Introduction and Guest Welcome

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is November 3, 2022 in the United States. I'm guessing it's November 4, 2022 in Australia. We are here to cover what has come out over the past few days and or weeks. A Mormon church tax scandal in Australia that is also making waves in Canada because it's part of a joint news story supported by both 60 Minutes Australia and the Canadian Broadcasting Company or the CBC. And to cover this very important story, we have back with us two guests who should be familiar to Die Hard Mormon Stories fans. First of all, we have Dr. Simon Southerton, who has been an important co host in a series that, that we've held in 2022 around kind of Mormon truth claims versus science. Simon Southerton is the author of several books. He's a geneticist. I got to know Simon through his book Losing a Lost Tribe, but he's written several things since then. But Simon Southerton, or should I say Bishop? Bishop Southerton, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Simon Southerton [00:01:13] Ex. Bishop Saladin, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] No, no, no, no. Tell him, Neville. Once a bishop, always a bishop, right? Right, Neville?

Simon Southerton [00:01:21] Yeah. Yeah.

Neville Rochow [00:01:21] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:01:22] Yeah. So, Bishop Sotherson, welcome to welcome Back to Mormon Stories.

Simon Southerton [00:01:26] Thank you, John. It's good to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:27] Anything you want to say about your own introduction?

Simon Southerton [00:01:29] Me? Yeah, that's fine. No, that's fine. Oh, you could, you could say we're going to be picking up The Mormon Doctrine vs Science podcast series again fairly soon, and we'll probably launch straight into the genetic ancestry of the first. First Americans.

John Dehlin [00:01:46] Excellent.

Simon Southerton [00:01:47] The research of the last 20 years is just amazing, particularly the last 10 years. So. And it just completely supports all of the conclusions that we drew 20 years ago.

John Dehlin [00:01:58] Yeah, so, absolutely. Well, that's been really enjoyable. A really important contribution this year. And of course, you also have a book called the Sacred Curse, which is kind of an update on, you know, DNA and the Book of Mormon. The subtitle is How Native American DNA Exposes Mormonism's Lamanite Myth. So anyway, welcome back, Simon. What's that?

Simon Southerton [00:02:24] Which they can access from your website?

John Dehlin [00:02:26] Absolutely, I'll include a link to that. But Simon, you also play an important role in this story that everybody's been messaging me about. So we're super glad to have you on.

Simon Southerton [00:02:36] Yeah, I took a break from the spotlight. Neville's got a much more handsome face than me and he's been, he's been copying most of the heat, fortunately. So, yeah, I took a break But I. I did, yeah, I did do a fair bit of the early snooping on this. So.

John Dehlin [00:02:53] Yeah. And with that, we want to welcome Dr. Neville Rocco back to Mormon Stories podcast. He was interviewed for episode 1536, the Australian Queen's Council, who raised the bar on Mormonism. But Neville is featured in Both the Australian 60 Minutes piece and the CBC piece. Neville, welcome back to Mormon Stories.

Neville Rochow [00:03:16] Thank you. It's good to be with you again, John.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] Yeah. Anything you want to add to your introduction? I know you Aussies tend to be humble and understated, so.

Neville Rochow [00:03:25] No, nothing.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] Okay. Well, it's a real honor to have you both back. Yeah. So what we're going to be doing now is we're going to be kind of having Simon tell us a little bit about the background to this story, how it came about. We're going to talk about kind of some background on the Mormon Church, its membership and financials in Australia. Then we're going to be talking about this kind of tax arrangement or scheme, however you want to call it. We're going to talk about Neville's kind of involvement, his realization of his involvement in some of this, and then we'll just talk about kind of what it all means. How does that sound, Simon and Neville?

Simon Southerton [00:04:00] Fine.

Neville Rochow [00:04:01] Perfect.

Religious Tax Law in Australia

John Dehlin [00:04:02] All right, so I'll move. I'll move these little things around. And Simon, why don't you start.

Simon Southerton [00:04:07] I think, Neville, I can share some perspective on the church in Australia, which I think is important to appreciate sort of as background information. I think Americans often assume that Australia is very similar to America, and it's probably not. It's quite a different country. And I'm sure Neville would agree. We're a very secular country. I think about 10% of Australia, less than 10% of Australians, would go to church every week, whereas in America, I think it's probably over north of 40 to 45%. So we have a lot of debate about religious rights going on in Australia at the moment.

John Dehlin [00:04:50] It's kind of. It's kind of a. One of the most secular countries in the world. Right.

Simon Southerton [00:04:56] I think the UK is probably slightly less secular. Much of Europe would be. But we're very similar to many of them.

Neville Rochow [00:05:04] We're hitting the same way as Scandinavia. Each census, we're getting closer and closer where the Scandinavians and the Dutch are, which is basically either agnostic or atheistic as a. As a culture, which means that people who are religious are fighting more and more of an uphill battle in order to get their position reflected in legislation or whatever. So, yeah, I Think. I think we're facing a decline of religion progressively over each five year census.

John Dehlin [00:05:46] And we in the US are probably a few decades behind you. All right, keep going, Simon.

Simon Southerton [00:05:51] But you're heading in the right direction. That's the most important thing. But an important consequence of that is that the Australian government takes a fairly, not a dim, view of religions, but they are yet to be convinced that the Australian taxpayers should be subsidising religions. And for that reason, virtually every church in Australia where you put your money in the plate on Sunday or donate tithing, you can't claim any tax deduction on that. That's because the government recognises that the vast majority of those donations are going to running the organisation, paying the priest's salary and building the building, cleaning the building and all that sort of stuff. And so the government in Australia doesn't think that the taxpayer should be subsidising those expenses. And so virtually every church in Australia doesn't get any tax deduction on their donations.

John Dehlin [00:06:59] Simon, that was

Neville Rochow [00:07:02] Neville.

John Dehlin [00:07:02] Please. Neville.

Neville Rochow [00:07:04] Yeah, I had lunch with a good friend of mine who's a professor at the University Law School, but he's also a Ukrainian Orthodox Catholic priest, and he said that every denomination that he knows of struggles to get any donations at all at the moment. They just don't get money. So they're not only not enjoying tax benefits in any way, but I mean, their properties are not taxed and some of their operations are not taxed, but the donors still get taxed. But he said that they're not only struggling to get money in, but they're just barely making enough to keep their operations going.

John Dehlin [00:07:55] Yeah, and I was just. Somehow I didn't realize that Australia didn't, didn't by default allow members to deduct their donations to churches. Is that something that's changed? Was there a modern battle? Because this comes a lot, it comes up a lot here in the us Like a lot of ex Mormons want the Mormon Church to lose its, its status as kind of, you know, any form of tax exemptions. Is that something that you all had to fight for? Did it never exist? Or is that kind of a modern.

Neville Rochow [00:08:29] It's never, never been part of that tax schematic that I can recall. What are you. Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:08:35] I don't know. I seem to recall when in the 90s, when I was active and paying tithing, that we could get virtually all of our tax back on our tithing. And that's pre, certainly in 2012 between. I think it was in 2012, 2013. There was a fairly close government inquiry into charities and churches and whether or not they could be regarded as charities. And that's when some of the changes that we're going to talk about today with regards to the financials of the LDS Church, that's when a lot of those changed.

Neville Rochow [00:09:20] The LDS Church has always been an outlier because it's driven to either take advantage of loopholes or create loopholes. And that's why, that's why it's been different from other religions that it has actually attended to that to create some sort of tax haven for the member. Other religions have neither tried that nor have that advantage.

Simon Southerton [00:09:51] Yeah. The earliest church was very active in 2012 in that. During that inquiry phase, wasn't it, Neville? And I think you have some recollections of before, when you were active in the church, of some meetings and some of the things that went on at that time so driving those changes. And I suspect that's probably when they, I guess, organized things in such a favorable way for the church.

Neville Rochow [00:10:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:30] All right, Simon, let's go ahead and. Go ahead and continue.

Simon Southerton [00:10:35] It's worth giving a little bit more background on the church. I guess Australians aren't hostile towards the LDS Church. They just see it as a little bit weird. The church is actually very small in Australia, so the church claims roughly 155,000 members on the books. However, the census, we've just had a census and there were 57,000 people listed themselves as either LDS or community of Christ. They get bundled together. There's about a thousand in the Community of Christ and about 57,000 in the LDS Church.

John Dehlin [00:11:16] So about a third of the people that the church claims to be members in Australia actually self. Identify.

Simon Southerton [00:11:22] Yeah. Yeah, a little bit more than that. And I would say probably in the vicinity of. A half of those probably don't attend.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] Right.

Simon Southerton [00:11:29] I mean, the Catholics would have. 40% of Australians would say, or 30% of Australians would say they're Catholics. And yet.

John Dehlin [00:11:38] So basically a sixth of the. Basically a sixth of the LDS Church members that the LDS Church claims actually attend church on a regular, probably in

Simon Southerton [00:11:49] the vicinity of 25 to 30,000.

John Dehlin [00:11:51] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:11:53] Another important aspect is that half of that population are from Samara Ortonga. So we have a very large Pacifica population in Australia. So they really are. They're almost over 50% of the church on the Eastern seaboard. So what's currently going on? The church actually declined at the last census, so we were 61,000. There were 61,000 LDs in 2016, but now dropped to 57,000. What's going on is there's a very significant increase in the Pacifica population membership and a very significant decrease in the Caucasian or the European population in the church. So, yeah, all up. It's a pretty small church relative to many of the other ones in Australia and getting smaller. But Australians love the Book of Mormon musical, though.

