the most important active ingredient of a successful religious experience. And I'm pained by the fact that, that many post Mormons and post religious people don't have always a healthy, strong community to go to. And I think that sometimes really is a disadvantage for many, not all.

John Dehlin [00:57:14] So I still really value that. And as far as kind of, I, I just caught myself not wanting to say supernatural for. Based on my. I don't believe in the previous conversations with you, but based on God, you know, I, you know, this may sound kind of cutesy, but I sort of, you know, my perspective on God is nobody really knows that. We're all just either hoping or guessing or prematurely concluding. And, and for me, the best thing that we can do, you know, this sort of saying of, I believe in life before death. In other words, the most we can do is live the most meaningful, healthy, happy now because we may not get tomorrow.

John Dehlin [00:58:00] And so trying to put a form or a substance to God for me is sort of just conjecture and not the best use of time, you know, and so it's not that I'm running around calling myself an atheist or agnostic. It's not that I'm denying the existence of God. I don't think I've ever done that. It's just me saying, you know, I do, I do reject the basic premise of religion as I have sort of come to understand it in most of its Incan incarnations, which is that God will speak to other dudes. Dude. And it's usually a dude.

John Dehlin [00:58:38] And, and, and then, you know, that person lived a long time ago. And so we have to read their text from hundreds or thousands of years ago to get what they claim God said to them. And then we have to also experience that through the filter of modern leaders who hold themselves up as the guardians of interpreting what, what God said through that other person. That just feels incredibly inefficient to me. And I just kind of reject that premise now. And I waited for decades for God to really speak to me, and I felt these inspiration things, but never anything that I could say, yep, there's a supreme being over there telling me to do this or that.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] And so until God really speaks to me with any of the same level of specificity that he supposedly spoke to the Book of Mormon prophets or Joseph Smith or whoever, or Allah or Muhammad or whatever, when he wants. Or she or it wants to speak to me with that level of specificity, I will listen. But I'm not going to believe that level of specificity as filtered through all these other people who could have been lying, who could have been just influenced by their time. That's just a broken model for me now, you know.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:00] Well, and I guess my one pushback in this would be, you know, you called this religion. And I definitely get it when it comes to the religions, you know, in terms of, you know, leaders from the past and, you know, believe us more, and somehow we have a different kind of. Of experience than you and things like that.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:00:22] However, the deep teachings of every religion, or even not deep, but the ones that get lost in the institutional story and the fact that that kind of comes front and center is that it's not just for them to have their experience, but for you to have the same experience of them. Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Moses, everybody says, oh, I wish that everyone were prophets. Oh, that I wish. And I invite everyone to have this same level of experience. And then as I was talking about gaining your own spiritual independence and your own sense of who you are with God and things like that and how God works with you, John, there's not a single.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:06] I think God works with me in exactly the same way that God would work with leaders of the church and things like that. At a certain point, I think you gain enough confidence in your own connection that they always say, weigh what we say against your own spiritual insight. Well, guess what?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:25] I've done that. I've just come to the point where I think the invitation to have your own experience, I've accepted that. I've gotten to the point where I just don't worry about those guys. And that's what I was trying to try to say. You kind of become spiritually independent within your own religion.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:01:47] Boy, that's the start. And that's what we're called to do by our own religion. All this follow the prophet stuff, that's not the deep teaching of Mormonism. That's not the thing that it's pointing to. That's like, for the children, that we continue on as adults, we continue to call ourselves children of God instead of adults of God. We're not seeking adulthood. And yet all that stuff is all over our scriptures.

John Dehlin [01:02:14] Right? Right. And I want you to know that if you'd asked me a year, year and a half ago, I would have felt. I think I would have said to you, Dan, I do Feel spiritually independent. I feel like I, whatever, whatever I, you know, feel about the divine, I feel confident in my relationship. I feel independent and, and part of the real big complexity with 21st century Mormonism is this notion of ecclesiastical roulette that I know, you know more than anybody about. Because at some point it's not just, you know, I concede that every major world religion has this core message of develop the divine with, in. I totally agree.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:03:06] Awake to your own divinity.

John Dehlin [01:03:08] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I completely agree. Including Mormonism. However, if you're living in the LDS Church, if you decide that you want to be open and honest with your leader, you could very well get a leader that when you tell them you're very empowered, independent thoughts and feelings, they may say, sorry, give me your temple recommend. They may say, sorry, you can't attend the wedding of your own child or grandchild. They may say, you know, sorry, you know, you're, you know, you're excommunicated or you're evil, or, you know, my spirituality trumps your spirituality. And, and then in the most egregious cases like, like you and I have talked about, they may tell you, oh yes, you're gay, but you should try and go to this LDS Family Services person that's going to cure you of your homosexuality or you should go marry this woman and let me give you a blessing because God tells me to tell you that, that you should marry this woman even though you're attracted to men and that it's going to work out okay, or that you masturbated and that's evil and you can't take the sacrament and the shame and the guilt that you develop can become toxic.

John Dehlin [01:04:28] And so, you know, you mentioned, you know, the fall of the prophet messages for children, but in some ways that's the problem because these children can become very impressionable by the dogmatic, exclusivistic, sort of man based teachings of these sometimes very authoritative dogmatic leaders. And it can become very toxic depending on who you are and what your experience is. And so I concede that about striving for our own mature, independent experiences. But I'll also say that for some people the lived experience is simply intolerable or toxic. And it just depends on who your bishop is, where you live, how comfortable you are, being direct versus not being, being quiet versus not using language that you know in some way is deceiving versus not. And everybody's going to probably find different thresholds and experiences there, right?

Community, Discretion, and Institutional Church

Dan Wotherspoon [01:05:33] Yeah. I've got a couple areas I want to expand your view of church beyond the institution. And I want to kind of go down that road. But even right there, deceiving versus a word like not wise to share. Those seem to me to be a distinction. In other words, when it comes to leadership, roulette, when it comes to self disclosure and things like that, I think there's a lot of people who.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:05:59] We got into this a little bit when you talked with me earlier. Is Sunday and is your ward really the community that you should share all your complexity with with? Is there some level of discretion that we need to have and an understanding of what is the purpose of gathering on Sunday and how does this play into the idea? Like I was trying to push that, you know, when I see the church, I don't think institution, I don't think my ward, I don't think my bishop and things like that. I think this entire body of Christ, I think of you, I think of me, I think of my.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:06:39] The thoughtful faith Facebook group that I am a moderator of and things like that. We are church and we are Mormonism. And I think it is wonderful and great for all those things that you say that I need to share.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:06:54] I don't think you need to share those with your leaders. I think we as Mormonism are doing a good job of saying this is also church, this is also us. Share, share away, wrestle with each other.

John Dehlin [01:07:09] Okay, so there is a level, you know, and of course, you know, I wrote the essay@staledios.com about managing your capital at church and being careful about what things you bring up and how, you know, why would you want to spoil someone else's Sunday at church and just keep those things to yourself and find a good community where you could talk about these things. And, you know, I completely understand the argument that of what the purpose of Sunday is. It's to build community, to feel spirituality. It's not to debate polyandry and peepstones and to bring up disturbing things and to spoil people's spiritual experiences. There's a level, Dan, where I obviously very, very much agree with you and your argument towards, you know, about discretion.

John Dehlin [01:08:01] And I would just say, you know, there's two. There's two responses I would have. One, is that it, you know, when you. It depends on what type of community you really want to have. And what I would argue is just like there's a milk before meat, you know, this idea of deeper levels, you know, some would argue that in the church today there's never a place where meat is ever really talked about in the institutional church. But even going to something that I seem to remember with something I read from M. Scott Peck a long time ago, there's a notion of a superficial community and then a notion of a deep, rich community.

John Dehlin [01:08:43] And I'll just say that I had a friend contacted me just this week, and he said to me, you know what I've got. You know, there's a bishop. And. And my bishop is realizing that there's five or 10 people leaving the church in his ward. And, you know, I think we should talk about this stuff at church because so many people are leaving and are troubled. And I think that there's a degree to which that's risky, but there's a degree to which I was like, that's really inspiring. That's a bishop who realizes that. But for a deeper, richer, more meaningful community, we should be able to talk about abortion or abuse or racism or historical problems.

John Dehlin [01:09:33] That if we could find a way to go deeper even in our Sunday discussions, that that provides the possibility for even more meaningful spiritual experiences and connection. And I think that's what draws people to Mormon matters in a thoughtful faith, honestly, is that that's where they can have those types of experiences. And so I guess I want to say, on the one hand, I agree with you, and on the other hand, I want to challenge that and say, wow, what if Sundays were people being more authentic, more raw, more challenging topics? What if, like, these communities could go from something that feels a little bit surfacy and superficial to something. Something really more deep and meaningful?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:10:20] 2 Responses back.

John Dehlin [01:10:21] 1.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:10:22] Would you agree or disagree that. Well, first of all, let me do the other one first. When I say Sunday isn't the place for these sorts of things and disclosures, it doesn't mean that at certain points I don't disclose or that people who have a strong view on GLBT or something like that don't just simply say, okay, let's stop this discussion right now. This is harmful. Let's realize what we're doing here. Let's see the big picture. I don't think what we're doing here is representative of Christ, etc. And we can do that. Don't think that I'm arguing that people wouldn't do that, because I know that that's been successfully and powerfully done.

John Dehlin [01:11:06] I understand that.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:11:07] The second thing is, I read the

John Dehlin [01:11:08] thoughtful Facebook group and it inspires me.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:11:11] Yeah, yeah. John Grimes lately with a couple of things that he's been sharing. Yeah. The other thing is, though, would you agree or disagree? And this is where I was going to first that if you were going to do that, if we're going to have these more public wrestles, would it be okay to like designate for those who have difficulties or questions. Here is a Sunday school class or here is, you know, a series of lecture or a series of firesides we're going to do. Do. Can you see the need to signal that ahead of time or would you just thrust that on everybody?

John Dehlin [01:11:42] Of course, of course, of course. There's absolutely. There's people who just don't want to know. It wouldn't be good for them to know. You know, I had a guy in elders quorum once say I was trying to give these edgy, controversial lessons, you know, and he raised his hand and he said, I don't want to sit here and have a thoughtful, stimulating discussion. I want people to just tell me what to do and I want to do it. My life is really intense. It's difficult and this isn't useful to me. I just want someone to tell me what to do and do it. And I think that's something that we should respect.

John Dehlin [01:12:24] So, yeah, I totally agree with you there. And I've heard of in Berkeley or Cambridge or other places where there's sort of two Sunday schools, a more progressive one. I think that in practicality that also has potential complications.

John Dehlin [01:12:42] But yeah, I love that idea. I'm going to just also just respond with one final thing in this discussion particularly, and that's having to do with honesty again, and particularly around interviews with ecclesiastical leaders and the temple recommend courses. Question. Because there was a time where I thought, oh, I can't go to the temple. I can't have my temple recommend because I don't believe anymore. And then I became exposed to you and others and I wrote the essay on stale ds. And ultimately I was like, oh, no, we can mean different things by the words that we use and we can interpret the temple recommend questions in different ways.

Temple Recommends, Tithing, and Personal Integrity

John Dehlin [01:13:22] And that's the way the church intended it. It. And we're supposed to be our own judge, after all. And so there was a good couple years where I was like, I'm completely fine answering the temple recommend questions as they anticipate that I should, knowing full well that what I mean is different than what they mean. But that why, you know, why go there, right? And then I'm just telling you that for me, I reached a point where I felt like I was being deceitful.

John Dehlin [01:13:52] And so that's when I went to Mark Jensen, my previous stake president, and laid it all on the table, right? And I said, we're going to have hours and hours of conversations about what I really do and don't believe because I feel like I want to be a member in good standing, where I'm open and honest and not dissembling or speaking in code or deceiving you. And I just want to. I want. I want to be a member in full standing. Not in hiding, but. But in full disclosure of how I see the world. And the crazy thing was, by the end of those dialogues with Mark Jensen, he said, you're.

