Welcome and Episode Introduction

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, Dr. John Dehlin. It is October 31, 2021. We're talking Halloween Day here in the United States and elsewhere, and we are super duper excited for today's episode. For those of you who don't know, there has been a real British Invasion on YouTube over the past year in the ex Mormon world as a bunch of amazing, thoughtful, intelligent, insightful and most importantly, funny British progressive Mormons and ex Mormons have started doing some really amazing things again on social media, but specifically on YouTube. And they have recently dubbed themselves the Brit Vengers. And coincidentally, in addition, just recently, and maybe coincidentally, maybe not, it was announced and I got wind of this just a couple weeks ago, but that three, count them, three Mormon apostles, Elder Ballard, Jeffrey R. Holland and Quentin Cook, were all going to be appearing at a area conference over the UK and Ireland this very weekend. So yesterday, October 30th and today, October 31st, there was an area conference for the UK and Ireland where three apostles spoke. And this started to conjure for many of us the idea of a rescue, kind of a UK rescue. So we all know that years ago, when Hans Mattson, Area Authority from Sweden, started to lose his faith and started to pull together a community of other Swedish Mormons that were also losing their faith, that the Mormon Church sent Marlon Jensen, church historian, and Richard Turley to Sweden to do what has now famously been dubbed the Swedish Rescue. You can go to several past episodes of Mormon Stories podcast, listen to the audio recording of the actual Swedish Rescue, and you can hear several episodes where I interview Hans and Brigitte Mattson and other Swedish ex Mormons who describe the Swedish Rescue. Anyway, that's the past. But when we heard about three Mormon apostles all doing an area conference in the UK on the same weekend, it started to make many of us wonder if a new British rescue was on the way. And so I reached out to my dear friends and contacts in the UK who a few members of the Brit Vengers and asked whether they knew about this and whether they were planning to do anything about it. And of course they were like seven weeks ahead of me and were already all over it and planning to do their own recording and analysis of the entire event. And so we decided that what we would do would be to once they had a chance to listen to and record this area conference with three apostles, we would have the Brit Vengers on Mormon Stories podcast to do what's called a reaction video to this conference. And so without any ado, brethren and sistren and everyone else, I give to you my Mormon Stories audience, the Britvengers. Hey, Britvengers.

Nemo [00:03:05] Hey.

Guest [00:03:06] Hello.

Alana [00:03:07] Hey, everyone.

John Dehlin [00:03:08] Britvengers, assemble. How are you guys doing?

Peter Bleeckley [00:03:14] Not too bad, thank you.

John Dehlin [00:03:16] All right.

Douglas Stilgo [00:03:17] Long weekend, doesn't it?

Nemo [00:03:19] Everyone's out of one another.

Meet the Britvengers Panel

John Dehlin [00:03:22] Well, let's do an introduction, because a few of you, at least a couple of you, will be familiar to my audience, but some of you won't, and we need to fix all of that. But definitely Nemo is here. And Nemo has been formally interviewed. Douglas Stilgo has been interviewed on Mormon Stories podcast. But. But, Douglas, why don't you take us around the horn in some sort of structured way and introduce all of my listeners and viewers to the Britvengers that have joined us today. And then I want to then add a little something to the mix. So go ahead, Douglas.

Douglas Stilgo [00:03:59] Okay.

Douglas Stilgo [00:04:00] So the idea of the Britvengers was said purely in jest once, and then it stuck, and then it became this whole big thing, and now here we are. I suppose the idea is that my channel started about a year ago. Peter Bleeckley's been doing his thing for quite a while, and then more and more people have been getting involved in this British movement. We've started our own Sunstone, and we form a collective of people who have a range of views towards the church, a range of levels of activity within the church, and we all come together informally a lot of the time over messages to discuss what's going on in the Zeitgeist of Mormonism and discussion and discuss what's happening. So I guess I'm just going to call out various people and get them to introduce themselves real quickly. So let's start. Ladies first. Should we have 21st century saints, Alana and Jane, introduce yourselves?

Jane [00:04:55] Will I go first? Well, I decided one day that a podcast was needed to talk about the lived experience in the uk. So, yeah, we've been podcasting since spring. We have got a really good reception. And I am the active Mormon who. One of our first interviews, John, you were kind enough to come on and chat with us, which was huge. Hugely well received here. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:29] So what's your name and what's your podcast? What's your name and what's your podcast?

Jane [00:05:33] We're 21st Century Saints. We're on Facebook, we're on YouTube. And what we had wanted to do was a sort of live podcast experience, a live stream experience, where if someone was to come into a Sunday school class, we would be having the Discussions that we really wished we could have, that we could say the things that were maybe a little bit painful, that sounded, you know, there was a little bit of tension there, that we could be really honest. So we wanted to go live. So we're very unpolished. We're two mothers. But maybe I could pass over to Alana, who you can maybe give your perspective of how we started.

Alana [00:06:15] Hi, everyone. So, yeah, it's quite a funny story. Jane had spoken to me about the podcast, which I was like, don't know how I feel, just purely because I wasn't really sure where I stood with church. I was kind of out and didn't know if I really wanted to speak about it. But I then decided, you know, that. That I felt that I needed my voice. So I felt this was the right way to go. And then literally, Jane phones me with about five minutes to go and said, right, we're going live in five minutes. So that's how we got started. And, yeah, so I was struggling with church. Sorry for a very long time with a lot of issues and things that were really hurtful and made me angry and various things. And lockdown was the breath of fresh air that I needed because it made me realize that. That I didn't need the church anymore. It was more harmful to be within the church than it was out. So, yeah, I've been out now for a while, but I'm still open to discussing, you know, a lot of the issues because I do see the change that needs to happen. And I just hope that, you know, by speaking out, that I always hope that they will listen, but I don't know that I actually believe it will happen, so to speak.

John Dehlin [00:07:35] All right, well, welcome 21st century saints. It's so great to have you guys.

Douglas Stilgo [00:07:40] Yeah. Next, I think. I don't think I can restrain him any longer. I think we'll have Peter Bleakley tell us a little bit about himself.

John Dehlin [00:07:47] Hey, Peter, welcome. Welcome to Mormon Stories podcast.

Peter Bleeckley [00:07:51] Thank you. It's good to talk to you live at last. Although we have phones a couple of times. So my name's Peter Bleakley. I was an official member of the church, still active, and I kind of started. I was doing a bit of blogging, and I spent quite a long time in the post Mormon and nuanced Mormon Internet. Just finding out what. What's going wrong in our church. Very concerned about the fact that in Britain, our active membership is really crashing, and we actually only have a few years to turn this around or for the whole church to make significant Changes or we will have no church left. So that was my motivator, really, and trying to be a voice in my Mormon Civil War channel, which is a podcast. And I post those things on YouTube as well for critique of what's gone wrong in the church and quite in depth analysis of that. Who's made what decisions, when have got us to the place that we are, but also what would it take to save it? How can we have the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints survive to the end of this century? What would make our children want to stay instead of leaving? So I talk about both those things quite intensively with a view to is reform possible in the church? And many generations of intellectuals and thinkers and nuanced members have attempted that before and given up. But I think that we're in a position where the Internet empowers people to find out things and cooperate much more quickly. So that's a game changer. And I think the pressure of the fact that everyone's going to start quickly realizing the church's days are numbered could also focus attention of local leaders to actually make changes. So that's kind of the general theme of what I'm exploring in my podcast. And John de Lynn keeps nagging me to up my game. So I'm working now on Mormon Stories, the movie, which will be an epic films documentary that eventually might become a Mormon Stories episode if it goes well. So I'm really responding to John's invitation for us all to raise our game. And as all of us here are, and you've been talking for a long time, John, about having a more diverse ecosystem that's not just Mormon Stories and it's not just one thing. And we can all step up. And I think what we all represent is anyone can do this, you know, if you have things to say from all your different perspectives. We're just ordinary people going for it and the technology's there to empower us. So join in.

Douglas Stilgo [00:10:23] Yeah, cool. Thanks, Peter.

John Dehlin [00:10:25] I love it. Thanks, Peter.

Douglas Stilgo [00:10:26] Next we will have Priestly Dispatches. Sorry, John.

Nemo [00:10:32] Yeah, I'll say it because no one else did. Hello, hello, hello. I'm Priest of Dispatchers. We have a blog and a YouTube channel where we just shoot the ship. It's all about taking the stranger than fiction stories from your life at church and just laughing about them, you know, and just kind of moving past being angry and just having a bit of fun with it. I've got my little friend Zelf Jr. Who just recently had his work done for him. And yeah, creative Dispatchers is there for anyone? We no holds barred. We just go for it.

Douglas Stilgo [00:11:21] Nice.

John Dehlin [00:11:21] I think that's the first time a green apron and a baker's cap has shown up on Mormon Stories podcast.

Nemo [00:11:27] Oh, sorry, guys hold barred.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] I guess we should tell people. Maybe there's a PG13 content rating for this episode because we've got British people on. You know what I mean?

Peter Bleeckley [00:11:39] Potty mouth.

Douglas Stilgo [00:11:40] And then the last person is Julian. I'm not sure I'm actually allowed to say where you're from, Julian, because they probably don't want you representing them, but that's cool.

Guest 2 [00:11:49] So I'm one of the organizers of Sunstone uk. I'm not here representing Sunstone uk. I'm just here as somebody with an opinion. I'm also Nemo's young men's president and I may have seen Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:12:09] Wow. Congratulations.

Guest 2 [00:12:12] I'm not saying I have. I'm not saying if I had, then I wouldn't share it here, would I? So I'm just. I'm just putting it out there.

John Dehlin [00:12:21] So you're British Denver Snuffer, basically.

Peter Bleeckley [00:12:24] He's taking on his countenance though. He's very white and he's got a beard.

John Dehlin [00:12:30] I love it. Okay, well that's great. Well, okay, that's the Bravengers. Well, listen, I'm gonna make it no secret that number one, I'm an Avengers fan. But number two, I'm a Britvengers fan. And so I'm trying to get you guys to let me become, if not an honorary member of the Britvengers, a full fledged member of the Britvengers. And my precedence, my justification of precedence is that American Terry Gilliam was allowed to be a member of Monty Python. So one of the six Monty Python members was an American. And so if the real avengers can have Dr. Strange and I mean, I guess Vision has a British accent. Is that right?

Alana [00:13:18] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:13:19] That's at least two Brits on the Real Avengers. And if Terry and Gilliam can be part of Monty Python, maybe you guys can someday let me be a Britvenger. But I want to show you my special power. Okay, cool. Because I actually do have one special power. Do you know what my special power is?

Douglas Stilgo [00:13:40] Go on.

John Dehlin [00:13:41] It's the ability to produce legitimate Brit ventures. Do you believe me? You don't believe me? All right, I'm going to show you right now. Okay, so here we go. I am going to use my special powers right now. I'm going to stand up, I'm going to wave my magic, I'm going to do My little magic powers. I'm going to wait. I'm going to wave my magic yes now I'm going to wave my magic wand.

Douglas Stilgo [00:14:07] How does this sound on audio?

Peter Bleeckley [00:14:08] Oh, my gosh.

Jane [00:14:09] What are you doing?

Guest 2 [00:14:11] Don't wave your magic wall.

John Dehlin [00:14:12] Oh my gosh. That was the worst entrance ever. I give to you a legitimate revenger, Samantha Shelley.

Guest 3 [00:14:20] Hello.

Douglas Stilgo [00:14:21] I really wasn't.

John Dehlin [00:14:23] Samantha. Samantha wants no part of that. So apparently that was very un British. Yeah, yeah, it was a bit weird.

Alana [00:14:31] I do not want to be a big review.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] Just be honest, Samantha. I give you guys, I give you viewers and listeners, all Samantha Shelley of Zelf on the Shelf. Welcome, Samantha.

Guest 3 [00:14:42] I very happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:14:45] What do you guys think? Where's the applause, Britvengers, please.

Douglas Stilgo [00:14:49] We're British. We're just reserved.

Guest 2 [00:14:51] Yeah, we don't do that.

Douglas Stilgo [00:14:52] Golf clap. Maybe that was enough screen if you want.

Peter Bleeckley [00:14:56] We used up a whole year's quota right there.

Guest 2 [00:14:59] We did talk about Sam earlier actually, didn't we? We said that she's like. She's more kind of Captain Marvel. You know, she's kind of gone off to foreign planets and she'll just come back.

John Dehlin [00:15:10] Yes, Samantha is literally the Captain Marvel. I love it.

Douglas Stilgo [00:15:14] Yeah, that is a reference because earlier I saw when the livestream went up, it said Samantha. She's like, wait, who are the Britvengers? I was like, well, well, well, well, wait and see.

Nemo [00:15:26] No, she was one of them.

Douglas Stilgo [00:15:28] Didn't even know she was one of us.

John Dehlin [00:15:29] Now, does the fact that she's a legendary YouTube ex Mormon from the UK, does that automatically qualify her for the revengers or not?

Douglas Stilgo [00:15:37] What say we.

Peter Bleeckley [00:15:39] Well, let's do a.

John Dehlin [00:15:40] Let's do a visual. It could be a thumbs up or a thumbs down.

Guest 2 [00:15:44] It depends. Just. Sam, have you eaten a pork pie?

Guest 3 [00:15:48] Do you know what this. You're gonna hate this, but I'm vegan. I know, it's crushing.

Douglas Stilgo [00:15:54] Have you had a Greg's Vegan sausage roll?

Guest 3 [00:15:56] Sausage roll.

Guest 2 [00:15:57] So that'll do.

John Dehlin [00:15:59] Good enough.

Peter Bleeckley [00:16:00] Yeah, she's been.

John Dehlin [00:16:03] No, seriously. I told Samantha we were doing this and she was all all over it. So she brushed up on a lot of the stuff you guys are doing and she was excited to be. I shouldn't speak for you. Welcome, Samantha.

Guest 3 [00:16:13] That's true. I'm excited.

John Dehlin [00:16:15] Tell us a bit about you.

Guest 3 [00:16:17] I joined the church at 16. 17 was when I officially got baptized in England. At a time in my life when I was pretty vulnerable to being recruited into an organization like that. I became fully converted, moved to America to go To BYU Idaho, got married in the temple after BYU Idaho and then about a month later realized it was all, it was all not true. And here we are making anti Mormon content six years later.

John Dehlin [00:16:49] I object to that, that description.

Guest 2 [00:16:51] Pro truth.

John Dehlin [00:16:52] The pro truth. All right, so Samantha will be providing some insight from across the pond throughout today as well.

Apostles Visit to Britain: Initial Reactions

Douglas Stilgo [00:17:02] Okay, Sam, did you know this was happening? Did you know that the apostles were coming over to Britain? Had you heard?

Guest 3 [00:17:10] No. So I didn't realize it until I saw John post the stream thing and then I went and binged everything I could. I watched the discussion you all had. I just speed watched the. Was there two broadcasts, the youth one. And then yeah, I watched the main one this morning at 1.5 speed and it was still so slow.

Peter Bleeckley [00:17:29] Really slow.

Jane [00:17:31] If you speed watched it, it would have to be like four times speed. It was so slow.

Nemo [00:17:38] It was like the turd sliding down the window slowly.

Alana [00:17:43] Exactly.

Douglas Stilgo [00:17:44] So we actually, we did a, we got together and we had a chat, didn't we beforehand, about what our predictions were. So joined. John, if you pull up slide two, we can share that with the audience. PD very kindly put together a little like super cut of kind of all of our predictions and our chatter.

John Dehlin [00:17:58] So we're gonna play right now.

Douglas Stilgo [00:18:00] Yeah. Yes. This is what the Brit vengeance looks like when we get together and we're

John Dehlin [00:18:03] playing the full clip.

Douglas Stilgo [00:18:04] Yeah, go for it.

John Dehlin [00:18:05] Okay, here we go.

▶ Video Clip 1

Video Clip 1 [00:18:12] We've all had those, those, those meetings in the past where they come over and they always, whoever it is, they'll always start with their kind of tenuous connection to Britain. You know, oh, oh, I love Britain because I serve my mission here. Or I love Britain because my great, great great grandma was from Britain or my best mate's dog is from Britain or whatever. And we like, well that's really going to endear them to us and we don't care.

Video Clip 1 [00:18:43] Well, recognizing that Britain exists I think is a really important thing because if you're in church in Utah, you've seen apostles, right. And you know, while they're doing the shopping and stuff, this doesn't happen. Not only is it three that we're getting right now, the last time I saw an in person meeting with an apostle, oh, 10 years, something like that. When Elder Grumpy face came.

Video Clip 1 [00:19:18] Along with whatever tenuous link, we're going to be re educated about the part that Great Britain played in building the

Video Clip 1 [00:19:27] church because we might have forgotten.

Video Clip 1 [00:19:31] Yeah, but, but the thing is they're just blowing their own trumpets by coming across and saying our Great Great granddads lush these shores for. For Utah.

Video Clip 1 [00:19:41] I was just gonna say it. It feels a little bit like it's just an attempt to endear us to them and I prefer if they just ate a pork pie.

Video Clip 1 [00:19:49] Well, why now? Thing that comes out has. Has been the coming out of everyone's mouth. The first thing that's been taped in chats from this sort of progressive new ones or ex Mormon community is shouting the words, is this the British rescue? Is this what's happened? So that's. And that was kind of my instinct to. Does the United Kingdom. The church in the United Kingdom is really, really struggling. Is this an attempt to address that?

Video Clip 1 [00:20:17] So, yeah, it's not unusual for them to be here. I went and saw Holland speak in Oxford when they came down, they spoke at the colleges, you know, they come over. But three of them is a massive, I think, show of force, full court press. I think they are sincerely concerned about the spiritual state of the church here. Like I mentioned, they have been talking to us in firesides and all sorts of things previously to this that there

Video Clip 1 [00:20:45] could be some kind of Brexit influence here. No, no, seriously. Right. With regard to annexing the UK and Ireland from the European area.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:01] And I think if we are going to see anything, we'll see some sort of procedural change, I think. Because what this administration of church leadership under Nelson has shown us is that the things they do change are policy, the things they do change are procedures and ways that things are an admin. It's just administrators.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:20] I don't think they're even. Yeah, I don't think they're even that imaginative though. Like that would be sensible, like to have. Have a leadership to focus on Britain and Ireland and its specific needs and so on. I mean, what would this will boil down to? Will anything they say actually address the real issues and concerns that are causing. Absolutely not. Leave or stay away.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:41] Active members will love this.

Video Clip 1 [00:21:43] If I was still tbm. Yeah, I know what they're going to say. It's just going to be a regurgitation of what they said two weeks ago at conference with memories about the UK and previous visits or missions. So the message isn't going to be anything special.

Video Clip 1 [00:22:01] What I was going to say is if you look at the question of whether or not it is actually a rescue, because it might not be, you know, say they've just kind of opened up restrictions. We'd all like a holiday, wouldn't we? A trip to Britain and they'll go and visit, have a look and they'll give their little stories connecting themselves to Britain and leave us with an apostolic blessing.

Video Clip 1 [00:22:24] And I remember we were being asked to really pray because you're going to have a church area visitor who's going to, you know, they're really pray because we want you to bring someone. We want them to be able to have a really spiritual experience. Everyone's preparing, and my husband, he ain't interested. But to my surprise, he came along one day and he's like, okay, I will go, but I'm not wearing a suit. I'm gonna wear my jeans. So I'm like, okay, you know what? I'm gonna wear my jeans too, if that will make you feel more comfortable. So we patch up like a pair of rock stars. And it was awful. It was awful because it was almost like an ego trip. For the people who were speaking, they wanted to talk about their own personal family histories. They wanted to talk about just things that my husband is like, what are they talking about? And we had to leave early. And we could see that the reaction that was coming from the stand was, you know, it was really embarrassing.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:28] I remember going to the Royal Albert hall, and again, it was prophets and their wives, and all they did was go on about how lucky we were to be sitting at the be to the prophet. But then there was never a punchline. There was never any actual content.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:43] Jeffrey R. Holland will give a rerun of his holding the pulpit shaking and saying, don't you dare leave.

