Introducing Ashley Sanders and Her Faith Background

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 69

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Tell us your name.

Ashley Sanders [00:00:01] Ashley Sanders.

John Dehlin [00:00:03] And where are you from?

Ashley Sanders [00:00:05] Salt Lake City, Utah.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Alright, and what are you doing right now?

Ashley Sanders [00:00:10] Well, right now I'm being interviewed, but I am. I am living in Salt Lake and I'm working for Sunstone and I'm trying to do all the things in my life that I didn't have time to do when I was in school.

John Dehlin [00:00:24] Where were you at school?

Ashley Sanders [00:00:25] Byu.

John Dehlin [00:00:27] Byu? What did you study?

Ashley Sanders [00:00:29] Everything. But I finally ended up majoring in English and philosophy.

John Dehlin [00:00:35] How was that?

Ashley Sanders [00:00:37] I liked English better than philosophy and it was lots of things, including frustrating and really rewarding. My English classes were phenomenal, I think.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] Good. Well, tell us about your faith journey from maybe your teen years to now and anything that is that you would consider noteworthy or unique or significant. You know, in 30 seconds? No, in, you know, five minutes or however long you would want to take on that.

Ashley Sanders [00:01:13] Okay, well, teen years. Starting with the teen years. My parents are really. How do I describe them? They're really apolitical people. And so the emphasis in my house was always on personal transformation, a personally good life and kindness above all. And, and so that cultivated in me, combined with my temperament, this personality where I just wanted to help, I wanted to do good. And so I just tried to do good in the church as much as I could and tried to. I felt really strongly that I should come to church with my own idea of what church should be and I should try to make it that way. And I tried to do that for a really long time.

John Dehlin [00:02:12] And.

Ashley Sanders [00:02:12] And I always felt like I was really different than a lot of other kids my age because I took ideas really, really, really seriously and I had these ideas of what church could be, what people could be, what communities could be, even when I was really, really, really young. And I had an almost probably violent sense of personal ethics and stuff like that. That doesn't sound right, but a very severe sense of personal ethics. And anyway, I went to church and I guess for as long as I can remember, I felt really peripheral in church, but I loved church and so I always came back and I wanted it to be better and I wanted it to be different. So I went like that for a long time. But I also wasn't exposed to very many things in church and in school. And so I think I tried to think really, really hard and really well, but I didn't really have a lot of people who taught me how to do that and I didn't have the information. So I had as good of ideas as I could have had, hopefully as Far as my thought process was concerned. But I didn't have a lot of the information to teach me that I maybe wasn't right in the things that I thought. And so in some ways, I was trying to be a good thinker, but I ended up being stunted by that lack of information. And so I grew up and my high school was very. Well, it was actually atypical, if you compare it to other high schools, but for Utah, it was very typical. Although people really emphasized being intelligent there, and they really emphasized conversation. And I had really good friends who. Who talked about everything. But I was still pretty. I don't know, I couldn't articulate fully why I felt different. And then I went to college, and I kept going in the vein of kind of wanting to help. I saw. Basically, what I'm trying to say is I feel like I've always been a social critic. I felt that way since I was 14 or 15 years old. I was always trying to change things and get people to look at things differently. But I also felt so strongly about institutions that I just wanted to help them whether they were true or not. And so, for instance, in school, I really, really resented the methodology, the way that people taught people in school. I resented that in church. But I tried to come prepared and make it better and change it. And finally, when I was about 20, I realized that loving something is not the same thing as believing in it. And that if I had been put into Hinduism or Buddhism or Catholicism, I would have tried to help in just the same way. And that's not the same thing as asking whether or not I believed in something. And so then I started to try to ask if I believed in it. And it was really, really hard. And then that set me on the path towards whatever. But with all the baggage of these questions that have become basically tropes in my life and tensions that have become motifs throughout my life and things like that, Tensions between individuals and institutions and being obsessed with the idea of paradox and wanting equality. And anyway, I'm not doing a very good job of explaining it. It's really hard to explain, I think, as anybody's would be.

Questions and Doubts Emerging in High School and College

John Dehlin [00:05:50] So can you think back either in your high school or college experiences to maybe some of the issues or questions that you brought into your church experience, say, Sunday school or really young women's. And what you experienced, if you want to tell a story or just describe as you were struggling with some of these issues, what your experience was in trying to discuss them in your church setting?