John Dehlin [01:14:34] You're worthy in every way to remain a member in full standing. And he let me ordain my son, and he let me, you know, partake in the Mechazic priesthood offices and whatever. And then zero changed about my beliefs between then and Brian King a year later, and Brian King tells me that my beliefs are unacceptable and excommunicable and

Dan Wotherspoon [01:15:02] never even really inquired for himself about you.

John Dehlin [01:15:05] I mean, we had the conversation once. It was after I had cornered him. It was after I had embarrassed him through a New York Times article. And it was sort of like, okay, I have to show an interest, so tell me where you stand on all these things. Okay, time's up. And then the very next lesson, the very next time together, he had his letter with all his conditions of maintaining my membership, telling me that my beliefs were unacceptable. And so I think that I don't judge someone who feels comfortable speaking in code to get a temple recommend or withholding.

John Dehlin [01:15:40] But I think sometimes I worry that when you speak about somebody who says, I can't hide, I can't speak in code. I need to be honest. Sometimes when I. What I hear you communicate in the way I interpret it is. You're saying, that's dumb. That's not right. You don't need to be fully honest. You don't need to disclose everything. You can sort of keep speaking in code and just sit with the differences and keep them private. And I would just say, I would prefer.

John Dehlin [01:16:07] I would want to hear someone in your position say, I can see why you would want to be nuanced. But I can see why for some people, they can't do that. And I respect both paths. Not that the wiser, deeper, more mature path is to speak in code. You know what I mean?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:16:24] Yeah. And I would never. The term speak in code, you know, that's. That's peppered your last.

John Dehlin [01:16:30] Okay, okay.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:16:30] A couple minutes. I would never even consider it that, like, you come into the interview with the biggest picture in mind. And understand what you're, you know, what's. What's in front of you, and that this person could not possibly understand you in the course of these questions, that he's doing his pro forma job and inquiry. And certainly, I'm sure he has his discernment filters on and things like that. And if things come for him, up for him in the course of that, then of course, you know, share more. But I'm just. I'm just saying, you know, when you're talking leadership roulette, here's one of the places to avoid, you know, throwing your power to somebody else.

John Dehlin [01:17:15] No, I hope I was clear. I lived that for many years. I validate that as a legitimate approach. And, you know, I'll retract the term, speak in code, and I'll just say that there was a point where I really realized that what I meant, if they knew what I really meant when I answered the questions the way I answered that, they would probably not want me to have that temple recommend.

John Dehlin [01:17:47] I know that's giving them power, but in some sense, they are a gatekeeper. And I wanted to be fully authentic. I just felt the urge and the need at some point to be fully open and authentic and to say, I don't want you to believe.

John Dehlin [01:18:09] I don't want you to leave this meeting with a different understanding than what is reality. When I say God, I mean something very different than you. And when you say atonement and Jesus and resurrection, I mean something very different. And when you say word of wisdom, I mean something different. And when you say, you know, belief in the restoration, I mean something very different. And I don't want to have to. If you're going to be the gatekeeper, I want to be the gatekeeper with us both having an identical understanding of what I mean when I answer your questions. Because if I'm not legitimate with my full, authentic answers, then that's important to me because you really are the gatekeeper and you're empowered to do this job.

John Dehlin [01:18:57] And if the church ultimately doesn't want me as my full, open, authentic self, then I don't want to be here, you know, because it's not for me. It's my relationship with my wife. If I'm keeping things from her, if I'm holding back, for me, it's not true intimacy for me. For me, I'm not saying this is true for everybody, but for me, I don't want to keep anything from Margi, and I don't want to have to hide who I am from Margi. And I want her to know all the truth, all the facts, all the nuance, and still feel loved and accepted by her. And to me, that's the greatest relationship you can have.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:19:36] And lots of people that unfolds over a lifetime. And, and there's a lot of time, a 10 or 15 minute moment when you simply say, I expect you to even have a glimpse of understanding of me after that 10 or 15 minutes. That's like insanity to think that they're going to even understand you. They may know, oh, he is claiming difference here, but they can't know that you actually put it together well in your heart. So simply declare that you've put it well together in your heart and move on. Because again, you're making that person be the church. If the church doesn't want me in the temple, if the church doesn't want me in full fellowship, this is a person who doesn't know you, whereas you and God are hopefully good together.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:20:27] And all he needs to do is sense with his feeling of green light or red light. And if he starts to sense something other than green light, go ahead and start the probing question. But I just don't see, you know, again, I'm just no good. We've gone around these rounds before and I'll just say, but you're not going to be disclosed. They're not going to understand you. And therefore it's a fool's errand to try.

John Dehlin [01:20:50] Okay, this is, I think this is a good chance to model what I've been trying to say in other segments, and that's that I concede your approach as valid for those for whom it works. I don't. I see the wisdom in it. I see it as empowering and as liberating. Almost everything that you just said is what I wrote into the why how to Stay in the Church after a Crisis of Faith essay on Stale ds. I think it's a valid approach and I think it's also two things. I think it's valid for someone to say, I'm sick of. Of not being fully open and authentic, and I feel the need to be. I think that is also a legitimate decision.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:21:38] So if we expand the definition of church beyond the leaders, then you can do that within Mormonism.

John Dehlin [01:21:44] What do you mean?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:21:46] I can fully be myself in Facebook groups, in online discussions, in. In study groups and things that I put together.

John Dehlin [01:21:55] I mean, with the gatekeepers that are going to decide if I'm going to be shamed in front of my congregation when my son's going to get baptized, that's going to get shamed. When my son is proceeding through the offices of the priesthood, whether I'm going to get shamed, if I'm going to go on a mission or get to go to the temple or get to engage in a wedding. To me, if other people, if I know I reached a point where I knew about ecclesiastical roulette and that maybe I was lucky and had a good bishop. And these bishops exist, bishops take presidents. They're like, I don't care if you're an atheist.

John Dehlin [01:22:30] You can go to the temple. I don't care if you believe that Jesus was resurrected. You can go to the temple. You can get anywhere from that to someone who is very orthodox and literal. And for me, I reached a point where I said, I'm uncomfortable with the disparity, with the power that we're giving these people. And it just doesn't feel, you know, it's kind of like the people, my friends, who sort of held out getting married until gay and lesbian people could get married, and then they went and got married because they sort of said, I just. I want to be a part of an institution that's just, at its core, just and honorable and not excluding people.

John Dehlin [01:23:08] And I'm, you know, there's flaws in that argument, but I have respect for that. And for me, this comes back to this notion of privilege. If I'm sitting there in my church experience, oh, I'm tall or powerful or have a podcast or I'm educated in certain ways or can use the right flowery language, and I get to go to the temple. But then I have to look at these other parents suffering in pain as their kids get married and they're excluded from the temple because they had the wrong bishop at point. Some. Some point for me to just go, well, I'll enjoy that privilege while other people suffer.

John Dehlin [01:23:41] I reached a point where that just felt like I was being complicit in a system that wasn't worthy. And I just, again, my ideal would be to hear from Dan Wotherspoon, both, hey, here's one approach that Dan does, and it's awesome and it's valid and it's legitimate. And for people who, who feel called to this and are sensitive about privilege and conscience and disparity, that's a totally noble and worthy thing, too. And both are legitimate. That's all I'm hoping for in this type of discussion. I'll give it to you.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:24:18] Yeah, and I didn't really intend for us to talk about temple recommend so much as But I know it's a big issue and my disclosure, I think it came from near things. I haven't sought a temple recommend in quite a while. You know, I'll keep reasons to myself, but it certainly wouldn't be the worthiness interview or the worries over, you know, what belief systems. To me the temple recommend interview is far more important. On the practice issues, do you pay your tithing, do you obey the word of wisdom, etc. Are you on and things like that. That's the, those are the key things. The belief stuff like, like I kind of was hinting before. I just don't think you can, I don't think you can get somebody inside your head and your lifelong wrestle or your many year wrestle, you know those things.

John Dehlin [01:25:09] Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:25:09] And so, and so I just, I choose not to pay tithing right now to this institution. So I'm not seeking a recommend. But I didn't want, I don't want anyone to think that I'm actually doing this right now. But I think in my heart would be completely at peace with the fact that, you know, I've made peace with this. God and I are good. You know, I'll, I'll not profess to do something that I don't do, but on the belief stuff, I don't need full disclosure with this person.

John Dehlin [01:25:35] Totally, totally.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:25:36] Who wouldn't have time in 10 or 15 minutes to even glimpse me.

John Dehlin [01:25:40] Totally. And I, and there's a, there's a mentor of mine, a very respected woman, woman within progressive Mormonism who hasn't sought a temple recommend in decades. And I respect her and she's still active in her ward and very engaged. And the only thing I would just say is for me, I just made this decision and this was like in 2013, that I refuse to be a second class citizen in my church where I'm excluded from the most visible and important and public sort of rituals.

John Dehlin [01:26:19] I refuse to be excluded from my own child's wedding if it means that I have to be open and honest. And so that was important to me. I basically when Oaks gave his Talk in late 2013 and I said the church is coming after same sex marriage again, I have to speak out. Out. I made a decision then that I am going to be 100% open and honest to speak out for those who are, who are disadvantaged and hurting and suffering.

John Dehlin [01:26:48] And a condition for my continued participation is that I'm a member in full standing because I will not be shamed and relegated to second class status by being excluded from these very public Ordinances. To me, that's unacceptable. It causes so much pain and suffering. It causes so many people to lie.

John Dehlin [01:27:11] Oh, oh, coincidentally, my daughter's about to get married, and all of a sudden my views have become a lot more, you know, faithful and progressive. And then the kid gets married, and then it's like, oh, I can let my temple recommend lapse now. I mean, all that is.

John Dehlin [01:27:26] And just all the people who just bold face lie to get the temple recommendations recommend, and then all the people that get excluded and shamed. That's just that there's something really fundamentally wrong about the way that power and rituals are, you know, officiated in this church.

John Dehlin [01:27:46] And to me, I didn't want to be a part in that, but I understand people that feel okay with it. I don't judge them.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:27:52] Would you argue for an open temple? Everybody gets to come.

John Dehlin [01:27:56] Oh, yeah, of course.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:27:57] Okay. So. All right, so that's. That'd be an interesting discussion for us to do.

John Dehlin [01:28:02] Well, I mean, I know that it's gonna hurt the church in some ways, so I acknowledge.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:06] Oh, I guess on weddings and things like that, I'm 100% for that. I think that we could easily accommodate non members into a temple wedding. Yeah, absolutely. But I meant, like, in general, you know, in other words, should there be some sort of level of commitment, level of disciplines, you know, whether it's financial disciplines or bodily disciplines or whatever, you know, the way you live your life thing before you go to a place of covenant making and things like that. In other words, I do think that there's. There's a right to have a certain level of gatekeeping for this, for these rituals, because, you know.

John Dehlin [01:28:47] But not. But just not for private personal growth and spirituality. Absolutely. But when it's tied to giving money to the church, and when it's. When it's such a public shaming, you know, to such. You know, to such fundamental rituals like coming of age or marriage or basic ordinances for your children, then I. I think that's. That's gross, you know?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:29:13] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:29:14] To me.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:29:15] Yeah. No, and I. I faced that with my son and ordaining him to the priesthood.

John Dehlin [01:29:19] Our first episode together, I definitely have

Dan Wotherspoon [01:29:22] felt the sting of it.

John Dehlin [01:29:28] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Matters Podcast. To discuss this podcast with others, please check us out@mormonmatters.org to keep this podcast alive or to join our support community, please consider a tax deductible donation today@mormonmatters.org Music for this podcast was brought to you by Brittany and Clayton Pixton. The Mormon Matters logo was generously provided by studiocase.com thank you for listening.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:30:11] Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive. Do this and joy your hearts will swell. All is well, all is as well. Do this and joy your hearts will swell. All is well, all is well all

John Dehlin [01:30:51] is well

Dan Wotherspoon [01:30:54] all is well all is well,

John Dehlin [01:31:01] well all is well.