Video Clip 1 [00:23:56] I'd love to hear them just say, look, we're just like you. You know, we haven't seen Jesus. We receive revelation just the same way. You know, we. We have a good feeling about something and we hope that it's come from God, and we're just trying our best.

Purpose and Hope Behind the British Rescue

Video Clip 1 [00:24:10] If they had the humility to realize that some of us have legitimate concerns and that maybe if they listen to them, they might hear us and they might be able to then help us. I think it would go a long way.

Peter Bleeckley [00:24:21] Mary Davidson in Ireland is a tough cookie grandma, and she will cross the Irish Channel and mess you up if you say we're talking about UK again and not add Ireland as well. It's a Republican. When I asked the question, well, what could they say that would actually fix things? What would save the church in Britain? You've talked really powerfully about this idea of the relationship, the power relationship. Will the leaders listen to us? Will they respect what we have to say? Problems that are sort of identifying there that seem to emerge from the hive mind of the blogger knackle is simply lying stealing, control freaky. First thing to address is the lying to apologize for lying to us all. And because that's the only thing that's going to hold the nuanced members who've discovered all the lies in long term and maybe even bring a few people back, they need to acknowledge the lying, apologize and commit to do serious fact checking before they ever say another thing in front of a pulpit. Stealing. They they were meant to stop paying tithe demanding tithing years ago when the church was self sufficient as promised by Joseph F. Smith in a conference assignment century ago. So they need to announce no more pain tithing, control freaky. Common consent votes. We've got to normalize. Voting opposed. Young people are not going to stay in a church that's racist, homophobic and sexist. So they have to make structural functional differences on those fronts.

Douglas Stilgo [00:25:46] What would you say if you had the chance whilst shaking their hand to say something to them?

Nemo [00:25:51] Just be real, be real, be honest,

Guest 2 [00:25:54] Put my arm around and say, look, it's okay. You know, be brave, Be brave. I know it's hard for you to, to maybe consider that the way that you view things isn't correct, but it'll be okay.

Peter Bleeckley [00:26:12] Can we create a safe space here at church for people with questions who, who need them answered? We have nowhere that people can bring their questions and actually be taken seriously or get answers.

Jane [00:26:22] You know, we have to get creative and we have to say, look, this is not working even when someone doesn't like hearing it.

Douglas Stilgo [00:26:32] Sean McKeith said, British Mormon Rescue. This is brilliant. The British Isles are doing their own rescue. No need to send apostles out from Utah. Brilliant. Amen, Jane. And I think you're right. We know the people, we know their names, we know their struggles. What we need is we need support from the leadership. That's what I would say to them. I would say, please support us, please enable us to do what we can for those around us.

John Dehlin [00:27:04] Man, I love that framing that the Britvengers are the British rescue. That's epic.

Douglas Stilgo [00:27:13] So that was an hour and a half. No, don't think so. No, just so that was our preamble, that was all our predictions and what we thought might happen. And I reckon we got a probably a good like 70, 80 correct.

Peter Bleeckley [00:27:27] Yeah, it's 100 Nemo. That's exactly what they did, all of it.

Nemo [00:27:34] The only thing we missed was the

Douglas Stilgo [00:27:36] restructuring because yeah, they didn't do any of that.

Nemo [00:27:39] No, they didn't do anything.

Guest 3 [00:27:41] No.

Douglas Stilgo [00:27:42] So what do you, you had a question for Us.

John Dehlin [00:27:45] John, real quickly, what are the. What. What were the. I mean, I don't want to. We're going to go into it, right, but if you. If you guys had to shout out, like, the highlights of the things you got. Right, let's just list them off without going into detail. List them off.

Nemo [00:28:01] That they just came for a holiday. They toured the UK through the week preceding and posted their holiday snaps on Facebook and just really tried to link themselves to the grassroots of the uk. It just. It didn't work.

Douglas Stilgo [00:28:24] Yeah, they.

Peter Bleeckley [00:28:25] They came in at home, but, yeah, everyone, it's a nostalgia trip. They were going back to their old haunts from their missions and things like that.

Douglas Stilgo [00:28:33] In fact, they talked about the past so much that at one point, Cook said, just one more thing about my past and then I'll get on to the future. And for the rest of the talk, he just kept talking about the past. There was no talk of the future at all. Just the entire talk.

Peter Bleeckley [00:28:48] I think he was aware that he was just talking about history, but he couldn't change tack. Yeah, yeah.

Nemo [00:28:54] The egos as well were, like, massive. Like, I'm surprised those guys could walk up there with the size of their balls. And they stood there, stood there at the pulpit and they were just like, ah, why do you think we're here? We're not here to fool you. Why would we be doing this? We're not dodos. And, yeah, he's 93. Don't you know, you said that a lot.

Guest 2 [00:29:22] Sorry if this is kind of jumping into it a little bit, but as far as that goes, the worst thing for me, and again, talking about us, them trying what, this hope that they might say, well, we're just like you. They went exactly the opposite way and said, well, we're nothing like you. We're all saved. We're all saved. Everyone here, we don't have to worry about that. We're taken care of. And I just think you can't really get a better way of just distancing yourself from everybody else in your audience saying, we're all saved.

Peter Bleeckley [00:29:53] We.

Guest 2 [00:29:53] We've got no worries. What about you?

Peter Bleeckley [00:29:59] I think, as well.

Jane [00:30:00] I think so.

Peter Bleeckley [00:30:01] It was, yeah. Going on about. Sorry, go on.

Nemo [00:30:04] I was going to say, as Jane said, actually, that, like, TBMs loved it. Even though there was no substance. Like, the. The people I've asked were like, oh, it was amazing. Yeah, we loved it. It was fantastic. They just can't see through the crap.

Douglas Stilgo [00:30:21] Jump on in there, Jane.

Jane [00:30:25] I think I answered the question. I think I answered the Question quite clearly, is this a British rescue? No, it really wasn't. There didn't seem to be any. But they thought it was agenda behind it, maybe. Yeah, maybe so. I think the members. Yeah, members loved it. It was, you know, it was. It was lovely. I think one thing that didn't come up when we were doing our analysis of what might happen is. Sorry, we did. We could have mentioned the fact that this week, this coming week in Scotland, we have COP26. So we've got this United Nations World Conference all about climate change. Greta Thunberg got off the train and was mobbed. You know, it's. It's. People are going crazy for all of the things that are happening here. The streets are at a standstill. And it would have been so nice to hear something from our church leaders about that. That didn't happen. I think they did a photo shoot outside the Parliament, but there was, you know, absolute crickets on that, and that really disappointed me. Did you notice that was one production

Secretive Nature of the Apostolic Tour

Nemo [00:31:41] we mentioned it was totally in secret. They traveled around the country and they didn't tell anyone where they were going. I don't know if they were worried about, like, Beetle Mania or if it was my very clear threat to egg one of them, but

Guest 2 [00:31:59] it just popped

Nemo [00:32:00] up like, we're here. Boom. And then they'd appear 300 miles in the opposite direction, and you're like, hey, you've got me. But, yeah, geography wise. And then they pitched up to do the actual conference at the Hyde Park Chapel. And I can only assume it's because it's got, like its own little Christus statue and we like to show off the money. But Hyde Park Chapel is on a road right next to Museum Row, and it is across the road from the Natural History Museum and the National Science Museum. So it's kind of like on one side of the road you have a church becoming a museum. On the other side of the road, you have two massive museums that disprove everything that they're talking about. It was just like, why did you go there?

Douglas Stilgo [00:32:56] Yeah, the optics wasn't great.

John Dehlin [00:33:01] Sam, what'd you think about that?

Peter Bleeckley [00:33:02] I spoke to a few people. Sorry. Who are trying to stay active and who are members, and they were very disappointed, you know, so it wasn't all happiness from the TBMs. I mean, we have a long history of them coming and doing this over and over again. That's why we made all these accurate predictions, because we know what they're like when they get here. And I remember when I was a kid, My parents, my mum particularly would just come home fuming because she was involved in PR for the church that once again we had traipsed into London and thousands of people had gathered and we had weeks of trying to invite your non member friends to come and be amazed by hearing from the prophets. And all they would talk about is themselves and each other and their ancestors in Britain. And their whole attitude seems to be it's enough for us to just be here. And I think something we all noticed was that they're off script at these things. When they go international, they don't prepare their talks so they speak off the cuff. And it's very revealing. This is why these regional sort of appearances are actually quite important to pay attention to because you get to hear the real person. No one has edited or checked what they're going to say and they're just riffing, usually really boringly.

Douglas Stilgo [00:34:17] And that's why they don't like folks like me recording it and putting it online.

Peter Bleeckley [00:34:21] Yeah, yeah.

Douglas Stilgo [00:34:22] They don't want it to stay out there because they don't want people to then be able to critique it and go through it because it was all off piste. So we're gonna hear what Sam wanted to say on that.

Reactions to the Conference Announcement

John Dehlin [00:34:31] Samantha, I'm curious what you thought about their predictions and then your initial high level quick reactions.

Guest 3 [00:34:38] Yeah, I mean, you guys are right on the money. I feel like the whole thing was. It had no substance, it was completely empty. I don't know what I was expecting, but maybe slightly more than that. I also walked away from the whole thing wondering, is Patricia Holland okay? Because her whole thing about wanting to be lost and never found, I was like, yeah, that makes sense to me.

Jane [00:35:00] Well, actually I'd really like to talk about Sister Holland if that's okay.

John Dehlin [00:35:07] Are we gonna, are we gonna be showing her clips at some point?

Douglas Stilgo [00:35:10] Yeah, we do have a clip of hers. Yeah. Right, slide number four. Do we want to start there of some of the stuff she said?

John Dehlin [00:35:17] Yeah, start there.

Guest [00:35:17] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:35:18] Should I play that? Play that clip. Okay, here we go.

Peter Bleeckley [00:35:22] Just to prep. Can sort to forewarn people because we don't want this to be disrespectful. She is getting quite old, struggles a little bit, but she actually speaks quite powerfully if you listen to what she's saying. But the content was, you know, serious, you know, worrying in some ways as well. But you know, she, she's, she's getting elderly. But she really tried her best, we think. Anyway, gone.

John Dehlin [00:35:46] And maybe just to back up a

Peter Bleeckley [00:35:47] tiny bit, what Sam was talking about.

John Dehlin [00:35:49] So the church didn't live stream this to the world, is that right?

Douglas Stilgo [00:35:53] Well, so they did. It went out on YouTube on a link. Anyone could watch it on that link, but the moment the broadcast ended, it went to a private video.

John Dehlin [00:36:00] Okay.

Douglas Stilgo [00:36:01] So I won't reveal my techniques on air, but I was able to capture it and keep a copy for those that wish to kind of rewatch it, which includes a lot of active members. A lot of people missed it for various reasons, and they want to watch it again. So it is available online for folks.

John Dehlin [00:36:15] So I wonder if that means the church is afraid to keep up what they say for this type of reaction video.

Douglas Stilgo [00:36:22] Honestly, I think so, yeah.

Peter Bleeckley [00:36:24] Oh, definitely.

John Dehlin [00:36:25] Okay. All right, so this is a. And again, main speakers were Quinton Cook, Jeffrey R. Holland, M. Russell Ballard, and all their spouses, basically, Mary G. Cook,

Douglas Stilgo [00:36:38] Patricia T. Holland, and then Elder Phillips spoke this morning. And yesterday we had a little bit from Elder DeFeo, but not really okay much.

John Dehlin [00:36:47] And that's Tom Phillips's son.

Douglas Stilgo [00:36:49] That is Tom Phillips's son. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:51] So we'll get into that because I think that discussion's great. Okay. All right. So you guys want to start with Patricia Hall. And we're not trying to pick on her, Right. It's. It would be easy for people to think we're trying to pick on.

Peter Bleeckley [00:37:02] I mean, she said important stuff. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:37:04] Okay. Here's Patricia Holland.

▶ Video Clip 2

Video Clip 2 [00:37:08] And as I've listened to them, they

Video Clip 2 [00:37:13] express the very same thing that Paul has suggested, that fear, even fear of falling into God's hands, can be a very fearful fate. We all have to go through fearful things.

Video Clip 2 [00:37:39] Some of the fears that we all

Video Clip 2 [00:37:41] go through, as some of you may have gone through, is that we fear

Video Clip 2 [00:37:46] any kind of change.

Video Clip 2 [00:37:51] It's because we can't predict the future. We just don't know what's going to happen.

Video Clip 2 [00:37:58] And

Video Clip 2 [00:38:00] we have our.

Video Clip 2 [00:38:01] Those of us sitting up here have fears of getting one day older for some reason.

Video Clip 2 [00:38:07] And I know you have your own

Video Clip 2 [00:38:08] fears,

Video Clip 2 [00:38:11] but I just want to say

Video Clip 2 [00:38:14] that it's the only way you're going to develop faith. And faith isn't faith until that's all you have to hold onto.

Sister Holland's Remarks and Faith Journey

Jane [00:38:31] So I just want to just jump in because I feel like I was really looking forward to hearing from Sister Holland, Queen Patricia. She is, you know, the story that I had shared back in our preview video about pitching up to church in a pair of jeans because my husband was so uncomfortable and, you know, didn't want to, you know, show up in a suit and feel really awkward. Sister Holland had done that years ago. An investigator, I hate that term, had come to church and was wearing jeans. So the following week, Sister Patricia turned up wearing her jeans to help them feel more comfortable. I love the idea of sort of the faithful, rebellious disruption that can kind of, you know, disrupt that narrative. So I've always had a real soft spot for her, clearly her health. I mean, I don't know. She's doing well. She's an older lady. She's doing really, really well. But where? Alana and I were having a great conversation yesterday while she was speaking that immediately we get cries of, she is. What were we hearing? Senility, Parkinson's. She should be retired. Everyone here is too old. And I get really, really upset with things like that because we just verge into ageism. That is not the reason why someone should necessarily inherently be released from a calling or not. We have a problem when all of our leadership are older white males, but when we go into the realm of ageism, it's just very uncool of us. I'm very sensitive to things like that. Having a disabled son that quickly, we can turn the church into Sparta when we see there's no needs. Sister Patricia reminded me a lot of a sister in our ward. The way she would speak, the way she would sort of look round for, you know, a bit of confirmation, about to find it, find her train of thought. So to me, I remember this. This lady talking about how she felt like she had been put out to pasture. There were no callings for her. And let's face it, if Sister Holland was released, there would be no space for her. Her voice would have been lost. So I loved hearing from her. I thought what she said was meaningful, allowing us to fear. We don't get to hear enough of that kind of rhetoric. And that was the one sort of thing I think I heard that I thought, oh, yeah, we're calling, we're crying out for this kind of talk. The other thing that I wanted to highlight that she did that was heartbreaking because I really see what's happening today in the world and in the British Isles, as I see, there is so much of a women's moment, and women are sort of driving this moment. Women are holding book clubs and podcasting and online groups where we're able to finally talk about the fact that our garments are causing thrush and that are, you know, they don't work with breast size and all of these things that finally we're speaking about. Sister Holland had this moment where she stumbled over trying to find the word for what she was, for what her calling was. And she started to sort of turn to Elder Holland and ask, what do we call, you know, us as companions? What. What would our title be? And it broke my heart because women are asking this question. Elder Holland, when he stood up, made a joke about how a primary child had once suggested that if they're apostles, then their wife should be called apostles. And it just made me really, really sad. But it was just that moment of this, you know, and the tone of voice that she was using at her age, the sacrifice that she's made to stand, how she, you know, stand there in front of us all, come all across the world and. What is my title again? Yeah,

Guest 2 [00:43:12] Can I just kick back ever so slightly there with one of the points that you made, Jane?

John Dehlin [00:43:19] And.

Guest 2 [00:43:19] No, obviously. Well, I'm going to anyway, because you are right when you talk about ageism. You're absolutely right. And I know some of the comments that I've made in the past. I might be guilty of a little bit like that being a bit like that, but part of the issue is that they've created a system that, you know, you. You become the president of the church by just being the oldest, by. By being the last person to die. That's what you've got to do once you're in the quorum of the 12, then if you want to hit the. The chief spot, just don't die. And, and that came across in the. The conference where they're constantly reminding us of. Of how old they are.

Jane [00:44:01] This, this.

Guest 2 [00:44:02] This constant reminder of how old all. All these people were. And so absolutely 100%, you can get people that are both very old and have got a lot to contribute. But I think we've got a system where their main contribution is. Is their age, if that makes sense, which is fine if it goes hand in hand with, you know, wisdom and something wonderful to say. But sadly, we know that often that it doesn't. And we've had very recently a president of the church that wasn't able to carry on with his. With his calling, but we just kind of ignored that and just kind of kept him in position anyway, rather than saying, okay, he's done, you know, he's done a great job. Let's retire him now.

John Dehlin [00:44:49] Nemo, do you have a clip of them talking about their age? Did you happen to grab that?

Douglas Stilgo [00:44:55] I do, yes.

Guest 2 [00:44:56] It is

Douglas Stilgo [00:44:58] number six. It comes with the second anointing bit as well.

John Dehlin [00:45:02] Okay, really quickly, Samantha, did you have anything you want to say in Response to Patricia Holland. I was just curious if you had a thought about that.

Guest 3 [00:45:09] Well, I loved everything Jane said. And just in case I misrepresented myself when I said that I was questioning whether she was okay, it wasn't referring to age or health, just the fact that she said she wanted to be lost and never found.

Jane [00:45:21] Yeah, you're, you're absolutely right. But the thing is, I think we all wear away or very aware that, that she's, you know, she, she's not doing great necessarily, health wise. You're, you're absolutely right.

John Dehlin [00:45:34] Elder Holland's not either. I mean, he, he makes reference. Oh, go ahead.

Peter Bleeckley [00:45:38] No, yeah, Peter, he, he, Sorry. That's right. He, he talked, he actually spoke about how he's pretty close to death. Like he says in my, in my health condition. You know, he implied quite heavily that he isn't well now. And, and they, I mean, there's a lot in their age and the end is nigh, which obviously impacts their whole worldview on things. And, and you know, President Nelson and others who are also in that position, they're very much, oh, the second coming is tomorrow. It's the end. The end. Let's just, you know, let's destroy the Salt Lake template. It kind of doesn't matter. And I think that is one of the problems of having a gerontocracy and elderly leadership, and that's the only people around the table with power is that they don't think to the future. The Ensign had an article a while ago about how this church was started by people in their 20s and they produce scripture like confetti machines. These elderly people do not. And it's not just because they're elderly. It's also that they're selected by the system to be the least imaginative, the least creative, the least inventive people because they will never rock the boats. As Hugh Nibley warned in his leaders versus Managers talk. You know, these are the elderly managers and all they have to talk about is themselves and each other and their system and how important they are. It's a feedback loop. And, and that's what we witnessed. But just on what Patricia said, it was actually really contrary to the usual Mormon narrative in a way that I wasn't happy about. By saying that you don't have real faith until you have nothing else was actually quite an elitist thing to say, because the normal message of the church is we all learn line upon line, precepts upon precept. The little 8 year old has faith that's valid. And you're growing it and you're developing it. And she was kind of talking this kind of very born again evangelical extremist narrative that you have everything fall apart and not even have any rational reason to support belief. So all you have is your faith and you just hold on to that in this moment of test which some people go through. And of course when you're, you're facing death soon, that, that's completely reasonable for her to be thinking that. But what worries me is this, this idea that your faith isn't good enough. All of you good faithful people who grew up in the church, you've just always had a belief in this church that your, yours isn't real. Faith was, was the subtext there, whether it was intentional or not. And, and it's a bit reminded me of F. Whitney Clayton, the president of the 70s, saying obedience isn't real until it's unconditional and in advance, which is ludicrous after he'd said he wasn't talking about blind faith. So I just. Those things ring alarm bells for me because it is suddenly sweeping away the whole infrastructure of what our church is meant to be about and saying you have to do these radical extremist things. You have to have no hope and be in total despair before you even know what real faith is, or you have to not have any rational analysis before you obey the leaders to be really obedient. And I think that's not a healthy messaging, but we can understand it's coming from her emotional and intellectual position at the moment. But as you say, it made us worry or it implies concern that she is feeling that level of kind of despair even though she's had a whole lifetime in the church, which isn't a great advert or, you know, all her supports are going away.