John Dehlin [00:12:58] Really?

Simon Southerton [00:13:00] Yeah. I don't know if they do this in America, but there's a small segment in the musical where they sort of very quickly give a snapshot of the LDS Church. I can't remember how it went, but maybe they do it in America as well. I don't know. But yeah, it was very popular.

John Dehlin [00:13:16] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:13:17] Yeah. So I guess that's as much background as I need to give. Just. Do you have any other things you want to add now?

Neville Rochow [00:13:28] There's just. Just one other thing that I would add, and that's the 1983 decision of our high court in the Church of Scientology. The Victorian government, as most state governments do, give an exemption to churches for payroll tax.

Simon Southerton [00:13:49] They.

Neville Rochow [00:13:50] They get exemptions at a state level in respect of payroll tax rates and taxes at the local council level and property tax. So there are some minor concessions to the religious organizations rather than the adherents. And that case was very important because it endeavoured to define what religion was for the purposes of that particular statute.

Simon Southerton [00:14:18] And.

Neville Rochow [00:14:18] And it came with a very broad definition of what? Well, there's really no definition in the case. It just gives a number of indicators, but it gives a very broad set of indications as to what a religion might be. But that wasn't to expand significantly the tax base. So it was a case that decided that the Scientologists were a religion, even though they didn't identify with a deity as such, but they.

Simon Southerton [00:14:48] And.

Neville Rochow [00:14:48] And as a result, they were entitled to the exemption from. From the payroll tax.

Simon Southerton [00:14:55] Okay, that's.

John Dehlin [00:14:58] That's helpful to know. So there. So there are some. Some advantages or breaks, you're saying?

Neville Rochow [00:15:04] Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:15:05] Kind of minor. Thank you. Thanks, Neville.

The Ensign Peak Scandal Explained

Simon Southerton [00:15:11] All right, Simon, let's just launch into the scandal.

John Dehlin [00:15:16] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:15:17] Sort of what got me, I guess what sort of really sparked my interest was the Ensign peak revelation in November 2019. $100 billion sitting there in a fund, not paying any tax on the increase on that. I mean, if that was in Australia. Yeah. I cannot imagine that arrangement would still be sitting there. I think the government would have just stepped in and taken some sort of action. So. But for me personally, that just shocked me. I just thought, well, that's just not the church that I thought I, you know, I thought I was, when I was a member, I just didn't think the church was like that.

John Dehlin [00:16:02] And for, for, for our, never Mormons that are kind of tuning in, but, but don't know the history. Maybe if I could just recap, I guess there's this organization called Ensign Peak, which is the church kind of has been using to, to invest its surplus funds. It's got stocks and bonds and municipalities and cash and real estate. And there was this whistleblower named David Nielsen who was willing to come out publicly, and it ended up coming out through his brother Lars Nielsen, but he ended up basically through the two brothers, letting the world know that the church had, I think at the time it was like 120 billion in total assets just managed through Ensign Peak. And that as far as David Nielsen was able to determine, there are only two times he was aware of where any of those funds were actually used. One was, was to, to help bail out City Creek to pay for, I guess, overages from the City Creek Mall, the shopping mall. And then the other was to bail out a failed insurance company. I think it's called Beneficial Mutual or Beneficial Life. And other than that, none of the money, to anyone's knowledge, has ever been used for any charitable purposes.

Neville Rochow [00:17:24] And since then, John, the Sea Capital, of course it's important to note, came from tithing funds.

John Dehlin [00:17:31] And the church worked really hard to say publicly and internally that none of the funds came from tithing. Is that right, Neville?

Neville Rochow [00:17:39] Yeah, that's right. Well, that's the message they would like to get across. The narrative is tithing funds are always used for the administration of the church, but I think they collect 7 or 8 billion a year worldwide. And it costs about 5.6 or 5.7 to run the church. The surplus money has been pumped into Ensign Peak, and so all the profits that are made are derived from tithing funds. So that's all money that members have contributed and have invested or have had invested on their behalf, and they get no advantage from it whatsoever.

John Dehlin [00:18:20] Yeah, thank you, Neville. Yeah. Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:18:24] So, yeah, well, I did some sums on that. You know, you look at the amount of money that the Church is making from Ensign Peak and it's probably pretty close to $10 billion a year now. I think it's 7 and 10.

Neville Rochow [00:18:40] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:18:41] So $10 billion and the church costs about 5 billion to run. If you start doing the sums, you could actually pay every single active Mormon something like about four or five thousand dollars a year to come to church. And the church would still Go on forever. It has so much money, such an enormous amount of money just seemed so. Anyway, this really got me quite obsessed. And I thought, well, in Australia, we've got public filings of the tax records. So churches since 2014 have had to file annual reports on their finances. So the data to enable us to look at what's going on in Australia is sort of hidden in plain sight. It's in these files at the Australian Charities Commission. So I jumped online and went and started looking through the filings. It's quite confusing because there are five different charities listed under the LDS Church. But the thing that really caught my eye was one of them in particular.

John Dehlin [00:19:53] So here on the screen, are these the five that you're talking about?

Simon Southerton [00:19:56] They're the five charities.

John Dehlin [00:19:58] Do you want to read them out just so that the listeners can know what. What we're showing?

Simon Southerton [00:20:05] Yeah. Okay. So the first one is LDS Charitable Trust Fund. And I'll describe what that is a bit later on. But the one that really caught my eye was the second one, LDS Charities Australia. And it's because of this, just the massive amounts of money that are flowing in and out of it. The other charities, basically the third charity there, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Australia, is basically the financial accounts of the church. And that includes things like building fund, fast offering. That's where they're paying the staff and church officers, and they're buying photocopy paper and photocopiers and ink and that sort of thing. So all of those costs are managed within the third charity there. So if you flick to the next slide, it shows you the sort of numbers that are associated with these charities. So in that slide, I've just listed their income, their expenses and their assets, and the number of staff associated with each one of those funds. So the two main ones that we're going to focus on, I wanted to focus on, are the first one, which is the fund into which all the money comes, and then the third one, which is this one, which has these large amounts that are coming in and they're going out to humanitarian aid. So the third one LDS Charities receives in 2021, received 93 million and almost 95 million went out, and that went to humanitarian aid. But the other important thing is that these, some of these have very large amounts of assets. So the first fund there has $200 million in assets. And that's why you can have. So as I mentioned earlier, the first fund is where all the money comes in, and from it, money goes to all the other Four charities there. Okay. So it's sort of a conu to those other charities. So if you click on that link, John, we can just sort of flick through. Yeah. Is that the website?

John Dehlin [00:22:26] Yep, that's the website.

Simon Southerton [00:22:28] Yeah. So this is the sort of thing that you see on the, on the

John Dehlin [00:22:31] website and you can just tell me, you just tell me where to click

Simon Southerton [00:22:35] and I'll click on the financials and documents there.

John Dehlin [00:22:38] And for those who just don't know this, on the Australian government website, there's a page for LDS Charities Australia that's kind of the umbrella. Is that right?

Simon Southerton [00:22:51] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:22:51] Okay. And where do you want me to click?

Simon Southerton [00:22:53] If you go down to financials. So that's a. Yeah, so the financials, if you scroll down that page, you can see there are documents for every year. Okay. So if you go right down the page, can you see further down? Yeah. So there's going back to 2415. I think that was when they first were compelled to submit these financial reports. So for each one of the five charities they have a website and they have exactly the same sort of page with annual financial reports. So if you go up to the top, you can see, if you go over to the People tab, you can see the people that are responsible for this. And on the left hand side is Carl Mora, who's a 70. Area 70, I think. So I don't think he would understand the financial reports, but he is responsible for it. Carl was actually my stake president when I resigned as a bishop 20 years ago. Yeah. So we, I think it'll be. I don't know any other things you want to see there, but yeah, this, this. So these websites.

John Dehlin [00:24:04] So these other, the, these other gentlemen, Douglas Martin and Paul Gray, anything we know about them?

Simon Southerton [00:24:10] I think Paul Gray has been a finance guy at church offices for close to two decades. Three decades. I think you probably know him. Do you, Neville?

Neville Rochow [00:24:22] I do know Paul. Yep.

Simon Southerton [00:24:24] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:24:25] Neville, do you have, do you have any, any questions. Commentary to make on these three individuals as.

Neville Rochow [00:24:29] Not really.

John Dehlin [00:24:30] Okay. Just in terms of as them being listed as responsible as directors for this charity.

Simon Southerton [00:24:38] Yeah. And they're pretty much the same people for the five separate charities.

Neville Rochow [00:24:47] I, I did, I did at one stage do an analysis of the trust documentation by which that's supported. And they are not on a technical reading of the trust documentation. They're not technically legitimately appointed at all because it's either the presiding Bishop or the president of the church that should be in their position. But they're not following the articles of association of the Corporation or the terms of the trust. But they're technical debates that we don't need to get into today.

John Dehlin [00:25:29] Okay. Okay. Thanks Neville. Simon, unless you have a plan for later, I thought it was cool to go into the financial document, the most recent one, and just kind of.

LDS Charities Australia and the Money Trail

Simon Southerton [00:25:40] We do that, scroll through it.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] Is that okay? So we can go to like the, the document for the, for the 2021 Annual Information Statement. And I just. And click View AIs and I just think a couple things are kind of really shocking, I guess.