Part Two Introduction and Support

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 570

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Mormon Matters Podcast is a production of the Open Stories foundation and is seeking to build financial support separate from Mormon Stories Podcast. All donations to Mormon Matters are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonmatters.org.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:00:38] Come, come ye saints, nor toil nor neighbor. Fe. Move into this because I hinted before I want to use the word public shaming. A minute ago you talked about coding or coded language and things like that. When you interviewed me there was a section where you simply say but of course you would admit that Joseph Smith was deceptive or something there. As I listen to podcasts of yours, I don't listen to every single one of them or something like that. Terms like racist or sexist or fraudulent, deceptive. These things seem to be pretty freely said by you or your guests without your trying to say now slow down here, you know, that's a loaded term.

Debating the Foundations of the Book of Mormon

Dan Wotherspoon [00:01:37] I just want to have a discussion with you about terms like that, like using it's got a fraudulent foundation and things like that. When you know that there's nuance there and yet you don't take the time to add the nuance. In other words, where is the, where is the benefit of the doubt of even if somebody is racist that they also there's, there's compassion that could be had for that person or something like that?

John Dehlin [00:02:05] I hope I've never argued against compassion for, you know, the Brethren, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, you know, the gas. I feel like overall I've tried to really communicate empathy for the difficulty of their position. But let's just take the word fraud because let's just start by getting on the same page. So I'll just, this is not going to be revelatory. I'll just say it really plainly.

John Dehlin [00:02:31] For me as I look at the Book of Abraham and the Papyru example or the Book of Mormon and what I would see as co opting biblical text and you know, teachings and stories from Joseph's surrounding culture. For me there's, there's number A, there's no chance that there's any ancient origins to these books and B, the overwhelming evidence is that they're, that they're created by Joseph Smith or whoever was around him at the time, that there were no gold plates delivered by an angel, that there's really no chance that that happened, that the Book of Mormon is an ancient record, that a Nephi and whoever really existed and that the papyra were what Joseph claimed they were.

John Dehlin [00:03:21] And so for me, what that means is that at some level, if Emma's hefting plates, then Joseph had to have created them and made her think there were golden plates given by an angel, when in reality they weren't, they were forged by Joseph or somebody else and he was allowing her to believe something that clearly wasn't true.

John Dehlin [00:03:46] And, and with the, with the, with Abraham, Joseph didn't, you know. Oh, the Book of Mormon claims that when they talk about how it was translated that the characters actually appeared through the Seer Stone.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:03:57] No, no, Joseph said that.

John Dehlin [00:04:00] Okay, well, people say that Joseph said

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:02] that, or no, that's just John Whitmer. You know, listen, we did a three hour Seer Stone podcast and certainly he never claimed that. He never claimed anything beyond the gift and power of God is how it came about. So when you talk fraud to me, it means I am a perpetrator of fraud on purpose.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:21] And you in some ways, without then allowing that, some sort of sense of, if you were in his shoes and you felt a commandment or a directive by God or something like that, can you have an imagination where you may make some human mistakes along the way that might involve shortcuts or something like that?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:04:44] Just there's so much starkness to some of the terms that, you know, you throw around and that you let get thrown around here without like stopping the discussion and saying, right. Oh, so by that do you really mean, do you, you know, like when we get back to the what do the brethren know? Do you really think, like, Corbin Voluse put something out on Rational Faiths recently, you know, or this conspiracy to hide everything and stuff like that, I would want to always query that, that kind of language.

Joseph Smith, Historical Claims, and Fraud

John Dehlin [00:05:13] Let's, let's jump back to the word fraud for a second. I, I, I am very certain that Joseph knew that he did not receive golden plates from an angel and that he knew that the book he was producing was not an ancient record, but instead was sort of stories and, and myths and borrowed sort of remix from his cultural surroundings. And similarly, I think he was in,

Dan Wotherspoon [00:05:43] he was in those at no time in his life, he was in some kind of spiritual state or some kind of state that felt extraordinary to him in some ways. This is not normal, this is not normal thinking. At some point, I feel a flow or these ideas coming to me and they feel fundamentally different.

John Dehlin [00:06:03] Okay, if he had said, if he had said I was in a dream state and this text came to me and I'M going to write it down because it's from God, that's one thing. But what he said was, an angel came to me and gave me these gold plates and then I translated them into this text. And to me, that on its face is fraudulent. And similarly, when he says, I got this papyri and I know how to translate Egyptian, and so I'm going to translate this papyri into English, I think he knew that he could not translate

Dan Wotherspoon [00:06:48] well, he ultimately gave up on that. But then it's at that point he kind of went into the same sort of, to me, state of production that he used with the Book of Mormon for that. So, you know, in, in, you know, obviously those attempts to read Egyptian and to say this character matches up with that, he gave that up. And it's at that point that he produced the Book of.

John Dehlin [00:07:12] And all I'm saying is, I think

Dan Wotherspoon [00:07:13] so that flow state for him feels to him like it's God involved.

John Dehlin [00:07:17] I'm not arguing against him believing that somehow God was inspiring what he was doing. What I'm, what I'm saying is, at its very core, he deceived people about the golden plates, having received them and having translated them, and he deceived people about having translated the papyra into English.

John Dehlin [00:07:42] He knew he was not translating either text, and he allowed people to believe that. And in my belief, that is direct fraud. That's just, you know, if I did that today, if I, if I uncovered this text and said, oh, it's. It's swazi language that nobody can read. And here, let me, oh, I've produced an English version, and here it's saying all these things. If I were to do that today, Dan Peterson and you know, every apologist alive, plus every believer, plus every ex Mormon, would all call me a fraud.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] Or if I were to create plates and say, these plates are from God, but you can't look at them, but heft them and they're golden and they've got characters on them of this language that no one's ever heard of. And I'm going to translate them into English because it's God's word. Every person alive, except for someone I was able to deceive would say, john, you're being a charlatan right now. But because we've enshrouded Joseph, in my view, with all this holiness and goodness and legend and babe and the big blue ox and Paul Bunyan, and then it's all sacred, and we can't call a spade a spade, which is that Joseph deceived people at very fundamental levels.

John Dehlin [00:09:02] And when he went and told parents that their daughters should, you know, in my view, sleep with him and marry him, that's that God said so. And that an angel. I don't think Joseph really believed that an angel came with a flaming sword and commanded him to sleep with 15, 16, 17 year olds. I just, I think he had a strong libido and was caught up in things and deceived people. And so I do. I don't think that the record allows for us to give Joseph the benefit of the doubt. For me, the record shows that Joseph frauded or deceived people also with finances, also with other types of things.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Although that doesn't mean that he didn't believe that in some ways God was inspiring him. I'm sure that that's possible. We all think that God or good, you know, I remember making a decision that was clearly evil, where I felt like somehow God was very happy with it because it felt really good to me at the time. You know what I mean? And so I allow for him, in his sort of misguided emotional rapture, to feel like somehow deceiving people was still okay in God's eyes. Especially because the scriptures he believed in allowed for God supporting deception and even murder of people. So that's one of the dark sides of scripture is they can actually endorse murder or deception because that's what the text actually says.

John Dehlin [00:10:36] So, yes, I can see that Joseph could have believed that God was inspiring him to deceive people in some ways and that he had good intentions and in many ways wanted to help people. But to me, at the very basic level, he was deceiving people in very basic, undeniable ways.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:10:57] Yeah, okay, and I get that. And I would only probably nuance that in a few places. I tend to just. So the reason for my asking the question is that you recognize that kind of language without at each point that you use it, saying and sharing other possibilities that have been advanced.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:26] Pretty much everything you said there, there's people who've wrestled with that and who've, who've presented an alternative, but you make these claims and things like this. So I'm back into this where we started, the whole thing. You are a public figure. You're saying, I support all of these pathways, Mormon in Mormon or something like that. But when you go so strongly with this kind of language here, what's behind it?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:11:59] What is sort of driving you or what are you revealing about yourself here? So what is the relationship for you? For Joseph Smith being a fraud and Mormonism being possibly a great tradition that somebody could truly have a rich, powerful, very happy, super expansive, go all the way to stage six kind of life.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:25] How do you balance the poison, the fruit of the poison tree, or the fraudulent tree with everything else that you're trying to claim? Because to me, you would need to constantly, you know, not use such declarative language.

John Dehlin [00:12:40] Okay, So I completely acknowledge that I'm using very, you know, taboo language. Right. I am.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:12:49] Loaded. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:12:50] Desecrating language. Right. Loaded. I am. I. And it's, it's. It took me a long time to be able to use those words. Right. I think part of the reason why Mormon stories survived is because I avoided using those words. I think some of the reason why I was excommunicated is because I started using some of those words.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] So at its very base level, number one, I use those words like fraud and racist and sexist, because to me, they're the most accurate way to describe the. What I, what I've observed based on my understanding of the evidence, honestly. And, and so, you know, you mentioned, you mention. Because I do, I think Joseph committed fraud. I do. And I think Brigham Young, you know, saying that if you, you know, have sex with a black person should be killed, like, that's. I do think that's racist. Now, I can follow that up and say he's a product of his time and that if I had lived in the 1800s, I might have felt that way, too.

John Dehlin [00:13:59] But there were also lots of smart, enlightened people who didn't have those views back in that time as well. And so we can't just say that everybody had those types of views in the 1850s and 60s. I don't think that would be accurate. So, you know, I'm happy to give an asterisk when I use those words, but I think.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:21] But do you give an asterisk? You don't. That's what I'm trying to say. You can see how they carry their. I think you're using them. Your comfort in using them is belying something.

John Dehlin [00:14:35] Okay, let me explain why. Let me explain why. I'll explain why. A couple of reasons. I believe that truth matters, and I know that truth is a loaded word. Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:14:47] Yeah. I actually have a set of questions on truth for you.

LGBTQ Members and Church Teaching

John Dehlin [00:14:50] So this is going to be a little bit repetitive, but I'll just make it really quickly to the young gay Mormon who's committing suicide. You know, whether or not the church really is what it claims to be, whether or not the prophet really speaks for God in his life. That really matters to the woman who's thinking about deserting her husband and taking the kids because he's lost his faith. Whether or not the church is really true actually really matters because maybe she wouldn't break up her marriage if she realized that what she's been led to think is true really isn't, and that her husband deserves respect and not abandonment.

John Dehlin [00:15:30] And the most concrete example I can give is my former BYU roommate as a freshman, Monte McCotter. We were good friends growing up in high school. We were freshmen together at BYU. Monty goes. Monty McCotter goes on his mission to Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic, and he gets hit by a car and killed on his mission. And for Monty, if the church really is what it claims to be, then that's a sacrifice worth making. But if the church isn't what it claims to be, then he gave his life for something that was actually a misrepresentation. So in my view, well, then that

Dan Wotherspoon [00:16:08] same thing for every soldier going to an unjust war.

John Dehlin [00:16:13] But, you know, a lot of people don't, you know, sign up for the military. They get money, monetary benefits. They get scholarships for school. They realize there's a chance that they're going to die. They don't really perceive America as necessarily claiming that it's God's one true country. It's just like, well, this is my country and I want to defend my country. But it's a very different, for me, me, it's a very different proposition, allegiance to a country, than.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] Than someone claiming to actually speak for the one almighty God. And when somebody takes it to that level, I am God's spokesman. I have a privileged access to God. And what I say is what God believes and thinks.

John Dehlin [00:16:57] To me, that's like the most serious thing you can do to someone who tends to believe in God. And so my goal isn't to, say, destroy Mormonism. I'm not that type of ex Mormon. My goal isn't to try and even tear people's faith down.

John Dehlin [00:17:13] If I could wave a magic wand, what I would want is every single Mormon alive to have a full understanding of the church's history and its historical record, good and bad, and a full understanding of the. The harm that the church can do to people as well as the good, and then to be able to make a fully informed decision about whether they want to remain members based on having all the information. Now, of course, I don't have all the history. I don't know all the good and Bad. The church does. So what I aspire to with this magic wand is impossible.