Ashley Sanders [00:06:27] Well, I guess that one of the. As an English major, I guess I am only capable of having broad abstract crises and issues with things. But one thing I felt was that we never, in church or in school, we never asked why something was important. We just assumed it was important and then cheerleaded for it. And that was really frustrating for me because I believe very much. And then I also, at that point, believed very much in the power of words, especially their ambiguity. And I felt like the ambiguity in words is really important, and we have to respect words and figure out what they mean and not try to dogmatize them or make them seem simple because that would have really negative consequences for people's faith. And speaking of the word faith, that's one of the words that I had a really hard time with in church because I felt like people made it really, really easy. And really, I think that they fetishized it. And I think that they made it seem like it was really simple. And maybe it is simple, but it's a very ambiguous word. And I feel like we never discussed it. We just said, have it, have it all the time. And one thing that I was really uncomfortable with, I remember when I was really, really little, I was at a party, a family party, and we were talking about church stuff, and people were being kind. They weren't being malicious or gossipy, but somebody. And they said with real pain in their voices, oh, yeah, this person is no longer active, or this person left the church, or this person, blah, blah, blah. But it was also kind of like, it's too bad they lost their faith. And my whole crisis when I was younger, I think centered around that word faith and the idea of activity or inactivity in the church. And I remember feeling really frustrated. And I think I even said something to my mom about it, because in my mind, this is how it worked. Why does it mean? I guess I felt frustrated that the moment that you do a ritual in the church to show that you believe, then you are a believing, faithful person. And if you don't do those rituals, then you aren't. And I was really frustrated that a person could go right up to the second before she was baptized and not be faithful. And then the second she was baptized, no questions asked, she was a faithful, active member of the church. And I felt really strongly, in a way that I couldn't articulate to myself when I was 8 years old. But intuitively, I felt that people's faith processes were much more important than the outcome of their faith. And I felt like we had made faith into an outcome where you only had it if you achieved a certain outcome. And I felt really angry about that because I felt like you could have faith and decide that you didn't believe in something. You could have faith and not get an answer that another person got. And I think that is a good foundational story for the rest of my experience and my journey, because I feel like most of the things that I worry about or struggle with come down to that difference between process and product. And I really, really feel frustrated when you can only earn a virtuous word if you achieve a certain outcome. And I was really troubled by that when I was younger. And I was really troubled by the discussion of faithful versus non faithful people. And it wasn't in a flippant way or a teenage rebellion, non conformist way, like, who cares, man? Everybody's just fine. Okay? It was really, truly that I felt like you did have to do battle with something and that you had to really set your heart on something and struggle. And it wasn't a desire to avoid something or just to slip into pop relativism, but I felt like people could struggle with something and conclude something very different than someone else. And that was probably one of the most significant struggles. I didn't like the way that we used the words that were supposed to be the most beautiful words in our religion. And

John Dehlin [00:10:46] how did you cope with the feeling of being different? It's clear that there probably weren't many kids your age feeling and thinking the things you were thinking. You probably might have even experimented talking to them about it and maybe didn't find a group of peers, at least maybe in your high school years that maybe got why you would be feeling so frustrated. So what did that do to you internally? Did you internalize it? Did you feel any guilt or anything? Or were you just sort of frustrated that everyone else wasn't as, you know, compassionate or tuned in to your concerns as you were?

Ashley Sanders [00:11:26] Well, yeah, it was very frustrating. But interestingly enough, I feel like I'm on the guilt. I'm riding the guilt train in almost every way. But that I don't feel, and this is something that's always felt strange to me about myself. I almost have an uncanny belief that the things that I think are good and that they deserve to be thought about. And so I didn't get depressed about that. I felt like I think I have a really strong mind. And I thought, no, these things are important. And I didn't shrink and I didn't say, oh, they're not important to other people. I'm more of a crusader than a tormented soul in that regard. And so I tried really hard to create. My big thing was creating the situations that I wanted to see. And that was part of my integrity, that if I had integrity, I would create these situations that weren't available for me. And so I. That sounds self aggrandizing, but that's what I tried to do in high school, was to constantly speak about what I thought was important and to get people who were interested to do those things with me or to talk about those things with me. So I was pretty resolute. And I ended up having really good friends because of that and a really rewarding high school experience. And I had all sorts of crusades that fell under bigger crusades. And I tried just really hard to, you know, have that be my gospel and try to honor it in myself. But I was. I felt different my whole life because I would sit in school and I would feel really sad because I would feel like I would feel confused that that was enough for people, that it was enough for them to just sit in a desk, bored out of their minds and wait for the teacher to call on them and ask a specific question that they could answer. And I felt really uncomfortable. The structure and methodology of the church and of my school classes were the most frustrating things to me because I wanted a place where I could create new ideas and associate ideas and bring whatever I had to the table and offer it. And I felt like all most places offered you was just the opportunity to answer a pointed question correctly. And that. That made me feel so lonely.

John Dehlin [00:13:58] How did you deal with that loneliness?