Jane [00:49:24] I feel like as she was speaking, I had more sort of felt like it was. She's experienced on some level the dark night of the soul. I felt like this was a woman talking who has had spiritual experiences and they felt like they had dimension. And as she was alluding to that, I could hear some kind of substance behind it. And while, okay, your faith doesn't have to have had the dark night of the soul experience in order to be valid for a lot of people, that is an extremely powerful spiritual experience that if, you know, if that's what she's talking about, that's what she's alluding to. So I found it quite. I found it really interesting, I found it really helpful. And especially I think whenever you're surrounded by other people who are quite maybe formulaic or they're relying on their ancestors, their age or their studies. You know, we studied this. We know she has had some kind of experience that has fundamentally changed her and she's sharing that. And I just, I liked how it was her. There was real connection there to the point where she felt she wanted to stay.

Peter Bleeckley [00:50:41] Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:50:42] So I kind of read that differently as well. For me, she was saying something that's quite positive compared to what we often hear and what we heard sometimes in that conference, which is that faith is. It's only faith if that's all you've got is faith. You know, when we, when we focus so much on getting up every month and saying about all the things that we know. I know this and I know that, and it's all you know. And then again, and we're going to get onto this in a minute, this idea of, you know, we know with certainty. Knowledge isn't faith. If you've got. And the scriptures are quite clear on that. If you've got knowledge, then you haven't got faith. And. And so I thought it was quite nice to hear saying it's only faith if that's all you've got is faith. If you've got this, this great knowledge, then that's not faith. That's how I read it anyway.

Guest [00:51:31] There you go.

Guest 2 [00:51:32] Are we gonna. Sorry, before we move on though as well, are we just gonna. Can we talk about the whole. We can't predict the future.

Nemo [00:51:40] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:51:40] Do we want to play the age. Okay, we already set up the age clip. Do we want to play that?

Alana [00:51:45] Yeah.

Douglas Stilgo [00:51:45] Okay.

Douglas Stilgo [00:51:46] You just need to play the first kind of like.

John Dehlin [00:51:47] Which one is it?

Douglas Stilgo [00:51:48] Minute or so that it's Slide six.

John Dehlin [00:51:50] Slide six. All right, let's just play the age. The age bit. Here we go.

Elder Ballard at 93 and His Message

Douglas Stilgo [00:51:55] I wonder if you've thought what it means to have a 93 year old come and do this. Now, he doesn't act like he's 93 and he surely doesn't act with us like he's 93. We're exhausted trying to keep up with him. But Elder Cook and I are no spring chickens. You know, when you think about this, he just turned 81 and I'm about to turn 81 and I'm already lame and afflicted and carrying a cane and leaning on Sister Holland. We're just staggering toward the finish line here. You know, talk about the blind leading the blind. These scriptures have great meaning for us the older we get. You know, the fellow that fell into the Ditch and all of those. Well, here we are. We're visual aids before you. And I wonder if you've seen thought even today about why do these men and their wives. I don't say anything about the ages of the wives. The wives are eternally young. But somehow the men they marry just get older and older and older. Have you thought about why President Ballard's doing this? Why did he come? It would be a lot easier to stay home. It would be a lot easier or if he came to just head straight for Brighton, you know, just, you know, put your feet up, whatever. Let the. Let the church carry on and enjoy the. Maybe there. I don't know whether they're sunshine and Brighton today or not, but at least there's sand and a beach chair. Why not do that? President Nelson. President Nelson. 97. 97. This may be our first 100-year-old prophet and he's going strong. He's made a U turn. He's going the other way. He's getting younger. Person after person, elder after elder, year after year, age after age. Why on earth do they do this? Why is he here today? I can testify to you that it is not for his sake. It is not for him that he is here. And I can testify that it's not what he would ever say. It is not for his salvation. It isn't for Russell Ballard's salvation that he keeps coming here. He got that taken care of a long time ago. He wouldn't say that. But I can. And so too with Elder Cook and Sister Holland and Sister Cook. Just leave me out of it. The rest of them, they're all home free. Their salvation for me is sure. If they're not sure, what about the rest of us? We're in big trouble. So let's give them this. This permanent pass that they've earned and been blessed with by the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ and the principles of the gospel. And so they're safe. All the more reason to just say I've done there, done that, been there, given everything. Been on these umpty, umpteen missions, gone around the world all these different times. I'm staying home, I'm relaxing in a. Put the feet up and watch, you know, Coronation street, something.

John Dehlin [00:55:33] Oh, my gosh, there's so much there.

Alana [00:55:36] How old was Elder Ballard again? How old was he?

Douglas Stilgo [00:55:39] I think he was 93.

Peter Bleeckley [00:55:41] 93. We all know now.

Nemo [00:55:44] Can we just do it?

Peter Bleeckley [00:55:45] They said it about 10 times.

Nemo [00:55:47] A quick fact check. Brighton is the gay of the uk.

Douglas Stilgo [00:55:53] It is indeed.

Nemo [00:55:54] So that's where he wanted to go. And there is no sand in Brighton.

Peter Bleeckley [00:55:58] It is a Francisco.

Nemo [00:56:02] So he's clearly not being too bright.

Peter Bleeckley [00:56:03] But there are deck chairs. I was there with my art students a few weeks ago. There's.

Nemo [00:56:07] There's chairs.

Peter Bleeckley [00:56:08] You can sit on a chair.

Nemo [00:56:09] He's an apostle. Now then.

Jeffrey Holland's Talk: Live Reactions

John Dehlin [00:56:12] So before we go into detail, I just want to hear somebody distill like, the, the main points he was trying to make and how you feel felt as he was trying to make those main points.

Douglas Stilgo [00:56:22] Go on. Pd,

Douglas Stilgo [00:56:25] Right?

Alana [00:56:25] Were you desperate there?

Nemo [00:56:27] I just think they nuffed it up so much. And that's me, like winding it in.

Jane [00:56:32] Okay, so can we just say pd, did you just clarify this? That clip was from the youth session. Yes, this was for the young people.

Nemo [00:56:42] Okay, this makes it even worse. Okay, so basically he's standing up and he's, he's pointing out that they're all really old. Okay? If you couldn't tell from the way they look and how they speak, they're all just really old and they're flying around the world to all of these lovely places. But it's not for the goodness of their health, you know, it is not for them. It's for you, okay? They're old. They don't need to do this. They've had their second anointing. You know, he even started naming them. And then you could see on his face, he was like, oh, I've gone too far. Okay, so he starts, like winding it back in and he's. He's speaking to like 12, 14 year olds and he's. It's like their granddad saying to them, oh, son, you just follow me. Don't worry about the rest of it. Don't worry about what the scientists say or anyone else says. I'm still here at 81, flying around the world, so it must be true. And that's literally what he said. He said later on, we've had experiences that you haven't, so trust us. Okay, to what I thought those 14, 15, 16 year olds or young single adults are having experiences that you apostles at 81 and 93 will never understand because this generation is growing up in an entirely different world to the one you did. And you've come in and basically said, have blind faith, follow us because we're old and we're still doing it, so it must be true. And yeah, that was where he went with it. And he, he did give the don't you ever, ever, ever think it's okay to leave speech.

John Dehlin [00:58:40] I hope we can play that later.

Douglas Stilgo [00:58:42] Yeah, yeah, we can. Yeah, we've got that.

John Dehlin [00:58:45] Other. Other reactions because I want to react, but I want everyone else to react first.

Guest 2 [00:58:48] I think it was really, really poor taste. I really did. I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was really fascinating. Obviously there his alluding to the fact that they've all had their second anointing. The reality is that probably the majority of the audience there have got no idea what that is because we don't talk about it.

John Dehlin [00:59:08] Julie, can I just, can I just jump in and then cav. You keep going like Mormon Stories podcast, the number one episode of all time probably is the Tom Phillips episode where a former two time stake president friend of Jeffrey R. Holland tells in detail on Mormon Stories podcast that he's received the super secret second anointing, which basically means that an apostle anoints Tom Phillips, his wife anoints him with oil. It's a super secret ordinance that they all have to lie about where basically they're told that they've made the celestial kingdom. So the fact that we know that that is like a big deal. That is probably the number one episode of all time. Tom Phillips's son is sitting on the stand and then Holland has the gall to be talking about them having made it was just like mind blowing to me. Like what, what was he thinking?

Douglas Stilgo [01:00:05] That's right, because Alana's probably had it as well. So you know, he's in the club. You know, Alana Phillips has probably had it in his position as a 70.

John Dehlin [01:00:15] Like did he.

Jane [01:00:15] Was he.

Douglas Stilgo [01:00:16] Sorry, carry on, Julian.

John Dehlin [01:00:17] Was he not thinking, Was he like trying to be like, was that a semi disclosure so that there could be plausible deniability? Was he. Was that a lame attempt at like informed consent so that he could kind of allude to.

Douglas Stilgo [01:00:30] I wouldn't say so. Because they wanted this video taken down. Were it not for people recording it and putting it back up, it would have been down the memory hole. They could deny anything that was ever said at this conference if they wanted to. So the. Not in the record.

Nemo [01:00:45] So the other thing was.

John Dehlin [01:00:47] I'm just wondering why it would go anywhere near that topic.

Douglas Stilgo [01:00:50] I think because.

Guest 2 [01:00:51] Because it's their trump card. That's their trump card. Because they've got nothing to give. You know, I think we can and we'll. Anyone that's watched it and, and as we go on and talk about it, we'll see they didn't really have anything to. To give us other than to say we're really old. We know things that you don't know. We're not allowed to talk about. Just trust us. Just trust us. Don't leave. Just trust us. And so it was just a way, I think, of just galvanizing that, you know, because anybody that does know about the second anointing and was watching that is probably thinking, what. They've seen Jesus. That's what that means. They've seen Jesus. And. And so we can trust these people because they've actually seen Jesus. And later on, that's hinted at as well, this idea of things that you don't know. So I think that was the purpose. Ego as well, maybe to kind of put that out there. But it just felt so in such a bad taste to say, don't worry, we, we or do worry. I don't know about you guys, he says, but. But we've. We've made it. You. You lot can worry, but we've made it. You don't need to worry about. And we've earned it as well. I think that was the worst. We've earned it. You didn't say we're saved because of Jesus Christ, because of the atonement, because his grace has washed away all of my sins. We have made it. It was. We've earned it. And I just thought, that is. That's poor. That is poor. If I was Jesus, I'd have been pissed at that.

Nemo [01:02:22] Yeah. And I think this was just the beginning of showing how poorly planned this whole thing was. All the planning must have gone into, like this holiday tour of Blighty and Ireland. Right. And the talks all the way through, you take away a teleprompter, you take away the correlation committee, and they're absolutely knackered because they, they were off on tangents. They said things that they were going to do and then they didn't get around to it. All sorts of things. And I think that was just one of the situations where he started down something and he kind of thought, yeah, this, this is good. The kids need this. And down with. Down with the Ute.

Douglas Stilgo [01:03:09] And I mean, they, they came out of the gates. Mary G. Cook came out of the Gates with a reference to Vera Lynn, the British wartime singer. Right. That's how down with the Kids she is. She came out of the Gates with a singer from the 40s. And then we had references to everything I Do, I do it for you by. Who's that by Brian Adams. Brian Adams, Right.

John Dehlin [01:03:30] I'm aware of that reference.

Douglas Stilgo [01:03:33] I have to uphold my youth status, Julian.

Guest [01:03:36] Right.

Douglas Stilgo [01:03:37] So. But they just came out of the Gates with Dated reference after dated reference. Elder Cook was Talking about the 1940s and the Blitz and how he was named after a radio presenter from that time. It's just they're so out of touch. It's incredible. Sorry, John, you wanted to react to what he's been saying about second anointing.

John Dehlin [01:03:54] Well, Samantha, did you ever. Did you have a reaction? I'm curious both with the. Like, you all, you know, we're saved and you're not, so be very scared. And we've had our second anointing and you haven't. What do you think?

Guest 3 [01:04:07] I think they're just doubling down on reinforcing the hierarchy and I don't know that they realize how not compelling that's going to be to a group of.

Guest [01:04:15] Of what?

Guest 3 [01:04:16] Teenagers?

John Dehlin [01:04:18] Yeah, yeah.

Alana [01:04:20] I just remember sitting, thinking with Jane.

Douglas Stilgo [01:04:23] Yeah, sorry, go on, Alana.

Alana [01:04:25] No, it's all good. I just remember sitting, thinking, like, do they realize they're talking to children here? Like I was saying to Jane, like, I mean, there was one small part. I'm hopeless with names. Who was the first guy who spoke defeo or. Yeah, like just. Again, it was a little bit of, you know, the guilt. And, you know, I remember he said something like, you know, this is our day. Can't you feel it? And I'm like, no, son, I can't feel it. You know, And I guess, I mean, it's not major important. It's just something that really bothered me was, you know, saying things like, you know, stay close to your family. I'm just reading from my notes here where you are loved and accepted and. And I hate statements like that because not everyone is loved and accepted by their family. And it troubles me a little bit when they make statements like that. I think you really need to think out. And like you say they didn't have the teleprompter, they can have a free flown. But I think things like that can be problematic because I look at certain people who I know who are not accepted by their family, who are not accepted for who they are and things like that. That's just one of many things that I've heard over the years in the church, you know, that I really do find problematic. I really think they need to stop and think about the words that they're saying and how they affect people. And I don't think for a minute, personally, he went out his way to say that in a bad way. But I just sometimes think that they really need to stop and think before they say things because things like that could hurt People, you know.

Douglas Stilgo [01:05:58] Well said Peter.

John Dehlin [01:06:00] I wanted, did you want to say something also. Also Jane? Yeah, Peter, Jane, before I even say anything, did you guys have any quick.

Peter Bleeckley [01:06:07] Yeah, well, they, they kept saying, you know, oh, we're, we're witnessing history. You know, Holland said late in one of his talks, you, you sometimes don't see history happening unless you're in it. And he was making all these references to where their and, or his buddy's ancestors had come over in the past and implying they were here doing the same to rescue Britain. You know, I know they're not calling it British rescue, but they actually frame things in those terms a lot. Never any conversation about the strengths of the British saints, how we recovered this church from being devastated, where they converted thousands, then took away with all their resources. How over the last century, my grandparents, parents, myself, all of us against the odds, built this church till it grew. And we grew these tiny branches into wards while being constantly sabotaged, which we'll probably talk about later, by mission systems that kept baptizing loads of people who were not ready. You know, the baseball baptisms originated here. And then we had this huge burden of inactive members to carry in all of our world lists ever since. But still, somehow we grew. That wasn't because they popped over every decade or so as apostles to kind of cheer us up and stir us up and bring God. It's because we already had our religion and we worked really hard at it. So this whole thing of, you know, we're here, we're better than you, we've earned our elitist states. They're just locked in a hierarchy, as Sam said, all they talk about and they think that's all it takes, is to just turn up and be, and that will do the job. And it doesn't happen like that. But the history that was made is we just had the clearest, possibly for a century, in a talk publicly from a pulpit reference to the second anointing. I mean that, you know, let's just savor this moment because he was, you know, he went down the rabbit hole. But this is why in my podcast and other people, we focus so much on the face to face dialogues that the apostles have. Not so much general conference, although they keep revealing stuff there as well. So anytime they are off script, we. We get all these insights into what's really going on and what they really think about stuff. So that, that's my comment here, really is that was one of the historical moments that, that, that was in the long term, a real take home sort of Admission there blatant references to the. To the second anointing with some detail. I mean, it's amazing. Yeah.

Jane [01:08:48] So I think it's really important to sort of build on what Alana was saying. Alana is. I feel it's important to give the audience a little bit of context that as the active Mormon in our friendship, Alana has kind of symbolized for me a lot of what is happening in the church in the UK just now. So while I've been on this journey for a really long time, it's complicated. Alana would call me, I mean, like, just about every night with another question about something that's going on in the world of Mormonism. I've been listening to a podcast. Have you heard this thing? Alana was getting really, really ill. But the pure stress of what was happening in her church life. Alana's friends, Alana's family, you know, our friends have all left the church. And so Alana is in this position of being a person with incredible faith and making herself ill because she's so busy helping other people. She's like the perfect Mormon who is in so much pain that to help her process, this is how our podcast came about. So today, as we're preparing for today, as we're preparing for this weekend, we are calling out in the United Kingdom for someone to hear how much pain there's. Now. This is not just a UK problem. Peter has made it really clear that what's happening here is an early warning system. It is coming to where you live. You know that this is a global issue. But if Alana's the personification of this tension and for the sake of her mental health is having to take a step back, if the prayers of the UK scenes are that, will you please, please come and speak to us about this pain, about the things that we are really worried about, the things that are on our mind. Alana's your audience, and as soon as they come out of the gate, it's like they were asleep. It's like, you know, you're speaking to you. If there was no. There was no energy at all. You know, we were kind of joking today in the chat. It was like we were watching a funeral. And that was awful. So you had these opportunities. Alana's prepared, Alana's watching. You know, so many of us are hoping that you may have something. We do. You guys, like, sorry, my dog is just very dramatic. You know, we are having. He's not dying, I promise. It's just a drama queen that we are Having a discussion about something where there was so little substance that, you know, we're talking about what we wanted to happen that we're having to really dig to Cester Holland. There was substance there. And so, yeah, I just wanted to highlight that Alana's experience of, you know, waiting to hear something that is never going to come is heartbreaking. And if you think, you know, we've all heard it in church where you have speakers or teachers who are relying on their mission stories and having no, not one spiritual experience since then that you can share, that's what you guys came to the UK with. That's great. I'm really delighted. I'm glad that you made a difference. I'm glad that you had those experiences. But that's what you brought to help. It wasn't enough,

Nemo [01:13:07] the shit show.

John Dehlin [01:13:10] It was powerful.

What the Apostles Left Unsaid

Guest 2 [01:13:13] I think one of the, one of the interesting things about all this is that if we're actually going to focus on what they said, there's not really a lot for us to work with because they didn't really say anything. So the most interesting thing is what they didn't say is all of the things that they didn't say. And I think some, someone mentioned earlier, I can't remember who it was but said about a lot of their friends that TBMs watched it and I loved it and I would, I would love, I really would love to just talk to them and just say what, what was it that they said that you loved? You know, because if I, I,

Alana [01:13:49] you

Guest 2 [01:13:49] know, if, if we've taken this really seriously, if we're taking this seriously and saying, well, we've got three people here that are prophets, seers and revelators. Yeah. And you think about what those words mean. What we're going to do is they're going to come here and they're going to talk to us and if we were, if we were speaking to our non member friends that didn't understand what to expect, if they could set aside their skepticism for a moment, they would be like, what? Okay, I want to hear that, I want to hear that, that, that message. Because they're going to talk about some, some really important issues and, and they didn't, you know, what did they talk about? Well, but they said that they've been to, it's not the first time they've been to Britain. That's one thing they said. They're very old. Some of them have got some kind of Mormon celebrity ancestors. In fact, those three things, it's almost like they had to come up, one of them had to be mentioned every 10 minutes, otherwise the broadcast would just stop because they just talked about it so often. But that's it. They didn't really say anything. And so on the one hand, it's the absence of any real substance, religious instruction. Know there's no real religious instruction, you know, did we really. Okay, so a couple of highlights I thought were I thought Patricia Holland's talk was good. I also thought that Alana Phillips's talk, for me, that was the best, without a doubt of the whole thing. But aside from that, where were they saying, well, look, this is how we want you to be good disciples. Not don't tell me religious scriptures and say your prayers. That's not the same thing. Tell me how to be a good disciple, tell me how to serve, tell me how to love more, tell me how to be more Christlike. There's complete absence of that. But then also you've got this absence of all the things that you would want a profit. You've got profit coming. What is he going to talk about? The fact that there was no mention of environmental issues, considering what's going on in Britain at the time, it's just, it's baffling, especially to a group, group of young people. That is just baffling. No mention of, of mental health, you know, no mention of, of COVID really. And, and you know, you really want a message that says, says, look, you know, let me, I can tell you, I've, I've. I'm in touch with a higher power here. And I can tell you, don't worry about this, this is going to be okay. Or, you know, this is the message. You've got to do this if you want to, if you want this planet to survive. This is what God wants you to do. That would be a wonderful thing to hear. And there's just none of that. There is nothing of the prophetic at all.