John Dehlin [00:17:49] But with Mormon stories and with everything that I've done, it's not been to tear the church down. It's not been to erode faith. It's been to awaken people to the point where they can go, oh, Joseph did that. Joseph did this. Brigham said that. Brigham said this. The Book of Mormon claims to be this. But the evidence is that, oh, women get hurt. Feminists, you know, minorities get hurt. LGBT people get hurt. This is really serious. Okay, I'm aware of all that now. I'm going to make a fully informed, conscious choice. And once they then say, I want to remain, then I'm cool with it.

John Dehlin [00:18:24] Right? But until they have had the chance to make a fully conscious decision. Because you know that the missionary program preys on vulnerable people, people that aren't as educated, the people that are in a low ses socioeconomic status.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:38] Prey on them? John, come on.

John Dehlin [00:18:40] Well, no, they target vulnerable people. They do.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:18:45] Missionaries vulnerable in order to get their money. What's the vulnerability? They always tried to. I always hear they want to go after leadership material folks.

John Dehlin [00:18:55] Well, that is the paid. That is the ideal. But if you look at the lived missionary experience, you go to the poorest, the most uneducated, the most humble, and those are the ones that you target, because that's where the numbers come from. And you know that there are.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:19:11] Because numbers is the goal versus they would sense that those are the ones that seem most likely to be open to receive the message. For thousands change their life.

John Dehlin [00:19:23] For thousands of mission presidents and for tens to hundreds of thousands of missionaries, numbers were often the goal.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:19:31] Sure, but they wouldn't ever say that in a public meeting.

John Dehlin [00:19:35] But in the lived experience, it was. What are your numbers this week? Get your numbers up. What's your goal? Have you hit your goal? You haven't hit your goal. You're punished.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:19:44] And every one of those guys would be. Would be embarrassed by that if it were laid out like that. And so I'm just saying, why don't you lay that out instead of. Instead of, you know, using language like preying on those. In other words. Okay, you know, it's like there's some, like, Stanley Whiplash, you know, twisting his mustache here.

John Dehlin [00:20:04] I'll say if you look at the body of Mormon, okay, so I created Mormon stories. I encourage you to create Mormon matters. I created a thoughtful faith and have supported that stale ds. Those are all projects that originated with me that to this day, I financially bankroll and Support. Right. With time, with money, with effort. Right. If you look at that overwhelming body of evidence, that all points back to me. So I'm supporting you in what you're doing. I'm supporting Gina Colvin. I'm supporting Stale ds. And if you look at my body of work, even with Mormon stories, I've supported conversations on both sides of the issue.

John Dehlin [00:20:42] And so I'm very comfortable with the balance of the overall portfolio of what I've sponsored and originated and created. I don't know of anyone who's been more balanced than that. Overall portfolio dialogue's been pretty good, but Sunstone at times has been really good. But as far as podcasts, go find me a podcast that's more balanced than would you say.

Balance and Bias in Mormon Stories Podcast

Dan Wotherspoon [00:21:11] But are you still being balanced in your podcast, or do you have to go to the body of work in order to say, here's the balance of John Dehlink?

John Dehlin [00:21:20] No, no, no. There is absolutely a difference between my own personal journey and that's the Blessing and the Curse of Mormon stories. In the one sense, the Curse of Mormon stories is it was my journey all along in many ways. I interviewed people that interested me. I interviewed people because I had questions, because I was fascinated. And what drove. How did I get 560 episodes over 10 years with all the pain and suffering? It's because it was a personal passion for me. It wasn't some academic journalistic exercise for me. It was very serious. It was very personal, and I just did my best to be neutral.

John Dehlin [00:21:58] So it was, in some sense, a lot of people benefited from that and enjoyed it. But then once I reached some conclusions that were not always favorable to everybody, that's when the curse came for many, because then I moved directions and it became about me.

John Dehlin [00:22:17] And in many ways, that tainted the Mormon story's body of work. And part of me is split about that. Part of me wishes that it never happened. On the other side, there's a lot of people that say, I listen to Mormon stories because your journey interests me. And that's been part of the fun it's been not only to hear all the different people you've interviewed, but to experience your journey along the way. And I just. I wish I could have been all things to all people and have done it perfectly. But so I acknowledge that my personal rhetoric, because of my personal experiences, has bled over into Mormon stories in the past few years and over the past 10 years, when I was stale DS and really faithful.

John Dehlin [00:22:56] Well, guess what, Dan? I was going the other direction, right? And I was calling out ex Mormons and calling out post Mormons as anti Mormons and using speech that made disaffected Mormons feel belittled. And you know, just so you know that that bias ran both ways back when I was asking you to start Mormon matters and championing a thoughtful faith in stale ds. And so, yeah, for better, for worse, my bumpy, exhausting, narcissistic journey has infected Mormon stories in every direction. And in some ways that's awful and I'm sad by it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:23:33] How could it not be?

John Dehlin [00:23:35] No, but in other ways, that's what people have liked about it. And in the end, it is what it is. And so, yes, when we're talking about balance, I can't stand on where I am today because I'm not balanced. But I can step back and look at the portfolio and say, show me another podcast or body of podcasts that says balanced. It's not infants on thrones, not Mormon expression.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:24:00] Yeah, for sure. You're going to win that one for sure, John. So I guess the question for me has to do with more you have made these conclusions and so now you're comfortable with the language that is pretty strong. How is it that you're, what is it that you use to judge good history from bad history, to make the conclusion that Joseph Smith did this for this reason versus that for another reason? Because I know that a lot of people, as they look at some of the podcasts you'll do, you'll have certain guests on that are basically not well respected historians or well respected people.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:24:41] And just because you have this enthusiastic personality and you use the word super and great and you're a hero and various, you know, kind of things, and that's endearing to me about you, but it's also, I'm not positive, where is your, where is your sense of how to judge the sources? Do you go to primary sources yourself? Are you relying only on secondary sources? You know, how is it you distinguish a Richard Bushman from a Grant Palmer in terms of, you know, why does Richard Bushman not think that the different things that Grant Palmer was sharing in insider's view, why does he not feel like those are seriously compelling pieces?

John Dehlin [00:25:27] So I don't know if I need to defend the caliber of historians I've had come on Mormon stories?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:34] No, because this is Mormon stories. This is their journey and things.

John Dehlin [00:25:37] No, you, basically what I'm saying is Michael Quinn, Richard Bushman, Claudia Bushman, Brent Metcalfe, like, like they're great. I'm just saying that great historians now

Dan Wotherspoon [00:25:53] that You've made these decisions that, again, this is still tied to the declarative, loaded language stuff for me. Okay, you, you know, you, you've.

John Dehlin [00:26:01] You've.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:26:02] Joseph Smith approached women or these families. I want to sleep with your daughter. You know, you, you basically make that. That's the case versus a Richard Bushman, you know, who at least will want to frame that in terms of I want to unite our families. I want to. I want us to have a kinship relationship or something like that. You say the one thing versus the other. Who are you reading versus not reading? That, you know, kind of gives you that. That sense of empowerment to speak on the one side.

John Dehlin [00:26:35] I believe that even recently in interviews, I've said that I believe that partially Joseph was motivated by this expansive desire to unite everybody. So I, I actually am okay with that being a layer of complexity for Joseph. All right, okay. So. But, but when it comes down to it, I mean. Okay, so who have I read? I, you know, I've read.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:27:02] Or how do you evaluate who you read? Because unless you, Unless you control the material yourself, you know, do you have a skeptical mind when it comes to something being in print?

John Dehlin [00:27:13] Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm certainly not a historian. I'm certainly not, you know, even in the, you know, 90th percentile of most knowledgeable regarding historical things in the church. I'm a hack in many ways when it comes to history.

John Dehlin [00:27:35] But, you know, I've read, you know, I've read Fawn Brody. I've read Richard Bushman. I've read Claudia Bushman. I've read Michael Quinn. I've read Grant Palmer. I've read, you know, Matt Bowman. I've read Terrell Givens. I've read, you know, just, just most of the big names in. In Mormon history.

John Dehlin [00:27:57] I've read them, and I've gone enough to the primary sources to feel satisfied. But at the end of the day, I don't think any of us. You know, when Richard Bushman wrote Rough Stone Rolling, it was maddening to me because you can sort of come from a faithful perspective and paint a context where when you start describing things, somebody would go, oh, well, that totally makes sense. That's totally reasonable. And people can read Rough Stone Rolling and go, what's the problem here? Joseph's awesome. You know, these are not the droids you're looking for. Pass right on. You know, and. And I don't. I don't. I do not read Richard Bushman as a balanced, fair contextualizer.

John Dehlin [00:28:41] I view him as an extremely biased you know, his, his devotion to Mormonism and fidelity to the church, while he's a top rate historian, completely biases how he contextualizes the evidence. And so when he says something like, oh, well, perhaps Joseph was experimenting with peep stones and folk magic as a way for him to develop and to harness his, you know, spiritual chops so that once he does have the chance to translate the plates, he's been able to practice with these other artifacts. Like, to me, that is.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:23] Dude, do you want to keep that voice in this podcast? I can let you go back because I don't know that that's going to serve you well.

John Dehlin [00:29:30] No, I don't. You know, I don't. I respect Richard Bushman and I say that just as I say that with the sense of humor that in my family people talk like that for fun. I don't mean to demean Richard Bushman. Right. But I'm just saying that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:29:47] So you believe that Richard Bushman and somebody who comes to the opposite conclusions the same material, it would be Richard's loyalty to the church that drives, that drives him saying this and somebody else does it.

John Dehlin [00:30:02] Sure. So I, I believe when I, when I look at the historical evidence, I'm a, I'm a fan of primary sources. I've dug, I've dug into them enough to feel satisfied. I don't think anybody has a photograph of what happened. I think we all put together a mosaic and we, based on primary sources, secondary sources, culture, feelings, experience, biases. We're all painting a mosaic of what we think happened. Right.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] And if you go too close, nobody's painting is flawless. But I believe that you can gather enough information to be able to step back and have a pretty decent sense for what happened. And I just, personally, I really go, I really respect scientific peer review and I really respect, you know, what I'll call Occam's Razor. And for me, you know, just the perfect example is going back to this question of fraud or not. I think that it is obvious to anyone who's objective and, you know, and not overly biased by either fame that they get from their affiliation with the church or tender relationships with other believing and devout Mormons or reputation that they, you know, positive reputation that they get from their affiliation with the church or their emotional connections to the church, if somebody's able to divorce themselves satisfactorily from those very heavy influences or anyone who just was never raised Mormon and has no devout sort of affiliation or connection with the church, they look at Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon Book of Abraham, polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:31:56] And the story is really, really simple. It's that the Book of Mormon is not what it claims to be, the Book of Abraham is not what it claims to be. And Joseph got carried away with his libido and power and took advantage of people. And I don't think there's any other reasonable conclusion that isn't tainted by again, reputation, emotion, family connections, social connections, monetary connections. I think that's pretty clear and that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:32:27] So the only clear eyed people are the ones that use the type of language that you do. The only ones who really are seeing clear eyed.

John Dehlin [00:32:34] Oh, no, no, no. I'm not saying either of those things. I'm not saying that I'm clear eyed and I'm not saying that everyone who's clear eyed uses the type of language. What I'm saying is that for me it's an open and shut case at face value that Joseph Smith committed fraud with the Golden Plates and his account of the Book of Mormon and how he produced it. It's an open and shut case that the Book of Abraham is a fraud in the sense of it being advanced as a translation of Egyptian. And it's at face value egregious that Joseph Smith took 30 to 40 wives, lied about it, and engaged in sexual intercourse with underaged women and lied to Emma and everybody else.

Difficult Historical Issues and Joseph Smith

John Dehlin [00:33:26] To me there's nothing divine, there's nothing nuancey about that. There's nothing that can be. Any attempt to sort of, sort of feel okay about those things is informed by a strong social, sort of, you know, sort of social conditioning or a strong desire to avoid taboo or to remain in the faith or to remain respectful. And that's just, that's what I've concluded. I know that that comes across as offensive or hurtful, but in this case I think it's this fear of speaking plainly, of crossing that taboo language that really does us a disservice. Because sometimes I think apologetics or nuance actually takes us away from just simply saying that was wrong and it was just wrong.