Ashley Sanders [00:14:01] I just annoyed people. I just kept doing what I thought was important and I kept coming to school over prepared and coming to church over prepared and raising my hand. And not selfishly, hopefully, but when I thought something was important, diverting a conversation and I don't know, I. I think I responded by just being really bullheaded about it. Hopefully not in a bad way, but I just thought it was important and so I did it. But I felt really lonely. And as far as what I actually did about that loneliness, it didn't go away. It never has gone away. I had friends I could talk to about it and I did that. But mostly I just tried really hard to counteract it by the way I lived my life and by the way I went to church, which usually just makes you feel more frustrated. But.

Navigating BYU, the Honor Code, and Campus Culture

John Dehlin [00:14:51] So how did this grow or diminish as you went to byu? Let's see.

Ashley Sanders [00:15:03] Byu.

John Dehlin [00:15:06] Well,

Ashley Sanders [00:15:08] I was really mad that people Thought BYU was a lost cause. And people would say, oh, you're going to Provo, and they'd roll their eyes. And I. I get angry. I love underdogs of any kind. And I get angry when people feel like towns are just whatever they are when they find them, you know, and that's the best they can be. So I thought, well, I'll make Provo what I want it to be. And so that's the attitude that I had when I went into it. And not that it was all up to me, but I would try my best. So, on the one hand, I've had the most vibrant experience of my entire life going to byu. And I found people who. Who are unparalleled in any other city or other place I've ever been. And we've done incredible things together. And then in the classroom, I was really challenged, and I felt really good about my education for the most part. But a few things. Number one, the old methodology crisis persisted, and I felt lonely in class, and I felt like I just basically longed to be a teacher because then I could create a class where everyone could participate. And then, number two, the honor code. I didn't really know about it before I went to byu. I guess I signed it, but I was just like, what is this weird document? You know, I signed it, and then that became part of my. Part of a huge crisis in my life and in a lot of other people's lives, and part of my crusade at byu. And then the tension between the administration and the students was a huge deal at BYU for me.

John Dehlin [00:16:44] What's wrong with the honor code? I mean, you know, don't drink and smoke and be nice to people and don't steal and don't lie. What's wrong with that?

Ashley Sanders [00:16:53] Well, I. Partly what's wrong with it is that I feel like I am a spiritual anarchist, for lack of a better term. I feel like people should be good because they chose to be good. I feel like they should believe something because it meant something to them and not because they feared it, not because it was culturally accepted, not because it was forced on them. And that's a pretty radical view to take. And everybody tells me, I'll change that idea when I'm a parent. But I think it's really important. I think that critical thinking and the process of coming to know something altruistically, with the right motives is more important than what you conclude. And I think the honor code makes it. It's a document. Basically. You go into BYU and they say, build your testimony But. But the honor code says from the very beginning, you should always already have had a testimony, and it should be this testimony. And so people feel, I think, that determining what you believe is very Cartesian. It's the process Descartes described. It's starting with as little as you can in terms of biases and whatever, and then trying to move. And maybe you'll be at a point that doesn't look moral or ethical, but it's an integral part of that process of trying to figure out what you believe. And the honor code doesn't allow for that. It's static. It makes people come in and feel guilty if they don't already espouse the doctrines in it. And they are doctrines because they're doctrinaire and they control an entire campus. And the second thing that's wrong with it is, I think, and this has always been my problem, it infantilizes the gospel. And it says to people, this is what the gospel is. The gospel is a set of codified rules that you can check yourself against, rather than the gospel is a transformative concept that you can only judge yourself against honestly. Only if you're honest can you ever judge yourself against it. And if you're not, we have no help for you. And so the honor code is a codified set of rules that makes people think they're good for all the wrong reasons. And the things that are found in that document don't matter, I think, religiously. And if you just don't drink, my personal opinion is that if something. If you're not living a law on a higher level according to the principle that it was based on, then it probably actually does more damage to you than it does good because of the dogmatism that it invites into your life. And so if people decide that they don't want to drink and smoke because they believe that it is important to them to have harmony between their spirit and their body, then I respect those people more than anything. But if they decide to. To not drink just because somebody said, we're Mormon, we don't drink, I don't think it blesses them, except for it keeps them maybe from having liver cancer when they're older, I think that it's not enough. And I think that the honor code sets a ceiling on goodness, and it punishes people who are actually trying to live according to principle and according to concepts, and it creates a pall of bad thinking on campus so that people are not capable of engaging in discussion about why they do things or don't do things. All you have to do is point to a rule as your founding document and that does your work for you mentally, spiritually, emotionally. That's damaging to people. I think it's damaging to that campus. Most people have not learned how to think on that campus, and I don't think that most of them have had the opportunity. That sounds really condescending, but they're not given the opportunity to learn to think the way that I think they could be. And I don't think that they're given the opportunity to be spiritual the way they could be.

