Mormon Stories: May 22, 2026

John Dehlin [00:00:31] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is May 22, 2026, and today we are going to be covering several really important and some breaking news stories. The thumbnail says nearly half of former active Latter Day Saints have disaffiliated from the church. But that's just one of the stories we're going to be covering today. It's a very important story. We also have several others, and I'm excited to announce that we're experimenting with a new format and with a new collaborator today. And the collaborator is Megan from Generally Unquotable. How's it going, Megan?

Guest 4 [00:01:13] Yeah, I'm doing great. I'm happy to be here.

John Dehlin [00:01:17] Yeah. And we had you and your sister on Mormon stories recently and people just loved that episode, I think.

Guest 4 [00:01:23] So, yeah. It was a really good experience. So I'm glad everyone else got to experience it as well and tell us

John Dehlin [00:01:29] really quickly remind us what generally generally unquotable is and what you do.

Guest 4 [00:01:34] I do a new show. So I'm on YouTube and Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and five days a week, Monday through Friday, I do a 15 to 20 minute news segment, just keeping people updated on what's going on in Mormonism.

Guest [00:01:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:01:49] And I thought it'd be really fun to have, you know, if you're swimming in Mormon news all week. Since I've been really busy with other things, I could use someone to help me get up to speed on Mormon news. And I figured our audience could benefit from your expertise as well. So what we're gonna do today is we asked Megan. Not Megan, we asked Megan to.

Guest 4 [00:02:13] Right, yes.

John Dehlin [00:02:14] To distill some of the biggest news stories of the week. And we're gonna talk about them. And we are doing this as a live stream. And so we welcome everyone who's joining us on the live stream. And so we've got a lot of stories to cover today. So why don't you give us an introduction of what the stories are that we're going to be hearing about. Megan?

Guest 4 [00:02:35] Yeah, we're going to talk about the disaffiliation and decline that's going on in the church. From Jeff Strong's book Torn. We are also going to look at a lot of sexual abuse cases that are going on in the church right now, everything from prosecutors collaborating with the current McConkey Law Firm to a breaking news case. We're also going to look at how bishops are feeling overwhelmed since they don't have young men's presidencies anymore. How kind of an update on what's going on in Fairview. I feel like that story's been going on for so long that we all want it to wrap up, but it hasn't yet. And then a couple at the end of more maybe something fun about Charlie Bird and his husband and what they're, what they're up to in their lives.

John Dehlin [00:03:20] There is a legally same sex married gay couple that has announced that they're having a child through in vitro fertilization. And this is not the Mormonism I grew up in.

Guest 4 [00:03:36] No.

John Dehlin [00:03:36] And we're super happy for Charlie, Charlie and his partner. But there are others who aren't so happy. Yeah. Anyway, okay. So that's what we've got in store for us. I thought we might lead with the Jeff Strong study, which is kind of taking the Mormon Internet by storm. But I think we should start with the breaking news. So why don't you tell us a little bit about this first story that kind of came out in the past day or two. Megan?

Former Livermore LDS Bishop charged with sexually assaulting boys

Guest 4 [00:04:08] Well, yeah, it broke last night as we were really getting ready for this. It says, former Livermore LDS bishop charged with sexually assaulting boys for over a decade. So this is coming out of California and there was very limited information. If you go to the next slide, I had to go to four or five news articles to piece together what information they have now. Oh, we could watch the video clip.

John Dehlin [00:04:34] Yeah, let's, let's go ahead and watch the video clip because I think it kind of gives us a bit of an overview and one of the victims, along with his wife, kind of speaks out. So let's go ahead and play it. Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:04:45] A former bishop for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Livermore is charged with decades old sex crimes involving four boys. The child sex abuse survivors are now adults and one of them sat down with KTV today to share his thoughts after police finally made an arrest. Our crime reporter Henry Lee is in Dublin tonight with more on the conversation. Henry,

Former Mormon Bishop arrested on sex crimes charges

Henry Lee [00:05:07] good afternoon. The ex bishop has since posted bail after appearing here at the East county hall of justice in Dublin. And now a survivor of the alleged abuse says he's ready to tell his story.

Guest 2 [00:05:18] He's created a lot of harm in my life and the lives of others. There are many victims.

Henry Lee [00:05:24] A survivor speaking out to KTVU after a former Mormon bishop in Livermore was arrested and accused of sex crimes involving him and three others when they were boys.

Guest 2 [00:05:34] The coping, I think, comes along with knowing that we're now seeing some justice take place.

Henry Lee [00:05:39] He did not want his name used, but with his wife by his side, he says it's time to say his Peace. Now that 76 year old Michael Dillar Morris has been charged with 18 felony counts of sexual assault and lewd acts from 1991 to 2000. Court documents obtained by KTVU accuse Morse of assaulting four boys at various spots, including at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on Hillcrest Avenue in Livermore, as well as at his home, a car and the childhood homes of at least two victims. At the time, Morris led the young men's group at the church and was a Boy Scout leader.

Guest 2 [00:06:10] He could act one way in one situation and act a very different way in a different situation and be able to use that to his benefit to perpetrate.

Henry Lee [00:06:20] An attorney for Morris declined to comment in court. He described his client as a former engineer with Lockheed Martin who was excommunicated from the church but later re baptized and reborn.

Guest 2 [00:06:31] It's been frustrating to know that he's been able to navigate a system, a community in secret and get away with it.

Henry Lee [00:06:42] He says he wants to bring this case into the light to help bring about accountability.

Guest 2 [00:06:46] We're also hoping that by telling our story, this will help out for future generations.

Guest [00:06:52] Right.

Guest 2 [00:06:52] This is a shot across the bow. We're not going away. We're here. We're standing up now.

Henry Lee [00:06:59] Reach out today to the Mormon Church but have not heard back. If convicted of all 18 felony counts, the ex bishop could face more than 14 years in prison, which according to the DA would amount to a life sentence. Live in Dublin, Henry Lee, KTVU, Fox 2 News.

Guest 4 [00:07:16] All right, Henry, thank you so much for that report. A former bishop for the Church of Jesus Christ.

Former Mormon Bishop on the Abusive Bishop

John Dehlin [00:07:21] What's interesting to you about this case

Guest 4 [00:07:23] in particular, what comes up for me is that a lot of times in the church first of all, people rely on two things, I think discernment. You know, if someone's a bishop, they've been called of God, so they're a great person. So there's that automatic trust there, which obviously is something that people need to be more aware of, that just because someone's a bishop doesn't mean that you can trust them. And the second thing, because I've had conversations with people about this where.