John Dehlin [00:34:25] And, and deceiving people about the plates is just wrong. And claiming to translate Egyptian when you can't is just wrong. And claiming that you speak for God when you don't is just wrong. And, and manipulating your influences and relationships such that you can sleep with underage women and other people's wives and sending people on missions so you can sleep or marry their wife, that's just wrong. And any attempt to use flowery language or philosophy to sort of soften that as Anything other than just wrong to me leads people to feel like they can be empowered to do all sorts of bad things because the spirit told them to or they felt some type of emotion to justify their behavior.

John Dehlin [00:35:12] You know, And I feel bad using such plain language, but that's what I. Being plugged into. All the damage that the church can cause led me to feel like I needed to speak plainly. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:35:29] Yeah. Well, that's understandable when you play only in the fields that you're doing. What was missing until, like, less than a minute ago was the first time you mentioned I don't care what the spirit is saying and things like that. There was never anything in any of your explanations up until this point where you even acknowledge that there are, you know, that Joseph Smith really. Well, I guess occasionally you would say maybe he felt inspired to do this or something, or he really thought he would do it and stuff like that. But when you don't analyze or use.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:12] I don't know. I guess what I'm trying to figure out is I know the fluidity in which spiritual truth comes to me, and I tend to grant that same thing to Joseph Smith, and I tend to believe that you can be completely wrong in nine areas, and yet something powerful and important is still. You still have an important channel, and you still have very good things that can kind of emerge.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:36:48] Like, for instance, when I look at the church leaders and they're so wrong or they're so behind or something like that, I tend to look at them and go, okay, look at these guys are doing good in the world. They're working hard every day for something they feel is valuable for. They probably don't notice that the spirit is withdrawn from them in the area where they're not in what I senses in tune. And the same thing with Joseph Smith or something like that. I tend to think other than the time when he lost the 116 pages were gone, and he finally has lost the ability to plug into the channel that is sort of his frequency with God.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:37:34] If you listen to the Joseph Smith Seer Stone podcast we did, you can kind of get some more of my sense on that. That's the only time that I think for Joseph Smith that he felt like, okay, something's fundamentally changed here. I've got to get right with God. I think at every other point of his life, he could just go to that channel and he could plug into that channel and he could have things start appearing to his mind. And they are inspirational things, they are big things, they are good things. Even though he could be completely wrong in these other things. I still think that he had this sort of connection with what he thought is the divine.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:38:15] So even when you say he's purporting to translate Egyptian and we know it's not from those papyrus, I still think Joseph Smith, when he finally gave up on trying to do the one to one correspondence and he went in with Seer Stone or whatever means he was to produce the Book of Abraham, he could still very genuinely believe that the interpretations of the facsimiles he gave and the words there are actually what are on the scroll or what are on the papyrus. And he, he would be, he wouldn't be committing fraud at that point for me. Does that make any sense?

John Dehlin [00:38:50] Yeah, I mean, I, I understand that perspective. I would just say, you know, why, if it's anybody else in the world who reviews the evidence. Right, okay. Any non Mormon who reviews that evidence says, oh, charlatan. Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:10] But part of the evidence is the text and the text's own feel and the text's own, you know, your own experience with the text where again, maybe you granted it some sort of priority, but yet it did open up spiritual vistas to you that have given you expansive views that have worked in your heart in a way that makes you a bigger, better, larger, happier person.

John Dehlin [00:39:32] Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:33] You can't, you can't dismiss that.

John Dehlin [00:39:35] No.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:39:35] You can't dismiss the production, what was produced from the means.

John Dehlin [00:39:39] No, I, well, I, I, here's for me, and this may be a tiny bit repetitive, but I'll try and say it in a different way. It's one thing, it's one thing for Tolkien to say I was inspired to write Lord of the Rings. Right. He says, he says, he doesn't claim it's, it's, it's history. He doesn't claim to be translating anything. He's just saying, hey, I was, I was inspired and it's fiction.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:03] But, but he knows he's working on it in some sort of constructing way versus what seems to be with Joseph Smith, I'm just some sort of flow state.

John Dehlin [00:40:13] Well, I'm just saying that for me, Joseph crosses the line when he tries to deceive people, that he really received plates when he didn't. And when he tries to claim to be God's primary mouthpiece on the earth, you know, when he probably wasn't, but

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:34] he might have thought he was legitimately. Is that a deception when he actually,

John Dehlin [00:40:38] I think, I think at some point, you know, he knew, he knew he was practicing polygamy and lying about it.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:40:46] But we started to get into that when you were talking with me. But you know, again, where's the slack that you cut somebody who, if you were to grant the idea that they might have felt wrong or right, they might have felt called by God, and yet the reality of human relationships, the reality of the times and the mores of the times and things like that, could anybody really go about it in a, in a completely transparent way?

John Dehlin [00:41:14] Dan? I'm just saying that if, you know, you have a daughter, right? And if, and if somebody came to your daughter as your, as your future son in law and said, hey, I found this papyra and I've translated it into English from an unknown language and hey, you know, Dan's daughter, will you marry me? And by the way, I'm going to take 29 other wives and some of them are going to be 14 and I'm going to sleep with them and then I'm going to lie about it. There's no world where you would extend that same level of empathy and understanding and nuance and philosophical approach.

John Dehlin [00:41:54] You would say to your daughter, get the hell away from this sociopath. And that's just a fact, Dan. I think, I think. And if I tried to do any of those things that Joseph did, I think I would be put in jail, killed, run out on the rail, and any of us would. And the only difference that I can see is that we were all raised to hold as sacred this story. And because we so desperately love our emotional experiences at church, in the community, when we read the texts, in our interactions with others, because those give us such positive emotions, which I don't deny, then what we do is we say, oh my gosh, the cost for bailing is so high.

John Dehlin [00:42:43] And the positive feelings that I get are so incredible that, that I'm going to go to the great lengths to, say, make all sorts of crazy justifications that I would never allow to someone today in this real world, but I'm going to afford it to Joseph because he lived 180 years ago or whatever, and because it's sacred and because I've been taught it's sacred and I don't want to get kicked out of my community. And I love going to church and it feels so good. And the only thing I would say is that there's all sorts of things in life that feel really good.

John Dehlin [00:43:16] When, when, when Jeffrey Dahmer ate people's brains, I know he felt good about that. You know, like, I know that there are lots of people who have been Parts of, let's just, I won't violate. Is it Godwin's Law? What is it Godel's? When you invoke, you know, Hitler or Nazi, what's the thing you should never do? Like, I won't, I won't explicitly do that, but I'm sure that you could take any fascist regime over the past 10,000 years, any imperialistic state, any, any, any crime, you know, mob scene or gang related sort of activities or cults, or you know, people who believe in UFOs or Jim Jones, the people that are willing to kill themselves or the dudes that flew into the Twin Towers, all those people are going to say, oh, but I felt so good reading that holy book and I felt so good at that religious service and I felt so good being a part of marching with my fellow soldiers and the camaraderie and the friendships that we built.

John Dehlin [00:44:23] I don't think positive fruits in and of themselves are a solid foundation for justifying what I believe should be just face value, egregious, unacceptable behavior. And I'll extend that to say that when we condition people to not call evil evil and to not always call good good, then we sort of can get what you might see with the FLDS church or with the Lafferty Brothers where people are like, wow, well, I read Laban and Nephi chopping off his head. And Nephi got a good feeling that he should do this.

John Dehlin [00:45:03] I'll kick my gay child out of the home because I got this good feeling at general conference. And I just think there's danger in saying I had a positive experience. I feel positive emotions, therefore it must be from God and therefore I must follow. And when Joseph claims to be God's single, entitled, unique, exclusive mouthpiece on the face of the earth, he crosses a very important line that, that makes it even more serious for me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:45:32] Even if he genuinely thought it.

John Dehlin [00:45:35] Yeah, yeah. And I again, I don't doubt on some level he felt really positive emotions towards these girls, towards their family members, towards the, the desire for Zion and bringing everyone together. I don't doubt that he was worried about the fate of Alvin, his brother, and how are we all going to get back together someday.

John Dehlin [00:45:58] And I think that he believed that the words that he produced in the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon would be inspiring to people and that maybe even he felt like God was working through him. But there's enough for me, clear, obvious fraud and deception in all those stories that it's important for and the stakes are so high at all the people now that are giving their time and their money and their lives to, to these propositions, there's enough at stake and the stakes are high enough that, that for me it's important that we use clear language.

John Dehlin [00:46:35] And, and, and that's where I feel like sometimes apologetics can move into the area of sort of giving cover for abusive and bad behavior. And that's when I, when, when, and people have accused me of this in the past. When you start to say it's okay and you know, it's nuanced and it's symbolic and the fruits are so good and how did you feel?

John Dehlin [00:47:00] Sometimes the end result of that is giving more money, more time, more power to the people who are inflicting real harm on other people or deceiving people. And I think that that's an important perspective, as is your perspective of saying, look at all the good, don't give it away too quickly. There's nuance here and there's context and we should understand more deeply. I will explicitly validate your approach and my dream would be that you could go, yeah, I see your point of view too.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:47:32] Oh, I definitely see your point of view. Yeah. At some point I think it's, I'm more interested in what's behind it rather than, you know, the flow of words that you just gave or something like that. Because there tends to me to be a feeling of, well, if I say this strong enough and I don't offer the, what do you call it, the expanded.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:48:04] But of course it might be this as well. At the same time, again, it feels like I am directing you towards a particular answer and it's my answer and you know, you asked me that several times. Well, don't you think somehow you come across like you think yours is the better way? Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:48:22] And so are you owning that you think that yours is the more clear eyed vision than those who you know for whatever the calculus is, whether it's a mental calculus like you. But you know, for me it's super infused with spiritual experiences, you know, that may, you know, I don't think you ever still always give, you know, you can, you talk about emotion and you'll talk about pressures and you'll talk about desires and feeling good and comradery and all those kinds of things. But somehow or other for me, you know, the ear for the ear for the moments in which, you know, all that stuff is clearly not what's going on, you know, I don't know.

Moving Forward and the Church's Future

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:08] So I guess I didn't intend for us to go an hour on this, but I do sense that there's a point in which you have passed beyond in the current thing. Again, the balance of your work is balanced, you know, with all the different things that you've created. But I think you've passed the point where you can tell it fair or tell it in both ways.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:49:35] And so really I was asking why is it that you feel these sources or these ways of viewing it, I just wanted to see how is it that you're putting yourself in a position where you might be wrong now? How is it that you're, who are you reading? Are you still on a journey for the truth? Or in this case, these, you know, you use the word open and shut case.

John Dehlin [00:50:00] Okay, for me, for me, like I don't, I don't run around questioning gravity because I just feel pretty convinced that it's a pretty solid theory that, that really governs, you know, our mortal existence. I don't question anymore, even though I'm taking it on faith. I've talked to enough scientists and watched enough TV and have enough faith in science to sort of say, yeah, I'm pretty sure the Earth revolves around the sun and I'm pretty confident with that. And I really don't, I see that pretty clear eyed. Now I believe that germ injuries, I've never really seen germs, but I really believe in germ theory just because of what I've experienced and what I've read.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:50:46] Germs.

John Dehlin [00:50:47] What? Yeah, and for me, for me, the, the non historical nature of the Book of Mormon, the non historical nature of the Book of Abraham, the, you know, the, the COVID up of the Mountain Meadows massacre, the polygamy with Joseph Smith, you know, the church's approached homosexuals. These are, these are, these are, these are things that are as obvious to me as that, that Tolkien is fiction and that, and that gravity governs our scientific world. And I don't, I, I do not think that that a reasonable, objective person who reviews the evidence will come to any other conclusion than, than what I just said.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:51:38] But yeah, you're not, you're not talking about spiritual evidence.