John Dehlin [00:20:26] But you would acknowledge that there's probably some who comply with the honor code and have thought a lot about it. I mean, certainly you'd say that's possible, right? Are you just saying you didn't find it very often?

Ashley Sanders [00:20:36] Yeah, I guess it's possible. I just don't think that. I think there are people who have been thoughtful about it and who have chosen to comply with it, but I don't think that if you set out to be thoughtful and there was no document, you would end up painting a document like the honor code for yourself. I just don't believe that.

John Dehlin [00:20:57] Okay, you were talking about administration. Are you also an organizational anarchist?

Ashley Sanders [00:21:05] I don't know. I'm too torn to be an organizational anarchist. But I think that maybe one of the values of an organization is to make life so difficult for people that they consider things they haven't considered before. That might be honestly one of the best purposes of an organization that I know of. I believe in people working collectively profoundly, and I believe very much in obligations and like, sacred obligations to other people. And I think the organizations can foster that if they combine their organizational structure with principles. And I think if they do that, organizations can be wonderful. And if especially they allow everyone to participate as equals, organizations can be wonderful. But when they lose that, they, I think, are just protectors of a really, really damaging status quo. Not that the status quo is always wrong, but. But protecting it as if it's sacrosanct is wrong, in my opinion. And so I think it's damaging. I think that the administration at BYU is not acting according. Well, I don't think that they teach us principles. I think that they teach us rules. And I think an organization that's lost its founding principles is not an effective organization. I think it's a dangerous organization.

John Dehlin [00:22:31] Can an organization be both uplifting and dangerous?

Ashley Sanders [00:22:34] Yeah, I think every. I think every organization has the potential for both.

John Dehlin [00:22:39] And so tell us a bit about the good you see in byu.

Ashley Sanders [00:22:44] I feel like the. And it's not always realized, but it was realized in several of my classes, this idea. And it was beautiful when it was realized. And I think, actually, from what I've read in the founding documents of byu, this was one of the purposes of it. I think that if. That. The fact that BYU requires secular and spiritual thinking from a person at the same time has the potential to do something that I think is more important than anything, which is to make someone recognize their hypocrisy and try sincerely to change that and to make people consider things from different angles and. And really battle with them. I went to the U for a while, and it was a good education as well. And I visited my friends at other schools. And this condemnation is not fair, and it's not a condemnation. But I feel like if you're just at a secular school, sometimes you're not attached enough to ideas to have it matter if they're replaced by new ideas. And so you happily accept the next bad, the next chain of thinking, the next zeitgeist or whatever, because you're not attached enough to something to have it hurt to change it. And I think religion means being attached enough to something to have it be painful to consider something else, but to also have the obligation to consider something else is one of the most powerful educational tensions I can think of. And BYU has that tension. And in the classes where the teachers emphasize that tension, I had some of the best education that I can imagine that I couldn't have had other places. I love that about byu. I love that you have to constantly consider that everyone on that campus is your brother and sister. Not that you don't have brothers and sisters other places. But that is always in your face. You know, you have to think about it. I like that about byu. I like that they provide a place where people can talk about things spiritually. Because. Because I think people get really lonely and start to despair when they can only talk about their life in an intellectual way. So I like those things about byu.

John Dehlin [00:24:50] Any professors that were inspirational to you? Not necessarily by name, but I mean just or by name, whatever.

Ashley Sanders [00:24:58] I had so many professors who were inspiring to me, friends that I'll have for the rest of my life, hopefully. And I feel like I found professors to match my different temperaments because part of my problem is I feel really conflicted temperamentally because I have a part of myself that's profoundly devoted, profoundly religious, and a part of myself that is really wary of things and a part of myself that's very radical. So it's just I feel like I found teachers who matched those sentiments. And the best ones, the best mentors that I found were people who had like, the gravity and potential for joy and expansiveness that is like, characteristic of a religious soul, but also like the conscience and awareness that is necessary to live a good life in a secular world. And I found. I found probably 10 of those teachers. I was really lucky.

John Dehlin [00:25:51] Good faculty. Then how about. How about peers and talk a little bit about the beginnings of discussion night