Douglas Stilgo [01:16:22] We do have a quick example of what we did get.

John Dehlin [01:16:25] Let me, I'll just say really quickly, my. When they talk about how old they are, they're talking about it like it's a feature, not a bug, as we say in the software business. And I think the fact that you're all saying, where's the beef? You guys are prophet seers of revelators. How much did the Church send with all the security detail for this entourage? And then what did they actually deliver? It was a lot of off the cuff, extemporaneous, low impact, low substance, uncorrelated, kind of, you know, I think you know, we know that they could put some sort of emeritus status, impose an emeritus status on the apostles. Why do we know that? Because they do it to the quorum of the 70s. Everyone is forcibly removed from the quorums of the 70 once they reach the age of 70. And so we know that there's value in forcibly retiring people. But I guess from JRR Tolkien, we learn that it's hard to give the ring up. And these apostles will impose on the 70A timeout, kind of a forced retirement that they won't impose on themselves. And somehow this bragging about age, it's not only to kind of make the members feel like they should be impressed, to feel like they should be in awe, to feel like they should be grateful, but they're almost saying, look how amazing it is that we're all so old. And that feels a little bit tone deaf when you think about the fact that so many people are kind of looking at each other saying, where's the beef? Where's the prophecy, the seership and the revelation? You know, and maybe that's just a bunch of disgruntled ex Mormons reacting, you know, tearing this apart. But I don't think so.

Alana [01:18:11] I don't think, like, it's really necessarily sitting tearing it apart. I think for me, I tried. I'm kind of like so angry at a lot of things right now. And I'm in that position where, you know, I'm hurt, I'm angry, and I think, you know, I tried to go into this. Now I don't even watch General Conference. So this was a biggie for me watching this. And quite possibly, if I wasn't coming on here tonight, I probably wouldn't have watched it, to be perfectly honest. But I went into it trying to be positive and thinking, right, okay, we've got three apostles here. Let's hear what they're going to say. And for me, there was just no wow moment. There's a saying that goes, I would rather watch paint dry. And that's how I felt with it. I just thought, what is even happening here? Why am I giving up? I think I said in our group message today, well, that was an hour and a half of my time wasted. And I don't like to think that, you know, but it was like, what is your point here? Like, why are you even here? You know, I was waiting for the let's talk about how to love better. Let's talk about how to accept people better. You know, and, you know, the amount of name dropping I always Go back to. Jane always says, where's Jesus? You know, I need Jesus, I need to go to church and hear about Jesus. And I think that they did the name drop Jesus's name as much as they name dropped each of their names. Absolutely not. I think if we had to go back and go through it all and pinpoint how many times Christ's name is mentioned compared to Elder Ballard, Elder Holland, I think it would be very minimal, you know, and I just think that's sad.

Guest 2 [01:19:44] You know, was it Alana? That's. Am I right in remembering this? I think Alana, one of the things that he said was, you know, God loves you, you are enough. You are enough. And I thought that was, that was lovely. That is the message that we want to hear. Not, you're not enough, because you're not, you know, we're enough, we're all sorted, but you're not enough. You need to worry.

John Dehlin [01:20:06] And Julian, something that came to my mind as you were talking about what wasn't there. And Peter, this goes to kind of the purpose of you, your wonderful YouTube channel, Mormon Civil War. Where's the advice on how to fix the hemorrhaging of the church in the uk? Like, where's the, okay, we know we've got a serious problem and we've spent all this time and money to like come and do this major week long tour. Here's how we're, here's how we're going to acknowledge the problem and here's how we're going to fix it. There was none of that. And then I'm just going to say to end this rant about, about the age stuff and the second anointing, the fact that, that the second anointing, I think for most of the people that listen to that episode where Tom Phillips outlines what the second anointing is, which in a sense is just, it's an indulgence. It's basically saying if you're wealthy enough, if you're powerful enough, if you're rich enough, if somebody recommends you and you've paid enough tithing, you, you get this super secret ordinance that nobody knows about that promises you that you and possibly your posterity are all in. You've all made the celestial kingdom. Even if you cover up for a sexual predator or even become a sexual predator yourself, it doesn't matter. You're in. That should be something that the church is embarrassed about, embarrassed that the second anointing exists, embarrassed that they, you know, that it's. That it has existed and embarrassed that it's such an elitist, unchristlike ordinance that's super secret. The fact that Holland would even come close to that while Tom Phillips's son is on the stand was just. It's so much hubris. Like my brain can't even handle it.

Personal Stories of Joining and Leaving

Jane [01:21:47] Well, could I just. I didn't anticipate mentioning. I never mentioned this to anyone. Alana, I think, is the only person I've ever spoken to about this. And I'm interested in Samantha's point of view. But I was also a teen convert to the church and when I was 16 years old, during a chat with another convert youth, this girl had talked about how she had been at a fireside and a few people, including Meshnik, had been talking about temple garments. And as she's telling me this as a, I mean, a 16 year old teen convert, I felt physically sick. I was hearing about something that, I mean, it's just, it's unimaginable to me. Why would that even be a thing? I'd heard about the temple and that feeling of being physically sick because there is some kind of secret knowledge or. It's not even that, it's necessarily something really sinister, but it's an awful feeling. When I, years ago, had first started to hear about the second anointing, that's the same feeling that I have. It's the one thing that I really struggle with. And it's not the fact, you know, John, what you're saying about the fact that it exists or that it, you know, it's not even that. For me, it may be. Actually, you know what? I think it sounds like a great, a beautiful expression of an ordinance where a woman is able to offer a blessing and she can. I mean, that sounds, that sounds like something that I think women in our church should get to hear more about or get to experience. There's something incredible there. I can't even explore that feeling because it's the, it's the fact that it's not. It's the fact that it is so hidden. Yeah. So, yeah, I just wanted to share that and I'm interested, Samantha, if you had a. Just a similar experience hearing about temple garments for the first time. And.

Guest 3 [01:24:16] Yeah, so by the time I found out about garments, I was already psychologically dependent on the organization. So I think I was maybe a year into having been baptized or six months. But yeah, the psychological dependency builds line upon line. So by the time I found out about it, I, I think it was unsettling to me. But the, the amount I trusted the person who I found out about them from. And the way that she presented it to me felt somewhat safe. Yeah. Just because I really loved the, the woman who, Who I discovered garments through. So. Yeah. But I do relate to that, that feeling of being physically sick. And the second anointing, I can't imagine if I would have found out about that, that while an active member. Actually it's hard to say because again, I was so psychologically dependent. There's a lot of things I would have been, you know, sort of willing to be okay with or would have made myself okay with. But I didn't find out about that till after I'd already lost all faith. So.

John Dehlin [01:25:26] Yeah, I can.

Nemo [01:25:27] Can I say just quickly? Sorry.

John Dehlin [01:25:29] Sure.

Nemo [01:25:30] One of the difficult things for me about the second anointing is knowing someone on a deeply personal level and then finding out they've had that second anointing and then things start to fall into place about the way that they treat you, the way that they treat the church, and they almost. We speak about the bubble in Utah and different things, but they live in the, this bubble in life because everything's great now because nothing can go wrong, if you know what I mean. They've made it. They've. They've been through the trials and everything else becomes elementary. But it's kind of like having,

Peter Bleeckley [01:26:17] I

Nemo [01:26:17] don't know, the class suck up and no one else can see that there's kind of issues there and that the sun doesn't shine out of their backside. But they made it.

Guest 2 [01:26:30] It's a very clever idea really, isn't it? And I know we're going to move on from the whole second nighting thing, but to, to create this ordinance that says, look, you've made it. It doesn't matter what you do, unless you kill someone, you're safe, you go into heaven. Why would you question that? Why would you question it? Why would you suddenly go, oh, I don't know if that's true. True. You know, so for actually, for these people that get to that point, it's a great way of kind of keeping them on board, isn't it? You know, you're not going to question something that says you are one of the elite. You know, you're one of the 144, 000. You. You're one of the few people that are going to be, you know, top dogs in the next life. It's a, It's a clever idea.

Jane [01:27:13] I, I think what's important as well is to, you know, the fact that I'm talking about first hearing about Something, you know, and that feeling would last for months. And as you're trying to make sense of it, you're, you're in a position where you have to make a choice about how you're going to process that information. Is that a deal breaker? Eventually what would come is, you know, I'm endowed in the temple, I, you know, though I'm married to, you know, a non member. Because what would come is context, but without any context. And like PD saying, you're then going through a world where you can then see the double speak that, oh, when someone was talking about that section in Sunday School of the Doctrine Covenants, they're alluding to the second anointing. But most of the class probably, except for the person speaking, because I can hear that you, you've had some kind of experience. I can, I can hear the code words. I can hear the, you know, you can suddenly read between the lines and see things that you, you didn't necessarily see before. Maybe if everyone had the same context, it would be different, but it's a horrible feeling. It's a really horrible feeling.

John Dehlin [01:28:34] Peter, you want to say something?

Peter Bleeckley [01:28:37] Yeah, just. It's this whole secrets and lies thing. This is where I talk about sort of two religions going on in the same religion. You know, there's that from the beginning this pattern was set. Being secret about polygamy while denying it publicly, being secret about what happens in the temple and you're not allowed to talk about it. Being secret about the real statistics of loss going on in the church at the moment, while publicly lying about growth, being secret about the money they've hoarded. And then the second anointing, it's just this spiral. Like you keep thinking there can't be another layer of worse. And then you find there's another layer of worse. And by even starting down that path, they made a fatal error. If you read Matthew 23, it's so clear that Jesus forbids giving people titles even he forbids calling people father or teacher or anything because only God is your teacher. Yet we make it a requirement that we call everyone elder or president. It's literally forbidden by Jesus from his own mouth. He forbids being obsessive about details and judging people by appearance and virtue, signalling through clothing. But these people have made it the Mormon religion. And so it goes on and this obsession with detail, the Pharisee religion, but there is a rebellion against it. So we're talking about, you know, obviously these three guys are fully on board with, with Pharisaical Mormonism, but what Was fascinating in recent conferences though is there are a few of the apostles starting to step up and they're growing in number. Uchtdorf has been sort of the lone voice. He's not been perfect, but he's often talked in grace based evangelical terms about you're good enough and you're saved. We had exactly the same on Gong. He and Elder Gong, who is an apostle now, last conference before last, absolutely nailed it for Christianity. And now Suarez has joined them and his talk was the standout in the most recent general Conference for pure Christianity, the gospel of grace and love and acceptance and hope. So there are these and they're clearly positioning themselves in exact opposition to the Nelson Oak site, obsessed with about every detail. You know that constantly, even the women in this, this conference here in Britain were saying, always be worthy of a temple recommend, you know, follow all the rules, be exactly obedient on the covenant path. They were ramping up all this anxious perfectionism. Ballard talked, I think it was him talked about being a bishop and he had a prompting at 10pm to go and visit a couple in his ward and didn't. So he left it to the morning and overnight one of them died and he felt guilty. But that's just piling on anxiety because we all have thoughts of I could do this or could do that and you're going to feel bad for not going and visiting people when you should stay home and look after your own children. You can't be everywhere at once. So there is this, this, you know, there was a message here, it was the same old message, you know, try and pray about someone to bring to church was Ballard's main way to solve everything. And we might talk about this later, but he was saying, you know, we'll build more buildings for you if you need them. Which pushed some of my buttons because we clearly don't need that. Or except one wall up the road from where he was that they've never given a building to. And then it's or just obey, obey, be worthy, be worthy, be worthy, be worthy and stay on the path. Do it because we're telling you. So I just want to point out that there is a rebellion going on even amongst the apostles who've had enough of this. Clearly, if you look at Gong and Suarez and Ukdorf's talks, they are very openly positioning themselves in opposition to that religion and it is two different religions. And here in Britain we're a really interesting social experiment because we are away from Utah culture. We have had no idea about the politics and the Corruption. We don't have any social pressure to be Mormons here. There is no social reward for it. You're not going to marry better because of it. You're not going to get a better job. So the people in Britain who live this religion and go to church, they mean it. And they are on the whole, some of them buy into that culture, of course, because it's. But most of them are really living a very Christian, sincere lifestyle. And they will have been horrified by this conference. I know they would because that was my parents for time after time the apostles did all this. And I've spoken to three people today. One messaged me straight away. Two popped over friends of ours who visited. All of them deeply disappointed with this. And these are people who've lost their children, their children have left or are leaving the church. And they need hope, they need the meats we're talking about. And their analysis as faithful people who've been in the church for donkeys years was. This was a disaster. This is old men mumbling to themselves, one of them said, and really letting them down. So, you know, it's, it's. There are people who, who are Mormon Christians who know what the religion should be and they can see that it is not what these leaders are saying and doing. And somehow we got to do something about that. And, and, and you in a way experience that in a more pure form away from Utah because the people who are involved really mean it. They're not here to be physically in and mentally out on the whole.

Reviewing Conference Clips Together

John Dehlin [01:34:07] Love it. Nemo, what was the next clip?

Peter Bleeckley [01:34:10] You're going to show some clips.

Douglas Stilgo [01:34:11] Oh, that was.

John Dehlin [01:34:12] What's the next clip?

Douglas Stilgo [01:34:13] We almost want like a roulette wheel that we can spin and it just like tick around. We can get a clip. I mean, something that really interests me. Just to hammer home this point about how obsessed they were with their ancestry is actually clip number three. And I think it actually speaks to how tone deaf they were about some of the actual issues people are experiencing that they can allude to so openly to something which we'll talk about in a mo, that then they just, they don't discuss the problem. It is. If you hit clip number three, I'll talk about that after I, when I

▶ Video Clip 3

Video Clip 3 [01:34:42] was a little older, when I was seven, my mother gave me this history of Heber C. Kimball.

Video Clip 3 [01:34:48] This is the actual book that, that

Video Clip 3 [01:34:50] she gave to me. I didn't read it then she gave

Video Clip 3 [01:34:53] it to me because they were having

Video Clip 3 [01:34:56] the hundredth anniversary of coming into Salt Lake Valley and they Had Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball and Wilford Woodruff on that. And Heber C. Kimball was my great great grandfather and she wanted me to know about his history.

Video Clip 3 [01:35:12] And this book is written by Orson

Video Clip 3 [01:35:14] F. Whitney, a grandson of Heber C. Kimball and the son of my great aunt Helen Mar Kimball Whitney.

John Dehlin [01:35:24] So that argument of like, I'm just curious, like that argument of like, we. Here's a book. Yeah. That references all you people. How, how impactful is that for all of you?

Douglas Stilgo [01:35:36] I, I am, I am so skeptical. Whenever they hold up a book and say this is the book. Because ever since we realized that Holland wasn't holding up the book in that conference session, then I, I'm skeptical. But say that it is. He's holding up a book and saying that his great great grandfather was Heber C. Kimball. He is not a man I would be proud to have as my great great grandfather. Because if you know anything about church history, you know he is the man who gave his 14 year old daughter to Joseph Smith as a polygamous bride. That woman, Helen Markimbell, he says was his great aunt. He said her name in front of a group of people who, if any of them are struggling with church history, one of the things they will have come across is Joseph Smith's polygamy. In one of the big things that a lot of people stumble into. And one of the big problems so many people have is the fact that a 14 year old girl was given as chattel to a man in his 30s. That's a problem for a lot of people. Just more

Peter Bleeckley [01:36:31] you've, you've hit, you muted yourself.

John Dehlin [01:36:33] Nemo, unmute yourself really quick. Sorry, Samantha. While Nemo's getting his microphone back.

Guest 2 [01:36:39] It's because he started swearing.

Peter Bleeckley [01:36:41] Oh yeah, he's.

Guest 2 [01:36:42] Honestly, when he gets going, Nemo's at the back.

Jane [01:36:45] Okay, just come down and just hit

John Dehlin [01:36:48] the button you had. Samantha was nodding. So you were saying something good, Nemo.

Douglas Stilgo [01:36:53] Right, okay, well, yeah, I mean, Samantha, take it away because like, I just don't know what to say about a man who can talk so brazenly about one of the central characters is so problematic to people's faith.

Guest 3 [01:37:03] Yeah, I mean, I think it's a really bold choice to bring up Helen Markimble or even that book. I mean, I haven't read it, but I imagine it's a bit of a shit show based on the time it was written. And it being Heba C. Kimball.

Douglas Stilgo [01:37:16] Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Bleeckley [01:37:20] But proudly, it was Heber who complained that the British missionaries were snapping up all the beautiful young women.

Guest 3 [01:37:26] Oh, yeah, yeah, America.

Peter Bleeckley [01:37:28] And he could have his pick.

Guest 3 [01:37:30] Bring in the ugly ones.

Peter Bleeckley [01:37:31] Telling them not to marry them. Yeah, and leaving them with the dregs. And he was rubbish at it. Partly because Brigham Young took all the money. Heber was never able to financially support his many, many, many wives. His kids all went off the rails. They were notorious. Like the slingers of Utah, from the way people talk about it. I mean, he's a complete disaster as a role model. So do they not know the history, missionaries in Britain?

John Dehlin [01:37:55] Like, do they not know the history of the heroes that they're lauding? Or. Or do they just depend on the fact they assume everyone else does? Saints won't be able to learn what we're talking about, which isn't.

Guest 3 [01:38:07] Don't you also think it's a bit weird?

Peter Bleeckley [01:38:09] I don't think they know. I think they're just ignorant. These guys. They don't study the scriptures clearly. They misquote and misrepresent Jesus's own parables on a regular basis. None of them talk about their scripture study anymore. And Elder Cook lies about history every conference. Now, last conference, he said that Joseph Smith was in Carthage jail for opposing slavery. And the one before, he did a whole diatribe in October, in 2020 about how Utah was this anti racist paradise. I mean, he just lies about history. And they've had him doing the church history face to faces with young people. Sorry, Sam, go on. They don't know they're liars.

Guest 3 [01:38:51] Yeah, I agree. I think it's interesting that they are referencing the fact that their great grandparents were also prophets and apostles. Like, I don't know. I don't know why you would play the nepotism card that much.

Douglas Stilgo [01:39:02] Well, because Ballard did it as well. And then Holland got up and said, I looked at my ancestry and I didn't get back too far before I realized they were all strung up by their necks. So I'll defer to the better ancestry of the two men behind me. It's like, okay, you get to play the. I'm slightly better than these guys because my family isn't full of nepotism. But I'm pretty sure he's married into it at some point.

Guest 3 [01:39:22] Yeah,

Jane [01:39:25] nepotism works though, right? I mean, if your pedigree is very, very relevant in the uk, we care about a lot less until you get to church life when suddenly it becomes very important again. So I think. I think the fact that it gets brought up at every opportunity, that's what. That's the Work.

Nemo [01:39:47] Yeah, it's a boys club.

Peter Bleeckley [01:39:48] Ballard's son was sitting on the stage. They're working on the Next Generation. Jeff Holland is already a 17.

John Dehlin [01:39:55] Holland's son Matt is a general authority.

Peter Bleeckley [01:39:57] Yeah, yeah.

Douglas Stilgo [01:39:59] He spoke at conferences. A teenager as well, I'm pretty sure.