John Dehlin [00:07:51] Can I just add something to that?

Guest 4 [00:07:52] Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:07:53] My understanding is the prophet approves the callings as bishop. And so, you know, Mormons believe that the prophets of all people are inspired of God. Why is it that a Mormon prophet is not able to foresee that a prophet that he is signing off on a bishop that he is approving that he is signing off on is going to be or already is a child molester? That's a real problem. Okay, sorry. So.

Guest 4 [00:08:24] Well, no, and that's actually something that when I was. After I'd stopped going to church and was deconstructing, I posted a picture on my Facebook and it was a grouping of news stories of men who'd been bishops who'd abused children. And then in the comments, I was putting quotes from a conference talk by Henry B. Eyring that were talking about how bishops are called of God and mistakes are not made. He actually said in there that they don't make mistakes. And I was trying to reconcile the two because your question exactly. How does a bishop get approved by a prophet who's supposed to speak to God and then go on to abuse children?

John Dehlin [00:09:01] Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Any other. Any other things you think are interesting about this, this case in particular?

Sam Young on the Child Abuse in the Mormon Church

Guest 4 [00:09:10] Well, I mean, this case in particular, I. I am just glad that the victims are speaking out. I know it can take a long time. And people, you know, why didn't they say something back then? Well, it. It doesn't matter what their reasonings were back then. They were a child. They're coming out now. And I'm glad these things are coming to light. You've said it before where the church is kind of maybe having its spotlight moment, and we're going to see that today. We're going to see a handful of cases.

John Dehlin [00:09:35] Yeah. Some of the things that come to mind for me, like we're going to be, later in this show, we're going to be doing a study about how they got rid of the young men's presidents, and now bishops are in charge of the young men's programs. We all know that one of the problems that Sam Young. Former Mormon Bishop Sam Young expressed concern about was how bishops are allowed still in the Mormon Church to sit alone with 11, 12, 13 year old boys and girls and ask them about their sexual behaviors, ask them about their masturbatory behaviors, and that this has long been viewed as grooming behavior. In other words, making young children feel comfortable being alone with a grown man that isn't a parent. That's what Sam Young was speaking out about. And while we know of so many child abusers in the Mormon Church that have never been excommunicated or even punished because it was all kept secret so that the church's image wouldn't be harmed, the Church chooses to excommunicate whistleblowers like Sam Young and others who are trying to actually advocate for children. Natasha Helper is someone else who tried to advocate for children and four victims and she was excommunicated as well. So. And I think a lot of Mormons would think, oh, that, you know, well, we're eliminating a risk by eliminating the young Men's president because the bishops are more trustworthy. And I, I just don't think there's evidence for that.

Guest 4 [00:11:12] No. And you're gonna see in that article later that they talk specifically about they eliminated the young men's presidencies so the bishops could have closer relationships with teenagers.

John Dehlin [00:11:24] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:11:25] With this context, that language does feel. Yeah, a little bit disturbing.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] Even the, the other just big part of this formula is that the church, you know, we've covered this many times on Mormon stories. The Church works really hard to keep these things quiet so that members never know that they have an abuser among them. And so even if in the rare case an abuser gets excommunicated, so often they're readmitted, like with Wade Christofferson, the brother of the Mormon First Presidency member D. Todd Christofferson. Even when in the rare case that an abuser is excommunicated, they're often quickly rebaptized. It looks like their records are often deannotated, if they were ever annotated to begin with. And the members are never told that they have an abuser among them. And oftentimes these abusers are allowed back into positions of power over vulnerable people and then they repeat abuse. And the Church just somehow wants to rely on the atonement to protect and forgive abusers and allow them to be put in positions to reabuse. This not only hurts victims, but it makes members vulnerable to repeat abuses. And I just don't understand how the Church doesn't see this as damaging ultimately to their own reputation to continue covering up for and rehabilitating abusers that we know can't be rehabilitated and then just setting themselves up for more and more and more abuse cases. I just don't understand what they're thinking, do you?

Guest 4 [00:13:19] No, no, not at all. Because if you cover it up the first time someone abuses and then like Wade Christofferson and actually the gentleman in this last video mentioned it too, how he was watching this guy be readmitted and flying under the radar, they have to understand that it's going to happen again. Statistically speaking, someone who abuses children never has one victim. Like, I just haven't seen that. And the statistics don't bear that out. And I don't understand with all of the manpower, will, you know, people power that they have in their upper echelons, how they don't see that?

John Dehlin [00:13:59] Yeah, I mean, you could say they just sincerely believe in the atonement, but you could also say they're trying to protect a scandal from harming the church's reputation or costing the church's money. But whatever the motive is, what. What the effect is, is that they're endangering the membership with this behavior.

Guest 4 [00:14:23] Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And something that I've talked to a couple of people about, when someone is put in as a leader in the church, say a bishop and. Or a stake president, and they learn of someone abusing, that's not something that I think male leaders, bishops and stake presidents have a really good grasp on before they agree to do that position. Does that make sense? So they're taking on this liability that they don't even understand because they're focused likely on. I'm going to be guiding people through the atonement. What they're not foreseeing when they get into those positions is that I'm going to be dealing with people who have committed grievous crimes.

John Dehlin [00:15:07] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:15:08] It's just another aspect of someone brought up. And I thought, wow, I've never even thought of that, that when a bishop, he gets this calling and we all look up to them, we're like, oh, you know, congratulations, you're the bishop now. Well, they're also taking on a huge liability of something that they're likely not trained to deal with.

John Dehlin [00:15:24] Yeah. All right. Well, it seems like every week there's another Mormon bishop or Mormon leader, you know, caught up in an abuse scandal. And I do want to make a shout out to the floodlit website and organization. They're just meticulously chronicling all these abuse cases. So check out Floodlit. Maybe. Maybe Julia can put a link to Floodlet in our. In our comments and in the show notes, because Floodlet deserves our support. Because you can read up the details on all these cases on Floodlit.

Meeting Venmo with a Mormon Abuse Case

Guest 4 [00:16:03] They go through the background to pay for court records, and they put it all out there. And I mentioned once I do a show five days a week, and I could report on one case from Floodlit every day for years and not get through all of them. Just the ones that they have on Floodlight.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] Yeah. And if a case like this. Let's just. Let's really think about this. If a case like this is 20 or 30 years old, an apologist could go, oh, see, that's old. But no, what that tells us is the Church can keep an abuse story secret for 30 years. So that doesn't mean that all is well in Zion now. It just shows us how good the Church is at keeping today's abuse cases secret and private.