Simon Southerton [00:25:58] One, countries where the, the aid is going to.

John Dehlin [00:26:03] Now I would just assume that, that a, a bunch of money going to a bunch of countries, that's just an unmitigated good thing now.

Simon Southerton [00:26:11] Yes. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:12] So that's good. That's good.

Simon Southerton [00:26:14] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:15] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:26:15] It's good that this aid is, is being given.

John Dehlin [00:26:18] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:26:19] It's good that Australians are so generous. Okay, so this is where we. I've extracted data.

John Dehlin [00:26:27] Neville, tell me why you're laughing. Because some of the subtleties here may escape some of our viewers and listeners.

Neville Rochow [00:26:34] Well, the numbers that they're talking about. Excuse me, the numbers they're talking about could not possibly on any view of the world come from the Australian Saints. That level of donation is just not possible of the say 30 to 50,000 tithe payers that there are. And so clearly the money that is being claimed in that documentation is coming from the local church, just is not coming from the local church. And so any tax deduction that is claimed on the basis that local Mormons are that generous has a big question mark over it. And the question mark attached to a question is where did the money really come from? Okay, it can't have come from Australian Lad Day Saints, it just cannot have done.

John Dehlin [00:27:34] Yeah, so, so when we see this number. 93 million. 93 million, right.

Simon Southerton [00:27:41] Income.

Neville Rochow [00:27:42] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:44] You're saying that unlikely came from the ten or so thousand tithe paying Australian Saints.

Neville Rochow [00:27:51] It's just impossible.

John Dehlin [00:27:53] Okay.

Neville Rochow [00:27:54] And can I just add this John, that compared if one accepts the document on its face, Australian Lady Saints are something like 3,000 more times generous than their fellow Saints in other jurisdictions.

John Dehlin [00:28:12] Okay.

Neville Rochow [00:28:13] And that doesn't strike me as being. We're very good people. We're good, but we're not that good.

Simon Southerton [00:28:23] Yeah. Why don't we hop out of the

John Dehlin [00:28:25] website because if it's okay. Totally, Simon. I just wanted to note that a couple other fields are really interesting here because it says. So we've got $93 million in donations and bequests, but $0 in employee expenses, you know, you know that. That's just. How in the world is that much amount of money sitting somewhere where there aren't expenses or employees or. Or anything? Right.

Neville Rochow [00:28:59] And serious decision makers, rather than factotums that are just following a directive coming from overseas.

John Dehlin [00:29:07] Yeah, yeah. Now, okay, so Neville or Simon, should we get out of this page, or is there anything else that's worth seeing?

Simon Southerton [00:29:13] We hop out of that, because what I've done is to save everyone the effort. I've extracted all of the data from those.

John Dehlin [00:29:18] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:29:19] And we're going to run through a few slides which sort of summarize what that is. But this snapshot, I think this actually is a modified version of an image which was in one of the reports.

John Dehlin [00:29:31] Should we go here next?

Simon Southerton [00:29:32] Yeah. Even on that, because in the report that was in the newspaper, I think they had 74 million as donated. But this is the last year's figures. So $95 million was donated by LDS Charities Australia. And this shows how it compares to other charities in Australia. So it's right up there. You know, it's. It's almost the second largest charity in Australia.

John Dehlin [00:29:57] And for those who can't see this and are just listening, we've got world vision at 144 million. Then medicine Sans Frontiers. Is that Doctors Without Borders? Basically, yes.

Simon Southerton [00:30:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:30:11] That's 97 million. So these are major world charities. And then LDS Charities Australia comes in third at 95 million. And then Oxfam, Plan International, Beyond Blue and Caritas Internationales are all laggards. They're all distant 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th.

Simon Southerton [00:30:30] You know, they're big.

Neville Rochow [00:30:31] So, John, just going back to our earlier point, World Vision, for example, has a donation base of potentially 26 million people, and it gets 144 million. LDS Charities has a donation base of potentially somewhere between 20 or 30 to 50,000 on a good day, as its donation base. So logically, one has to ask, why are a few tens of thousands of people being so much more generous than the rest of Australia?

John Dehlin [00:31:12] Yeah. And Neville, I don't want to nitpick, but, like, we know that maybe only a third of active members really pay tithing.

Neville Rochow [00:31:22] Well, that's right. It's usually the breadwinner that will pay it on out of an active family. So, I mean, I'm throwing around numbers to be as generous to the other side of the argument as I can. But the reality, nevertheless, is the same whichever way you fiddle the Numbers on the LDS side of the equation, you know, you've got 26 million potential donors for World vision and medicine sans frontier, you know, and they come up with 144 and 97 million. LDS Charities comes up with 95 million, with a base of, you know, tens of thousands.

Simon Southerton [00:32:02] Right.

John Dehlin [00:32:02] Yeah. Immediately.

Simon Southerton [00:32:04] Tens of thousands of people who are paying 10% of their income as tithing. Right. So it's really pretty hard for, For a Mormon to be donating above and beyond that.

John Dehlin [00:32:17] One of the, One of the questions that comes in is from Elizabeth. She writes, could this be money laundering? I mean, that's what Elizabeth is wondering. Is that a reasonable question to be asking or is she totally missing the point?

Neville Rochow [00:32:28] No, she's right on.

Simon Southerton [00:32:31] Yeah. It's washing, it's laundering, it's washing, it's funneling.

Neville Rochow [00:32:37] Okay, well, can I just add to what Simon just said, please? If you think about what the source of these monies likely is, it's probably Salt Lake City. Okay, so no prizes for that guess. But the money that goes into Salt Lake City is generally either tithes or offerings that have already been the subject of the tax deduction in the United States or possibly in another jurisdiction. And then they come out of the United States, out of Salt Lake City, then come into Australia to get yet another round of tax deductions going. So money laundering is one way of looking at it. Somebody put to me, well, this last week, well, look at all the good they're doing. And I, I said, well, yeah, but remember, Al Capone was a great contributor to his local community and made a lot of generous donations to his local community, but he still went to jail for tax evasion.

John Dehlin [00:33:42] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:33:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:33:44] Really quick, Simon and Neville, we have a. We have a question here from, I guess a skeptic, and I know you both value skepticism. Zach writes, if there's 50, 50,000 members all paying, that makes it around 1,400 per person per year. If you assume 20% of active members are tithe payers, that number is 9,500. To be honest, neither of those seem off. That's what Zach says. Do you guys have a. I'm throwing that at you cold. Do you guys have a response to Zach?

Simon Southerton [00:34:16] Oh, for the. He's done that calculation on the 95 million?

John Dehlin [00:34:21] I guess so, yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:34:23] Yeah. So, yeah. So every tithe payer, every single active member is paying 9,500 a year.

Neville Rochow [00:34:30] So that's every man, mother, woman, child, probably their pet dog, paying 1400. Maybe they're all faithful, I don't know. Yeah, but no, that's. That's just. That's just improbable. The the average income of an Australian Mormon would be, I would say, in the 50s or 60,000 a year. And in fact, a lot of the members in the Pacifica group would be net recipients of social welfare and not have the resources to make anywhere near a contribution like that. Now, what would be the motivation to come up with 1400 for every man, woman and child and their pet dog and cat? That's first question that has to be asked. But secondly, it's just improbable that people who are on average around 50, 60,000 a year after paying their tithing of 5 or 6,000 a year and then paying their mortgage, which is increasingly expensive as our interest rates go up, and paying to put food and the wherewithal to live on the table in a very highly inflationary environment. That's just an absolutely improbable calculation.

Evidence of Tax Evasion and Minimal Donations

Simon Southerton [00:35:59] All right, Australia, we are under very, very significant housing pressure on families. Australian houses are just, I think we have some of the highest house prices in the world. Very like the average house price. The median house price in Sydney is now 1.2 million.

John Dehlin [00:36:17] Oh, wow.

Simon Southerton [00:36:18] And many others rents as well.

Neville Rochow [00:36:24] If you are a renter in just about any capital city, the best you're going to get these days is probably $400 a week. And that's very rare. But most people are paying six or seven hundred dollars a week in rent. So where their fourteen hundred dollars is going to come from begs belief.

Simon Southerton [00:36:46] Okay, yeah. If you hop onto the next slide, this. We're now sort of get started to get a bit forensic about what's going on. So we have two sources of data. We have. So we're now focusing on LDS Charities Australia. This is the one where that 95 million came out of in 2021. And these are the donations from that charity to humanitarian, global humanitarian aid. They're those blue bars you can see on the right. But the graph actually shows global humanitarian aid donations of the LDS Church going back to 1985. And the reason we're able to, we know what the church donated was because in a submission to the LDS Church. And we'll show some grabs from that submission in another slide. A submission from the LDS Church in 2012 to the government. It claimed that it had donated $900,000 to humanitarian aid since 1985, or roughly $32,000 per year. So I've actually included $32,000 per year in this graph for each one of those years. Now, $32,000 is actually so tiny that when I first created the graph, it was smaller than the X axis bar. So I had to expand the, the 32,000 probably up to 100,000 to. So you could see the little blue bars on the left hand side of the graph. So clearly something happened in 2012, 2013 or 14 because there are a couple of years there where the church didn't have to submit reports. So clearly this is when we start to get these massive, massive donations overseas. So they started off initially about 10 million, then quickly jumped up to 30 and then up into the 50s. And then last year was 95 million that went out the door. So I think the next slide shows some of the quotes from the submission in 2012 that the Australian LDS Church

John Dehlin [00:39:14] and Simon, if I can just kind of note for those who are just listening that what you just see is, is bars that are barely visible. I'm just restating kind of what you said. Bars that are barely visible from 1985 to 2014. And then all of a sudden starting in 2015 there's this massive spike and it balloons to just a, even a more massive number by 2021 and you've got like 400.