Peter Bleeckley [01:40:02] Yeah, yeah. And Ballard's youngest was with him who's already on the young men's general board. So he's being worked up. And they, and they often have their children or son in laws because. Become mission presidents because they get the same salary and a massive, effectively 140 grand a year salary for a three year mission presidency gig is all fun money they can take home afterwards and buy a nice house which some of them literally do. So it's. It, you know, it's. The nepotism was literally stand in front of us and, and the thing is, you'd think Brits would love this because, because it's royalty, it's aristocracy. But the difference is we cut that. We chop their heads off if they get too arrogant with it. We will tolerate a royal family as long as they're incredibly humble about it. But these, but Americans, as I've said before, they. You have no immunity to dictatorship. You have no immunity to royals bamboozling you with their fairy tale of their, their family. You know, you've got the Kennedys and so on. There's no resistance. And our experience of World War I and 2 taught us an intense lesson that Americans didn't learn that you never give people that much power. So we are incredibly skeptical. We can't stand someone standing up and saying we're better than you. We can't stand someone saying we're great. And everyone cheer. Aren't you special? Oh, you've done so well. You've got rich. Well done. God must love you. Our culture evolved from being the baddies who loved all that stuff over the last century through two brutal world wars in which, you know, I could, I'm, I'm always 300ft away from a bomb hole, a crater where a, a doodle bug rained down on Greater London and North Kent. I live in the, the scarred war zone of those wars and that impacted us all consciously. Whereas for America the war were, you know, you made amazing sacrifices when you finally joined in. Thank you. But it was, it made America rich. World War II turned and one turned America into a wealthy superpower. We were humbled. We were in desperate poverty owing America a lot of money that we only paid off in the 1980s. So there is this different culture that we Have. And that's part of what Avengers bring to the table, is we're not afraid to say to the leaders, stop being so pompous. You know, coming over here and lecturing us when we can see that you're lying and you're stealing and you're not as special as you think you are. Yeah, take America.

Jane [01:42:46] You're channeling your elder cook there.

Douglas Stilgo [01:42:49] Oh, my goodness.

Jane [01:42:50] We went back into. To, you know, the.

Peter Bleeckley [01:42:52] The war.

Jane [01:42:53] And, yeah, it's because of today.

John Dehlin [01:42:57] I kept the wide shot because PDs, like, got his face in his hands and Nemo's, like, laughing so hard he can't control himself. I'm glad I kept the wide shot on that one.

Jane [01:43:06] I love it.

Guest 2 [01:43:09] Just on. On that, Nemo, you mentioned Holland's comment on the whole ancestry thing, and I think it's. For me, his was the worst. I think it was. I think it was distasteful in so many ways. So he, again, he emphasizes the fact that he's got ancestors and they're brilliant. He's got ancestors and they're brilliant. And then he says, I. I looked up my family tree and found them all hanging from their necks. And I think it's a. It's a distasteful reference anyway to. To just use that kind of language. But also, again, it's just emphasizing this idea that if you don't have, like, celebrity ancestors, you're not as important. You know, that's just not a. That's not a thing. And, yeah, he's just already basically just shits on his ancestors, and. Yeah, I didn't like that.

Nemo [01:44:03] Neither did they.

John Dehlin [01:44:07] All right, Nemo, I want to play the clip of Holland talking about how much he knows and how he wouldn't be a liar. Do you mind if we. While we're on the subject of Holland, for me, that was one of the most disturbing parts of the whole.

Douglas Stilgo [01:44:19] 7 and 8 will get you those. So 7 is about the fantasy narrative. You said that before. And then eight is where he says he wouldn't like.

John Dehlin [01:44:26] Is that. Is that okay to go there now? Or did you want.

Douglas Stilgo [01:44:28] Yeah, okay. It's your show, John. Do what you want.

John Dehlin [01:44:31] I want this to be your show, but I'm going to feel bad if we don't get to this. All right.

Douglas Stilgo [01:44:35] Yeah, go for it.

John Dehlin [01:44:36] Okay, here we go.

Douglas Stilgo [01:44:40] Please understand that we've had some experience you haven't had. We know that you're free. We know that you're growing. We know that you're filled with flight and hope and envy and Opportunity. And sometimes that flying from the nest might border on flying from the church. Don't you ever, ever do that. This is where you have to assume that we do know something that you haven't yet known and haven't yet found or. Why on earth are we doing this? I can promise you we didn't get up this morning, meet over in the hotel and say, with President Ballard leading out, well, what joke can we play on them today? You know, what fairy tale can we give them today? Let's all get together and continue to try to fool the youth of the United Kingdom and Ireland for another 24 hours. And certainly the prophet Joseph did not say that to his brother Hyrum, great, great grandfather of President Ballard.

Douglas Stilgo [01:45:54] So it stops there.

Guest 2 [01:45:55] In case you'd forgotten.

John Dehlin [01:45:58] I mean, I also want to hear where he talks. Where he talks.

Douglas Stilgo [01:46:01] Yeah. I'll give you the time code for that.

John Dehlin [01:46:02] Okay. Okay.

Douglas Stilgo [01:46:03] So what reactions to that?

John Dehlin [01:46:05] Let's just do reactions.

Guest 2 [01:46:07] Can I just talk about that one?

John Dehlin [01:46:08] I heard an audible sigh from Samantha, so. But. But go ahead. Yeah, please start, Julian.

Guest 2 [01:46:13] So I am one of those people that. That flew from the church, and. And when I did, when I left the church, I invested in. In this little device here. You can get them on Amazon. They're not that expensive. It's a cult sensor. So when anybody, you know, when you're around anything that's a little bit cultish, it goes off. It's like an alarm, you know, so, you know, normally I just carry it around with me. Normally it's nothing, you know, but if I start talking about sacrificing virgins or something like that, it goes off just to warn me that it's getting a little bit cultish. That was going crazy at that point in the talk. My cult sensor was just going bonkers. You know, you just. You just need to trust us. Just assume that we know something that you don't know and trust us. Don't. Don't question anything. Don't you dare leave. Don't you ever. Yeah, it gets really like, oh, I don't know. Someone's obviously told him that they like it when he gets all angry like that. And I hate it. I just want to punch him in the jaws when he does that.

Alana [01:47:22] Forcefully was years ago. And now I'm like, I don't like you anymore.

Jane [01:47:27] Alana, would you. Would you mind? Because I know that I. I went off and won about this earlier on, but do you think it would be okay if I go off on one about Elder Holland's Jowls again, would that be all right? So, particularly, I think as. As women, we get a lot of, you know, if there's. If trolls to be had, they tend to target women, you know, pretty heavily first. And so can I just say that we don't love it when there is body shaming happening. No matter who it is, whether it's an apostle, whether it's anything to do with physical appearance. It's just, come on, we, you know, we do better than that. Guys, we've got so many things you could talk about. So I'm just gonna say let's. Let's, you know, not. Let's not be those guys. What I. What I do think, though, is that Elder Holland, it brings us back to his motivation. Do they really believe what they're saying? Do they, you know, when Peter talks about lies, do they feel like they're being dishonest or disingenuous or any of those things? And I think when we see that, we can really see an Elder Holland who I think he thinks that's sufficient, that that should be okay, that we can just rest on their faith. He must know that that is not what faith looks like. He must we teach it right? As an apostle, if you're being a special witness of Jesus Christ, if it is, take my word for it, because we know better. Again, it sort of feeds into that, you know, second anointing, possible kind of rhetoric there. He must know that that is not a deep, rational, meaningful form of faith. And so I feel a bit disappointed with that. And I think also the days when I could look forward and think, oh, we've got Elder Holland coming, We're safe in his hands. I think we're still reeling from the BYU talk a few months ago. I think it caused pain to such an extent that we're very, very tense around Delta Holland at the moment. At one point, that passion bringing the fire was exactly what so many of us would get such a kick out of. We would see that genuineness at the point. Moment. You know, it's. It's almost like, you know, we've. We've been bitten and we're afraid of, you know, continuing abuses.

John Dehlin [01:50:11] Can I ask. Can I ask you about that, Jane? Because he's basically saying, trust me, he's saying. What he's not saying without saying it explicitly is there must be baddies out on the Internet questioning whether we're really sincere, questioning whether we really believe, questioning whether we have genuine testimonies that the church is true. Which is the number one question that I Receive in my job is, do the brethren really believe? So he's clearly gotten that memo. He's clearly responding to that question. And, Jane, he's saying to you, hey, all those people that suspect whether or not we're these conniving leaders trying to perpetuate a lie, that's not true. We know. So he's telling you, Jane, that he's sincere. In response to questions about his sincerity, he's saying, jane, I am sincere. I literally believe. Not even do I believe. I know. And you're saying that's not working for you, Jane.

Jane [01:51:11] It doesn't work. It doesn't work. We are building testimonies on did Joseph Smith see God and Jesus? That's something that we can explore. If it's, take my word for it, because I have special knowledge, I don't know. It's taking me down the road of, so did you see Jesus? Have you had your second anointing? Do you have special knowledge? But we're not going to talk about what that special knowledge is. It really is. You know, we talk about it in Sunday school, that at some point, children, as we are teaching them in church to have, you know, what faith looks like, teaching them to. These are the patterns of faith that at some point they're going to have to rest on their own testimony. But we're not giving anybody the tools to do that here. It's shallow. There is no depth to it. Here's what it comes down to. For me, it's not even pray and ask God, which isn't sufficient for so many people. And that's. That's fine. It's not even pray and ask God, though. It's, trust me, not trust God, not trust the Spirit, not trust this, you know, experience that you may have, that's going to change. You trust me in my experience. And I don't think that's what an apostle as. I mean, he would know. He's the apostle. You know, I feel like I'm saying, Elder Holland, you're not doing your job properly.

Douglas Stilgo [01:52:42] Well, well, he's, he's special. Pleading without giving us any reason or any, any justification as to why he's special.

Nemo [01:52:49] Yeah, but the, the not doing his job properly, his message might in some case be an okay message to those of his generation to say, look, we've been through all of this and we're still here. Let's, let's keep going with that. But when you go back to what they taught us all to do as missionaries or as member missionaries, they give the story of Ammon, from the Book of Mormon, who goes to the Lamanites and they won't listen to him, chops off a bunch of arms and then they will listen to him. And he goes to the king. He says to the king, do you know about God? And the king says, I don't know about anything about your God. So what Ammon does is he finds a common ground. He finds common language to be able to explain his version of God and the gospel in the king's language. And what Elder Holland has done is he's come into a meeting with youth and young single adults, and he's not managed to speak their language. He's not managed to put it in a context. That to him is a very good message and that there. There might be to a TBM some good in that message. But he needed to frame it by using common experiences. Not just saying, I've had experiences that you haven't that will have been experiences that those youth have had that he had. At some point, he could have used that to build that relationship of trust and then say, there will be other experiences in your life to come and say how special they were for him and how that built his testimony and how they can build their testimony that way. But he didn't. He just said, look at me. I know it. So just follow me.

John Dehlin [01:54:49] Nemo, I think I figured out the slide problem. What's the slide? Where he actually tells his testimony and then we'll get Peter in number eight. It's number eight. Okay, Peter, you're right. Next. Okay, Peter. Okay, here's Holland's testimony.

▶ Video Clip 4

Video Clip 4 [01:55:03] I am more certain of the divinity of this work than I am that you sit here and that I stand at this pulpit. It would be more logical and real for you to dissipate, appear before my eyes than for me to doubt with one shadow, with one farthing of a moment of concern or anxiety or doubt that this is anything but the divinity of Almighty God and the truthfulness of which has been spoken from every prophet and apostle since time began, since Adam and Eve left that garden and started this family experience for us, from their generation to ours and our generation to the end. This is the truth. This is God's very truth. I would not, at my age and circumstance and in my proximity to the other side of the veil, given my health, I would not dare ever, ever do anything but speak the truth to you, knowing that I would be accountable

Video Clip 4 [01:56:20] for everything,

Video Clip 4 [01:56:22] every thought and every deed and every expression. I'm measuring those expressions carefully these days, knowing that I will Account for them and stand by them. And I do.

John Dehlin [01:56:36] And he says, and I do. Okay, Peter, we said you would get you in next. And then Samantha, I want to hear Samantha's reaction.

Peter Bleeckley [01:56:42] Well, I mean there was a lot there. So Bill Real got excommunicated for calling him liar liar pants on fire. And there he's saying no. And by everything I've said, even though I've lied about statistics on. And he's. And the point we keep making is they're not offering any reason to believe that they're teaching the truth. You know, President Nelson does this all the time now. Just says prophets always speak the truth. He said in the last conference you're about to hear pure truth. And then it was more waffle that really. And they contradict each other. As I said, the apostles literally taught different religions to each other. So which one is the truth? How are you going to know that? You know, there needs to be a rational faith, particularly in the modern age. I've known Elder Holland is an asshole since I was 18. My first zone conference on my mission in the Florida Tallahassee mission was Elder Holland doing his thing. He turned. I didn't know him from Adam. Then he turned up, told us all we were shit. He told us all that he would not go into battle with us. Our mission was so useless. And this is my first zone conference. So I looked at all the other new mission. One of them sitting next to me, we just arrived. We were like, maybe if we leave now they won't know we got here because we've obviously just landed in a mission that is shit. And they're in big trouble because this member of the 70s telling them their shit. And then he dragged all our district leaders and zone leaders, including one of my dear friends who I'd been in the MTC with. He got called as a district leader quite quickly and asked them what to write on a whiteboard or chalkboard or something, what their numerical goals were. So they all did. And then he told them those were shit and made them guilt trip them into doubling them into totally unrealistic numbers that no one fulfilled. So I was just. I wasn't falling for this. You know, there were some. We know that a lot of missionaries cheer all Elder Hollands coming to our mission, but there are a lot of people will share this quite different sense of what happened. But I was having a really interesting dialogue about this and his talk and his attitude, the pulpit thumping was an American or your state. And he made a really brilliant point. I thought he said this is American sports culture. This is the coach psyching up the team before they go out onto the field. And that's what they think they're doing. Now, when you're doing that, you can say any old nonsense. You just need an emotional effect. You're riling people up to be excited for its own sake so that you go and get some energy and play ball. And this, again, is very alien to British culture. We kind of don't do that. But this is what they're doing. They think this is enough. As Jane and others have been saying, there's no reason to believe them. They think just riling people up and being emotional and exaggerating and pulpit thumping and don't you ever do that is the way to do it. And I do think, again, this is a culture clash thing. It's part of American culture that Americans get that this is what your high school football coach does. And it's wonderful because he is a God. And they're great motivational leaders when actually they're teaching quite toxic ideas to their young people. But a lot of young Americans have grown up with that culture being okay, and they're fine when the apostles do it, they think, yeah, great. That was really inspiring. And if you're a bit more skeptical, and not all Americans are like that, obviously, but it is part of the culture. If you're a bit more skeptical and you want valid, rational reasons to believe anything, well, that's a complete disaster, because you're looking at these idiots with circular arguments. He made a great argument for being a Roman Catholic because they're bringing it with, well, we've got these traditions. Hold on to your traditions. A lot of them were saying, you know, that our fathers cherished we're great. They claim to be the only people still carrying on till they literally drop dead in leadership. You know, he or someone said, there's no one else does this. No one in the corporate world or I think he even said religious world would do this. It's like, well, the Catholic Pope does, you know, Benedict cheated by retiring early. But mostly they do it till they die. Let's all be Catholics then, because that's. You're not offering anything different. And they've been doing it for much longer. They've got far more traditional tradition to offer than you have, mate. So it's. It's a complete failure as a convincing argument. And you can't do that in the modern age. You know, young people are educated. They. They're not falling for this nonsense.

John Dehlin [02:01:15] Are you saying that Jeffrey Holland is the Ted Lasso of Mormonism, basically. Is that what you're saying? No.

Douglas Stilgo [02:01:20] His mustache is not as beautiful.

Guest 2 [02:01:22] No.

Douglas Stilgo [02:01:23] Ted's great.

Nemo [02:01:24] I can't believe he even just said

Guest 2 [02:01:26] that, John, like, well, just the, you

John Dehlin [02:01:28] know, the American coach model of psyching up your. Your players. Right.

Douglas Stilgo [02:01:33] Can we get Sam's thoughts? I really. I keep feeling like we're running over Sam. I really want to hear what she has to say.

Guest 3 [02:01:38] Thank you. I think a big thing that seems to be missing from Jeffrey Holland's understanding of young people and the thing that I think is so fatal for the church is that our understanding of psychology is a lot more advanced. Like the. The world has come a long way in that sense since he was around. And it's an old man really believing in something that he was born into is not a compelling argument. He said in that previous clip, you, you need to assume that we've, you know, we've realized why this is so great in ways that maybe you haven't yet. And it's like, well, it's your job to communicate that to us. And if you don't have anything compelling, then it. Then it wouldn't be healthy for us to. To just go with that. And as much as, you know, wisdom can, like, age can absolutely facilitate wisdom, but not inherently like the. The brain is less flexible the older you get. And Jeffrey R. Holland has been psychologically dependent on this organization since birth, essentially. So I think someone said this in the comments, but his. His talk is showing more the power of indoctrination and how fully it can take root in a brain. Because he said, you know, I. I believe this church is true more than I believe that you guys are even here today. And I feel like that's just Taylor's oldest time. That's Jonestown. That's drinking the Kool Aid. That's what I get from that. There's nothing compelling about it for anyone with, you know, like, a shred of understanding about the psychology of religious conviction, which I don't think he has.

John Dehlin [02:03:19] I'm reminded of Bruce R. McConkie just really quickly. Bruce R. McConkie did that in my generation. So in the 80s, before Bruce R. McConkie dies, he gives this general conference talk where he says, if I were to die and kneel at the Savior's feet, I will not know any more than. Than I know now that he lives. And it's just this trump card of, like, I'm a special witness of Christ, and I know it even more powerfully than we're all sitting here. I felt like that was an incredibly bold and for me a disturbing thing for him to say.

Alana [02:03:54] I think as well, like going back to the youth thing, like as I was sitting watching it, I'm thinking, I mean I personally, and I mean that's not in any disrespect but I sometimes think, are you guys so delusional? Are you so delusional that you sit there and think that what you're saying is going to hit the youth and going to make them think, yeah, let's do this. And I often think as well, you know, that, you know, he's basically saying trust me, trust me. But you know, we talk often about, you know, the age of the Internet, you know, when I was young, you know, it wasn't so freely available and so we weren't necessarily out looking. But so many young people have so many questions now and it's not like we did where we can just go to our parents or go to a bishop and ask, they are going to look it up on the Internet, they are going to find out things and how can you expect them to trust people who lie? I know they say they don't lie, but they do lie. And just the other point that I thought about is, you know, he's an old man, what is it that he can. I guess what I'm trying to say is that his experience when he was a child is very different to today's world that we live in. I think what can you give to our youth and say that your experiences they have not experienced? Because in my opinion the experiences that I experienced as a child compared to my 8 year old daughter's experiences are completely different. I know we can relate in ways, but I just think what is it that you're trying to get? There's just nothing there for me that they could give to the youth other than drumming it into them that you need to trust us, you need to believe, you need to do this. You know, all the stuff that they tell you and I just think they really need to strip it back. They really need to strip it back and rethink what they're speaking to the youth about. Because nothing in that talk for me at home to think, yeah, the youth are going to really relate to that, they're really going to take that. And I just thought again, a complete waste of time.

Guest 3 [02:05:50] And I think the answer to your question like are they that delusional? Yes, I really do think they are that delusional. And I don't think they have this space in their minds to deviate from these narratives that they've been reinforcing for, what, eight decades of his life, if he's 80.

Nemo [02:06:07] It's a bit like

John Dehlin [02:06:10] P.D.

Nemo [02:06:11] say, Julian. It's a bit like coming to my lair, said the spider to the fly. You know, the. The. You don't know what you're actually getting. But for some people, it's. They like it.

Peter Bleeckley [02:06:25] Yeah.