Ashley Sanders [00:26:01] and what it became as far as people in Provo. I have not been everywhere in the world, so this statement will not be corroborated by experience. But I could not imagine finding a more vibrant, beautiful group of people ever. And I think that they are so amazing because they have, because they are religious and because they are really committed to helping in the world. And that combination, I felt like, made them really powerful people and really important, meaningful forces in the world in a way that, you know, I don't feel other places as much. We started discussion night or I started it because I felt frustrated at the methodology of church and school. And I felt like there must be other people like me who had their hands in the air when the bell rings and who wished they could talk about school after it ended and whatever. And so we started a discussion night. And at first it ended up being called Virtues Night because I made a sheet for myself of different gospel principles that I thought were really important. And then I made a challenge for myself to go with those things. And I tried to live it to see if it made me a more daring and better. And so the first night that we had discussion, I passed that out to everybody. And we read about the virtues and we talked about them and everybody chose the virtue they thought was most important. And then for the next year, about every week, a person would present on a virtue and there was no holds barred. You could say, I don't think that's a virtue. I don't believe in that. Blah, blah, blah. You could be tedious, you could be philosophical. It was for all the marginalized people basically to come and have their ideal conversation. So it was pretty insane. And there were arguments and there was everything. And then it evolved slowly over the years. We did it for five years. Over the years, it evolved into all sorts of things. We would cook dinner together, we would have art nights, we would do social experiments, we would talk about philosophical things, current events, activist stuff, I don't know, everything.

John Dehlin [00:28:13] What were the numbers of attendees the

Ashley Sanders [00:28:15] first night that I did it, I think there were 12 people there. And then over the years, I mean, it would fluctuate, but usually by the end of the night, there had been at least 30 people in and out. It was very much like a Mormon wedding of the mind. People just came when they want and left when they wanted and had some bad food, maybe. But yeah, 30 people, sometimes 70 people would come. It really just depended on the topic the night.

John Dehlin [00:28:44] What would bring 70 people?

Ashley Sanders [00:28:46] One thing that brought 70 people was when Stephen Jones talked about his 9, 9, 11 conspiracies or conspiracy theories.

John Dehlin [00:28:54] You had them come to discussion night?

Ashley Sanders [00:28:56] Yeah. And then another one. Let's see. There are a few that brought tons of people. I'm trying to remember. There's a lot of people. When we talked about Marxism, there were a lot of people. We talked about the Iraq war, there were tons of people. When we planned for alternative commencement, lots of people. I don't know. There were huge numbers several times, but usually there would be like 25 to 35 or maybe 40 people. It just kind of depended.

Organizing Alternative Commencement at BYU

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 70

John Dehlin [00:00:01] So you've probably talked about it elsewhere, but talk about alternative commencement, how it came about, and what the highs and the lows were for you.

Ashley Sanders [00:00:15] Do you want to know why we did it, or do you want to know? Okay, well, I think there were lots of. There were as many reasons that people did it as there were people, as is the case with every organization or group. But Cheney got invited to speak. BYU invited Bush, Bush said no. Then Cheney offered to speak. So they had him come to speak. And everybody was all abuzz about it on campus. And since discussion night's kind of the base for a lot of planning for different things, everybody's like, so are we having a discussion night about it? Blah, blah, blah. So I started thinking about it and then came up with this idea with my friend and Evan to have an alternative commencement. And we pitched the idea, and people liked it, and we started planning for it. And then my ideas just went galloping away, and I was trying to hold on, and we invited Ralph Nader and Jack Healy and Pete Ash down, and it started getting bigger and bigger. We had to raise 25,000 or 20, $20,000 in like, 14 days or something like that and get a venue, do all this crazy stuff. But, I mean, a lot of people did it strictly because they opposed Dick Cheney. A lot of people did it because of issues of political neutrality. A lot of people did it for community reasons, because Provo is very divisive, you know, and they were trying to have a conversation about politics. I personally felt like it was important because I feel that when there is not, when I did it because of personal liberty issues. And I feel like BYU does not allow for people to apply the lessons that they learn in school to their institution. And that is what I am most afraid of when institutions will not let people apply the principles of the institution to the institution itself at the time when it most needs it. And so that's why I thought it was important to protest. And I think that if you can have a conversation about things, people have to give you reasonable arguments about why they did what they did. And so it was basically just an effort to create a conversation and to show people that we wanted a conversation and that we would find our own way of having it if we weren't allowed to have it where we should have been able to have it, which was at our campus.

John Dehlin [00:02:45] What were the hardest parts about that whole thing for you?