Utah law firm alerts church officials when Latter Day Saint Bishops write

John Dehlin [00:17:23] All right, Megan, so what's. What's the next story we got?

Guest 4 [00:17:27] So this is along the same lines. This says, when Latter Day Saint Bishops write letters for criminal defendants, some Utah county prosecutors alert the church's law firm. And so the background on this. I think that might be in the next slide, or were we going to watch that video? It stems from a case. Yeah. That actually came out last October, where a professor at byu, after weeks of pressure, wrote a letter defending a man who'd been accused of possessing child sex abuse material after weeks of. And that guy was looking for jail. So a professor at BYU wrote a letter saying, he's a great guy. He pays his tithing. I always saw him at church. He treats his wife well. And because of that case, the Salt Lake Tribune became aware that Curtin McConkey had a little agreement with the prosecutor's office. So if the prosecutor saw someone write a letter similar to that, they would alert Curtin McConkey, and then Curtin McConkey could go to that, you know, BYU professor or a bishop or stake president and say, you need to retract your letter because we don't get involved in these cases in that way.

John Dehlin [00:18:38] Let's play the clip, and then we can. We can break it down and discuss it. How does that sound?

Guest 4 [00:18:42] Absolutely.

Dean of BYU Writes Letters of Support for Child Sex Abuse Case

Guest [00:18:43] All right.

Guest 3 [00:18:44] A Utah county man who is facing 41 felony charges tied to allegedly having child sex abuse materials submitted letters of support when he asked for bail last summer. And one of those letters came from a dean at Brigham Young University. The dean wrote that they were both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and that the defendant had been faithful to his wife and was honest and trustworthy. The dean wrote, for as long as I've known him, he's attended church nearly every Sunday. As far as I could tell, he followed all the teachings of the church, avoiding all alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, smoking, drugs, et cetera. I believe he could to read it generously, a full tithe during this man's bail hearing.

John Dehlin [00:19:22] Okay, I'm going to pause. So why is the dean of. What does it mean that a dean of the church's most important and prestigious university, a dean, is writing a letter on behalf of a child porn consumer slash purveyor? What. Why would this be happening?

Guest 4 [00:19:50] I've tried to think about that. Is he just really naive? I mean, has he gotten. Has he grown up in the church and he doesn't understand the implications of what this guy did? I know there's a tie, because one of the dean's lab assistants, I believe it was, was the man's wife. The guy who was accused, his wife worked for the dean, so they had that connection. But that's another. I was going to say this in the last one, and that was my number two thing that I was going to say at the very beginning was people think that someone who abuses children will look like someone who abuses children. Almost like they'll come with this sign that says, I'm a child abuser. But they don't. That's why they get away with it, because they blend in, because they go to church, because they pay tithing, because they treat their wives well. So. So I don't understand how you get to the level of a dean at BYU without the knowledge that child sex abusers look like everybody else. And they do a lot of the same things everybody else does. And that's why they get away with it.

John Dehlin [00:20:54] And that was my next question is like, who gives a flying flip if this child abuser or porn purveyor. Child porn purveyor. Pays his tithing and doesn't drink alcohol and like, attends his meetings every week? But also, what is that? So there's a Utah county judge that's reading this statement. What do you think it does to the mind of a Utah county judge when the dean of the church's university is saying, hey, this is a good guy. What is the intent there and how is that possibly influencing the judge? Right.

Guest 4 [00:21:35] Well, because the judge is likely Mormon. So then he's getting all of that cultural context, something that he's very familiar with, something that makes him feel safe and something that he's been taught, likely from his childhood to trust in.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] Yeah. And so what's the result of that going to be?

Guest 4 [00:21:53] That he's going to look at this guy differently. He's going to say, you know, maybe he just made a mistake. Maybe he's going to rely on the atonement in the Mormon brain. I like to go back to that. You know, in my head, what would I have thought when I was an active Mormon if someone had abused or was looking at child sex abuse material? But then, ah, but they're a really good guy.

John Dehlin [00:22:16] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:22:17] How do you, how do. There would be cognitive distance. How do you put those two together?

John Dehlin [00:22:20] And doesn't it mean the judge is going to give him a lighter sentence?

Guest 4 [00:22:25] It could, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:22:26] I mean, isn't that the intent? It's basically saying, hey, this is a good guy, he's one of us, he made a mistake. Give them a lighter sentence. And do we want pedophiles or potential pedophiles or purveyors of child pornography in Utah to have lighter sentences because they pay money to the church and, you know, are active in the church? Which means, like, is that a, Is this a feature or a bug that. That this possible pedophile is active in church and constantly interacting with children and possibly constantly having access to children at church. Why is this being viewed as a feature, not a bug?

Guest 4 [00:23:15] Yeah, I don't know. Because, yes, this guy has children, so likely his children also had their friends over and whatever material he had. We don't know who that involved, but what likely happened was when he got arrested, his wife said, I know a guy. Right. I can go to this professor. He has a relationship with us. Dean, hopefully Dean. Yes, a Dean. He's gone beyond just Dean is not a department head.

John Dehlin [00:23:42] Department head. There's like, professors, which is prestigious. Then there's department heads, which is really prestigious. And then deans are over entire colleges, which is multiple departments. So, I mean, it's a very prestigious position. And he's basically saying, let's let this. Let's have minimal punishment for this child abuser so that he can continue having broad access to our children.

Guest 4 [00:24:09] And let's sort of brag about how much access he's had. I mean, he didn't know that's what he was doing, but like you said, that's what he was doing. He was at church every week, you

John Dehlin [00:24:17] guys, with our children. But this is. But the bigger story is that this is a systemic problem. So we've got this slide. You know, Grant Jensen defends Richard Mallard, so Greg Jensen's the dean. Is there anything else you want to say about this slide?

Guest 4 [00:24:33] This was just the information that came out. I believe it was last October, October 2025, this story about Grant Jensen and Richard Mallard.

John Dehlin [00:24:42] Okay, but the. But the bigger story is the systemic problem with the judicial system in Utah. So what is that? What? Give us the overview and then we'll play more video.