Simon Southerton [00:39:45] It was 3,000 times what they were giving in 2012. Yeah, you said times higher.

John Dehlin [00:39:52] So the 400 million number is an aggregate of all the revenue coming in between 15 and 21, is that right?

Simon Southerton [00:39:59] Yeah, that's correct, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:40:01] So just all. It's almost like some accountant somewhere figured out some way to help the church save a lot of money on taxes and it's like, let's funnel as much money as possible into Australia. Is that kind of what we're suggesting?

Simon Southerton [00:40:18] Probably a lawyer or an accountant. I think Neville may know the lawyer. I don't know if you know what a name Neville, but.

Neville Rochow [00:40:25] And I don't want to name him, but I, I do know the person that would have been at least one of the architects in Australia behind this scheme. And I also know that there was

Simon Southerton [00:40:39] a

Neville Rochow [00:40:41] scheme, excuse me, there was a scheme operating for a long time where the church was claiming that its classrooms in each chapel building qualified those buildings as educational facilities. And so therefore the, the costs in both holding those buildings by way of some loans between the church in Australia and the church in Salt Lake. And the upkeep of those educational facilities gave the basis upon which it could be claimed that there was a legitimate deduction for tithing. So it wasn't the normal charitable humanitarian thing, it was the educational exception. And that's what was claimed by the Church. But of course that wasn't going to last forever. And so when I came into the scene on these things. There was talk about what are we going to do to get a new source of deduction for church members? How are we going to legitimize 100% tax deduction for tithing funds? And so there are a number of discussions about maybe setting up a food basket type fund in Australia to be a bread basket for all of these starving nations around Australia. Various other things were floated in meetings. I wasn't involved in the technical side of that. I'll come later to my involvement, but there was an active discussion in the early teens of the 2000s to see how they could find another way to keep the deduction flowing to the LDS community. And what we see is probably what they came up with behind closed doors. And I've spoken with a few people that were involved in those meetings, and it all seems to point in one direction, that they needed a new way of doing things, and this was going to be the new way.

John Dehlin [00:42:59] Got it. That's great. That's great info, Neville. All right, Simon, should we go to the next slide?

Simon Southerton [00:43:05] Yeah. So this is some extracts from the LDS submission to the Australian treasury in 2012 at about the time that all of these charities were being organized by the church. Now, there's the one that's highlighted in yellow is the. Is where we learned how much the church gave over something like about 27 years since 1985. So $900,000. That's where we get that figure from. So this is a quote straight from the horse's mouth.

John Dehlin [00:43:40] If I could just read it. If I could just read it. It says In Australia, approximately $900,000 has been contributed to those not of our faith since 1985.

Simon Southerton [00:43:50] Yeah. So that's the humanitarian aid that's gone out from the church. So that would have been the donations above and beyond tithing, fast offering, building fund, whatever. There would have been a line item in the budget, sorry, on the donation slip where people could donate to things and it would be for. There would probably be calls on members, you know, when there was some sort of a national or international disaster. So that's where those sort of funds come from. But the. The other one that might get you to read that one out, the one in red, because this is a very common thing that we hear from the church, you know, an unplayed unpaid clergy, blah, blah, blah. Do you want to read out that red section there?

John Dehlin [00:44:32] Yeah. It says. Because me. You want me to read it, Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:44:36] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:37] It says because most of our efforts are undertaken by volunteers only a Very small portion is used to cover administrative costs. Hence, almost every dollar donated goes directly to the needy recipients. For this reason, some people who are not members of our faith support the welfare outreach programs of the church in Australia and overseas because they know that their donations reach those in need.

Simon Southerton [00:45:04] Okay, let's talk about what really happens in Australia. About 35 million comes in and of that, about 11 million goes to paying church office salaries. So bang, you've got a third of the income coming in going straight to salaries. So it's just dishonest to be saying that the salaries is just absolutely insignificant.

John Dehlin [00:45:27] It almost makes it sound like a bunch of Americans are sitting around going, hey, let's all invest in Australia because Australia is the place where our money is going to do the most good when we would have. No, you wouldn't even be on our radar. No offense. Right.

Simon Southerton [00:45:44] Yeah. So it's just a very misleading.

John Dehlin [00:45:47] It's like we're sitting around elders quorum and the elders quorum president says, you know, brethren, I think Australia is the place we should put our, put our humanitarian aid.

Neville Rochow [00:45:57] Well, can I just ask you this, Simon, it's sort of a rhetorical question, but how many non members do you know that are participating in any welfare scheme run by the LDS church or donating to it or being in any way monetarily or significantly involved?

Simon Southerton [00:46:16] Yeah, I mean, I,

Neville Rochow [00:46:20] it may be true in other jurisdictions and it may be true in, in the U.S. for example, where you've got very wealthy individuals that would just throw their money around across a broad spectrum of possible charitable outlets. But that just is not true of Australia. What they say happens where there's a beneficence from these wealthy individuals to the LDS Church. They're struggling to get tithing out of members.

Simon Southerton [00:46:50] So.

Neville Rochow [00:46:51] Yeah, it's a dubious claim.

Simon Southerton [00:46:53] Well, I think it's a, It's. I think it really illustrates that what's going on in that document, what's been written in that document and what's gone on is not being driven from Australia. This is just driven from Salt Lake.

Neville Rochow [00:47:07] Well, I think I know the author of the. What would have been a draft of the document. I think I know who that is, but I would say that it would have been signed off by somebody in Salt Lake before it could be given to the tax department.

Simon Southerton [00:47:25] Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:28] All right. Do you want to go to the next slide, Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:47:31] Yeah, let's go. This is, this is the, this is the one. This is an illustration of what I think is really going on. Okay, so these are, I've put some dollar figures here and I've rearranged the five charities that were listed before into how they are sort of aligned with each other. Okay. So those numbers that I've got there are the numbers that are reported in all those five accounts for 2021. So about $35 million is coming in from tithes and offerings and about 65 million from somewhere else that goes into the LDS Charitable Trust Fund. That's that fund, that massive fund that's got about 210 million in assets at the moment. So that's where the two monies co mingle. But then we've got 35 million going out to the Australian church to run the church to pay $10 million towards salaries, $10 million to the building fund, 4 million to fast offering, and another 10 or so the remaining 10 million to turn the lights on, power, photocopiers, staples and all that sort of stuff. And then on the right hand side, money goes off to LDS Charities Australia, then it goes out to humanitarian aid. So I think that's how this whole thing is arranged. So you've got this co mingling. So I should have mentioned that on all tithing slips in Australia now, members are requested to donate to the LDS Charitable Trust Fund. So everything goes into that fund. So it looks like there's 100 million going in there from donations in Australia. But it's not 100 million. We know that it's only 35 million that's coming from Australians and it's almost all of it is used to just cover the running costs of the church.

John Dehlin [00:49:47] Really quickly, I want to try and process this a little bit. Like, the first thing that comes to my mind is Jesus saying, render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, in other words, saying that you should pay taxes. Right. And it's clear. And obey the law. Right? Yeah. But it's clear that in Australia, generally speaking, the government doesn't want, you know, religious donations, donations to churches to be tax deductible. So it would seem like if you're talking about obeying the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law, which the Mormon Church taught me the difference between the two. Right. It said the spirit of the law is as important as the letter of the law. And it was Christ who was critical of the Sadducees and the Pharisees and the scribes or whoever else got too legalistic and could get away from obeying the spirit of the law by technicalities. And so it would seem like if the Mormon Church in Australia or globally was Committed to the spirit of the law. In Australia they would say, hey, the government doesn't want, you know, the members of the church in Australia getting tax deductions. So they should, they should just, you know, donate to the straight up corporation, the church of Jesus President, the church Jesus Christ of Latter States, and, and they should just not get a tax deduction. Am I right? That that would be the church operating sort of ethically and consistent with Jesus's general teachings? Does that sound right?

Neville Rochow [00:51:30] That would be my general response. I would add one thing, that a church and what claims to be the Lord's church would also avoid the very appearance of any evil. In other words, we wouldn't even be in this territory of questioning, which is all we are. All we're saying is there's strong enough evidence here to warrant an inquiry as to whether what appears to be a RORT is indeed a RORT and possibly a fraud. I don't know. We're not making those allegations. But all we can say is the numbers are plain, that there appears to be something wrong. Well, that appearance is contrary to the spirit of the Gospel of Christ as I'd always understood it, that you don't even want to look like you might be doing the wrong thing, let alone doing the wrong thing. So as an example, the loophole that they've found to get 40% of tax dollars out of Canada into BYU amounting over 10 years to a billion dollars, while there is a loophole that permits donations out of Canada to foreign universities, if there are Canadian students there, one would say, well look, if you've got a campus of, I don't know, you'd know the number, John, but you've got a campus of tens of thousands.

John Dehlin [00:52:59] 30,000 let's say. But across all the BYU's, let's say 60,000.