Guest 2 [02:06:26] Yeah, I was just gonna say. So. So take it at face value. And I do. I genuinely believe that they believe it, that they're. You know, I don't think they are trying to deceive us in any way. I think, as Samantha said, you know, they are that deluded. So to take it at face value, what is the purpose of what he said there? What is the purpose of him saying, I have, you know, just trust me. Just trust that we know something that you don't. I know. No, you know, I know more than I know that you're in this room. What is the purpose of that? Is that really any different to Satan's plan? Just. Just turn off your brains. Don't question anything. Just do exactly what we've said that you need to do. That's what you need to do. Where is the growth? Where is the spiritual growth in that?

Douglas Stilgo [02:07:16] What's really funny is that mirrors what Elder Bednar said when he said that as teachers, we need to make sure people are agents to act and not objects to be acted upon. But all church leaders do time and time and time again is treat us like objects that they can act upon and tell us what to do. So the hypocrisy is massive.

Jane [02:07:36] Well, I think it's worth keeping in mind that from even the most believing Mormon perspective, Alma was converted because he's hearing that kind of testimony. It's enough. Maybe at some point, maybe. You know what, it was enough for me at one point. But I think Julian's hitting the nail on the head. I think we are at a point in the UK where we are. Everybody's gone. The people who are there today are the people who really, really want to be there. The people who switched on were the people who really, really want to listen. And anybody who's sort of struggling to try and make it work is tuning in, looking for three apostles are coming. Three of them. You've got all of these opportunities to see something of substance that's going to give me the tools to make it work and just trust didn't give us any tools.

Membership Data and the State of UK Mormonism

Peter Bleeckley [02:08:48] Can I just take this moment to do some data because something we perhaps haven't made clear enough is how bad it is in Britain. So here's the data. The church claims a membership in the UK and the Republic of Ireland of 188,187 members. We had an amazing data leak. This is incredibly rare of active membership statistics, which are usually top secret. In the year 2000, Teixeira, who is the president of the Europe area, challenged everyone in our countries to double sacrament attendance in 10 years. And this actually seemed like a really small, super cautious goal, like unambitious, faithless even. Because In a whole 10 years, surely everyone sitting in church on a Sunday can find one other person to reactivate or convert. So this became the Europe area goal. And then by 2010, the 10th anniversary. Sorry, that was given in 2010. So by 2020, the 10th anniversary, it was very clear we hadn't grown and were in fact losing members. So the fact that the data for the activity rates per state for the last 10 years was leaked in 2020 was timing. You know, I think that was intentional. And what it said was that in that time we'd lost 13% of our overall active membership. In those 10 years, that Birmingham state was the worst. It lost 40% of its active membership. My stake and my neighboring stake in the southeast of England lost 21 and 24, 4% respectively, of their active membership. And the actual active membership numbers showed us that we have an activity rate before COVID of 14.7% in Britain and Ireland. And in total, only 27,697 are active out of 188,000 most states think they have. And this is something people in every stake in the world should bear in mind. Here in Europe and Britain, most states think they have an activity rate of about 22% because that's what's on their ward lists. But we need to remember there are hundreds of thousands of people on the address unknown files where we've lost their address. Therefore they're not on award list. But the church slots them in for its national totals data. So if you know your national totals and how many are coming to church, so that's how we got that 14.7% perspective. And the final data thing is, which we're starting to get concrete numbers for now, is everyone understands that the COVID sabbatical gave a lot of people time to think. I can actually survive without this church. It's much less stressful. I'm enjoying my second Saturday. Do I really need the aggro and the worry and the guilt and Everything that this church does to me and my family. So the numbers are starting to come in here in Britain. We've been back into participatory membership or even with zooms. We're counting the numbers and my neighboring stake has now reported officially that they've dropped another 20 cents in their activity rate. So if that was replicated across the country, which it may well be, we would then be down to 22,000 active, which is just 11.8% of our membership active. So the thing to understand here and why we were talking about this being a British rescue and needing a British rescue is our church will cease to exist functionally in pretty much every part of our country in the next 15 to 20 years if radical changes don't happen now because we've lost our young people, our missions are closing. The mission I live in closed. We haven't had missionaries in our little struggling ward for ages. Our ward 10, 15 years ago had 150 coming out. It's down to 30. And I know that's similar numbers going on for Alana and Jane in Scotland. It's not in every ward. A few of them are surviving. But the urgency that we have here and why we are a warning to others. And it is starting to happen in America. You know that, John. You know, but you're hearing people talk about children are leaving and wards being closed and consolidated. So if these people, these people, these old unimaginative people who not because they're old, but because they've been carefully selected by an intense selection system to be the most unimaginative humans in our church, but the most loyal and unquestioning and reliable. They would never been given positions in the 70 and certainly not in the 12, because whenever you choose an apostle, this could be the next leader of the church. They will always play safe. They will choose managers, not leaders. These are the people who have to bring it literally in the next few years if our church is to survive. Because we've already lost most of our kids and we have a message as a nation to America, particularly this narrative America has now that it is inevitable that our kids will go. In the last conference Dallin Oaks talked about, this is a false narrative. People stopped going to church in America about 10 years ago and that's what's freaking everyone out there. But they stopped going to American Mormon church in the 90s when the Internet came out. That's when our crash happened. If you look at the graphs and the convert baptisms fellow, because we were hiding stuff. But in Britain throughout the 20th century. That all happened for us then in Europe. Our nation lost its religion decades ago. Hardly anyone here goes to church anymore. It's rare as hen's teeth to find an active Christian. But during those decades when the Church of England, Baptists, everyone else was losing their congregations and closing their churches, Mormonism grew. We grew because we were at the time offering something much better we had between ending racism and we're going to now declare in the early 90s that women, intellectuals and homosexuals are our enemies under Boyd K. Baca, which they've run with ever since. We had this window where people of my generation experience experienced a church that was inclusive, that was open minded. Youth activities were not culty boot camp. You came as you were wearing what you wear normally. And we normalize being cool, being young and being Mormon at the same time, not having to become weird clones of middle American zombies with one pair of earrings. And I looked up on the FSY guidelines for clothing for the Europe area. It's still got, you can't go to FSY unless you only have one pair of earrings. If you're a girl, you know, they pick up on all this pharisaical stuff and it is real, it gets piled onto the young people and judging them by it. So you know, this is, these people need to bring it and they need to teach to the young and they need to offer an intellectually credible religion. And the comments have been brilliant throughout this. I do hope people read them. But one of the points being made repeatedly is why are these apparently talking about Jane, particularly of course, this intelligent, obviously rational woman. Why is she still attached to this religion when there's obviously so much wrong with it. What I would say in response to that is the foundations of it are intellectually credible. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught that every truth is Mormonism, whether it comes from infidels, whether it comes from scientists, they use those words chemists, that if that should be our religion now that is incredible. That is a completely future proofed religion. Some people were saying in the comments, you know, humanism or Buddhism, intellectually credible religion. Mormonism started off with this ideal to do that, that any truth. And Orson Pratt, who served as mission president in Britain said in one of his pamphlets here, when he wasn't bigging up polygamy, that if someone could prove to us as Mormons that we are wrong about something, we should thank them, we should welcome it because they have saved us from ignorance. And he had that humility as an apostle that he welcomed early burley Hugh B. Brown talked about, you know, we are in a battlefield of ideas. You know, look up his talk. You find it on the BYU speeches, man. And what he may become. He said, this should be an intellectually credible religion and we have to adapt. If our ideas aren't defensible, they're not defensible. Change them. But that's Mormonism, because we're not born again Christians. We don't believe humanity is useless and we have to wait for God to save us. And it's all done. It's a journey of learning. We have to go step by step. We have to learn line upon line, precept on precept. We still see through a glass darkly. We should never be so arrogant that our oldest people, whose formative years were literally in the 1950s, are telling all the young people, you have nothing to teach us. We knew it all back then and nothing should change since World War II. It's literally the opposite religion to what Brigham Young even taught. And he was an authoritarian. And perhaps they learned that from Masonry. You know, this is a positive connection potentially. But that is the reason some of us day and fight for it. Because that is our Mormon religion. And Mormonism taught me all of that. Mormonism taught me to be a Christian. Mormonism taught me to be revolted by people getting up a stand and claiming on all kinds of rational fallacies by their authority, they should be obeyed and so on. Because I memorized that as a 14 year old in Doctrine Covenants 121, that no one should be believed because of their priesthood. They must be persuasive with truth. That's the only authority a leader should have. You win an argument. And I keep encountering people my age who are flabbergasted by what Nelson and Oakes and Packer have done to our religion to turn it into what these three were channeling in front of our faces this weekend. They've destroyed it and they've gone for literally what we were taught was Lucifer's plan.

Guest [02:19:13] Plan.

Peter Bleeckley [02:19:13] As PD has said. Why? Why do people not notice? But then they do and they leave. Loads of people have noticed this. They're not getting away with it. Anyone with who does a bit of thinking and reflecting usually finds this stuff horrific. And they go and we're down to 15%, possibly 11 now. And this is what's going to happen to everyone else until we change it. And if they won't change, we're going to have to start voting. Opposed. We are going. Local leadership class who want to stay are Going to have to have that moment to say these people are unfit for their roles. They are teaching the false religion. They're incompetent, they're alienating our young people. They have no new ideas, they're openly harmful. What can we do? Well, we can. We still have the last remnant of common consent. We can vote opposed to them in their leadership positions. They won't let us vote about particular policies individually even though the church's Institute Manual for Doctrine and Covenants says that that's what we do when we obviously don't and haven't since 1978. So this is where Nemo comes in and others with we've got a campaign going on here. Well let's vote opposed and see what happens and persist with it. We'll vote opposed every conference and you get to do four of them a year. My wife did it two weeks ago. She stood up twice, said I oppose. And she's now in conversation with her state president. I got excommunicated a few months ago for apostasy. So I can't vote. But Nemo's done it. PD's done it. Other people and this is a movement that's starting here and I know other people have pioneered this in the past in general conference. But we not helpless. There is an intellectually credible Mormonism to fight for. And as we've agreed, I think these people don't know what it is because they're in the wrong religion. They've bought into what Mormonism taught us is, is the enemy Lucifer's plan. Do not think here. And okay, we are never wrong. And if they keep saying get a revelation from the Spirit but they've made clear in their face to face talks to the young. If the Holy Ghost tells you the prophet is wrong, their spirit must be wrong. They've put themselves above God. It's blasphemy. And people can see this because it's really we, we learned this in seminary.

Jane [02:21:37] This is why we love Peter. This is why he is someone everybody's listen to.

Nemo [02:21:44] Take a breath.

Why This British Moment Matters

Jane [02:21:46] This British moment is I think that is kind of summing up why we're here when, when Peter talks about those stats. Just to put a fine point on that, when back whenever we were told about, you know, this, this area goal, this was presented to us as prophetic that our church area, if we do what we're supposed to be doing, then the church activity will double and Europe and it was presented as prophecy. Now of course that means that it's all on us. We know how this works. I am still here because I believe that the tables need to be turned. I believe that, you know what? The same reason, I guess, why y' all are here, you know, even whenever you leave the church, because Mormonism is absolutely bloody fascinating. It's such a. It's an interesting topic. It's intellectually stimulating, and I believe that there is a huge work to do. I am also not prepared to walk away from a church that I put everything into because they're kicking out Peter because we have members who are so concerned that Nemo is active and hasn't had any church to discipline and what is going on there. They are my church. They are my people, and we claim them and we. We are responsible for them. I am here because I think there are so many possibilities. The person who first told me, you know, that the church was sending the apostles was a wonderful transgender woman. Charlotte, who is hanging around in the comments, who we have such a great love for, was so excited to hear. Even though Charlotte has been told that they're not welcome in church, the dehumanising language has been used towards them. It would be really easy to walk away from that and not to want to affiliate with that. And I have total respect and understanding for people who look at that and say, but this isn't a deal breaker for you. I will not affiliate with that. But what I will do is commit that my life's work is about worshiping Jesus and making sure that you can as well. If we can, if we're supposed to be all about being able to find Christ and you can't do it because I'm in your way, then something has to change that. And I think we have so many members of the church and leaders of the church who stand in the way of someone being able to find Christ. And I just think that's a job that I have to, you know, that we have to do. I think that whenever Peter is talking about how things have changed, post Covid, I think Britain is going to be a great place. Excuse me, Britain and the United Kingdom is going to. And the UK and Ireland is going to be a great way to sort of feel for that pulse. Obviously, we're going to get to the part where it was made very clear that what our goal is as a present to Jesus, can we bring someone to church? And we're going to see how that plays out. But post Covid, what I'm seeing is, for me, church activity in its traditional way doesn't work. So I have a son who has special needs who can't attend church. There is no place for my child in Church. My 22 year old son, it's not made for him and we're not able to make the adaptations to make that happen now. That devastates me. Caring for him and having friends who are not able to physically get to church to worship. It has made me, with the lockdown, it's made me really resent the number of people who were suddenly couldn't leave the house and having to do the isolation thing. And this is my life. I can't leave. I can't. You know, at some point the doors will open again for you and they weren't for me. So now that we have finally we can have this on YouTube. We can have zoom meetings. This is huge. And I have to, you know, I haven't been to church for, I mean it's going to be almost years. I've got to go twice in two years because of the situation where I don't want, you know, Ronan to get sick. But what I'm seeing is so many people who. That works, that works perfectly. And it means that a lot of the tensions that come with going to church are kind of taken out of the equation. No, bishops don't know what to do with that. The ministering program can work very well with it, but members don't know what to do with that because we measure commitment by showing up. I think we have to look at a completely different model for what church is going to look like. But I don't know if we are in a place in the church where we are able to have that type of creativity of thought. What is not going to work is missionaries changing their approach to, you know, just adding reams of people on Facebook and, and you know, then as active members or nuance members are being contacted by people saying, oh, what this missionary again, they don't know me. They are joining dog walking pages or local community pages in an effort just to reach us because we're changing form from knocking doors. That stuff isn't working. We, and this is why I'm here because we have so many possibilities right now. Yeah, that's what I wanted to share.

John Dehlin [02:28:11] I love it. Pd, were you wanting to get in? Thank you so much, Jane. There's so much love for Peter and PD and, and for all of you and pd, do you want to jump just.

Nemo [02:28:25] Yeah. I was just gonna say I know Peter started with the, the stats and different things this week on social media. I know this has been a lot about the UK and Things, but we can't forget Ireland. And on social media, there was a discussion about the actual numbers in Ireland and the. For a country of its size, not. It's not. I guess by American standards it's small, but by European standards, it's not a small country. And they have five wards and eight branches and around 5,000 members. And that's just. It's unreal to me. In this whole conference, it seems like Ireland was mentioned as the UK and Ireland, but that was kind of it. That there was an opportunity there to speak directly to members in Ireland and in the UK about what's going on in their country and that they totally missed it. That everything they said could have been said anywhere in the world and just dressed up with stories about the local culture and food and different things, but that the message, which was shonk, was just generic and wasn't even gonna, you know, do anything. Didn't cut the mustard.

John Dehlin [02:30:01] I love all this feedback. Nemo. We've got maybe about 30 minutes before we have to start wrapping up. Are there. Okay, are there other clips that we really need to show? And if so, let's make sure and show them and then maybe we'll wrap up with.

Douglas Stilgo [02:30:14] Yeah, more insights. There's definitely. There's the clip. 15.

John Dehlin [02:30:21] Okay.

Douglas Stilgo [02:30:22] And 14. Yeah. So 14 is. Is Holland saying that he's in the church for the evidence.

John Dehlin [02:30:28] All right.

Douglas Stilgo [02:30:29] Didn't say what that evidence is. It's a very short clip.

Douglas Stilgo [02:30:33] I'm in this church because of the greatness of the evidence.

Douglas Stilgo [02:30:40] What evidence, Jeff? Just what evidence qualify that, please? Because I don't know what evidence he's talking about. That's all that clip is. It's just nonsense.

Guest 2 [02:30:56] And we're constantly going backwards and forwards between this idea of it's all about faith and. But look, there's a load of evidence. You need to trust me.

John Dehlin [02:31:07] I mean, does he mean the golden plate that we're taken away? Does he mean the book of Abraham, Papyru, that demonstrates the church is false? Like what evidence?

Douglas Stilgo [02:31:15] No, not that evidence, John. No, no. The warm fuzzies he gets when he

Guest 3 [02:31:19] talks about time of conditioning.

John Dehlin [02:31:21] Like the nine versions of the first vision that are all different. Is that the evidence that prove. Like what? The evidence of 40 wives of Joseph Smith with evidence of him lying to Emma and sister pairs of mother daughter pairs and marrying other men's wives.

Douglas Stilgo [02:31:36] Like what I think Julian says he

Guest 2 [02:31:39] knows that I've got the answer. It's the hundred billion dollars. Yeah. It wasn't true. Would God give him all that money.

Nemo [02:31:47] Well, the church of Apple, Microsoft and Samsung, that's where I go.

Douglas Stilgo [02:31:53] I mean, there's the church of 40 countries that have a GDP greater than that amount. I mean, it's not many, but still do I go to them.

Nemo [02:32:01] Boris Johnson is now my prophet. I think I'm in a better position.

Douglas Stilgo [02:32:06] Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer gets my vote. Yeah, there you go.

Nemo [02:32:11] Have we got the. The clip of Cook lining his talk up to give us some gems for the future?

John Dehlin [02:32:21] Did you want me to play 15 Nemo real quick, go 12 first.

Douglas Stilgo [02:32:25] Cuz 15's got some meat in it. Just go 12 and it's another quick one.

John Dehlin [02:32:28] Okay. All right, here's, here's clip 12i on the Mercer title.

Douglas Stilgo [02:32:35] Let me just say a word about it and then I'm.

Peter Bleeckley [02:32:37] I'm going to move towards the future.

Douglas Stilgo [02:32:41] He didn't. Spoiler alert. He just, he never got that. He sounds like your, your elderly relative who sat spinning a yarn in their armchair. Just kind of just. He just reminisced and reminisced and reminisced. Oh, I'll get to that in a minute. I'll get to that a minute. And it just never, it never materialized. He gave us nothing for the future of the church. He just kept chatting about the past.

Nemo [02:33:03] We were all so excited when he said, I'm gonna speak a little bit about the past and then the future. And we're like, wow, yeah, prophecy and revelator going to tell us about the future of the church in the uk. And he gave three or four different experiences from his mission and then he gave that one. And once he'd finished and bore his testimony, he just sat down and you're like, well, there's clearly no future for the church because that was your.

Jane [02:33:28] Well, that's what we have to infer, that there is no future.

Douglas Stilgo [02:33:34] That is where that leads us, logically.

Nemo [02:33:37] That was his double talk, which is

Peter Bleeckley [02:33:40] a Sex Pistols don. They could have got it to the 80s. They came so close.

Guest 2 [02:33:47] I'm just gonna say it's just such a disappointment. I just, you know, and I can kind of say these, you know, I, I don't believe anymore. I'm outside, but I've still got lots of people that I love and care about that are in the church and. And you know, I don't want to see burn down. I want to see get better. And. And it could have been so much better. And it's just so disappointing. You know, there are so many. I'm sure that I could probably with 10 minutes. 10 minutes of time, just scour the Internet and probably come up with three different talks or presentations that would be much, much more valuable than what we got today. Very easily. You know, you could, you could just do a, you know, just do a playlist of TED talks that would be a hundred times more inspirational and prophetic than what we witnessed there. And, and the thing is, that's the thing that these young people are listening to. So it's just. So it's such a letdown.

Douglas Stilgo [02:34:48] And this is why aren't expensive. Let down.

Guest 2 [02:34:51] Yeah, yeah. So when he says, you know, why would we come over here and do all. We're really old. Why would we come up. Don't bother. You shouldn't have bothered.

Douglas Stilgo [02:35:00] Save your money.

Guest 2 [02:35:00] Yeah, don't bother. Because we could get so much more with just going on the Internet. Where was the. Exactly. Where was the talk about the environment? Where's the talk about social media? Where's the talk about, you know, the anxiety that people feel about COVID Where's the talk about mental health? You know, these are things that people are getting elsewhere and getting really good information. You know, so many things that we. That, that we could have been talking about and we didn't.