Guest 4 [00:24:51] Yeah. So this one says for more than a decade, some Utah county prosecutors have quietly informed lawyers for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints at Curtin McConkey after area bishops submitted letters supporting defendants in criminal cases, a practice the county's top prosecutor says he didn't know about and may move to stop.

Utah prosecutors: Church leaders are writing letters supporting defendants in criminal cases

John Dehlin [00:25:11] Okay, and I'm a little bit confused about this part, whether it's a good or a bad thing. But let's play a little bit more of the clip and then we'll talk about it. Is that all right? Okay.

Guest 3 [00:25:20] Defense attorney John Eason emphasized this letter in particular.

Guest 2 [00:25:24] Again, I look to some of these letters, particularly again, a dean of a significant program at BYU College that's here willing to support him. Scoutmasters that have watched him interact with children. Again, very appropriate.

Guest 3 [00:25:39] But prosecutor Adam Pomeroy pushed back with

John Dehlin [00:25:42] reference to these character letters. What I'm most struck by, Judge, is that not a single one shows any acknowledgement of what the actual allegations here are. And you're talking about deeply religious people, people involved in our community, people involved with youth, and there's no actual indication that they truly understand what the defendant is charged with here.

Guest 3 [00:26:03] Latter Day Saint bishops and church connected leaders have written similar letters of support for defendants, even though the church says leaders shouldn't get involved in members criminal cases. In another recent letter, we found a bishop wrote in Support of a man who was convicted of sexually abusing his daughters. That church leader wrote, I believe he's a good man at his court core. Experts warn these letters.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] Okay, so really quickly. So I'm confused here. So let me. Let me tell you what I understand, Megan, and then you help me understand what's going on. So it sounds like the Church has set up this system through Kurt McConkey lawyers that whenever police or prosecutors find out that faithful Mormon leaders are writing letters on behalf of victims, that the what, the Church's lawyers get notified so that they can what, tell the members to stop sending these letters? Is that right?

Guest 4 [00:27:06] So in the news article, they didn't mention that the letters were being written on behalf of victims. They were being written on behalf of those who had been accused.

John Dehlin [00:27:14] Right. Sorry, did I say victims? I mean perpetrators.

Guest 4 [00:27:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:18] Okay, let me restate it. Okay, so the church. It's sounding like the Church doesn't want bishops and church leaders writing letters on behalf of perpetrators. And so they set up a deal where the judicial system or the law enforcement system in Utah is notifying Mormon church attorneys whenever they find out that. That church leaders are writing letters on behalf of perpetrators. Right?

Guest 4 [00:27:50] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:27:51] Okay. So on the one hand, does the Church get credit for discouraging bishops from writing letters on behalf of perpetrators? Is that a good thing, that the Church doesn't want them doing this? Why are they doing this if the Church doesn't want them doing this? That's. I guess that's my first question.

Guest 4 [00:28:12] Well, so writing letters on behalf of someone is a super common practice. I've actually done it before on behalf of someone who was accused not of child sex abuse, something very different. But it's common for people to get character witnesses in that way with letters written. Right. So if Richard Mallard needed a character witness, he is allowed to glean that from his social circles in any way that he wants. What the Church is doing then happen if it's somebody who is either volunteering for them in a certain position or is in their employ. This letter from the BYU dean made the Church look bad. And I don't like that. It presented Richard Mallard in a way where it was almost like forgive and move on. However, that is Richard Mallard's right as a citizen who is going to, you know, go through a trial or do whatever he ever he's going to do to have character witnesses. So the Church knowing about it and trying to stop it, to me, doesn't really seem ethical. Even if I don't agree with what was said in the letter.

John Dehlin [00:29:24] Okay, so let me, I'm just. Help me understand. Yes or no, is it a good thing that the church is trying to stop these letters?

Guest 4 [00:29:33] I don't think it's ethical because I think everyone deserves a character witness, even if we don't like the way that character witness presented their argument.

John Dehlin [00:29:42] Interesting.

Mormon Church Leader Letters on Child Abusers

John Dehlin [00:30:47] And do you think these bishops or whoever, these church leaders who are writing these letters don't know that the church is opposed to these types of letters getting written?

Guest 4 [00:30:58] Well, if they haven't read the handbook. But as the article also states, if when Curtin McConkie gets notified that someone's written a letter, they make a call and they say, by the way, the handbook says don't do this.

John Dehlin [00:31:11] Okay. And you have a slide about that.

Guest 4 [00:31:15] Or the information was just in my brain. But.

John Dehlin [00:31:18] But I mean, you got a slide of the handbook. Is there anything you want to say about this slide?

Guest 4 [00:31:23] Well, that's just what they use. So when a bishop or a stake president writes the letter, if they didn't know, Curtin McConkey makes sure that they know from then on out.

John Dehlin [00:31:35] Okay. All right. So as I'm trying to make sense of this, on the one hand, it could be, it could be considered a good thing that the church is, is trying to stop these Mormon church leader letters on behalf of child abusers and perpetrators. Because, you know, I don't think any of us necessarily want Leniency for child abusers or child porn purveyors. Now, the, the asterisk to that is, is the church just trying to protect its image because it knows that it looks really bad when a BYU dean is saying, hey, this child abuser pays tithing, so let's be lenient?

Guest 4 [00:32:17] Well, and does it also end up going into the realm where they want a big ten, the COVID up not just for people supporting the perpetrators, but when people try to help the victims? So if a bishop has had a confession made to him and he's asked to testify in the handbook, it falls under the same rule of we don't involve ourselves in court cases.

John Dehlin [00:32:41] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:32:42] So if they're allowing bishops or stake presidents or a dean at BYU to write a letter for, for a perpetrator like the one we saw, do they also then need to allow them to testify on behalf of a victim because they heard a confession and they understand that that person is a victim?

John Dehlin [00:33:02] Yeah. Yeah. I guess for me, the, the question it, it asks is how problematic is it for the wealthy, powerful Mormon Church to, to have these secret dealings between lawyers and law enforcement? I remember like, I remember like at byu, there was, there was a real problem with, like, victims of rape, you know, policemen who were investigating BYU students who were the victims of rape, reporting some of this stuff to the honor code office? Yeah, I guess there's a little bit of a problem with possibly with sleazy Mormon Church lawyers having secret deals with law enforcement. I think just at a macro level, that feels a little gross or disturbing or problematic to me.

Guest 4 [00:33:55] Yeah, absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:33:58] Let's. Let this, let's, let's finish out this story and then we'll, we'll.