Neville Rochow [00:53:04] Okay, let's say 60,001. I'm happy to run with that. And the aggregate of Canadian students attending is about 1500. You would say, well, isn't there a disproportionality in getting a billion dollars across in 10 years for that sort of number of Canadian students out of the Canadian tithe payers without telling the Canadian tithe payers that that's what they're using it for? And without accounting for how BYU uses that billion dollars over 10 years in any way at all. Now can I just tell you that Adelaide University, which is my alma mater, is very highly ranked in world universities. It's well and truly in the top 100 universities in the world. It's a major research Institute university in this country, and it's a major research university in the world. And I could go into some detail on that, but that's not necessary. With a billion dollars coming into its coffers, it would continue to produce not just the couple of Nobel Prize winners, you know, the dozen or so Nobel Prize winners that's produced so far. It would really be producing some pretty serious research that would go on the global map, as far as I'm aware. I don't know that BYU has ever produced a Nobel Prize winner at all. But where is that sort of serious money going into research, education or whatever? And as far as I can see, it's not going anywhere towards that sort of end. And one wonders whether it goes down the i15 back up to Salt Lake somehow.

Defining the Rort and Filing a Formal Complaint

John Dehlin [00:54:50] Neville, really quickly, would you mind defining the word rort? I'm not sure that's a term many of us would be familiar with.

Neville Rochow [00:54:57] Well, wrought is a pejorative term. So if you're rorting the system, that means that you're either not obeying the spirit or you're actually breaking the letter of the law. So it's ambivalent in terms of. It doesn't actually allege a fraud or dishonesty, but it does include that if that be the case. So if the. Well, the Canadian situation is the clear example of what we in our vernacular would call a rort, you know, maybe there is a loophole that permits it, but it's so contrary to the spirit of what you'd expect that it looks like you're rorting or gaming the system to your advantage.

John Dehlin [00:55:43] Got it, Got it. Simon, Zach is asking for clarification. He wants to know again where the 35 million dollar figure, where those come from? You've already said it.

Simon Southerton [00:55:56] That's tithes and tithes and offerings.

John Dehlin [00:55:59] And that's just publicly available information. In Australia.

Simon Southerton [00:56:02] Yeah, from Australia.

John Dehlin [00:56:03] Okay, got it. Okay, that, that's, that's super helpful. And then one other person, and this is just to kind of like maybe state the office is obvious. Mr. Mr. Netman 11 says the church must have been worried that Australian tithing would drop if the members lost their tax deductibility.

Neville Rochow [00:56:26] Clearly.

John Dehlin [00:56:26] Okay, clearly.

Simon Southerton [00:56:27] Yeah, it is very. It's a huge burden in Australia.

John Dehlin [00:56:32] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [00:56:32] And of course, if you then change the rules in Australia to help Australians, assuming they don't have the tax benefit, they can't claim their tax back, then you've got a very difficult situation for the church where you help Australians out and reduce their tithing or whatever. Got it we know the church doesn't need the tithing anymore. Right. It's got so much income from its investments, it could just go on forever. No tithing.

John Dehlin [00:56:59] Yeah. Okay, great. Should we go back to the slide now, Simon?

Simon Southerton [00:57:03] Well, we did answer that question. I wanted to spend a little bit more time on that $35 million thing here.

John Dehlin [00:57:09] Okay.

Simon Southerton [00:57:10] The important thing to know of those funds, if we look at those things, I'm drawing what's the most sensible conclusion from these accounts? These accounts have incomes and outgoings, but they don't specify, they don't really clearly say where the income came from. So the funds going into that top one LDS charitable trust fund, it's $100 million a year. It doesn't actually specify 35 million, but we know from the Church of Jesus Christ of La La Saints Australia fund that it's got an income of 35 million. And it specifies there that it's tithes and offerings. So that's the other difficulty. The expenses from one fund will be the income from another fund. These funds are all linked together. They don't all have independent income sources.

Neville Rochow [00:58:06] Simon, could I just interrupt to say this because I think you're doing a good job in explaining this, but can we go back to the slide, please, John?

John Dehlin [00:58:15] Yeah, absolutely.

Neville Rochow [00:58:18] So if one can imagine in a strict way of approaching things, the line from the 35 million at the top, the Australian tithes and offerings should be a straight line, straight through to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Australia. And then the bifurcation at the bottom would just be as the church chooses to allocate the monies. So it really would be a, a straight line but for the endeavor to obtain tax deductibility and to do a smoke and mirrors trick so that no one really knows after the commingling that's occurred, what money came from where. And the 65 million line should be a straight line and just have money going straight out to humanitarian overseas aid. There should be no connection in an ideal world between the left hand side of the screen and the right hand side of the screen. They should just be straight lines, straight through to their ultimate destinations without any middling tax type of juggle that that occurs on this screen. So sorry, Simon, but I just thought that was important to point out.

Simon Southerton [00:59:39] Yeah, and the one on this, as you say, the one on the right hand side, the green one, should be inside Salt Lake, should be overseas because it's not really Australian funds. I should also point out that the church has made lots of noise recently. About how its annual humanitarian aid is something in the vicinity of 900 million, close to a billion dollars per year. But that's a grossly inflated figure that includes an awful lot of welfare and fast offering other things that are exclusively for members of the church. The true humanitarian aid given by the church is in the vicinity of 100 to 200 million per year. So that, you know, that gives an indication of just how big this amount is. 95 million dollars. There is close to 50% of the children Church's humanitarian aid funneling through Australia.

John Dehlin [01:00:40] Got it,

Simon Southerton [01:00:43] yes. Any other comments on that one? Because we can flick to the slide where. So what I've done is I put all this data together and I lodged a complaint with the Charities commission back in July 2021, and I wanted to show the response from the Charity Commission. Yeah, I might just read that out. We have received your concern and we'll review it. We need more information from you. We will be in touch. Due to secrecy provisions in the acnc, that's the Australian Charities Commission. Due to the secrecy provisions in the ACNC legislation, however, we are unable to advise you of the action we take in your response to your concern. In other words, I will hear nothing more from them and I have no idea whether they're even looking at the complaint or they're taking any action. So I think that's when I got pretty disappointed. I think I'd shared this with you never time complaint. So it's a pretty unsatisfactory response. And the. This is when Ben Schneider's from the age got really quite closely involved and he was equally frustrated by this fact that you just can't get any information out of these. They claim that. Yeah, no, they're happy to take complaints, but then they just don't tell you anything about what they're doing.

John Dehlin [01:02:15] So, I mean, I think in the United States there's something similar because I know that like David Nielsen's whistleblowing, you know, report to the Internal Revenue Service or the irs, none of us have any idea what's going on there. And they wouldn't tell us if we asked.

Neville Rochow [01:02:31] Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's analogous to that. There's. There's clear parallel. Yeah. Is that, is that probably a good place for me to come in and just explain my involvement in the story?

Simon Southerton [01:02:45] Yeah.

Neville Rochow [01:02:46] Are you happy, Simon?

Simon Southerton [01:02:47] Have you absolutely.

Neville Rochow [01:02:48] Think that's enough background?

Simon Southerton [01:02:49] Well, yeah, no, I think, yeah. Your. All your deep and dark past. I'd like to hear all of that, Neville.

Neville Rochow [01:02:56] Yeah,

John Dehlin [01:02:59] we'll Call this segment Neville's Confession. How does that sound, Neville?

Neville Rochow [01:03:02] Yeah, I'm down with that.

John Dehlin [01:03:05] I'm okay, I'm joking, I'm joking.

Neville Rochow [01:03:07] It's good to make a clean breast of it all. Well, John, as we all know,

The Tithing Tax Case and Legal Proceedings

John Dehlin [01:03:15] in

Neville Rochow [01:03:15] the early 90s under Hinckley, they set up the Ensign Peak Fund. None of us who were members of the church at the time knew anything about that or what its purposes were or that it was going to be the recipient of any tithing funds. So I think that's just an important general piece of background that when all of us were paying our tithing, we all just thought that the brethren were doing the right things at all times with all the monies that they received. And we had utter and implicit faith in the directions of the law that they would receive as to the disbursement of those funds. That certainly was my attitude towards paying what really was a fairly substantial tithe. You know, it was a substantial impost after tax.

Simon Southerton [01:04:07] So.

Neville Rochow [01:04:13] How my entree into this, into this scenario comes is in about 2013, in fact, we're invited to a meeting in Sydney being held at the offices of Deloitte. This is. My wife and myself were invited to a meeting in Sydney on the 15th of October 2013. And that meeting was held in the conference room at Deloitte's where for the first time some 20 or 30 religious leaders had gotten together in the same room that had not happened before and that was hosted by the LDS Church. And it was to launch a report that had been done, a scoping report. I think you have some pictures there of these documents. John, do you want to bring those, those slides up?

John Dehlin [01:05:14] Absolutely, absolutely. So here we go. How's that?