John Dehlin [00:51:40] Okay, so let me get to that, let me move to that. So I just want to be clear that, that I, for me, I am clear eyed and I think it's that open and shut. I think it's Earth revolves around the sun. Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham are not historical, ancient records at all. And Joseph Smith's polygamy is evil. Now when it comes to spiritual and emotional and feeling sorts of things, I think that a ton of good comes from the church. And I think that these things could lead to enlightenment and expansiveness and inspiration and good fruits.

John Dehlin [00:52:16] And I'm on a journey seeking truth and wisdom and expansiveness and growth and healing. And I 100% validate people who, who feel like their journey within the church also leads to that, you know. 100%. 100%. I, I, I didn't know if you're done. I completely validate. I don't think I have all the truth and wisdom in the world. I don't think I have all the enlightenment. And I validate both paths, you know, I don't know. That answers your question. Do you want to ask a follow up?

Dan Wotherspoon [00:52:54] Well, I guess, you know, again, I have five pages of notes here and this was back from page one, you know, two and a half hours in or something like that, you know, and, and to let you know, I have had amazing spiritual dives that came out of this close reading that I have given to the Daodejing. I don't read it in Chinese, but I've read enough translations and it's on my bedside and two to three times a year I study it. It's part of my meditation sometimes my trying to protect myself in the morning and, and have some time where spiritual things are to me, whether or not Joseph Smith is a prophet or anything like that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:53:44] The stakes aren't that high for me, I have to say, because it's my autobiography that sometimes pondering something in Mosiah 4 or Alma 34 or Section 93 or Section 88 or something like that, when I'm in these, these modes I've had, that's been catalyst for me to go far beyond those texts and into things that completely couldn't care less about what put me into this, you know, noetic realm, this, this realm of where I'm feeling like something is happening to me, that I'm not driving, that's, this doesn't come from, from within me, that I'm somehow like a floor has opened and I'm now getting fed from new rivers or something else is bubbling up for me.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:54:42] So I'm not claiming that it's that big a question for me whether or not Mormonism is true. I've shared, I think enough times that my view of ordinances and things like that there's no salvation at stake for me in Mormonism or not.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:00] So I just wanted to be clear with all those kinds of things. But what I don't think is fair is for us again, maybe it's not fair, John, because I don't know your own experience. You talked about that time when you were feeling the spirit from a Stake conference and you said something like you were walking on air. You felt like you were surrounded by light for weeks.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:32] That, to me, is a fundamentally different experience than pretty much any adjective or anything that you have shared here before. In other words. And I don't think that there's this clear distinction when you feel those spirits between truth and good.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:55:47] If something is true or something's good. I think the similarities are pretty big there because I don't think very many truth claims or discursive language or cognitive ways of phrasing something survive when you're in these bigger experiences. Somehow, through a Mormon means, somehow or other, something started flowing with you from that point on for the next few weeks, and that's a pretty typical thing. Everything felt light.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:18] Everybody felt divine. I don't want to put words in your mouth. I can't quite remember what you said, but you fundamentally had a shift there with those kinds of things in mind to use the narrowness of the language and the cut and dryness of the language and things like that. For me, It just says something like, I don't really think that Joseph Smith's production, because you always worry about how it was produced rather than what he produced.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:56:54] You know, the service project in which the person next to you has been your enemy in Elder Scorm and they now become a being of light. So these productions and things like that, despite, to me, with the narrowness and the strongness of the language and without adding the nuance at each time, it just feels unfair.

John Dehlin [00:57:15] Okay, I'll try and make a really quick answer, and this will be a tiny bit repetitive. But also, hopefully, we're always so number one, I, you know, just like I believe every black everyone, everyone who's black who's ever baptized into this church, I think has the right to know that the church discriminated against blacks for 150 years. Now, other people may disagree with me on that. I think that's really important that they know that before they join. Similarly, you know, if I could wave my magic wand, everybody would have. Everybody would listen to the missionary discussions and read, you know, Jeremy Runnels letter to CES director or Mormon think and have a really clear understanding of the origins of the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. I think that.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:58:06] And see, again, those would be sources

John Dehlin [00:58:08] that to me, okay, so make them.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:58:11] They're important. They're important for our culture, but they're but they're not, you know, bullet point history, bullet point context is never going to be.

John Dehlin [00:58:21] No, no, I'm not. I was using those as an example. I wish that someone reputable would come. You know, the church's essays are a step in the right direction. But I wish that like Adam Bowman or, you know, whoever. Right. Pick, pick someone that we could both, you know, that both non believers and believers respect. I wish that they would come up with an alternative to Mormon think.

John Dehlin [00:58:43] And I wish that a panel could. Right. Because obviously Jeremy doesn't believe anymore and he's not credible now for believers and Mormon think is incredible, but also neither is fair. Right. So get whatever committee you want to together put out something that's more neutral and fair. But my point is get that information to every investigator because right now what happens is they're being taught the narrative that is not that they're being taught the narrative that's deceptive. They're joining the church saying, oh, you know, an angel delivered gold plates to Joseph and then Joseph translated them with the Urim and Thummim and that produced the Book of Mormon. And that's.

Dan Wotherspoon [00:59:24] So you're. But you're ignoring that, the fact that they might be having genuinely spiritual experiences.

John Dehlin [00:59:28] Wait, wait, I'm getting there at this. I'm getting there. I'm saying that I think, I think when there's evidence that is historically credible that speaks to the origins and the authenticity of something or evidence like with blacks and discrimination that just, or gays or whatever, like just the notion of full disclosure I think is important for me. That's number one. Number two is that it's not. If everybody were just reading the Book of Mormon in isolation and having spiritual experiences, none of this would matter. But what happens is kids are born into the church. They're taught from age 2 to say, I know the church is true.

John Dehlin [01:00:11] They're taught that Monson speaks for God. They're taught that their bishop is God's representative for them. And so it's not just these isolated, positive, emotional experiences that I had that you have had, that others have had. It's the fact that those are tied to an institution that brings vulnerable people. And I will say vulnerable, whether it's investigators that are ignorant to many of these things or young children that are brought up in it and then get, you know, the young kid who masturbates and then is shamed again or the gay person or whatever, they then get confronted with really difficult, sometimes toxic and even life ending situations because the Book and the spiritual experience is tied so tightly to, you know, before you're able to become Dan Wotherspoon, when you're 40 with the PhD and throw nuance at everything, you may have tried reparative therapy and committed suicide.

John Dehlin [01:01:08] You may have entered into a marriage where you then don't believe anymore and your wife is taking the kids away. You may have, you know, you know, instead of pursuing a PhD as a female, you may have married some guy and had five kids. And now the future that you really would have chosen wasn't really made available to you. And for me, it's the connections with the institution that make full disclosure and the stakes of difficulty much more significant. But then if you can give full disclosure and blunt the negative impact of the institution, then yes, then at that point, for me, it's all about what good comes from your reading of the text.

John Dehlin [01:01:50] How does it enlighten you? How does it expand you? But for me, I can't turn a blind eye to those other things in this narcissistic rapture of that wonderful emotional experience I had as a teen.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:02:03] To me, so again, it is just an emotional experience. Maybe it's just like, just like others, spiritual damage.

John Dehlin [01:02:10] Don't miss my bigger point, because maybe it was God speaking to me. Right?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:02:15] Again, that's goodness.

John Dehlin [01:02:16] Or goodness. But I'm saying I'm not going to sit and marinate in the rapture of my spiritual, you know, thrill if it, if it comes at the expense of all these other things. To me, they're all tied together. That's just how I am. Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:02:35] Other people's experiences are tied to your wanting to do that.

John Dehlin [01:02:40] Everybody needs full disclosure to me. In my view, every black person should know about the church's discrimination. Get the blacks. Everyone who. Here's the Joseph Smith narrative should know about the first vision accounts. Everyone who reads the Book of Mormon should be taught about its historical problems. Everyone who learns about the Book of Abraham should know that it's not a translation and then be allowed to make a decision with the full evidence.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:03:09] And I agree with that, that it should all be available and willing to do it. On the other hand, I don't know that in a situation where somebody is seeking God, they are seeking a change, they are seeking somehow to step up into life in a richer way. And it happens to be the Mormon missionaries or their Mormon neighbor or something like that that comes along and says there's hope for you.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:03:35] You are not just the sum of your choices to this point or something like that. If you Want. My church has helped me along these paths away. And if somebody like, feels drawn towards Mormonism or something like that, I don't feel like that person needs the full load of, you know, basically it would take you a few weeks or months to, to go through this. Very rational, let's weigh it out, full disclosure kind of course that you're talking about here. I'm quite comfortable, comfortable with somebody's spirit saying, I'm reaching out.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:04:12] This was an energy source that called me towards it and I'm stepping into a bigger and a better life right here as long as all those resources are there. And I think the church is recognizing that they need to be there. And I think, again, this broader, expanded view of the church that pretty much most of the world can get on the Internet and things like that, I just don't know that it needs to be quite as systematic and, and full on ahead of baptism for everyone.

John Dehlin [01:04:38] It's never, it's never going to be. You know, most of the missionary work now being performed is in the third world where people don't have access to these resources in their language. So it's sort of a.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:04:48] And they, they wouldn't join if they had.

John Dehlin [01:04:50] I don't know. I don't know. I'm just saying it's. We're sort of arguing a philosophical theoretical point that in reality is not super important. So we're talking magical realm, wave, a magic wand kind of thing. But for me, it's like, you know, even if I really enjoyed the leather upholstery and the air conditioner felt really good and the ride was really smooth, you know, if some of the pistons were broken and the engine had been run without oil and it was 10,000 miles away from blowing up, I think everyone should know that even if you feel really good with the air conditioner and the upholstery and the radio sounds really good. Full disclosure, when, when, when people are aware that there are significant problems, I believe full has. Full disclosure is crucial. That's just how I.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:05:42] Because you also believe that they wouldn't join. You really do.

John Dehlin [01:05:45] No, no, no, no, no. I know, I know.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:05:48] It's so clean.

John Dehlin [01:05:49] Listen, listen me, Dan. I have people write me all the time and say Mormon stories caused me to join the church. I do not believe that full disclosure means people don't join. I know that there are gay people who remain celibate and miserable. In some cases, knowing all the history for the rest of their lives, like religion is extremely powerful and compelling and resilient. And I believe that reasonable people can just make different claims or hold different beliefs or maintain allegiance. I just think it's the moral, ethical thing to do for people to have all the information before they make a decision that that has such significant consequences for them and that could really blow up for them later on.

John Dehlin [01:06:37] I think it's, I think, you know, Jehovah's Witness, they require a year of investigation before you can join. So, yeah, if I could wave a magic wand, people wouldn't get baptized till they were 21 or 18. And they'd be given all the spiritual, positive, uplifting things, but also all the difficult things. And they could have all the information and then make a really educated decision. And investigators would not get baptized in a week or two weeks, like often happens in the mission field. They would get months and months of lessons and information and experiences.

John Dehlin [01:07:10] And if the church was as compelling in six months, all the better. But just don't withhold the information and then blunt the impact of the institution. Create some type of inoculation or immunization so that when they join, they're not set up for the disillusionment of when the prophets get it wrong and when the bishops get it wrong. And when things go wrong, they're not just totally plugged in to the matrix to the point where they get railroaded into self harm, which I think does happen, you know, it really does.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:07:49] Yeah, some, some language in there that's a little bit strong and overstated, but I agree with you to the most part. Do you have any, any warm feeling towards the fact that pretty much what you're calling for in many ways is the trending direction? Of course, but it, for the church, in other words, in an organization has a lot, you know, before it can turn.

John Dehlin [01:08:13] Of course. And, but, but, but again, the fact that the church claims to be led by God, but really what happened is the Internet happened and shamed and embarrassed and forced the church into making these changes. You know, makes it the stakes very high and it makes it less, you know, a little bit less benevolent or magnanimous of the church's changes. And then of course, the fact that I feel like I and many others were important factors in the church actually making these changes, whether it's Kate Kelly in the female changes or me and many tens of thousands of others before me about the historical candor, and yet they punish and excommunicate people like me as a thank you for moving them in the direction they should have gone.