Guest 3 [00:34:01] There's deep and harm for victims, and they can feel betrayed by these leaders they trust. It's what researchers call institutional betrayal when people in power appear to support an accused perpetrator instead of encouraging accountability. In this case, the judge did grant him bail, but he said those letters didn't factor into the decision.

John Dehlin [00:34:21] So in this case, the guy did get bail, which means he was allowed to not go to prison. But the judge is saying that the letters didn't influence him. How likely is that, that a BYU dean's letter saying he's a really good church guy didn't influence the decision?

Guest 4 [00:34:42] Yeah, I don't know. It would definitely depend on the judge. I didn't look deeply into who the judge was and what his affiliations are, so, yeah, yeah, it's hard to know.

John Dehlin [00:34:52] All right, well, that's an interesting story. And I just thought it was worth sharing. So thanks for helping us out with that. If that weren't enough, we have a third abuse related story. And then we'll go on to the main story for today. So tell us about this story, Megan.

Mormon Church battles insurers over sex abuse settlement coverage

Guest 4 [00:35:09] Yeah. And this one. The Mormon Church battles insurers over sex abuse settlement coverage at the 10th Circuit.

John Dehlin [00:35:15] Okay, so this is a federal. This is a federal case. Right.

Guest 4 [00:35:22] You know, I don't always understand the distinctions between all of those. I mean, if it's in the 10th Circuit, I think so, yes.

John Dehlin [00:35:28] Okay, so tell us what's going on in this case.

Guest 4 [00:35:30] So the case date backs dates back to a series of abuses from a teenage church member, Michael Jensen, whose victims say the church failed to protect them throughout the 2000s. Jensen was sentenced to 35 to 75 years in prison in 2013.

John Dehlin [00:35:44] So this is the, this is the West Virginia case where the returned missionary was abusing kids before, after, and maybe even during the time he was a missionary. And the church covered. Covered it up and allowed. That allowed him to keep abusing people. So keep going.

Guest 4 [00:36:02] Yeah. Well, and I think some of the mothers tried to kind of commandeer a testimony meeting once upon a time.

John Dehlin [00:36:08] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:36:09] I don't know if you remember that. Yeah. Same case.

Guest 3 [00:36:11] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:36:11] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:36:11] The church reached a settlement with the victims and their families in 2018. The National Union Fire Insurance Company and ACE Property and Casualty Company. So this is who the church is fighting with now denied coverage for the sex abuse settlement because they argue the abuse was not one single incident, but a series of incidents with different times, places, and victims. Further, they claim the church was aware of these incidents and chose not to act. And that is their main point of contention is that the church knew and they didn't do anything. So the insurance company doesn't want to reimburse them for those settlements.

John Dehlin [00:36:50] So what do we think? So is this basically the church trying to avoid having to pay the settlement and trying to push as much of the payment of the settlement onto the insurance companies?

Guest 4 [00:37:03] Yeah. Which doesn't. I mean, they have so much money. I guess I don't understand what it's like to have that much money because they made a mistake, they hid it, they covered it up, they let it go on for years and years. They reached the settlement and now they want someone else to pay for it.

John Dehlin [00:37:24] So the church. Oh, go ahead.

Guest 4 [00:37:26] The other thing that people have been bringing up is that that means that the church has insurance specific to pay for sexual abuse lawsuit settlements, which is something that I don't know as an active member, I wouldn't have thought about, I wouldn't have thought when I paid tithing that that money was going to go to insurance to pay for sexual abuse settlements.

John Dehlin [00:37:49] I'm guessing their premiums are going up because I'm guessing that insurance companies are seeing how pervasive child sex abuse and child sex abuse cover ups are in the Mormon Church and they're going to be less and less likely to want to insure the church from these types of things. But yeah, I can see the church basically saying, hey, it's all one. You know, it's, you know, I can see the church basically wanting to take advantage. I can see faithful Mormon apologists saying, no, it's a good thing. If the church can push these payments off on insurance companies, it saves tithing to be used for temples and for other missionary work and other things that the church should be using. So why shouldn't the church take advantage of insurance companies? Like anyone, I could see an apologist making that argument that this just shows the church is smart and is using the church's tithing money as carefully and as thoughtfully as possible by forcing insurance companies to pay out for the church's neglect.

Guest 4 [00:38:58] Yeah, I know a lot of people were like, oh, this is the only time I've ever sided with an insurance company.

John Dehlin [00:39:05] Yeah. Well, anyway, that's fascinating and thanks for bringing those stories to light. We could do, there could be an entire daily or weekly podcast, as you say, dealing with child abuse and child abuse cover ups in the Mormon Church. So I, I just this week I, I received several people saying, can I tell my child abuse story in a Mormon context? So anyway, all right, well, here's the, here's the main topic of today's news story. It's a, it's a book. I actually have actually was sent a personal copy of the book Torn by Jeff Strong. This is a book that I believe is self published by Jeff Strong. It's got a forward by Steve Young, former, you know, hall of fame San Francisco 49ers quarterback Steve Young. We consider Steve and Barb Young to be Friends of Mormon Stories podcast.

Jeff Strong's new book Torn by Steve Young

Guest 4 [00:40:14] John, I have a signed Steve Young jersey.

John Dehlin [00:40:17] Oh yeah.

Guest 4 [00:40:18] In my house.

John Dehlin [00:40:19] Are you a big NFL football fan?

Guest 4 [00:40:21] I, Megan, love football. Oh my goodness, I love football. And my husband grew up in the San Francisco area, so. Huge 49ers fans.

John Dehlin [00:40:32] Well, we, we, you know, we, I think Steve Young's a great guy and Barb Young is also great. And so, so that's all true. And, and then, you know, I Want to give a little bit of background on, on this Jeff Strong guy. Jeff reached out to me a month or two or three ago, and he told me he was going to be publishing this book. And Jeff's background is really, really interesting. There have been many efforts over the past two decades to try and build empathy and support for Mormons who question their faith, lose their faith, and or leave the church. I started publishing, you know, videos or episodes advocating for people who leave their church, you know, two decades ago. And then, of course, I worked with Travis Stratford and Greg Prince and Hans Mattson and others to publish a study around 2011, 2012, 2013, to help make the church more sympathetic for people who leave the church. But never before have we had a champion like Jeff Strong who, who's willing to go to bat for people like us. And just to give you a little sense for Jeff Strong, let me start by playing by. By playing a clip of a little bit about his background.