Neville Rochow [01:05:22] Yeah. So let me just explain going left to right. So on the left we have what is the program of the meeting that was held on the 15th of October? And you'll see that there's a Dr. Ian Harper who is a significant economist in this country. He's got an impeccable reputation as an academic and also as a practitioner of economic practicalities. So he's a part. He was at that time a partner of Deloitte. I think he may still be, but he was also a professor at Melbourne University. He, he's a fairly notable figure. He's also an active member of the Anglican Church and one of the, the very faithful and true members of that

Simon Southerton [01:06:21] church,

Neville Rochow [01:06:23] Ann Robertson, who's mentioned there, she is a charities law expert and fairly well regarded in legal community. Then there's Elder Jeff Cummings who At the time was an area authority and in charge of this overall project. And then there's Professor Paul Oslington, who is a professor at one of those startup Christian universities and is also heavily involved with what is now a fairly controversial Pentecostal movement called Hillsong. And they have had some tax inquiries themselves in recent times. I'm not saying that casts any aspersion on Oslington, but what I'm saying is his connection is on the. On the Pentecostal side of the equation. Okay, so that's the program. The, the launch was to launch that middle document. That's just the front page of it. It's a fairly substantial document which had been prepared under the auspices of, of Professor Harper. And it was to work out the economic impact of religious activities in Australia to show that they were worthy of tax deductibility because churches, the thesis runs overall by their activity, release the burden on government or relieve the burden on government. And so therefore a entitled to continue continuing deductions in respect to their property and their payroll and stamp duty and the like at a state level and at a federal level. There should be an argument about extending tax deductibility to their contributing members for their contributions. And the third document on that slide is the second report. It was not. The second report, I should add, was not prepared under our direction. It had to be prepared after Penny and I had gone to work in Brussels. And it was much narrower in its scope than what we were intending. But another member of the church took over the role of running that commission. And I'm not sure what happened, but the ambitions seem to have been drawn back a little bit as far as giving an overall argument about tax deductibility for religion and only focused really upon volunteering behavior and its connection with religiosity. And the argument was that if you're religious, you're more with likely to volunteer to do good works in the community. And the report in a marginal way makes that argument. I don't think it's very compelling, but there it is. So they're the three documents. And I'm happy I've finished with that slide now. So we were invited by Elder Hamula, who was then the area president, to engage in this econometric study of the value of religiosity and to assemble a multi faith committee of experts in economic and accounting and socioeconomic issues. And that is what we did for two years. We went around the country meeting with people, showing them the scoping report explaining the ambitions of the church to drive this thing and we were being good corporate religious citizens by sharing the good will for all this. I have here in my position, for example, a letter that we wrote to Cardinal Pell's secretary when he was the senior prelate in Australia. I also have here in my possession a study called the Economic Impact of Religious Activities, which is a scoping submission type document that I think I might have had a hand in, but was done principally by public affairs. So that's what we did for a couple of years and we, we thought nothing of it as faithful church members to do what we were asked to do. And that's what we did then at the end of that two years of what was a pretty well full time job, we were then called on a mission to go to Brussels to work as a church's representative to the EU on religious issues. And we worked on a platform recognised by the European Parliament. We also did some work in the UK Parliament, but we had a fabulous couple of years working with people of like mind on questions of religious freedom across a broad variety of religious and secular beliefs. And that's what we did for a couple of years in Brussels. When we came back, the report that I referred to before the second report had been completed and it was embargoed at the time, but I spoke to the chair of the committee and I said, well, look, surely we can be trusted. And so he lifted the embargo for us and I got to read it and write an article on it, as it turned out. But anyway, that's how we got involved. But then, as I've spoken on your show before, John, both my wife and I found our way out of the church and our initial approach was to leave quietly, just to ride off into the sunset, saying nothing, really, making no stir, but just wanting to be left alone. Then I spoke on your show in January of this year and I did that really just so that those who'd be asking questions about how my faith migrated in the way that it did, that there was something on record to say that, and I've had a lot of good responses from a number of people to that, to that interview, far more than I could possibly have expected, and of friends who had said, well, that that helped me make my decision, or your experience was very similar to mine, whatever, but we don't need to dwell on that. I think you've probably gauged that sort of response yourself. But then also early in the year, Simon, having done the research that he's spoken about and that he's so beautifully captured in those graphics that we were walked through before he wondered whether I would look at the draft of his complaint and make it look a bit more legally professional. I mean, Simon did an artfully professional job, but it did read a little bit like something coming from a layperson going to what was really a legal entity. So I read it, and all of a sudden it occurred to me that maybe the work we were doing, when we were doing the econometric work, was a sort of COVID or maybe a mollifier to cover the fact that Mormons were getting 100% tax deduction for their tithing and that we were looking like we wanted to share that around and somehow take the eye off the real ball that was being played, which was the scheme that has been captured in those graphs that Simon put into those slides that we looked at before. And so I thought at that point, well, as much as I'd like to write off quietly, even having made my declaration public in your show, still write off quietly. I said, well, if I'm silent on this, I may be complicit. So when Simon started engaging with some of the journalists, I was willing to talk to them as well. And ways led upon ways, and that led to both the Fifth Estate interview and to the 60 Minutes interview. So that's where it comes from.

John Dehlin [01:15:28] Excellent, Excellent. Thank you, Simon. Do you have any responses to Neville?

Simon Southerton [01:15:35] Well, yeah, at the time that they were doing that Deloitte study, they must have known because the way they. The way it works is the Australian tax office decides whether you can. The members of your church can get it 100% tax deductibility on their tithing. So that's a tax office distributed in. Once the tax office has given you that, basically that gold card, it's called a gd. The. I think it's the drg. It's dgr. So it's dgr.

Neville Rochow [01:16:08] Sorry, yeah.

Simon Southerton [01:16:09] Define what's the acronym? Yeah, I can't think of what D stands for, but it's a Gift recipient. Designated recipient. Designated gift recipient. And that essentially gives members of the church, gives the church a gold card, and they get. So all of their donations are tax deductible. And that's the thing that most other churches around the country don't have. So the church would have had that almost certainly at the time they were doing that Deloitte study that Neville was involved in. So I would tend to agree that the church would have preferred that that study had been successful and that all churches were able to claim 100% tax deductibility on their donations, but it clearly wasn't successful and now you've got the Mormons sitting out there like a shag on a rock all alone. So.

John Dehlin [01:17:19] All right, well, that's, that's helpful. So, so thank you, Neville. And it's so great, Neville, to have you and Simon both as, as citizens of Australia that are willing and able to not only share some of the history, but also the status of where things are going. So, Simon, where, where should we go to next in terms of what you've prepared?

Public Responses and Media Coverage

Simon Southerton [01:17:44] We can talk a little bit about some of the responses. Neville's had some pretty interesting responses because he's appeared in the documentary.

John Dehlin [01:17:53] Yeah, I mean, speaking out publicly on what would be for you, national television. Global television. That doesn't come without some costs and maybe some benefits. Do you want to share what that's been like for you, Neville?

Neville Rochow [01:18:08] Yeah, sure. Look, the, the overwhelming response has been positive. Those who have contacted me and I've had contact from all over the world, most people, you know, admired my courage. Well, I don't think it's a courageous thing. I just think it was the right thing. And, you know, that's, that's where I am. Where I see corruption, I will call it out and if it appears like corruption, I'll invite an investigation. And that's where I am on this. This appears a corrupt act on its face. A rort it may not be. I can't see the explanation on the face of it, but I did invite that response. But anyway, so people have admired the courage and the, they enjoyed the, the shows, both the, the Fifth Estate show and the 60 Minutes. And so overwhelmingly it's been positive and has helped some people make their decision not to pay tithing or to leave the church or whatever. I've also had some pushback from some members of the church who have said, well, what would you know? Who do you think you are? And they missed the point that I was asking a question rather than giving an answer. But they have been fairly aggressive, some of them. Yesterday I received a visit from a member of the church in Queensland, which is 1500 kilometres from here, but he just happened to be in town. And one of his priorities, amongst all the other business that he had, was to come and visit Penny and me and say, well, what happened to you? How come you left the church? How come Neville's doing these things? And so in the 20 minutes we had with him, we had to give him a fairly quick response. And just after he left, I started receiving text messages and emails from a fanatical morn in Queensland again who was calling me an apostate and saying how dare I? And I don't know the facts and giving me Delanoes talk from general conference and the like. So that's been the mixture of responses but like I said, predominantly and overwhelmingly they've been very positive. But I think in fairness to any media coverage, it doesn't have the time to be as exacting as Simon has been this morning where he's gone through chapter and verse of what gave rise to the complaint and also for me to explain why I would get behind the complaint and be prepared to go as a public face to the media. I don't have any vendetta against the Church. I'm not some sort of cavalier or, you know, some sort of crusader. That's not what I do. But I do respond to wrongfulness where I see it. And when something either appears wrong or is wrong, I will do all within my power to bring it to book and to make sure that it's properly accounted for.

John Dehlin [01:21:36] Love it. Well, we appreciate that, Neville.

Simon Southerton [01:21:39] Well, I, I spoke to Ben Schneiders. He's had no end of fairly hostile responses to the 60 Minutes.

John Dehlin [01:21:47] He's the reporter. He's the reporter from. The reporter from the newspaper, right?

Simon Southerton [01:21:52] Yeah, the age. And so he's had no end of negative responses. I think Americans tend to, you know, some American Mormons might feel, oh, if it's legal, it's fine. That's not the problem here. The problem here is it just looks awful because it is awful. It's deceptive and the Australian government's being deceived. But probably the most important thing is it doesn't pass the pub test. Have you heard of that expression, John?

John Dehlin [01:22:22] I think I have and I think I know what it means. It means if a bunch of guys, if a bunch of blokes or mates are sitting around a pub, pub. Does it seem, does it seem fishy?