John Dehlin [01:09:00] Obviously that sours my benevolence a little bit. You Know if somebody makes a decision because a gun's being held to their head, it's very different than if they look around like the community of Christ did. Sort of like, hey, let's do the moral and ethical thing even. It's going to hurt us. But. But that's not what our church did. What our church did, is it? It punished, installed and punted for as long as it could until it literally couldn't hold out anymore. It hurt as many people as it could trying to delay. And even as it made the changes it threw under the bus, many of the people who were, who were instrumental in helping those changes come about.

John Dehlin [01:09:39] And, and to me that's, that's not gracious, you know, it's not, it's not cool, you know. So, yeah, I acknowledge the progress and, and I don't have a ton of respect for how they've handled it in many ways.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:09:54] Yeah. And I would just, I would fill in a certain learning curve on their behalfs and desire and need for unanimity on action. I just tend to know that the sausage is not made in a clean way. And when you overemphasize, well, they claim to be led by God. There's lots of complexities to how somebody is led by God that isn't just quite as clean as you want to say.

John Dehlin [01:10:22] There's there and I then I wish they would openly acknowledge that and make it a common understanding that they're. That they also made tons of mistakes and viewed through a glass darkly and that they live.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:10:34] Of course we've had a couple of moves towards.

John Dehlin [01:10:36] I wish that they would live the humility that is incumbent upon people who really aren't any more special than anybody else. But instead they.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:10:45] Some try that and some do it well.

John Dehlin [01:10:47] I think overall in General conference they perpetuate the leader worship stand when the prophet enters the room. Don't question authority. And whenever you step up and criticize or question, you are struck down in this church to this day. And so.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:11:02] But you agree that lots of general authorities would say these are privately as well. But they. Right. But you don't know exactly what's happening behind the scenes towards, towards ending this. We have, you know, we have a. Basically a complex structure full of people with different experiences and different abilities to see these things and whether or not, you know, a lot of it is going to determine what friends and loved ones have run into. The different things that you are claiming here as to whether they are alerted to it. And then are they on the right committee to where they could speak up and actually get something to move up the ladder.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:11:40] There is just so much going on in the church that I think sometimes, if it claims to be led by God, therefore, it should be able to clearly see this right this second. When I see it, you know, I think that happens one person at a time, you know, slightly slow. Slowly but surely, it does happen.

John Dehlin [01:12:02] Yeah. I agree that change is complicated and sophisticated and difficult and complex and nuanced and takes patience and time. I totally. I totally agree with that. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:12:15] And ultimately, where I'm, you know, all of this kind of stuff for me is again, and, you know, I stand up for it when I can. When it comes up, when it's clearly right in front of a place, when it could be a constructive moment. I want to say those kinds of things at certain points. Again, I don't know how to say it enough, John, That.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:12:40] That spiritual independence, that working through a stage four kind of thing of moving from all the things that you've inherited into a careful weighing of these things to where you are. You have a very long and deliberate reasoned place for your stance.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:13:01] It's then that all this stuff can be met, and it can be met without as much despair, certainly sadness and loneliness, but. But not as in despairing. And again, to me, somehow not as so starkly condemning that it seems to me where you've shifted to.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:13:27] And again, this is going back to the language of fraud and deceit and that it so easily flows from your mouth. We've beat this dead horse, but respond back if you want.

John Dehlin [01:13:38] I honestly don't feel like I'm comprehensively condemning. I really. If I were, I would shut down Mormon Matters. I would shut down Stale Dias. I'd shut down A Thoughtful Faith, and I would tell everybody that I meet with to run from the church, but I don't. When I counsel people, I ask them what their values are, and I validate staying for anyone who feels like staying is what's right for them. I continue being overtly and covertly supportive of people who feel like staying is right for them. And I just think that I. I really. I really believe strongly in things like transparency and candor and speaking out against wrong and abuse. And I just feel like I need to help push both sides along, really. You know, I don't know what else to say.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:14:35] No, no, I hear you. And again, you know, going to the larger body is one thing. And again, all this kind of started for me with. There were certain questions and we kind of circulated, you know, anything you want me to ask John. And it was just this, you know, John, you recognize that you're a powerful and influential person at some point. Mormon stories, like, you say, it's always your journey and things like that. Your talk with, your interview with Gina was certainly wonderful and transparent and stuff like that. But now you're doing Mormon transitions again. You've embraced this public role, and yet at the same time, you are being very clear about what your things are.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:15:19] Can you be truly an effective therapist if you had a mixed marriage, you know, couple in this sort of situation? Can you still. Can you do all the things that you say you want to do or have you in some ways decided? My ministry now is going to be more towards those that are either moving into post Mormonism or just this amorphous thing called progressive.

John Dehlin [01:15:46] Yeah, so I. There's definitely been a shift with Mormon stories. For example, I have no interest in interviewing, you know, an apologist about how they believe anymore. And that's because I kind of have. It's not interesting to me anymore because I. I feel like I've. I've reviewed enough of the evidence to draw my conclusions and so. And, and you're. You're doing enough of a good job about helping people stay in the church.

John Dehlin [01:16:16] I'm not interested in sort of covering that territory anymore. So. There are things that used to be super important to me that I just have no interest in. I'm also, honestly, I have zero interest in reading Mormon history right now. Like, you couldn't pay me to read a book. You would have to pay me a lot of money to read a book, a Mormon history book these days. I'm just not interested.

Personal Reflections and Shifting Public Positions

John Dehlin [01:16:38] I'll just. So as far as you know, I think I've shifted, though. Like, I don't think you'll see me posting on Facebook. The church is a fraud and Joseph Smith's a fraud, and the church, you know, run away.

John Dehlin [01:16:53] I think I'm moving away from any. I don't think I did that very much, and I think I'm really moving away from that. So I've lost interest in talking about the truth claims at all.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:17:06] Would you stop people on your forums from saying that, or would you like to throw a caution?

John Dehlin [01:17:12] I just don't have time to moderate. I mean, I've got 7,000 people in that Facebook group and.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:17:17] But you would. But your dream would be that nobody does these quick hit, you know, extreme rhetoric kind of condemnations.

John Dehlin [01:17:24] My dream would be that people go, hey, you know what? My review of the evidence leads me to believe this isn't true. And other people are like, hey, you know, my review, the evidence says that it is and let's just love and respect each other. I wish that evidence, everybody had that level of respect in their discourse that would, you know how much that would thrill me? I'd probably pay $30,000 a year to be able to have that be the level of discourse on anything associated with me. Because yeah, I hate people who are disrespectful on either side of the equation. Really?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:17:59] That's nice.

John Dehlin [01:18:00] Yeah, for sure. But. But 7,000 people in the Facebook group is just unwieldy. As awesome as our moderators are, that's just impossible. You know, I've got almost 10,000 followers on my, on my public Facebook page now and I just don't have time to moderate all the comments. I wish I did so that I regret that I think is one of the most unfortunate things about everything. Not, you know, I've made mistakes. But what's I think been most damaging to Mormon stories me, my brand is the fact that so, so many of my commenters are so negative and strident and disrespectful that it oftentimes gives me or what I've tried to do much more of a bad name than it otherwise would have.

John Dehlin [01:18:42] You know what I mean? And that's true about comments on Mormon stories blog, that's true about Facebook comments, etc. And then the only other two things I'll say is I, I feel like I am shifting towards what's interesting to me, even though all those other things don't interest me. Me, I'm super interested in helping people through their transition. For those who have decided that the orthodox correlated TBM kind of view isn't going to work for them anymore, I want to help minimize the pain and maximize the, the unproductive pain. I'll say minimize the unproductive pain and maximize the healing and growth.

John Dehlin [01:19:22] And if that goes into staying in the church, honestly, I wouldn't be supporting you and Mormon in a thoughtful faith faith if I wasn't okay with that destination. I am okay with that destination. But I also want to, you know, as I look out there, there aren't a lot of people who are trying to say, hey, let's focus on healing and growth. For post Mormons, you know, there's some, but it's not, it's not obvious where the real centers are for very constructive, practical sort of support for healing and growth. And so yeah, I'm willing to spend the next 20 or 30 years of my life supporting that.

John Dehlin [01:20:01] Not because it's just a Mormon problem, but because, as you know, the fastest growing religious group in the US and it's over 20% at this point, are people who are no longer affiliated with any religious tradition. And I think they deserve as much healing and growth and enlightenment as religious people do. Now, the final thing I just have to say, because it's my career, is that I feel, and I think you could ask my clients, to date, I have six years and over a thousand hours of clinical time. I am 100% validating and supportive of people who want to be TBMs in the church, people who want to be in TBM marriages, people want to be in a mixed orientation marriage, a mixed faith marriage, people who want to leave, people who want to go back and forth.

John Dehlin [01:20:46] You know, I have deep respect for the psychology code of ethics that really mandates neutrality. I've been trained for six years by non Mormon psychologists to doggedly respect the values of my clients. I think that all my non Mormon trainees do an amazing job at this at Utah State University and elsewhere. I think that, I think that I have done this and I think I'm committed to this. And I think you'll find that certainly the vast majority, if not all of the people that I've been a therapist for will tell you, man, I was surprised at how affirming you were of my belief. I was surprised at how supportive you were of our mixed faith.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:21:32] That's great.

John Dehlin [01:21:34] And to do anything other than that is to ultimately get your license taken away and barred as a therapist. Because the code of ethics for psychologists is so clear that religion is to be respected, people's paths are to be respected and affirmed. Their religion is be respected and affirmed. And I'll just end by saying that it is completely ineffective to try and tell people to leave the church or stay in the church or to believe or to not believe. As soon as you do that, that a client says you're, you're an ass. I don't want you as my therapist. I'm not here to have you tell me to believe or not believe, to stay or leave my wife to masturbate or not masturbate.

John Dehlin [01:22:18] You know, people, clients just don't stand for that. They come to you because they want support in figuring things out. But no client wants you to tell them how to believe and what relationship to have with their spouse or with the church or with their sexuality. And if a client comes to me and says, I'm gay and I want to marry a Woman, I'm like, okay, well, let's talk about what's hard about that, but let's also talk about what's good and how do I support you?

John Dehlin [01:22:46] Or maybe I'll refer them to somebody else. But there's no way that I'm going to try and impose my beliefs or push people one direction or another.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:22:54] Yeah, no, that's great. I knew that about you, and I sense that about you. I guess the question. I think it was originally formulated, as in, now that you're so more public about the direction of your own life, do you worry about that in your client relationship? Meaning they know they're coming to you with this there. And so the fact that you're a public person, do you feel you said in your interview with Gina you only wanted to probably have a few clients at most and. And spend, you know, 30 or 40 hours of your week, you know, doing this larger transitions thing versus clinical stuff. But is that part of the factor? The fact that you, you know, the people who would be attracted to you, you know, know so much about it?

John Dehlin [01:23:40] Yeah, it completely. It completely bums, you know, and this was just really one of the hardest parts about being a therapist at, you know, at Utah State University, because I would have these students come in, and either they'd smile when they saw me in the greeting room for the first time, or when I brought them into the office and I'd tell them my name, they would stop me and say, oh, you're the John de Lynn, you know, Or. Or they grin and say, you know, I listen to your podcast. I hate that. Like, if you think that when somebody comes to me and says, I'm here to have you be my therapist, and I've listened to 500 Hours of Mormon stories, that's not, like, something that I smile and grin about.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:24:21] Right.

John Dehlin [01:24:22] That's a nightmare to me, because I honestly, I don't think I do. I'm not a therapist that thinks that. That I can tell people the way they should live. I have tons of humility about being broken, flawed, confused about life. Like, I don't emerge as a therapist thinking I know what people should do in their lives. And so I don't want them looking at me as a celebrity. And then whatever I say, they hang on to, like, they should look at me like a prophet. Nothing makes me more uncomfortable. So, yes, for all the people that I see as a therapist, my dream would be that they would not know me and know nothing about me, and it's all about their journey on the other Hand, I feel like my conscience impels me to speak up and so I can't shut that off.