Alana [02:35:34] There was also no mention about the

Peter Bleeckley [02:35:35] people that we are losing.

John Dehlin [02:35:38] Go ahead, Alana, go ahead.

Alana [02:35:39] I was just saying, like, that was something I said in our group chat after. I was like, where's the conversations about the people we have already lost, the people we are losing and the people we are going to lose? You know, I feel like, are they not important? You know, here's someone like me who grew up in the church and gave my whole life to the church, minus a few years of rebellion. You know, why are we not talking about this? Like Jane said earlier, these are people we've loved, people we, well, we still love, obviously, but that we care for who are gone. And we're not talking about that. It's like, you know, obviously, we'll go on to the next bit, you know, you're saying about getting another member of the church to baptize. Like, no, what. What about the people who have left? What can we do to help them? You know, it's like, let's look to the future and see how we can build the church, but forget all the people who have already left. And that's frustrating for me.

Douglas Stilgo [02:36:29] You think it would be a sensible thing to keep those who you already have. Right. That's a better business model to keep the customers you have than to go out looking for new ones, but they just seem to be like, oh, well, members of church are expendable. Would you go find new people?

Alana [02:36:44] Well, I remember a while back that the missionaries asked me to find, you know, someone when I was still active, you know, is there anyone? And I was like, completely honest, and I said, no, I will not ask anyone of my friends that I know to come to a church that needs not. Not fixing, but talking generally about my ward, where I said, we need to fix what's going on here in our ward right now, and the people within the ward who are struggling before we even contemplate bringing anyone new in, because it just won't work. We've had quite a few baptisms over the years in our church, and they're nowhere. They're gone. Because again, it's more about getting the number than it is about the person and what their needs are and really getting them to understand what they're getting into, because half the time they don't. Because it's all about the baptism, the baptism, the baptism. Let's get a number. But then they're gone. They're nowhere to be found. So. So to me, that needs to change as well. They need to concentrate more on the people, what their needs are, is the church right for them. Even if it takes six months for them to be baptized, then it should. They should wait. It shouldn't be this rush on getting, like, what's coming up, you know, let's get someone baptized by Christmas. There's a rush on that.

Guest 2 [02:37:59] They can't do that because it all comes down to honesty, doesn't it? I think, you know, that's why then that there's no acknowledgement of all of this because that would require them to kind of burst that bubble that they're trying to create. But I think it'd be the most healthy thing that the church could do is to just go, look, we're just going to front up now. We're going to be honest. You know, rather than this whole thing that they did of kind of alluding to the fact that they may or may not have seen Jesus, it would been so much more healthy for them to have just gone, look, you know, I'm an apostle. Yeah. I'm not. Not only apostle, I'm a really old apostle. I've lived all these years, I still haven't seen Jesus. But that's okay, because it's my faith that's important, and it's living a Christlike life that's important, you know, and I've had lots and lots of blessings for that from that. I think that would do wonders. I think people would get more out of that. It'd be more inspiring, you know, to actually say, look, guys, you know, we're struggling here, we're struggling. There's lots of people that are leaving. These are our, our brothers and sisters that are leaving and they're leaving and we need to reach out to them. And yes, that's a massive turnaround from the narrative that we're constantly hearing of. You know, we're going from strength to strength and the numbers are always increasing and the standard of truth has been erected and no one hallowed hand can

Peter Bleeckley [02:39:15] stop the work from progressing.

Guest 2 [02:39:18] But I think it's what we need and I think it's, you know, I don't, I don't like to talk for the younger generation because I'm not part of it. But you can't lie to them.

Peter Bleeckley [02:39:28] You're a teacher, though.

Guest 2 [02:39:30] Yes, yes. Well, maybe, maybe you can't, you can't

Peter Bleeckley [02:39:35] know what you're talking about.

Guest 2 [02:39:36] The, the Internet's there, the information is out there, so stop, stop trying. Let's just make it the healthy church that it could be by saying, well, look, we're going to be honest about all this and we're just working through it all together. You know, we're not here because we know so much more than you. We're here because we've done it for longer and we want to give you the hope that you can carry on even though it's really, really hard, it's really, really difficult.

Jane [02:40:01] And this is why, as individuals, we've had to say, look, I can do this myself. If we are waiting for someone higher up to come and do it, it's not going to happen. I don't know if they know how to do it. I don't know if they have the creativity of thought or think are too correlated or, you know, or what. They just don't have their finger in the pulse. I refuse to believe that because I think that the, whoever's writing those surveys that are coming out to us know exactly the right questions to ask. You know, people are aware of what is going on. And what I'm loving is that people are being very honest and vulnerable as they're replying to this stuff. But if you're in the uk, if you're, if you're a member of the church worldwide, but, you know, especially in the uk, you're going to want to know what is the deal with, with Peter Bleakley, you know, do we have to quarantine him in my thoughts. Now, what's the deal with all of this stuff that Nemo's pumping out? Who is John Dillon? Should I be listening to Mormon stories? What's. You know, am I allowed to have transgender friends? You know, what will we have all of these questions that we're grappling with that we've had to start bloody podcasts to start addressing, and it's going really interestingly now. We're not guaranteeing from that that anybody's going to stay based off of that. That's become. Not the aim. The aim has been making sure that the mental health of the people that we love that have been, you know, sitting beside us in the pier for the past 25 to 40, 50 years, they are okay. Because at the moment, we are getting nothing except we've got Sister, you know, Sister Patricia, this amazing thing that she said. She was talking about how often things we're afraid of are just not real. That's an incredibly mindful, you know, meditative. Meditative statement that as someone with ocd, oh, my goodness, I could have so much thought. And I can work on that. You know, my friend is having to go to other. Other faiths to learn about things like breath work and. And how to, you know, live interfaith principles where you can actually get your teeth into what your faith can look like. We are demonstrating possibilities that I just don't know based off of this weekend if our leaders are really able to see.

Nemo [02:42:39] Yeah, Nemo.

Douglas Stilgo [02:42:41] Yeah, I'll jump in just real quick. I kind of. I'm not sure I view Patricia Holland's statement that way. And I don't know whether it's the cynic in me, and maybe this is my problem, but I view that very much as she's saying the Boogeyman isn't real.

Douglas Stilgo [02:42:56] Don't worry.

Douglas Stilgo [02:42:57] The things that you're. You're scared of, these things that people are saying about the church, they're not real. I feel like I. I don't know. It's nice that people could take away what you've taken away from it. And I can't speak to her intent necessarily, but that's what I hear when I. When I say that. But to your point, about. About the health of people and the mental health of people, I think informed consent is very important for that, and that's certainly why I do what I do, because people deserve to know exactly what's going on, and they can do with it what they want. I say this all the time. People can Leave if they want to leave. They can stay if they want to stay. But if they know the state of affairs in the church, if they know the truth about their own religion, then more power to them to do whatever they want. Sorry, PD and Julian, I know you

Peter Bleeckley [02:43:37] guys want to say something.

Nemo [02:43:38] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:43:38] And then Nemo. Cue our next clip.

Douglas Stilgo [02:43:40] PD yeah.

Nemo [02:43:41] In, in all of this and from the very beginning of this announcement we have to frame is this a rescue? And I think in the sense of maybe the Swedish rescue and, you know, send the historian to answer questions. I don't think there'll be any more of those rescues because I think we've demonstrated here, we had the full court press with three apostles, and they've come up short in everything, and they've just come and asked us to defer to their authority. And how many people stay in the church because they say, well, the stake president's a great man and I respect him and he's okay with it, so I'm gonna stay. And I think that's where they're going now. They, they know that they can't, and, and I think they think it's beneath them to discuss the history of the church and the issues around that. So they've come here and bigged one another up and said, defer to our authority. That we know it's true. So you know it's true.

John Dehlin [02:44:54] They might also realize that if they talk about the church history problems, they're going to spread them, spread awareness about them, and that at the end of the day, they don't have good answers. So I think they're terrified, based on the Swedish rescue alone, they're terrified to acknowledge that there's a problem and to actually talk substantively about it.

Douglas Stilgo [02:45:14] I think Julian has a point and then we'll jump onto that. Clip 15. Yeah, yeah.

Guest 2 [02:45:18] So this relates to what you just said then, John, but also kind of going back to what I was saying about how I think it'd be so much better, so much more healthy if the church was just a lot more honest. I just wanted to point out that community of Christ has done that and shown that you can have this much healthier model and, and it work and any function. And I know that they lost members when they kind of dealt with a lot of these problems. I know that they haven't got $100 billion, but that's not the point. As a religion, they're showing that you can kind of keep, keep the good stuff, be honest about the rest of the stuff, and it still work.

John Dehlin [02:46:01] And they're dying. But it's a great point. At least it's. It's a matter of integrity to be honest and open. What's this next clip, Nemo?

Elder Ballard's Gaffe and Marriage Culture

Douglas Stilgo [02:46:09] So this next clip is Elder Ballard forgetting what day it is, forgetting what month it is, and then inviting us all to, you know, get a friend in the pews by Christmas, because that would be a lovely Christmas present for Jesus.

Guest [02:46:21] All right, what is this? Is this November yet? No, no, about November, isn't it? What is it? Oh, still in October. Well, November's tomorrow, so you got almost two months. I'd like to ask you to exercise your faith and let your prayers to your Father in heaven include a desire that heavenly Father will place someone in your pathway, one of his children in your pathway, that you can share what you now know is true. Between now and Christmas. If I were to ask you, would you like to give Jesus Christ a Christmas present? Every single one of you would say, oh, yes. How do we do it? I just told you. We can all give Jesus a Christmas present that he will love us for. Couldn't give him anything possibly as great as to bring a soul, another child of God to him.

Douglas Stilgo [02:48:05] Here you go. Jesus will love us for it. So, you know, what's not to like? Why wouldn't you?

Peter Bleeckley [02:48:14] I think what we're seeing here is

Douglas Stilgo [02:48:16] how's your culture, Julian?

Peter Bleeckley [02:48:19] We've talked about, you know, the quality of the leaders here.

Douglas Stilgo [02:48:22] Let's.

Peter Bleeckley [02:48:22] Let's do, you know, a reminder cells. Who's in the line of succession when President Nelson dies, if he's still here, Dallin Oaks is next. After that it's two of these guys, Ballard, then Holland. If they. They're not really looking like they're going to make it. After that it's maybe Uchtdorf and then it's 10 years at least of Bednar. So you know, where we're needing urgent effort to change and sort the church. The next three people in line are going to be disastrous for that. Clearly. And then even if Uchtdorf achieves some kind of reformation and reform and we've seen how, how kind of old and slow and unable to think anymore that they get at the that age. And we've recently had a prophet in a coma, I think a machine signs my mission call from President Benson. And we've had President Monson who had dementia for most of his administration and never talked to the press anymore. So what they constantly talked about was this narrative that we stay in the saddle till we die. Our wisdom, we lead, we direct. They talked about how President Hinckley was doing meetings until three days before he died. But that's not a realistic narrative. The vast majority of them end up very incapable. They slip into dementia quite quickly. And when you're like that, your safe place is your youth because you remember it clearly. Your short term memory goes, so you live in the past. That's why they keep idealizing their own youth and the model they keep giving. When Ballard's got round to telling the young people to get married and married young, said, oh, we got married, we didn't have a nickel to rub together. Just go and you know, you boys marry these pretty girls and go and start making families, you know, you can't afford that. London is one of the most expensive cities on earth. When he was at byu, the tithe payers paid for half of all the BYU students fees. They make it affordable for universities. And the whole of America is subsidized, of Utah is subsidized by gargantuan amounts of tithing being spent locally. And they, and the model they give is a fatal one because if you marry young and start having children and get in debt, all of those three things are factors for a high divorce rate. More than half of those young marriages, even in the church will end in divorce. So they're saying this model based on their own 1950s middle class Utah childhood. And they're doing it in all the face to faces to the youth. They are setting these young people up to fail. And there's no acknowledgment that that's a bad idea.

Nemo [02:51:04] Did we have the clip of that where he told the youth that they need to get married and ask?

Guest [02:51:10] We do.

Guest 3 [02:51:11] Yeah.

Nemo [02:51:11] Because the girls aren't going to ask that.

John Dehlin [02:51:12] Which club is that?

Douglas Stilgo [02:51:13] Yeah.

Peter Bleeckley [02:51:15] Which was boring.

Douglas Stilgo [02:51:16] He stopped short of his lipstick talk, but he gave the same sort of tirade. Young men, buckle up.

John Dehlin [02:51:21] Yeah, here we go.

Guest [02:51:22] And now I'm going to say something that I think is important for you to hear, and that is get a little more busy trying to find a companion. You, young man, wake up. These beautiful ladies here, one of them should be your wife. I think they're not going to ask you. You're supposed to pray that through and figure it out and you do the asking. Now I realize some of you may not be quite old enough yet to think about marriage, but anybody that's returned mission missionary here and is moving on in life, your next great adventure is to find your companion and get married. Wow.

John Dehlin [02:52:22] I mean that's.

Alana [02:52:23] That really, really annoys me.

John Dehlin [02:52:25] Why, Alana?

Alana [02:52:27] Because it's like, so as an independent mother, you know, on my own, I see the struggles I have and obviously I am kind of surviving monetary wise, but it's like, let's go. What was it he said? Something like, it doesn't matter if you've got silver or gold stashed away or something like that. He said. And it's like, so just go out and have children anyway, even if you don't have the money to provide for that child's needs. It's more than just providing for a child emotionally, you know, physically, you know, all the things they need. There's so much, so much children need. We know that in today's society that, you know, when we were young there wasn't so much pressure. And I'm not saying we should always give in to those pressures, but it's like, yeah, it doesn't matter if you've got money or not. Just, just go have children, bring them into this world, have them struggle, have them not be able to live up to the, the height of the world and what the needs are for for the children in this day and age. It just angers me. I remember the same talk being given years ago when I was in ys and I remember thinking, I wanted to stand up and say, why are you saying this to people? You are wrong. That is not okay to tell people that. And here we are again, many years later hearing the exact same thing and it's just wrong.

Douglas Stilgo [02:53:40] And I have a question for Sam, actually, because I feel like in the room of everyone, you and I are the ones that have most recently come out of the meat market. That is ysa. How does those, how those sorts of comments land to you as someone that's been, been in that position where, you know, you're there like, well, I don't get to ask a guy to marry me. It's clearly expected that one of these guys is going to select me. How does that feel for you?

Guest 3 [02:54:02] Yeah, he definitely flattened women in his, you know, there's a bunch of good looking ladies here, so marry one of them. You know, it's really reductive of what you might be looking for in a relationship. But I also think these, again, coming back to these men growing up, that's what they were taught. That is still, I mean, a much bigger part of Utah Mormon culture than the uk and that, that, that's like he's, he's sexist. He's inherently sexist. He's been raised in a sexist system. His understanding of What a healthy relationship looks like is probably very different from the average young person, maybe especially the average young person in the UK at least, versus Utah. And it just doesn't work because that, that kind of advice of like, just get married, just get married. You're encouraging people to get married while they're still in a phase of their relationship where there's a massive chemical cocktail going on that makes you infatuated with the other person and you really have no grasp of what it takes to make a marriage work or you don't know yourself well enough and you don't know them well enough.

Alana [02:55:13] I was going to say that there. I think that's one of my biggest issues with the whole marriage. Let's rush and have kids. You can't, especially in Mormon world. It's like, let's meet, let's get engaged and married within six months to possibly a year. And that's a stretch in the Mormon world. So like, I look at a member of my family, him and his wife have been together, they're out the church now, but they were married for quite a few years and they've only just had their first child. And I'm like, they travelled, they went to work in another country, they took time to really get to know each other. And that's what it's about. I mean, we look at why there's so much divorce in the world and in the church especially, and I feel a lot of it is to do with this rush on marriage, because you don't know a person if you've never lived with them before, if you've never been intimate with them before, you don't know that they're the right fit. So, you know, that's when all the problems start because you move in together, you get to realise, oh my goodness, like, they're possibly not right for me here. So why put a rush on having kids and bringing kids into that equation where then there's a split in that? Now, obviously my child was born from someone who's not in the church and when I had left the church. But you're then bringing kids into that world where they then have to have two parents who split and quite often not on good terms, you know, because maybe one has different views, etc. Etc. So it's wrong to teach that to our young people. Just get married and have kids. They've got to be emotionally stable and the, the, the parents have got to be stable. And if you've not experienced years being together before you have children, they're not Going to get that, what they need

Douglas Stilgo [02:56:45] in life, something really important. Out of the comments, Sarah Elizabeth just said no concern or insight for the crap impact on LGBT individuals of Ballard's marriage. Bit. He did say that later on he said he talked to those who. And we don't have a clip of this, unfortunately, but he basically said to those who will never get married and you may feel lonely, but just pray and be faithful and then you won't feel lonely. That was his advice. At least he addressed that those people exist, but that was his advice. Pray and you won't feel lonely, even though you will be for the rest of your life.

Jane [02:57:17] That's always the caveat at the end. And I just want to reinforce what. What Samantha just said is that we can, you know, my goal for worship is that we can have completely different opinions and discuss them and, you know, and agree and where we meet and things. But what Samantha just said there about sexist leadership as an act of Mormon, I absolutely agree. Our leaders are sexist. Our leaders, there's internalized misogyny. It's throughout the whole system that we live in. And I think if we acknowledge that, then we acknowledge the fact that I will often bring things back to my friend Alana, who's just always so willing and so open in life that she lets me do this. But you know, that my friend, during every talk that comes back to this, ends up feeling broken or like there's some kind of hole in their life that, you know, along with our transgender and, you know, actively choosing to be single members of the church, whether you're male or female, it's an acceptable choice to not be married. Wouldn't it have been so much better to think about, you know, the gift that Jesus would actually want you to give? Is it really converts? Is that what Jesus wants as a Christian Mormon? I like to think it's kindness, it's love, it's doing, you know, doing what Jesus would be doing were he to be here. Not delivering up relationship statuses or, you know, names on an activity sheet.

Nemo [02:59:18] He wants the convert's money. Sorry, just drop that one in there.

Peter Bleeckley [02:59:26] And it all contradicts their other messaging about self sufficiency. The church for a while now has been on this endless kick about being self sufficient, financially secure, provide for yourself. The church is to hear support life, not lifestyle. So the young people forced into this debt cycle and poverty and having more children than they can afford, become dependent on welfare. And then the church shames them for it and then it expects them to pay for all of those children to go to college and university. Now again in Utah, there's an international colonial system of exploitation. Here, 15 to 20% of all the tithing everyone in the world pays is going straight to the four American universities. 80% of the people going to those universities are white Americans and most of them are middle class. Provo University, BYU is in the bottom 2% for social mobility in American universities. Can I just thank everyone for their donations? Because my British parents met at byu, had me, and it was all worth it, but it's still an issue. And the way they enrich their nation, you got the American exceptionalism. But they've put $140 billion of just money into the mostly American stock market to make their country richer. I mean, that's a significant contribution to America's wealth and all the other lands and investments they have. They could be using that money to invest in developing.

Douglas Stilgo [03:01:02] Meanwhile, what they do is they go globally. They go globally then and say to other people, you want a chance at university? Sure, we'll loan you the money and for a modest fee, you non white American can pay us back once you've gained your university education. Meanwhile, the government that have just been paid a ton of money to go on a mission and be a mission president, their children get subsidized entry into that university. How is that okay to anyone?

Nemo [03:01:31] When, when I was a bishop, pay interest. Africa, who. He was at university and he'd done a couple of semesters and then his international student fees came up and his bank loan had fallen through and it was. He needed several, you know, tens of thousands of pounds. And as a bishop, the biggest check I could write was 500 pounds, which wasn't even going to touch it. And he was a new member and he went on and looked at church assistance and found the perpetual education Fund. And we tried so hard to get access to that, but we were just told he has to go back to Africa, leave university and then start again because he has to apply from his home country. Because he's not. He wasn't. He didn't qualify because he lived in the UK already. And it was just such a joke that there's all this money sat there and that they say that there's all of these great things that they do with it, but it's all tied up in red tape and bureaucracy that Jesus probably wouldn't have if you went to him for help.