Simon Southerton [01:22:32] I don't hang around pubs all the time. But I was at a pub and I'd had a couple of beers and the guy I was talking to had had probably a couple more. A non member, just a regular Australian. And I was explaining what the church was doing and I was thinking, is this guy really understand what I'm talking about? And he just looked at me, said, that's double dipping. The church is double dipping. As Neville mentioned earlier on, the people who donated that humanitarian, those, those dollars to humanitarian aid in mostly in the US got their tax break on that and then they're funneling the money they donated through Australia and they're getting another tax break. He understood perfectly what's going on.

John Dehlin [01:23:18] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [01:23:18] So this fails the pub test in Australia very clearly and I've actually demonstrated in a pub.

Neville Rochow [01:23:27] Could I just add to the pub test and I'll give you the lunch test. I was at lunch earlier in the week with two good friends who are tax lawyers, and one of them had caught eye of me on 60 Minutes and was cheering me on because one of his good friends is a former member and he said since he's left the church, he's so much easier to deal with again. But I told them what it was about and the two were the words that came out of their mouths without any more. And these are tax lawyers. They said, scam, fraud, money laundering. Now they are the words that immediately came to their mark, their mind. So with that in mind, what I've done in, in the last week is I've started making inquiries about and started giving some thought to a class action in Australia. And perhaps I can just explain that the Australian equity law is different from the equity you have in the United States, because I think you guys had some sort of rebellion or argument with the King back in the 1700s. Not sure what it was all about, but it left you out of a lot of things we kept on doing after you went off into your own little corner. But equity developed over the 19th century and it developed a set of presumptions regarding donations to religious organizations by adherence. And the presumption is that when a religion accepts a donation, that it is a presumption that has to be overcome, that that donation was obtained by undue influence and is repayable in the hands of the donor. Now on, I, I'm. I'm friends with K Birmingham and I'm getting a bit of an echo back here. But anyway, I hope you're still getting me. I'm friends with Kay Birmingham and I'm familiar with the case that she's running and I'm familiar also with the fact that she has to allege fraud. In Australia, you don't have to allege or prove fraud. All we have to do is prove that you are a religious adherent and you've made a donation. And in this case, you would prove that the donation did not go to the place that you thought it was going or that the religious organization had said it was going. And that class action could be in the tens of millions, maybe even more, if we would estimate three to five thousand tithe pairs. Ex tithe payers got onto it. So that's something we're considering at the moment. So this is not a flash in the pan. It's not an insignificant matter. We are taking it seriously. And if it needs to go to the next stage of litigation, the Australian law is favorable. I'm not saying we necessarily win, we may not. There may be a defence to all this that we haven't seen yet. But we cannot be ignored on these things because they are significant, important, and they will have repercussions at some stage, either with the government closing the loophole or an Australian Tax Office audit and causing unpaid tax to be repaid. And that would be in the hundreds of millions, possibly, or the avenue of litigation, which is a live issue. It may not happen, but it's not off the cards and it would probably be, have to be started fairly soon. Because the revelations that came out about City Creek and beneficial finance or beneficial insurance, whichever it was, and the Ensign Peak Megafund, they're only recent and they have shocked a lot of former tithe payers. In fact, we were just in the process of leaving the church and my wife usually handled the, the transfer of our tithing funds and we'd both read about the, the revelations that were coming out of the United States regarding City Creek and the like. And Penny was so disgusted, she said, we're going to pay tithing anymore. And I said, no, I'm not paying another cent to that, that corporation, that cult, that's, that's revolting. That makes me sick. And what makes me sick also, if I can just add this, John, if you don't mind. And this didn't come through in the 60 Minutes interview, even though I said it on tape. I think the whole structure of the tithing doctrine of the church is quite evil because time and time again they've said pay tithing first and then pay all your other bills and feed your family after you've paid your tithing. And of course they dress that up as an article of faith and, and say that if you're a faithful member, you have faith in the law of tithing. But general authorities have gone to Africa and said the reason why this country is so poor is because people don't tithe. If this country tithed, then it would be prosperous. Well, how dare they make such a promise. There's no precedent for that. There's no historical example that shows the truth of that allegation, that, that assertion. And so I think that's revolting. But also to encourage these people to pay their tithing first, when every 40 seconds a person in West Ethiopia dies of starvation really calls into question why anyone should be paying any money at all out of such a poor country into this massively wealthy American corporation. It just doesn't stand to reason. And so I think when the law of tithing was first introduced, as we well know, it was really the focus was on tithing on your increase, which is a different thing from tithing on your income, because your increase, whatever your income is, may be zero if you're having a bad year. So your tithing may be a net zero, but with it being on income, whatever sort of year you're having, whether it's a highly inflationary year, whether it's a high interest year or whatever, the church still takes out its pound of flesh. Interviewing you first of all in tithing settlement, but also at every worthiness interview for a temple recommend for a calling, or just because the bishop wants to bring you in and ask you a few questions and take you through the tithing gamut, they can do so and so. It's not like there isn't some pressure on every member to pay their tithing. It's not a plate being passed around that you can pass on to the next person. There is real pressure because you cannot participate in the temple or in any calling unless you're a tithe payer. And so you stand out in the congregation as the one person that doesn't go to the temple, the one person that doesn't have a calling, the one person that doesn't do this and doesn't do that. And people would say they're unworthy in some ways. And one of those unworthiness criteria and the criterion that we're talking about particularly is tithing.

Simon Southerton [01:31:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:31:32] Beautiful. Thank you, Neville. Simon, do you have anything you want to say kind of in reaction or in addition to what Neville was sharing?

Simon Southerton [01:31:45] No. I thought Neville really summed up the core issue, really. I guess the only thing I just sort of wanted to add was that we're going to hold of the bone and we're going to keep holding on. If we don't get any joy from the response from the Australian government, then I think we'll probably both be writing to every church in Australia that has a global footprint and advising them. This is how you get your tax back on all of your tithing, by funneling your global humanitarian aid through Australia in a false account or a shady shell account, just like the Mormons did.

John Dehlin [01:32:31] Yeah.

Simon Southerton [01:32:32] And if, you know, if we. Can you imagine that the Australian government is going to be happy with every church claiming their tax back on their tithing. You know, I don't think there will be.

John Dehlin [01:32:45] Yeah. So Simon and Neville, check me on this. I was talking to RFM about this situation before this program aired. And on the one hand, this is what corporations do. Like, I love the quote that came out of both, both of the, both the 60 Minutes program and the CBC program. You know, that the Mormon Church is a corporation that kind of like dabbles in religion. I appreciated that quote. And I do think if you just look at the percentage of assets or revenue allocated to true charitable purposes, it's, it's minuscule. So let's just say that problem number one is the church isn't acting like a church or a charity. It's acting like a corporation that seems to be doing charity, minimal cosmetic charity, primarily for PR purposes. Like, let's just say that's the huge problem that Jesus would be most concerned about. But then let's just say they're a corporation, not really a church. You know, what corporations do is they hire accountants to try and like figure out how to get around tax law and to figure out how to minimize the, you know, the, the, the tax obligations of the institution. That's what all corporations do. It's totally legal. And, and you know, potentially in both Australia and Canada, it's possible that everything that's been done is legal. Now, of course, in the case of at least Australia, we know that there are legitimate questions about legalities that are likely being pursued, even though the authority from Australia acknowledge that explicitly. I guess the one thing I just want to say that bothers me is a lot of people don't like taxes, they don't like governments. You know, they basically say, you know, bleed the beast, whatever you can do to never, never pay taxes and, you know, stick it to the government. That's a good thing. That's fine if that's your point of view. That's not point. My point of view. I believe that, that civil societies are good things. That as problematic and as even corrupt as governments can be, they're certainly preferable to anarchy or tyranny. And so I believe that taxes are a duty and an obligation of citizens and of corporations and I would say even of churches, because the churches exist under the protection and by the infrastructure of these governments. If the governments didn't provide a civil society, if they didn't provide a military, if they didn't provide roads and access and law and order, none of these churches would be able to thrive or exist. And so for me, it just seems respectful. I don't try and get away with not paying taxes. I literally pay what taxes, you know, seem fair because I believe that that's how you fund the civil society. So for me, one of the biggest moral and ethical problems here is just that the Mormon Church wants to run these churches and gather literally hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from these churches that exist, that exist because of the civil society guaranteed by these countries. But the church doesn't want to pay for those benefits. And that's what's problematic for me.

Broader Context and Closing Reflections

Simon Southerton [01:36:32] Yeah, only yesterday there was an article in the newspaper about the 800 largest companies in Australia that paid no tax. The Australian government is just, is really, really focused on closing loopholes and making these companies pay their fair share of tax. So there are some big companies that are structured in such a way that they just continually pay virtually no tax in Australia. Among those, obviously, would be some of the big companies like Apple and Amazon and Google. So the Australian government is hell bent on making sure they pay a fair amount of tax.