Guest 2 [00:42:14] I have three children who are out, and in no way do I see them as lost. I have many, many friends who are out, and in no way do I see them as lost. They're certainly not lost to God. I could tell you stories about how I see God's hand in all of this and in their lives in incredibly inspiring ways. That's not the sadness for me. But they're lost to us in the church community. And if we're doing it well, the church will be large, growing, healthy, a place of abundance where more people and different kinds of people can come in and, and experience the incredible blessings of being a member of the church and living the gospel of Jesus Christ in a faith community. That's what I think our charge is as a church and as members of the church, we talk a lot about the gathering of Israel. There's a key concept in the gathering of Israel. Gather. And so if we have this mindset of sorting and sifting, and I've talked to people who just say, yeah, we know disaffiliation is happening, but it's just the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, it's sifting. It's all good. We're going to have a smaller, more homogenous church. And I have a hard time reconciling that with what I see as the teachings of Christ in the scriptures. I have.

Jeff Strong on Why People Are Leaving the Church

John Dehlin [00:43:32] So really quickly, let me also give a shout out to Faith Matters podcast. That's a clip from the Faith Matters podcast. Just that video has 129,000 views on Instagram. But to give You a sense for Jeff Strong, lifelong faithful church member, multi generational, was a marketing exec, I believe at like Johnson and Johnson or Procter and Gamble or both. You know, just a real top notch corporate executive marketing guy, but super faithful in the church and at some point became an assistant to the quorum of the 12, counseling them on, on special projects. And I don't know the details on those special projects but. And then, or I should say during that time his own son, who I understand was, was sort of like you know, a top student, you know, in the Heber Midway area as a high schooler, I think was a Utah track star, admitted to Stanford, then goes on a mission into the MTC and loses his faith while I believe he was in the mtc. And he comes home early and eventually leaves the church. And as I understand it wasn't treated very well by his local warden stake because he didn't have a good excuse for leaving the church. And that led to his son disaffiliating from the church. And I guess a couple more of Jeff Strong's children have disaffiliated. Jeff ends up with his wife becoming mission presidents in Arkansas and they served as mission president and wife in Arkansas for three years. And then when he came back he started the study on why people are leaving and what we should do about it. And I know for a fact is sort of on a texting close friend level with at least a few of the Quorum of the twelve apostles. Now let me pause and say, Megan, do you have any questions about that before I jump in?

Guest 4 [00:45:42] No, that all makes sense because I'm seeing what he's doing now and having that background. Yeah, I love that he has all of that and that instead of going really hard line, he decided to come into this empathetic space. I love that.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] Yeah, so that's kind of his background. And so he spent years doing this study, a deep statistical, analytical dive into why people are leaving the church. And that's, you know, basically torn, which I want to encourage everybody to buy. You could buy it on Amazon. He's got his own website. We'll ask Julia Brooklyn to include a link directly to his website in the comments and in the show notes. But he releases this really mind blowing and eye opening study. So really quickly we'll call out his research team. He lists Jay Barney, Sean Edwards, Jeff Dotson, Mark Dotson, Ryan GottFriedson, bunch of PhDs, James Glenn, Jeff Larsen, Sam Sturgeon, Sam Hardy, and of course Jenna Reiss as part of his research team. And this is the mind blowing stat that is just taking Mormonism by storm. Check this out, everybody. Multiple data sources, including Jeff Strong's own study, the Harvard Cooperative Election Study, the Pew Religious Landscape Study, suggest that between 30 and 50% of formerly active Latter Day Saints have died, disaffiliated, or left the church over the 25 years since 2000, with 40% as a reasonable midpoint. Which means that 40% of formerly active Mormons raised in the church in the United States have stepped away from the church in the past 25 years. Megan, what does that number say to you? 40 to 50%.

Guest 4 [00:47:58] It's. When I was still an active member, I didn't see this happening because I think part of it was that we moved around so much that we never stayed in a ward long enough to see it start withering away. But as someone who's been out of the church now since 2018, this is what all of the anecdotal information was saying. But when I would present it, I would get a lot of pushback from faithful Mormon podcasters who would say, well, you know, those people just moved to a different state. So the ward in California might be shrinking, but it's growing in this other place. And now to see this in print form and have it validated in that way. It is what I've been seeing. There's a subreddit called Mormon the Mormon Shrink or something like that, where they just talk about, we sold two ward buildings this week and we consolidated five states.

John Dehlin [00:48:56] Mormon shrivel. It's called Mormon shrivel.

Guest 4 [00:48:59] Yes, that one.

John Dehlin [00:49:00] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:49:01] And all of that information has now been validated by this study. And it's. It's really wild because I've seen it, but now to really see it in hard numbers.

John Dehlin [00:49:13] Yeah.

Guest 4 [00:49:13] Is. Yeah, it's fascinating. If I was an active member, I would be devastated.

John Dehlin [00:49:19] Yeah. Like, you know, people consider Salt Lake City to be the Mormon Vatican. Right. Vatican City. I live here in Salt Lake county, and they're constantly closing chapels, selling chapels, closing wards, closing stakes, consolidating wards and stakes. And if that's happening in Salt Lake City, if that's happening in California, in Orange county and in traditional strongholds of the Mormon Church, what's happening in Arkansas and in New York and in the south and in Europe, et cetera. But it's worse. Like, it's even worse. So, you know, Jeff reports, and I'll just read a bunch of the findings from his study. 75% of active members of the church are wrong about why people are leaving and why they're leaving. The stereotype or the trope about why people are leaving is because they lost their testimony because they sinned or they stopped praying and they stopped reading the Scriptures, or they lost the Spirit. They didn't want the responsibility or the constraints of membership, or that they were led away by the things of the world. But that's not why people are leaving. According to Jeff Strong. According to Jeff Strong, they feel like they don't belong. They don't believe in the restoration or have concerns about the church's teachings, and they're not experiencing the fruits of the gospel in their church experience, or the great plan of happiness is not providing them happiness. And so Jeff lays out primary reasons for disaffiliation. 42% are leaving because of problematic church history. They say that the church isn't what it claims to be. This is what took me out in terms of my orthodox faith. They're finding out that Joseph Smith married 14 year olds and they were never taught that by the church. They're finding out that he married women over 12, women who already married other men. They're finding out that the book of Abraham is fan fiction, is fraud, was not a translation of the papyri. They're finding out that Joseph Smith was a treasure digger, a legal treasure digger who was actually found guilty of breaking the law for scrying or peeping or looking into a seer stone and, you know, making money off of fooling people that he could find buried treasure. And when they discover all things, all these things, it's causing them to lose their faith. The second most common reason are social issues. People are saying even if the church were true, they couldn't support it. And what they mean by that is anything from these child abuse cover ups that the church is guilty of for decades, if not, you know, centuries. It's LGBT bigotry, which we're going to talk about at the end of this episode. It's the discrimination against women, with women as second class citizens. It's the racism in the church and even the overwhelming support of conservative politics in the church that make liberal or progressive Mormons politically not feel welcome. And then the third most common reason is just again, feeling like the church isn't led by Christ and that it's not making them happy. And then finally they're just like, why shouldn't I drink coffee? Why, why should I, you know, serve in these callings when I feel like they're soul sucking Anyway. Any reactions to you, Megan, for those primary reasons for disaffiliation?