John Dehlin [01:25:09] And then also sometimes my experience ends up being useful to people. And because they know about me and what I've done, it. It allows them to get help that they otherwise would have sort of suffered in silence about. So I'm torn. I'm torn about it, right? But it's certainly not like, yay, it's awesome. I'm famous and I'm going to help the world. It's more like, this is messy and I wish it was less messy, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:25:38] Well, thank you, guy. We've spent three hours. Crazy.

John Dehlin [01:25:41] And you're on page one still.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:25:43] Well, there are. There are quite a few things that I'm still debating them and stuff like that. You know, I really wanted to have a nice discussion about, you know, all the different ways that something can be true and to kind of hear your feelings about, you know, the importance of truth that, you know, may never have happened. You know, you know, the whole idea of I'm about to tell you a story, it never happened, nevertheless, it's true.

Post-Mormon Spirituality, Healing, and Closing Thoughts

Dan Wotherspoon [01:26:09] I'd love to hear you again because it seems like you're proactively moving into healing and growth and things like that. It's going to be most likely that you're not going to use a lot of Mormon talk. You're probably not going to use a lot of God talk, a lot of spirit talk or something like that. So I want to kind of hear a little bit about what does truth mean to you in this sense of ideas that might not be attached to, you know, factual.

John Dehlin [01:26:46] Yes. Okay. So I'll try to give really quick answers because I know you're sensitive about time. I wrote down your three sort of theories on truth, correspondence, coherence and pragmatic. And I want you to know I value them all. And so I can just start out by saying 100%. John Steinbeck is one of the most inspirational figures in my life and everything that he wrote is fictional and it's completely true. You know what I mean? I think fiction can be true because it relates sometimes the true lived life experience better than obviously a biography or not a biography. Right. Of course you've heard the quote that the highest form of fiction is autobiography. And you know, because someone's writing about themselves and man, how, how biased is that? Right? So. And fraudulent and deceptive and whatever. So,

Dan Wotherspoon [01:27:42] yeah, gotta throw those words in there, brother.

John Dehlin [01:27:45] Fraudulent for someone, for someone who claims that they have.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:27:49] So nobody can write by autobiography. That is fraudulent.

John Dehlin [01:27:53] Right.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:27:54] As well. Again, there's going to be some element of that, but, but never mind. This is what we've been arguing about for an hour.

John Dehlin [01:28:00] Well, at least you can see that I'm basically turning that back on, on secularism. Right. I'm not just using those terms purely religious. Yeah.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:09] But to me they just send you in the wrong.

John Dehlin [01:28:12] I understand, Go ahead.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:13] But, but I'm just be, you know, I'd use all the post modernism and all that.

John Dehlin [01:28:17] Yeah, well, I'm, I'm to get to

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:19] the, to get to the same point.

John Dehlin [01:28:20] I'm a blue collar.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:21] There's no innocent text.

John Dehlin [01:28:22] I'm a blue collar.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:23] We know that there's no innocent text.

John Dehlin [01:28:25] I mean I've got like 12, I'm, I'm on Google Scholar with like 12 publications. So on some sense I, I'm comfortable calling myself a scholar, but I'm a blue collar scholar. You know, I, I don't, I don't, I'm not Christine Hagland. I'm not Adam Bowman. You know what I mean? I'm a meat and potatoes bologna sandwich.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:42] There's Adam, there's Adam Miller and Matthew Bowman. So. But they're both good guys.

John Dehlin [01:28:46] Oh, sorry, what did I. Yeah, you

Dan Wotherspoon [01:28:48] said it, you said it before.

John Dehlin [01:28:49] Okay, Adam Miller. Yeah, but I'll just say that I love myth, I love symbolism, I love fiction, I love inspiring works. I find value in all the religious texts and in secular texts too. That's never going to change.

John Dehlin [01:29:06] And I have already made the point that I do think that evidence and truth claims matter because of full disclosure and of the stakes of people's literalistic beliefs. I've already made that point. But I would just push back a tiny bit and just say that if a client comes to me and they're a true believing Mormon, I am absolutely going to invoke my knowledge of scripture and of what they believe to help inform how I interact with them, them psychologically. And if, and if somebody is a progressive Mormon, I'm gonna, I'm gonna invoke parables of Jesus or of church history or of Book of Mormon stuff to the extent that I think it's not going to cause them to be allergic and offense offended.

John Dehlin [01:29:55] Right. And so I am not in any way averse to you to not only valuing the spiritual and, and symbolic and metaphorical and spiritual sort of values of text and of religion and religious tradition, but I'm going to use it based on where I perceive the client is and what's going to be most useful to them. And that's going to be true in all my work with Mormon transitions too, so.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:30:22] Okay, well, I'm excited to see what happens with you with that, brother, because, you know, there isn't. We're still in this point where we do need to develop a language for that that maybe doesn't necessarily always need to be God, that doesn't need to be spirit, that doesn't need to be soul, and all those kinds of things. Have you found some that you really like, that you think hold promise for speaking to those things that just really aren't part of your normal brain chatter, that they really aren't using the, the cognitive filters, but somehow or other there's some profundity for your life?

John Dehlin [01:31:03] Yeah, I'm still. Okay. So personally, I still think of myself as a spiritual person. I still value spirituality. I still consider myself a believer just in kind of the same way you do. Like, I think our beliefs about, you know, the truth claims are all probably almost identical. I think that our, our perspectives on some type of value and meaning and energy or force in the universe. Maybe you're a little bit more into that than me, but I think that we share much more than we differ.

John Dehlin [01:31:34] So that's just me personally. When I'm in front of a crowd of atheists and agnostics and post Mormons that are heavy, then when I use those terms, I feel like I need to sort of, okay, when I say spirituality, I mean this, and when I talk about God, I mean that. And when I, and I validate all paths and, you know, I, I feel like I need to sort of define the terms in a way to where they're sensitive to the fact that that language is triggering to other people and, and complex and nuanced and yeah, I may speak more secular to a secular audience, but then again, that's just driven by wanting to use the language that connects with people and meet them where they are.

John Dehlin [01:32:16] And I feel like I'm able to separate my own sense of meaning or energy or spirituality from, from the people that I'm trying to help, you know? Yeah, so I don't identify.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:32:28] So you don't know yet. Do you know yet what Mormon transitions will be? Will it just avoid the trigger language or just go trigger warnings all the time or. I mean, I was just curious of, you know, I know you looked into Sunday assembly, you probably looked at Elaine D. Bhutan School of Life kinds of this. Is that going to be more the model that you're going to rather than just like Okay. I know that this means something to you that I don't necessarily mean, but I'm trying to get at xyz, this part of the human experience.

John Dehlin [01:33:01] Well, I think you raise a good point that the more we can improve the language, the better. You know, I don't, one of the things I explicitly don't want to do is have some sort of doctrine or theology or, you know, sacred text that's like claiming to be divine. You know what I mean? And I, I don't.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:33:20] Of course not.

John Dehlin [01:33:20] While I respect Elaine de Bhutan and Sunday assembly and, and Oasis and, and all that community of Christ and you know, I, you know, I kind of just want to use language. I want to find a way to speak to people where they are, you know what I mean? And, and I don't shy from using the term spiritual again as long as I define it. I don't like having to give trigger warnings all the time. I think that sometimes treats people more fragile than they really are and just makes conversations really complicated when they don't need to be. But I do think that you can talk about morals and values and ethics without having to tie it to, you know, God or spirit.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:34:06] Divine command theory. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:34:07] And I think you can talk about, you know, a lot of it's going to be just how to communicate with your loved ones, how to communicate with extended family, how to build community, how to be moral, how to raise your kids. And there's all. 98% of that conversation doesn't need to invoke terms like God or spirit.

John Dehlin [01:34:24] But, but, but I consider spirituality or it's. It's alternative in a secular world to be one of the pillars of, of Mormon transitions. It's one of the major holes in the soul that develops. And if you think that, I think that somebody just loses their faith in Mormonism and all of a sudden they don't need a connection to something bigger or a sense of spirituality or of enlightenment. You're totally wrong on that front. I don't think. You do think that. But I acknowledge spirituality or its secular alternative as a fundamental pillar of human wholeness and well being. And whether it's nature or deep connections with other people or meditation or mindfulness or prayer or just, you know, private spirituality or even worship in a different church that connects with you better.

John Dehlin [01:35:20] I see all that as being a part of something essential to the human experience. And it's going to be inextricably linked as a pillar of what we do going forward. Forward. You know, my wife and I, every morning we meditate for 10 minutes every single morning. You know, six out of seven days, right?

Dan Wotherspoon [01:35:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] And we meditate. And Margi would tell you that's a spiritual. Even though she doesn't know if she believes in a God or spirit or sort of metaphysical whatever, to her, that's a spiritual exercise. And every Sunday, our family goes on a hike to one of the canyons in Logan, and we consider that a spiritual connect with nature, connect with ourselves, dig for something deeper. That's all still very much a part of who I am and what I hope to encourage.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:36:12] Well, good, brother. More power to you. There's definitely an audience for that and a big need for it. I'm glad to see you stepping into

John Dehlin [01:36:25] it, and I appreciate you encouraging me to not forget that stuff and to pay attention to it. You've been an important influence in my life.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:36:34] Yeah. We keep reminding each other how we come across or what's missing from our particular rhetorics and stuff, so I'm grateful for that, too. And it's been fun. So I don't know if anybody's ever listened this long to two guys talk as what we were probably, what, close to three hours when you interviewed me.

John Dehlin [01:36:54] Yeah. Yeah. Between.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:36:55] Lindsay, this would be ridiculous. Yeah. It's going to be 10, 12 hours, right?

John Dehlin [01:37:00] No, but holy crap, I swear, I will buy a steak dinner to whoever, you know, listens to the Lindsay thing, the Gina thing, the me interviewing you thing, the you interviewing me thing. If anybody makes it through all of that, if they come to Logan and our schedules align, I will buy them a stick.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:37:18] Nice. Thank you, brother. It's always fun to talk with you. I always. You've been an important person in my life. You know, what's the whole line of, you know, friends, sharpen friends the way, you know, steel, sharpen steel. And I'm glad that we were always able to talk and yell at each other, yet know that it's. It's good.

John Dehlin [01:37:38] Totally. I love you, Brother Dan. I respect you. I honor your path and what you do. And I look forward to at least 30 or 40 more years of us going at each other.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:37:48] Sounds good. We all have our calling in life, right?

John Dehlin [01:37:51] Absolutely.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:37:52] So all our angles that we. I don't know, it's so interesting. Our autobiographies are inescapable. And I think that's what I think was so brilliant about Mormon stories. You know, you really just opened us up, up to that space of, nobody here claims that they have the truth. They're just telling their story. And in some ways, even though, we've moved more into truth claims and what is truth and what is best or worse or something like that. Ultimately, in many ways, we're just telling our Mormon stories through all this as well, stories of our lives and what shaped us.

John Dehlin [01:38:29] Totally, totally. I'm so grateful for this conversation that we're all a part of, and I think we're all better for it. So thanks, Dan. Thanks for all you do. It's inspiring.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:38:40] Thank you, brother.

John Dehlin [01:38:41] All right, brother, we'll talk soon. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Matters Podcast. To discuss this podcast with others, please check us out@mormonmatters.org to keep this podcast alive or to join our support community, please consider a tax deductible donation today@mormonmatters.org Music for this podcast was brought to you by Brittany and Clayton Pixton. The Mormon Matters logo was generously provided by studiocase.com thank you for listening.

Dan Wotherspoon [01:39:27] Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to this angel. Your hearts will swell, all is well,

John Dehlin [01:39:50] all is well well

Dan Wotherspoon [01:39:55] do this and joy your hearts will swell

John Dehlin [01:40:02] all is

Dan Wotherspoon [01:40:02] well, all is well all is well

John Dehlin [01:40:11] all is well,

Dan Wotherspoon [01:40:14] all is well,

John Dehlin [01:40:17] well all is well.

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.