Neville Rochow [01:37:20] Sorry, Simon, I didn't mean to cut you off. Could I just add a fairness aspect to this? We just had a budget handed down by our treasurer that gave no discernible relief to the average mother and father and the average family. In other words, he said, look, inflation is going to get worse, interest rates are going to go up, fuel price is going to increase, and we have no answer that would not increase the inflationary trend that we're currently experiencing. So you are just going to have to tough it out. Well, okay, you take that in a philosophical way and just say, well, you know, we've got to bite the bullet here. But if every worker who's paying their tax, paying their interest, feeding their family in increasingly difficult inflationary times, would look around and see their Mormon counterpart down the down the aisle getting 100% tax deduction and therefore benefit from the Australian government tax system for paying money to a corporation that does virtually no good in this jurisdiction. Doesn't that at some stage become galling to those people who aren't getting that sort of benefit, who go along on Sunday and put their 5 or $100 into the plate and know they get no benefit back? That must be galling. But also, doesn't the Australian government have a responsibility to stop foreign corporations under the guise of religion coming into this country, arranging their affairs in cute ways, rorting ways, or maybe legal ways? We've got to get determined that there's a lot more that we need to know. But doesn't it have an obligation to investigate and to stop any abuse that is causing money that would benefit this Australian community in a more global and proper way doesn't have an obligation to stop those sorts of rorts coming in from overseas.

John Dehlin [01:39:53] So

Neville Rochow [01:39:55] I think that the church has got a nerve, a real nerve, in coming to this country, having their missionaries knock on the door to try and get more typos into their book and to get these monies to be taken from the members and applied in the ways that Simon's explained through his slides. I think it's galling. I think it's revolting. I think it's wrong. And the Mormon Church needs to be brought to account for what it's doing and be transparent with the public. And if it's so right, then everybody should be getting the same benefit. If it's so wrong, then it ought to be stopped and the money ought to be clawed out of its hide.

John Dehlin [01:40:47] Thank you, Neville. Beautiful. You guys are bringing the thunder from down under.

Neville Rochow [01:40:57] Well, yeah, John, I tend not to get angry very much. What's the point? You know, I'm very stoic in my philosophy. I mean, my hero is Marcus Aurelius, and I try to just live a very calm existence and not make trouble for anyone where I can avoid it. But this is trouble that has to be made because it's just wrong for it to go uninvestigated, for there to be no transparency from the Mormons as to what they're doing. And they're not transparent. They're secretive. They are by nature. And we were all in this culture at one stage by nature. Mormons are secretive, clandestine, and not open about what they're really doing. And their missionaries are the same. Their missionaries come out with their vanilla discussions that talk nothing about the history of the church or its ugly doctrines. And so it's time it was flushed out on its money.

Simon Southerton [01:42:04] And the response that, you know, oh, this is all wonderful. Humanitarian aid. And to focus on humanitarian aid, all that. The Church has already received the kudos for this aid in the United States and on its global website. So the church in Australia isn't trumpeting the fact that it's giving 95 million dollars in aid, 400 million over the last seven years. It's not trumpeting it and publicizing it. We had to dig into the financial reports to find these. These numbers suggest it's clandestine.

Neville Rochow [01:42:46] What are the good works they're doing? To me, they're like the Potemkin Village. You're familiar with that metaphor, where Potemkin had to demonstrate what great progress had been made in Russia along the Volga and erected these facades of villages for the, for the, for royalty to visit as they, as they went down the Volga and then would take the same facade and race down to the next village site and erect the same facade. It's, it's all smoke and mirrors. It's all for the cameras. And look, why doesn't it, why doesn't it just do all this stuff quietly and do it honestly, if it's really concerned about humanitarian aid rather than creating some sort of corporate image that it thinks will be good for it in attracting more TI players in an era where it's losing them hand over fist?

John Dehlin [01:43:42] Simon, I just want to say that, that it's not easy to do investigative work and then pitch, you know, I don't know if you pitched it or what, but to get, you know, mainstream large scale news media involved and then to help usher something that not only results in a print article but in, you know, two globally reaching video treatments, that's a real accomplishment. And Neville, I've already given you my kudos and our kudos and our gratitude for your courage in being a spokesperson. And Simon, I know you're kind of modest, but I just want to say, Simon, how does it feel to see these efforts that you started almost pre Covid kind of bear fruit this week? I hope it's as satisfying to you as it is as we feel grateful that you initiated some of this effort?

Simon Southerton [01:44:43] Well, it is satisfying because it was a fairly long road and there were times when I thought, oh yeah, this isn't going to go anywhere, but. Because when I initially reached out to Ben Schneider's it was about a week before the pandemic hit. So he said, oh, this is really interesting because he'd seen the story on Ensign Peak and $100 billion, so he was very interested. But in the pandemic hit and he just, there were just so, so many other priorities and he sort of lost interest. And then it was probably about 18 months later that he just got back in touch with me, said let's pick this up again. But by then I'd sort of run all of this past members of the Australian ex Mormon community to see what they all thought, just to reassure. Have I got the wrong end of the stick here? Am I misinterpreting something here? And it was really very reassuring to have people like Neville and, and others in the Australian ex Mormon community look at the numbers and yeah, sort of reach the Same conclusions. That just doesn't add up. So, yeah, I had no idea it was going to go to 60 Minutes and Fifth Estate. But it's very satisfying now to see it go that far. And that again reassures me that everyone else is having the same problem with this. It doesn't pass the pub test. And I think that's the, that's the, the big problem. Just ordinary folk who don't know a darn thing about the Mormon Church are just not happy with it. And yes, I think it's gonna, I think we'll, I think we'll succeed. There will be a, there has to be a response to this. I'm very confident of that.

John Dehlin [01:46:37] Well, I can say that I'm, I'm a bit of a canary, Nicole. Mine for the church or a barometer? Because, you know, when, when people start feeding me information, I know that it's having reach. And I've received dozens and dozens of, of direct messages and emails alerting me both to the CBC article or the CBC story and the Australian 60 Minute story. I'm talking dozens and dozens. It's been, it's been a while since I've been inundated with so many direct messages. So that's credit to both of you and to everyone else who participated. And I'll just also give a general shout out to whistleblowers, whether it's David Nielsen, you know, or James Huntsman or you all or, you know, so many other people. It's, you know, silence, I always say, is the killer. Silence is the enabler. And it's only when courageous people do the work to raise their voices and to get media involved. We know that that's the most sacred thing. You know, the two most sacred things in Mormonism these days are kind of tithing and media, you know, public relations, slash media exposure. And we know that it's those two things that move the church's needle even more than grassroots, you know, agitation. And so whenever people get news media involved, especially when it's around the church's revenue and its money, it's just a huge win. So Simon Neville and everyone else involved on behalf of, you know, Mormons and Post Mormons even, I think many believing Mormons want the church to be honest and to live up to its ethics and live up to its standards. Members don't want to always be plagued with weird questions about shady accounting and shady financial, almost un Christlike kind of commercial corporate behavior. So I think active believing Mormons and Post Mormons alike are very grateful for these types of efforts.

Simon Southerton [01:48:41] Well, I hope, I mean, obviously if the church does lose its DGR status and, and members can no longer claim all of their tax back, that's going to make it hard on Australian members. Now I hope that the church steps in and is compassionate and starts to have a bit of a rethink on tithing. Do they need to have 10% of people's income? Because that's a huge financial burden, particularly here in Australia. It's a very expensive country to live in if you're on a low income. Tithing is tough. It is really, really tough. So yeah, there will be short term pain on members, but I hope that the longer down the track that there is some sort of rethink from the church because I mean, they've got earlier general authorities talking about the day when people may not have to pay tithing.

John Dehlin [01:49:36] Right.

Simon Southerton [01:49:36] So they can change those. I mean, every doctrine, everything in the church has changed in the last 200 years. So why can't they change this? I think in some small way this will add to that pressure on the church to have another look at tithing

John Dehlin [01:49:54] and it's going to lead to people leaving the church just like the City Creek Mall did, just like the Ensign Peak thing did. These types of global news scandals wake people up and they become the impetus for people starting to question their faith. Not that we're trying to get people out of the church or at least I don't think of myself as being primarily motivated that way, but that's going to be a result. So the church just for all these reasons should clean up its act.

Simon Southerton [01:50:19] Yeah, I was actually watching on Reddit the other day and there was an individual, a member of a family, a child and a family watching the 60 Minute story and they were sort of saying, this looks terrible. And the older members of the church, all the members of the family, the parents were defending the church and blah, blah, blah. No, that's terrible. It looks terrible. So they don't have the sunk cost of being in the church for so long and accepting the party line. And this is the problem the church has with many, many issues. Obviously, you know, LGBTQish issues and, but this is one where the younger generation, they can smell a rat. They can just say, no, that's wrong.

John Dehlin [01:51:02] Yeah, the younger generations tend to be anti capitalistic just to begin with. So you add to that shady corporate accounting corruption in a institution that's supposed to be following Christ's admonition to give to the poor, to give everything to the poor. It just, it just, it just smells wrong. All right. Well, Dr. Neville Rocco, we, we love anytime you come on Mormon Stories. Thanks for coming back. Please come back anytime. And again, thanks for your advocacy. We really appreciate it.

Simon Southerton [01:51:32] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [01:51:33] And Dr. Simon Southerton, we, we are grateful for all your contributions this year and past years. And we look forward to bringing you back soon to talk more about science and science versus Mormon Church truth claims.

Simon Southerton [01:51:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:51:48] All right. Thanks, brethren. You guys take care. Okay.

Simon Southerton [01:51:53] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:51:54] All right. And thanks to all our listeners for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you value this content and want to see it continue, you can go to MormonStories.org, click on the donate button. Become a monthly donor. Most importantly, just share this content with everyone you can and subscribe to our channels. That helps with the algorithms. That helps get get the word out. But mostly just be good to each other. Be kind to each other and live the biggest, brightest, beautiful, most healthy life you can. And that's the best testimony and the best witness. You guys take care and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories podcast. Bye, everybody.

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