Jeff From Dissent: The Reasons People Are Leaving the Mormon Church

Guest 4 [00:53:18] Well, What I was thinking when you're first talking about it is that not only people. Not only are people leaving, but they're being misunderstood and they're leaving. And I think that was one of Jeff's biggest. Jeff, Big. Jeff's big motivators for writing the book in the first place is that people are leaving. And if we can be more understanding of why they're leaving, because there's a huge disconnect. People who are sitting in the pew every week and listening to the prophets and going to general conference, they have all these misconceptions about what it is that we're doing when we leave. And if people can start understanding that more, maybe there will be more space in the church for those people to stay. Which is what. I don't know exactly what Jeff's motivations are, but I would think after watching his own children get so distanced from the church that he would want there to be more space. And to do that. He's trying to educate people. He's trying to get more understanding. But it's not surprising. When I was an active member, I thought those same things. My brother left the church before I did. And, you know, rumors flew around, well, he must be gay. That's why he left the church. And he just wanted to sin. And the light is gone from his eyes. We've all said those things. And the church set such a specific standard for everything for so many years. You know, The Bruce R. McConkey Church and the Ezra Taft Benson Church, and that same church doesn't work anymore. But the people who are the most devout are still living in that church.

John Dehlin [00:54:45] Absolutely. Let's share a couple more of these stats and then maybe play a clip or two more. So the news is even worse because the disaffiliation appears to be accelerating. So, you know, he shows disaffiliation as sort of a baseline in 2000-2009. He sees it 3xing between the 2010 and the 2014 time period. This is sort of Prop 8, in my view. This is Prop 8. This is, you know, the Mitt Romney campaign. This is the Gospel topics essays. This is the Book of Mormon musical. This is the church fumbling. It's getting, you know, as the Internet sort of comes online, the Mormon Internet and the ex Mormon Internet between 2005 and 2015, the church is kind of caught with its pants down. And so that. That are. Those are some of the reasons why 3x is also, by the way, I don't think it's any accident that in 2014, I received my excommunication letter. Kate Kelly received her excommunication letter. The church bungled the ordained women thing. The church bungled again, Prop 8.

Guest 4 [00:56:04] Those were two things I was going to mention. I thought of in 2006, the MeToo movement came out with Tarana Burke. So that was in that early timeframe, if we're looking at it from the maybe more feminist perspective. And yes. And then in 2013, ordained women. Those were two things where I was like, those are also in that timeline there.

John Dehlin [00:56:22] Yeah. But it's also the rise of the Mormon blogger Knoll and the rise of Mormon podcasts. I do think that those were heavily influential between 2005 and 2015, which is why they excommunicated me and. And Kate Kelly by 2015. So anyway, all that is true. And then it's six X's between 2015 and 2019. And again, that's the aftermath of not just my excommunication and Kate Kelly's, but at the end of 2015, what I think is one of the most catastrophic things ever to happen in the Mormon Church. It's the exclusion policy, the November 2015 exclusion policy. But this is also the CES letters coming out by 2015. The gospel topics, I says, are coming out by 2015. And then of course, by 2019, the church is having to roll back its gospel topics essays, which was the right thing. I'm sorry, Roll back its November exclusion policy, which on the one hand was the right thing to do. But on the other hand, it adds insult to injury because all those LGBT suicides, all those people that left the church are like, wait a minute, President Nelson or Prophet Nelson said that it was revelation that brought on the November 2015 policy. And now you're gonna just say, never mind, and undo it and retract it.

Guest 3 [00:57:50] Right?

Guest 4 [00:57:50] It was the mind and will of the Lord. Those were his words.

John Dehlin [00:57:54] Yeah. So all of that leads to a 6xing by the end of 2019. But what's even more mind blowing is that at 11x's by 2020 to 2023. And I think certainly there's a network effect. In other words, the more people that leave, the more people that leave. So the more gay and lesbian and queer members there are, they leave. And then the more their family members leave, the more people that are in faith crisis, the more other family members learn about faith crises, start studying the issues, and they start leaving. So there is a network effect happening where the more people leave, the more people leave, the more people find out about the problems. But I also think another huge blow to the church was Covid because as several, as. As. As large numbers of members stop attending church and then realizing that they. Their lives are actually happier and they actually find more joy and better family experiences by not attending. I do think Covid was devastating to the Mormon church. And then also I just say millennials and gen zers, younger people are just coming home from their missions and leaving in droves. I think I've seen that statistic that 40% of returned missionaries in the United States are leaving the church within six months of coming home from their mission. What's your reaction to this acceleration of growth slide?

Mormon Stories: Covid and the Growth Slide

Guest 4 [00:59:32] Yeah, I think you're right. I think when Covid happened, there were anyone who was maybe on the fence. That was their ticket out. So it just made it easy. Nobody's looking for me. I'm not getting a call from my visiting teacher or my ministering sister saying, I didn't see you at church, because nobody's at church.

Guest 3 [00:59:51] So.

Guest 4 [00:59:51] And then everyone had a lot of free time, so everybody went online even more than they were before. And it did accelerate that. Yeah, absolutely. Well, and people used to be sequestered in the church, right? In the 70s and 80s, you sat in your living room with your kids and you read your Book of Mormon. And now if you have an issue, you put it online and everybody sees it. You don't have to walk to your neighbor's house or, you know, what Sandra Tanner was doing back in the day, printing pamphlets and publishing books. You put it all online.