Ashley Sanders [00:02:52] Well, frankly, being raised the way that I was, I have a really, really hard time still figuring out the proper relationship between compassion and Criticism because I feel like I can understand pretty or I feel like I have a lot of empathy for why people do what they do, even if they do heinous things. And I feel like, you know, I can even understand the institutional kind of. I can understand how institutions make people who are maybe good people do things that aren't necessarily the best and make decisions that might not be the best. So I feel that strongly and I want to be fair minded. And so I have a really hard time figuring out how to stand up for the right things so that things will change, but also understand why people have done what they've done, whether that be Dick Cheney or the BYU administration or whatever. And that causes a riot in my chest. I can't figure it out. I. I've been working on it for so long. And so I would stay up till 3am at night thinking, am I being a Christ like person? Am I being compassionate? What is the right way to descend? Is this the right thing to do? One of the hardest things for me was having that extra kind of courage to do something that isn't set up for you, that you have to create for yourself, that you and your friends have to create for yourself. Another hardest, another one of the hardest parts was I just got so depressed by the way that my, the way that Mormons talk about things. We are impoverished arguers. We can't argue with people who don't already agree with us. And so I would read the Daily Universe editorial section and it was just fallacy land on both sides because the minority feels embattled, the majority feels embattled, and bad thinking runs amok. And I think it's really unfortunate. And people would say, well, when the prophet has spoken, he's spoken. There were just truisms of bounding and people on the other side of the issue would spew forth truisms and platitudes. And it was so hard for me to hear constantly that I was doing either a bad or a good job for reasons that I considered to be bad reasons. I don't think that I lose. The hardest thing for me, frankly, was having people tell me that I had lost my faith when I was doing something that I thought was for me profoundly faithful. That required more real faith than anything that I've done in my whole life. And that also required me to consider faith in a more rigorous way than I ever have in my life. And I felt like it's so unfortunate that our, that are like founding virtues and our founding principles have become evaluative terms. Epithets that we throw at people. If you do this, you're faithless. If you do this, you're faithful. And rather than terms that can guide us in our lives, that was really sad for me. I had a really hard time with that.

John Dehlin [00:05:47] And what were the great joys, the

Ashley Sanders [00:05:50] great joystick, seeing that.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] Did you get to pick Ralph Nader up at the airport?

Ashley Sanders [00:05:57] Uh huh.

John Dehlin [00:05:58] That's gotta be cool.

Ashley Sanders [00:05:59] Yeah, that was really cool.

John Dehlin [00:06:04] Was he wearing boots?

Ashley Sanders [00:06:06] He was wearing a really old suit and really old shoes. Just your average low maintenance kid. But I liked talking to him on the way down about the Mormon Church. And he's really direct and really stern and not afraid of any issue. And so he'd say, why does if the Mormon Church. The whole way down to the commencement, he praised the Mormon Church and he said, oh, this and this. And he would say, ashley, tell Matt, Matt was his assistant about the radical concept of Mormon charity. And I say, okay, and I try to tell Matt. And then he commanded Matt to go on a Mormon mission. And that was pretty funny. And then on the way back though, he had criticisms. He said, why, if your church was so radical, is it so unimaginative now? And why this and why that? I like talking to somebody about that. Another joy was just to see that a group of very disparate people, and we were very disparate, I had really radical opinions about things. Other people had pretty centrist opinions about things. The group was very diverse. And to see everybody cooperate to do something that no one could have done by themselves was incredible. And the best part about it, I didn't expect. I expected it to be incredible, but I did not expect it to be as spiritually inspiring as it was for me. And when the actual commencement happened and I was there that night, I wept almost the entire time because it was so beautiful to see a community that was usually so divided, that might have still been very divided, at least be sitting in the same room some of them. And to have people who had felt ostracized their entire lives for Mormonism and felt like they couldn't even call themselves Mormon, be able to see that there was something in Mormonism that they recognized in themselves that was really beautiful for me, really moving and I loved that part of it the best.

John Dehlin [00:08:08] So how many people came?

Ashley Sanders [00:08:11] Well, KSL said there were 200, but I think there were 1500 people. And then.

John Dehlin [00:08:19] Wait, 200 versus 1500?

Ashley Sanders [00:08:22] Yeah, we got really. There are some.

John Dehlin [00:08:25] Oh, KSL's. Are you thinking is church owned?

Ashley Sanders [00:08:28] Yeah, they just said that we had 200 people there, which, if you can count in any way, it's just simply not true.

John Dehlin [00:08:33] Okay, but so definitely, at least. What would you say your minimum.

Ashley Sanders [00:08:38] Minimum.

John Dehlin [00:08:39] Most conservative minimum?

Ashley Sanders [00:08:41] A thousand?

John Dehlin [00:08:42] So, yeah, because I heard 200, I'm like, well, that's kind of cool.

Ashley Sanders [00:08:45] But, yeah, I mean, there were a lot. I mean, we did it in the McKay Event center because that was the only place that would let us come and have our event. And so there are 8,000 seats in there, and so it's hard to make it look full. But yeah, there were lots of people there and lots of people listening online and stuff like that. So it was really amazing.

Struggles, Loves, and Resources Within Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:09:11] So for yourself or for friends and peers, are there any aspects of your Mormon experience that. That you're struggling with today or. And do you have types of friends or peers that are suffering or feeling ostracized or alienated or in pain in any way that you have deep empathies for? Talk about yourself and then talk about where there might be need for re evaluation and maybe even reflection and improvement within how we deal with each other within Mormon culture and the church.