John Dehlin [03:02:52] This is all saturated.

Peter Bleeckley [03:02:54] These apostles.

John Dehlin [03:02:55] Oh, go ahead, go ahead, Peter.

Peter Bleeckley [03:02:56] If these apostles. Yeah, if these apostles are saying to young people, you don't have to have gold and silver in the bank to feel secure enough to, to start a family. But then on the other hand, the same people will justify hoarding possibly $400 billion of gold and silver because that's the security of the Church, that is its safety, it's its nest egg. That's literally what the First Presidency and Presiding Bishop Rick have said. It's completely contradictory because they're saying you have to give us all this money and you have to pay us as leaders so that we don't ever suffer poverty to keep the Church secure. But you as young people starting out in life. Oh no, just start, get yourself in debt. It'll work out fine. It did for us. Well, the average, so not even top level American university costs 30 grand a year in America the fees for you are about 15 grand. So even based on averages, tithe payers give every BYU student $15,000 a year just to go to university. And that subsidizes having middle class families have large numbers of children and be able to still maintain that level of wealth and privilege to their next generation. We're paying for that. And one of the things that really got my goat was that Holland talked about how we didn't ask for this calling, we didn't refuse it when it was given. We devote all that we have and are to this cause.

Financial Transparency and Institutional Honesty

Douglas Stilgo [03:04:29] We have that as clip 5 if you want it.

John Dehlin [03:04:31] Let me play that really quick because we're, we're almost out of time and yeah, I want to make sure we get the important clips in. Let me play that.

Douglas Stilgo [03:04:40] I leave my witness with you as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not an office any of us sought, but not an office any of us would reject. And like Peter and James and John of old, we leave our nets and walk away and devote the rest of our lives to this work in order that our children, collectively speaking, in this case the youth and young adults of the United Kingdom, Ireland, that we devote all that we have and are until we die. That you might know what we know and not be found wanting in a day of personal judgment and collective judgment for the human family.

Douglas Stilgo [03:05:35] We're here so you won't be found wanting.

Peter Bleeckley [03:05:37] Yeah, the salary he gets is in the top 10% of incomes for America and Britain. They're not losing any wealth behind.

Nemo [03:05:47] He's less left his nets to catch gold.

Peter Bleeckley [03:05:50] His net.

John Dehlin [03:05:52] I mean every, every Mormon apostle has.

Peter Bleeckley [03:05:54] And what we now know is every

John Dehlin [03:05:56] Mormon apostle has a vacation home in like Heber Midway. We know they all die Millionaires, we know they make two or three hundred thousand dollars a year. So yeah, to compare the self esteem.

Peter Bleeckley [03:06:08] So that another. Yeah, that's another take home from this whole conference is that was an epic lie because Gary Stevenson has just been revealed to have been allowed to not leave his net to continue as a board member of the company he founded and it's just about to give him dividends of $900 million. And one of the 70 is also involved in getting tens of millions. So that was a lie. They don't leave their jobs, they allow Gary, because he's so mega rich to stick with it. Now I'm delighted because what Holland said there was they give everything they have and everything they are to the young people of Britain. They're doing it for us, the youth of the UK. So we are going to have $900 million from Gary Stevenson, the apostle, to spend on anything we want. Which would be great because we gave $5 million to the Humanitarian Aid for fund over the last 10 years and only about 100,000 of it has been spent. It's still sitting in a bank account and you can look it up on the commission website. We have given $1 million to the perpetual Education Fund which would put dozens of poor students in Britain through university here if they can't organize themselves to spend it somewhere else. And it's still sitting there. And Wellingwater Wards, which was my last ward, is half an hour's drive away from Hyde Park Chapel. It is older than Mormons in Utah. That ward is 180 years old. They are still meeting in a school because the church kept lying to them. They found land after land after land, decade after decade and the Church intentionally underbid so they never bought them a chapel. But what they did last year was 103 million pounds to the British church account to buy Alder Castle, a business centre in London, 20 minutes drive away from where the Welling members who paid that tithing live in social housing. So this is real. The financial lies and exploitation is insane. And one of the state presidency members of that stake, this was one of the things that broke his testimony that he found out that they were intentionally under bidding. They were bidding two thirds below a reasonable bid for that land and that started to break his shelf and his family have now left the church. So this stuff is personal, it's real, it's on the ground. We are being robbed, we are being lied to. And he just told another lie then about who they are and what they do and how they sacrifice to rescue us. And it's all alike. We are sacrificing to give them a comfortable life.

Douglas Stilgo [03:08:56] You see why we're riled up John

Peter Bleeckley [03:08:58] here of the power relationship.

John Dehlin [03:09:02] Well, let me just say that I'm done now. This is so amazing. I texted Samantha, like, are all British people this intelligent? And I don't mean that in a condescending way, but I'm just saying, yes,

Peter Bleeckley [03:09:15] we all have sense as well.

Douglas Stilgo [03:09:17] It's just a fact.

John Dehlin [03:09:18] I am in awe of how intelligent you guys. It makes me want to.

Guest 2 [03:09:21] Just dumbed it down tonight.

Douglas Stilgo [03:09:23] Yeah. To be honest. 80, John. 80.

John Dehlin [03:09:28] Well, we could go on forever. And I want to, but I promised Margi I would. I would be home because we have a date tonight. But I do want to wrap up, so. So I guess I want you guys all to plug what you're doing. And I do want to give everyone a chance to give a final thought. Thought. So, Nima, why don't you call around the horn and give everyone a chance in some sort of structured way to

Closing Thoughts and Farewells

Douglas Stilgo [03:09:51] give closing points like we did at the beginning. So I think we'll go in the order we went in at the beginning. We'll go. Ladies first. 21st century saints. Shameless plugs, please.

Jane [03:10:02] Oh, this will be shameless. I have none. Okay. Well, I guess my final thought about this conference had been something that we didn't hit. While we were being asked to bring people to church, while we were being asked to, you know, effectively convert people, there was a talk right at the beginning of today that in the spirit of the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin, the speaker had talked about how he had left his kid very young kids at a service station. Now, we were, you know, in the group chat that we were having during this, we were all sort of chuckling about this because, you know, are you even a parent if you haven't mislead a child or two? It happens, you know, but, you know, it got very serious very quick because the reality is that some things are lost because the person who's responsible has lost them because there was an onus on the person in charge and they didn't do their job and they've been lost for a reason. Now, I'm sure that most people who are listening to this have, you know, who have been affiliated with the. With the. The Latter Day Saints and are no longer aren't feeling especially lost. If you're quite happy where you are, then, you know, Alana and I, we, we, we bless your journey. We're. We're delighted if you are happy and, you know, deconstructing your faith in whatever way you choose to do that, but if you are feeling lost and you've been let down because someone should have been been there to look out for you, then I am in a position where I'm being forced to think of. I'm being asked to bring someone. I'm being asked to think about my husband who's not a member of the church. Will you be safe? I'm going to bring you, and then you're going to be lost. That's what I know will happen. And so you're not going to be safe in the hands of this church. At the moment, I have my transgender, wonderful, incredible niece who's living with us permanently now, who's not safe to come to church because you're going to continue to hear damaging messages that are going to cause you further pain, and I cannot and will not expose you to that as your. As your guardian. I've got kids who are having to go to other churches to find a spiritual home. My son, who was a teenage convert who's now serving, is now serving his country, is finding that the people from Fiji who are serving along with him in this country are the best examples of faith that he has ever seen, that they've come over, and that the worship is meaningful and real, and he's able to have experiences that he could not have in this church. And that is tragic, because I think we could, because I think there's possibilities. So for me, what am I doing? I am continuing to focus on building relationships as a human being with those people that I love who are deconstructing their faith or who have questions. I'm continuing to journey that way. The podcast we are having tons of fun with, we're having some Old Testament fun in the next couple of weeks. We're talking about origin stories with this incredible biblical historian, Dr. Sheldon Greaves, who is a treasure. And so he's going to be talking to us about, you know, should we be chucking out the Bible? What do we do with all those myths? So that's coming up this week, and we also. Sorry, that's coming up next week, and we've also just been speaking with a wonderful transgender sister and her best friend. They're going to be talking to us about sister's blessings. Now, this is going to be. Be the most ready, sort of Alanne and I got to hear a presentation that they both gave, and it was the most spiritually powerful experience that I have ever had. So, yeah, you Guys definitely don't want to miss that. Alana. What I've spoke to you.

Alana [03:14:49] What is it I always say to you? I don't have anything to say.

Jane [03:14:53] You're awesome.

Alana [03:14:54] Yeah, I guess I don't have any final thoughts necessarily regarding what we watched on the conference. I mean, my common thread that I always share with people and it's just how I feel, how I've always felt is just to love people and just accept people for who they are. And I think that's something that within the walls of the church, they may be good at speaking the words, but I don't think within them. I'm not speaking for everyone. Sorry. But I don't feel it's really there. You know, they talk about accepting people, accepting people, whether they're lgbtq. You know, we need to love these people, but. But they're not accepted. You know, like I seen in the comments somewhere, you know, that I don't fit them all, you know, single mum, all this. And it's like, it's sad that in a church that professes to have the name of Christ and who teach about Christ. Christ. And what is Christ? What I was taught growing up in the church was Christ is love, he's compassion, he's non judgmental. And in my opinion, we seem to be the most judgmental people around. And that's just my own opinion. I may be wrong, but I just think just love people, accept people, put your arms around that person, who needs that hug, irrespective of their lifestyle choices, and that, that's really just all I would say personally.

Douglas Stilgo [03:16:14] Thank you very much, ladies. Peter, don't keep John from the date with his wife.

Peter Bleeckley [03:16:19] I will not. We have a religion that is intellectually credible. There's hardly any of it left and certainly not in what you're going to hear from the general authorities. So do the research, listen to go and find Hugh Nibley's leaders versus manager speech. He predicted it all. He predicted that these managers would take over, that they'd most likely be lawyers and businessmen and their ethos would infiltrate the church. He predicted they would destroy the pioneer monuments. And Nelson's just gutted the Salt Lake Temple, our flagship, our Sistine Chapel. He's vandalized it and made a tombstone for himself from a slab of what he stole from that temple. These are the people doing this to us. So we need to understand that and frame things politically. All kinds of organizations, organizations have had last minute revolutions to save themselves when they're staring oblivion in the face. A palace coup to get rid of a mad king, a democratic revival. There are all kinds of ways to bring about change. And we can. And we have the Internet, which empowers us with a voice and action and communication, but it can't be led by the people who've left. The people who've left will tell us what to do. Trying in my podcast, Mormon Civil War, to channel the knowledge and the wisdom, a lot of which you've heard in this broadcast today. They know what to do to save the church. They have a program. They can give you lists, they can tell you what would have made the church for them to stay in. So we grassroots members are going to have to make it happen. But the only chance we have is if the middle management level, the local bishoprics and state presidencies and relief Society presidencies and all the rest of it, they have to decide. I'm tired of all my children leaving the church. What's the point when their wards are down to branches again? What's the point? Will you. Will you people who are active, concerned, intelligent members of the church actually do something to save it? And I'm trying to lay out a pathway of what you could save. And what we've collectively agreed is we're going to have to use common consent. They ask us every four times a year, two general conferences, state conference, ward conference. Do you sustain or oppose these people being in power? We have got to get. We got to see bishopric standing up and saying no. Because the shit show we just saw this weekend is all they've got. And it's counterproductive, it's depressing, it's going to destroy the church. But there are valid intellectual as well as spiritual and ethical reasons to be that revolution. And if we don't do it in the next few years, the church has to get with the program that young people are not going to stay in a church that's racist, homophobic, sexist and transphobic. It's not going to happen. And truth phobic, they're going to have to grovel, they're going to have to reform. It seems impossible, but if it's going to happen, it's going to be in the next few years. So it's exciting. I'm not talking about a lifetime struggle. It will either happen in the next five years as people see their families and wards disappear in front of their eyes, which has already started and they've got five years, I'd say, to make those changes, or it's too late, because you've lost your children and what will happen to you is what happens to the Church of England. You wait for the old people to die and you can close your buildings.

Douglas Stilgo [03:19:47] So stay tuned, everyone will inform you

Peter Bleeckley [03:19:49] on how to do it.

Douglas Stilgo [03:19:51] Stay tuned.

Peter Bleeckley [03:19:51] Join the revolution.

Douglas Stilgo [03:19:54] Viva la revolution. So Julian Heath, please give us your wrap up.

Guest 2 [03:20:02] Yeah, thanks. Thanks John for Let me come on and and just chat with everyone tonight. So I'm not here in any kind of official capacity as far as Sunstone UK is concerned, but I do want to just take the opportunity to kind of plug that a little bit. We've got a great group on Facebook that's getting bigger and bigger and bigger. We had a wonderful conference just a couple of months ago and the people that have talked to us tonight have all been a part of of that, including Sam who was was there presenting on our first digital conference that we did after after lockdown. We've got loads of of great things planned so just watch this space. If you're not already a member, join the Sunstone UK Facebook group and yeah, and stay tuned.

Douglas Stilgo [03:20:53] Thank you very much PD P. Diddy, as we call him.

Nemo [03:20:57] Thank you. Regardless of what they said, the doctrine and all of that, I hope that the church continues in one vein and that is that it is batshit crazy and puts a lot of us in a lot of stranger than fiction situations. And you can read and report those stranger than fiction situations@prihood dispatchers.com where we have a lovely blog which for sisters and brothers to share their experiences and just anything that you want to get off your chest. You know, whether you were asked to help someone move this kind old lady and sex toys fell out of a box or you know, these random things that happen to people when they're serving the Mormon Church. We also have on YouTube, Twitch and Facebook pages where you can share those stories. There's PD Storytime to share short stories and we have after dinner chats where just regular old members can come on and shoot the ship for an hour and just get everything off their chest. You can say the things that you weren't brave enough to say at church. You don't have to be an angry ex Mormon. You don't have to be a tbm. You can be anywhere on the spectrum and you can say it privately on The Priesthood Dispatchers YouTube channel for no one to hear.

Douglas Stilgo [03:22:40] Thank you very much P.D. i guess I'll just take this opportunity to thank you all for getting stuck in and coming along. Thanks very much John and Sam for having us on here. Thank you Samantha for joining as an honorary Brit Venger, that is really nice to have you back to your roots, joining in with us all. I hope your accent will thicken over the next few days.

Guest 3 [03:23:03] Me too.

Douglas Stilgo [03:23:04] That's my hope.

John Dehlin [03:23:05] Permanent designation. Are you saying it's only a temporary designation?

Douglas Stilgo [03:23:08] Oh, no, no. Honorary doesn't mean temporary. It means with honor.

John Dehlin [03:23:12] Oh, nice, nice.

Douglas Stilgo [03:23:14] There we go.

Peter Bleeckley [03:23:15] In our country, that's. That's an honor, literally with a capital H. You have it.

Douglas Stilgo [03:23:19] Exactly.

Guest [03:23:20] Yeah.

Douglas Stilgo [03:23:21] So I. Nemo the Mormon is my channel. I posted the videos of these, of these conferences. Other things like that happen in the uk. I'll do that again. Watch me as I continue to not get excommunicated for rabble rousing and opposing the church. If you want to oppose the church, check out my video on opposition. There's a pro forma there. All you have to do is put your name at the top, your state president's name at the top, your name at the bottom, and send it to him. It's got everything you need to give a scriptural argument as to why the church is in apostasy and you shouldn't have to support those leaders anymore. Other than that, I have nothing else to say because I say it all on my channel. So go check it out. Thank you very much, everyone.

John Dehlin [03:24:02] I love it. I love it. Samantha, give us some closing thoughts real quick.

Where to Find the Panelists Online

Guest 3 [03:24:07] I'm on YouTube @self on the shelf. We also have TikTok, Instagram, Twitter and a Patreon. We talk a lot about Mormonism, obviously, but a lot through the lens of psychology, dismantling certain cultural conditioning that we get, things like that. It's a fun time and it's been really nice being a part of this conversation. I miss British people a lot.

John Dehlin [03:24:30] How does it feel to see. How do you feel about your fellow Homelanders? Kind of rising up. Yeah, it's nice to see and joining in on the conversation.

Guest 3 [03:24:40] I love it. Yeah, lots more, Lots of reasonableness, which is cool.

Douglas Stilgo [03:24:47] Pragmatism. And John, you get to be a Brit venture too. Sorry, I forgot to mention that.

Guest 3 [03:24:52] Really take that on as an idol American.

Douglas Stilgo [03:24:56] Yeah, we have to have a token American otherwise, you know, people won't take us seriously.

Jane [03:25:00] I love it and we all do love it when people get in touch. We've had lots of great support, especially friends of all of our shows, Doug Finston. And we're just special shout out to you because you're just. It's so good to have so much support and he's been extreme, exceptionally supportive. So want a shout out to him, but do get in touch with us because we, we love to, we love to hear your thoughts.

John Dehlin [03:25:25] Yeah, I love it.

Guest [03:25:26] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:25:26] Well, I want to continue this forever. Maybe let's do this as a series every once in a while. But most importantly, listeners, my listeners, my viewers, please support all of these respective programs. Please support Nemo, please support Mormon Civil War, you know, but please Support Priesthood Dispatches, 21st Century Saints, Sunstone UK. Please support all these incredible efforts in any way that you can. We love you guys. I'm inspired by what you do. You guys make me want to retire because I think you could do my job better than I do. But I'm happy to kind of pass the mic and give you guys a platform. I had someone from South Africa write in, in a comment and say, say we should have a bunch of South Africans do a panel like this too.

Jane [03:26:12] And absolutely.

John Dehlin [03:26:14] Yeah, like what if we had a French equivalence of the Brit vengers and a German speaking equivalent and a Portuguese speaking equivalent.

Douglas Stilgo [03:26:21] Avengers, Brittany.

John Dehlin [03:26:23] Yeah, and Spanish. And like, I just want to see Mormons all throughout the world rise up and in their own language, in their own culture, on their own platform platforms, speaking to their own people. I just hope you guys are, are the first of many, many, many to come. But also bless you guys and keep it, keep it up.

Douglas Stilgo [03:26:44] I'll drink to that.

John Dehlin [03:26:46] I'll drink.

Peter Bleeckley [03:26:47] And thank you. John, Can I. You. You've made the, the nuanced and post Mormon space much more reasonable, kind, patient, thoughtful than it would have been without you by a long shot. And that is a space that we've then been able to move into and inhabit. So I just want to really pay tribute to the work that you and Mormon stories have done. You know, when I first heard that there was a Mormon stories and people were able to just tell their real experience, it was revolutionary and it has changed everything for us and for the whole community. So thank you and thank you for being so generous and encouraging others and not being competitive.

Douglas Stilgo [03:27:29] Yeah, cheers, John.

John Dehlin [03:27:30] It's my pleasure.

Alana [03:27:30] Thank you, John.

John Dehlin [03:27:31] My pleasure. Thanks. Thanks everyone. Let's do this again soon. Keep it up. And of course, Kara Burrell. Nuance Ho reminds us to come to thrive Nov. 14 at the Salt palace for a full day of amazing content. And I'm making my commitment now to come to the UK in May. I know that Clinton, Jenny Martin are talking about coming with me. Maybe Samantha, my. Maybe we can convince Samantha to come. Maybe Kara will come. Who knows? But let's plan something amazing in May.

Douglas Stilgo [03:28:00] And we have thrive UK 22nd of January.

John Dehlin [03:28:02] Thrive UK 22nd of January.

Douglas Stilgo [03:28:05] Let's be there.

John Dehlin [03:28:06] Yeah, Be there. Be square, Bristol. All right, everyone. You guys take care. Stay in touch. Thank you. Episode of our respective programs. Bye, everybody.

Guest 3 [03:28:19] Bye.

Guest 2 [03:28:19] Bye.

John Dehlin [03:28:20] Thanks, guys.

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.