Ashley Sanders [00:09:58] Let's see. I feel really strongly that. Church should not be about any person over another person. And it might seem like that's what I'm advocating when I say we need to change the methodology, we need to change it. But really what I'm saying is I believe that we could create a structure that would allow everybody to feel like they could speak. And I know that that's what we've tried to do, but it's not working. And there are people who go to church and feel because of some unwritten rule or some very strong cultural presence in the room, that they can't say what they feel. And that church is just about one thing which, you know, to them might be telling unbelievable stories that. That are supposed to make things seem okay when it doesn't make things seem okay for those people. And I don't think that church should be just about those people. I think it should be about everyone. And if we could include in our conversations in church why something might not be true or why someone might not believe something, or how we could interpret something differently, and we could allow people to be honest about their experiences and not ashamed of those experiences and talk openly together, I think I could have the same feeling in church that I had that night at alternative commencement. Not that just like all my people were there and everybody agreed with me, but that people were given a chance, a fair chance, to speak. And that's what I believe. And my friends who have left have left because of those reasons, frankly, most of them. Some of them have left because of doctrinal reasons or historical reasons, but most of them have left because they couldn't stand feeling like a bad person for doing what they thought was the best thing they could do with their character, or at least a good thing that they did with their character. And so I would. The people I feel deep empathy for are the people who follow the question where it goes and end up in a place that is not recognized as valuable or as virtuous to us. And I have always had, like, a profound lament and torment for them in my brain and for myself a lot of times, too, frankly, because sometimes I feel like if you really follow out certain ideas, even gospel ideas within the gospel, and you reach a certain point, it's odd that you could follow the gospel out of the gospel, but that's sometimes what it feels like. And I feel like the people I respect the most are the people who did not allow the era that they were born in and the arguments that were designed to keep people acting a certain way within that area. I admire the people who didn't let that keep them from having integrity. And I feel bad for the unimaginative way that we censure and criticize those people within Mormonism. And I feel bad for the epithets that we have for people who leave and people who I think have done something that is profoundly conscionable, who didn't end up with the right outcome in our minds. And so I would just dream of a church setting in which the process was more important than the product, and that people were rewarded and praised for having integrity wherever it led them, and that they could talk openly about things in an environment where people would respond to each other in love. And that similarly, someone who believed and had always believed could also feel comfortable saying those things in church. That's kind of. That's what I envision. But yeah, I do. I feel really, really frustrated because I feel like sometimes when I feel like something is unfair. There are a lot of manufactured virtues, and I do think that they're generally manufactured that praise people who give up the question or who give up the journey. And I think that's really tragic.

John Dehlin [00:14:07] So that's what I so what are your favorite things about the church? What do you love about the church?

Ashley Sanders [00:14:21] I love that we get to teach each other. I love that there is lay clergy. However, you would say that I love that we're teachers and that we're given that responsibility, which I consider to be more sacred than any responsibility. And I love that we have

John Dehlin [00:14:45] this

Ashley Sanders [00:14:46] heritage of people who were visionaries, who were social reformers, maybe not in the way that we understand those terms today, but in a very real way, and who saw a vision for the world and considered. I think, that we have a heritage of ancestors in our church who have lived personally prophetic lives. And I think that's because. And I think it's beautiful, the idea that everybody in our church is in some sense, a personal prophet for themselves. And I love that we're supposed to go to church with each other every Sunday, even if it's agonizing. I love church, and I love that we're supposed to take care of each other. And I love that we're supposed to learn to like people who, by some geographical sleight of hand, ended up living by us. I think that's beautiful. I think that the spirit of sacred obligation is one of the most beautiful Christian concepts that I know of. And I don't think you can practice it unless you're forced into certain groups and organizations that make you practice it fully. And also love that really, the way the church is set up, even if there are cultural checks on this, you can make the church in so many ways what you want it to be. And every calling, every structure, well, not maybe every structure, but most structures are invitations to make something into what you dreamed of it, what you dreamed it to be. Visiting teaching is one of the most incredible things to me that I can think of, that you have a responsibility for someone that you might not have known otherwise. And I think it's sad the way we trivialize those things sometimes in the church, but the fact that we have these callings, really, I guess what I'm talking about, callings that allow us give us an excuse to be good and give us an excuse to bring our vision to something, to be helpful. It's beautiful. I love that.

John Dehlin [00:16:47] Have you ever read Sunstone or Dialogue or been to a Sunstone symposium? And if so, what are your thoughts on their role in your life, in the church's history, and in their importance to people today?

Ashley Sanders [00:17:02] I've been to one symposium just recently when I spoke, I was invited to speak, and I loved it. And I had read Sunstone before and Dialogue for various reasons. I hadn't read a lot, but I'd read it for various reasons. And I had read it a lot when I was researching Heavenly Mother stuff. And it was one of the only places that I could find that had Mormon information on that stuff. I believe in sunstone and dialogue, and I believe that they're important because so many other traditions have great. These beautiful histories of people in their religion who commented on their religion. And I think we need people like that who can intellectually, emotionally, philosophically, and spiritually comment on what our religion means, what it could mean, etc. And I think people need that. And if there's not that in our religion, then they'll have to find other places, which is good, but it's profoundly valuable to have it within our own tradition. I also think that the way that some people respond to Sunstone is indicative of what I think is a very unfortunate sickness in the way that we view religion and thinking and stuff. It's stigmatized in some ways, and people say, oh, well, sunstone. I think that's really, really unfortunate to think that that isn't part of our tradition. To know in every way that we can know, to know with our minds, to know with our hearts, to know through conversation, to know through compromise. And I think there should. I emphatically believe that there should be a place where people can explore a question or a belief as far as they need to explore it, to feel like they have integrity when they finally say, I believe or do not believe in this. And I think they should be able to do it in a community of people who can also speak, who can check them, who can counter them, who can love them, whatever they need in order to have the most robust spiritual and intellectual experience that they can. But more importantly, much more importantly than that even, is to have a place where they can feel like they can follow the principles of the gospel as far as they need to take them, to have integrity. And the fact that we consider that a side hobby or divorce from our culture or our church or our religion is disturbing to me. It's not personal preference. It's what everyone should do. And so I think it's very important to have a place for that.

Pillars of Faith and Final Reflections

John Dehlin [00:19:53] Any final thoughts you wanted to share? Messages? Feelings,

Ashley Sanders [00:20:00] I guess. I believe very strongly that every good thing is attention. And I think not attention, but a space tension. And I think that those tensions are valuable. So the tension that I feel going to church is valuable and instructive to me spiritually and emotionally. And the tension in the idea of faith is valuable and instructive to people. And the tension in. In the idea of love, the tension between institutions and individuals, I think that those tensions are actually the things that are teaching us spiritually. And I think that sometimes we view them as impediments, as something that we'll get over one day when we get to an absolute state or we are happy, or when we know something or when we believe something. But I believe that the purpose of those virtues and those ideas is actually to keep tension alive in us. So we're always doing the best kind of thinking and the best kind of living, and we're always practicing faith to reconcile those tensions from moment to moment. So I believe in anything that promotes that. And I think religion is supposed to promote that maybe more than almost anything. So that is one testimony that I have, is a testimony of tension, which may sound strange, but that's what I believe in, I think, the very most.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] What are the pillars of your faith?

Ashley Sanders [00:21:31] I think one of the pillars of my faith has come from taking seriously the idea that God is our Father, that we have a heavenly father and a heavenly mother, and that that is our relationship to them. And that makes me understand the other pillars of my faith better. What faith would mean, how you come to get to know somebody. But it has led to one of the pillars of my faith, which is that I feel like I must honor and reverence somebody who loves me with real knowledge of who I am and who is a better person than I am, but who still gives me my autonomy. To love somebody and to give them autonomy at the same time, when you may know more than they do, is, I think, what it means to be godly. Among other things. I believe in the church because I think it teaches people to do that, to love somebody enough to have it hurt if they don't choose what we wish for them, but to grant them their autonomy as well. And that tension, I think, makes people godly. And I believe in that. And I don't care as much if the church is true as if it makes me true. And I think that the church makes people true if they'll let it make them true. And one thing that I believe comes from my friend's mom. She's Muslim, and my friend is Mormon, and she asked her mom, so why is it that you're Muslim? What about this in Mormonism? What about this in Islam? What about this? And her mom interrupted her, and she said, all I've ever tried to do is honor what is familiar in me. And I believe that that is one of the most beautiful pillars of faith that you could have to honor what's familiar in you. And I believe that means different things for an LDS person. It means honoring the Spirit, honoring your divine nature. Honoring what God has for you to do and honoring other people in the way that you feel called to. To honor them. I believe in that. I believe that we have missions on this earth and things that we can do. And I believe. I believe in something. I believe in practicing. And I believe that humility and love and all those other things aren't satellite virtues orbiting off somewhere. I believe that you become humble when you care enough about blessing other people, that you keep returning and trying again, and that your goal is not to be right. And that your goal is not to be good right away, but to act in the moment that you are called to act. And that you go back when you have acted and it didn't work or it did, and you thank God for it. And I guess what I mainly believe in is the spirit of reverence that religion gives people and the spirit of honor and everything that honor entails. And I think honor entails a lot of ambiguity. And I think the ambiguity requires great love from people because it requires attention. And I believe that all the things I could say that are more traditional church virtues, like faith and repentance, they all have to do with honoring in some way, and they all have to do with practicing in some ways, and they all have to do with loving people while granting them autonomy. That's what I believe.

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