John Dehlin [01:00:20] Yeah. Let me just take a second to welcome all of the people on our livestream. Our livestream is pretty big. We've got almost 700 people on our live stream. Now, if y' all could do us a favor, please like and subscribe to this channel Mormon Stories podcast. That would really help with the algorithm. That would really help our growth. Also, while you're at it, check out generally unquotable on YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. Subscribe and like her channel as well. She does. Megan does great work. She's reporting on daily news. And we want to see her grow, just like we want to grow. I want to also remind people that the Mormon Church is suing Mormon Stories Podcast. And me personally, I believe, because they want to silence and smear and defame us. And so if you want to, you know, we've been able to raise some money, not nearly enough to defend ourselves if anybody wants to support that lawsuit in our defense against the church trying to silence and smear us. You can do so@mormonstories.org legal I also should say I'm super excited to announce that Holy Kool Aid. Have you ever heard of the Holy Kool Aid YouTube channel? Yeah, it's only Holy Kool Aid YouTube channel. Should be releasing an interview today of me that is one of the funniest, most well done videos on Mormonism I've ever seen. So everybody needs to check that out. He interviews me about the lawsuit. He's got almost 500,000 YouTube subscribers. So it was a real honor to appear on that show.

Guest 4 [01:02:03] That's huge. John. Why don't we put a slide about that?

John Dehlin [01:02:06] Yeah, well maybe we'll talk about it. Maybe we'll show some some highlights next week if we do this next week.

Guest 4 [01:02:11] But awesome.

John Dehlin [01:02:11] Yeah, I'm excited about that. Anyway, please like and subscribe. And thanks to everyone for supporting us.

Less than Half of Mormons Are True Believers in the Church

John Dehlin [01:02:47] If this weren't enough amazing information from Jeff Strong, it gets even more interesting. So this is a slide of what current LDS belief looks like. So as I understand it, these are people who are attending church still and it's showing a breakdown of how they describe their beliefs. And it shows that only about 25% of. If I'm reading this slide right, 25% of those who are, let's see, previously identifying as being completely your most active. So, okay, I'm going to correct myself there. Of those who at one point were either completely or Most active, only 25% now identify as literal true believers. And then another 13% identify as active. They believe in most things and they're mostly consent content. Another 18 say they no longer believe the church is what it claims to be. So there's a huge percentage of people who are currently active Mormons who no longer believe that the church is what it claims to be, but they're still attending. Sometimes we call them pimos, physically in, mentally out. And basically what this shows is if you just take that block of 56%, it looks like 31%. So over half, if I'm reading this right, over half of those currently attending The Mormon Church in the US are no longer literal believers in all things. Only a third ish of those are true literal believers. And, and, and over almost 2/3 are either semi believers or non literal believers in the church's truth claims. So that's fascinating. And the way that I understand that is just the costs of disaffection are so high. You could lose your job, you could lose your income, you could get divorced, your family could disown you, you could lose status. Or you are in this trap of believing. You can't raise happy, healthy kids outside of the church. But regardless of you don't feel like you can fall inactive or lesser active or you don't think that it would benefit you to do so. But whatever that is, it's becoming a minority in the inactive faithful Mormon pews in the United States to identify as a true believing literal Mormon. Is that surprising to you, Megan, or is that what you understand generally as well?

Guest 4 [01:05:47] If I look at when I was active, that blows my mind because when I was sitting in the pews I thought everybody pretty much believed the same way I did. And maybe more of them did at that point. I mean, I've been out since 2018. It doesn't feel like that long ago. But yes, this is very surprising to me because I never would have been sitting there thinking that the person in the pew in front of me maybe didn't believe. I wouldn't. That would not have crossed my mind. And I, I'm wondering if this means there's more space in the church for people who don't believe. But I, I don't really see that because I think that they're not talking about it openly. If you go into Sunday school and you voice some of those non beliefs, I, I still don't think you'd be looked at favorably. So they're there, but are they vocal? Do people know or did they only say it in this survey because they felt safe to say, yeah, I attend church, but I don't believe?

John Dehlin [01:06:43] Yeah. And that's another thing that I really love about what Jeff Strong is advocating for. Let's play another clip of Jeff Strong's. Again with the Shout out to the Faith Matters podcast. We're going to be sharing a clip good for their show.

Guest 2 [01:06:57] There has to be more than one way to be a Latter Day Saint, because if there isn't, we're going to lose a lot of people over this issue. If you feel overwhelming pressure to conform to something that you're not, then you have a choice. You can pretend that's called pretense. Or you can leave. Maybe there's a third alternative. We could actually respect, value, embrace how people are different, including the way they come to believe and live their beliefs without sacrificing the unity that we have in the church community. But unity around what? Unity around a love for God, being disciples of Jesus Christ, living the gospel of Jesus Christ with enthusiasm and deep commitment and all of those things. Or unity around dress and grooming standards? Now, look at me. I'm that guy. I wear my shirt tie to church. I cut my hair short. I can't grow a beard. So I get that. But when we start to mandate those as conditions of acceptability, we have a problem. There has to be more than one way to be a Latter Day.

John Dehlin [01:08:02] Okay, so, Megan, like, I just can't. First of all, I just want to give a shout out again. Jeff Strong, buy this book. Don't just buy Torn for yourself. Buy it for your believing family and friends. Buy it for your bishop, buy it for your stake president, buy it for your young men's leader, your young women's leader. Buy it for the members of your Stake High Council, your Relief Society president, your young women's leader, and share with them Jeff's interview on Faith Matters, because don't you want to scream a hallelujah to Jeff Strong for preaching this idea that there has to be more than one way to be a Mormon and that if we're going to be an active Latter Day Saint, we should be gathering number one. We should be focusing less on the sifting, less on separating the wheat from the tares, less on. Less on celebrating those who leave as chafe, and that we should be more looking to gather, to be more inclusive and to rally more around a belief in God, a shared belief in God, a shared belief in Jesus, in the atonement, and less around grooming standards and behavioral guidelines. What do you think? How do you feel about the gospel that Jeff Strong is teaching?

Guest 4 [01:09:24] I love it. I love it. He is taking all of the good things that I actually appreciated and enjoyed when I was at church. The shared ritual, the connection, and leaving out all the stuff that doesn't matter and really inviting people in, in this very loving. One of my main values is connection. And if that's what the church focused on, I would be a lot more likely to show up. But in my experience, that didn't happen because people were so busy trying to do this huge list of things that the brethren are still getting up over the pulpit in general conference and saying that they didn't have time to form meaningful relationships with people. And Jeff, I mean, look at him. He does look so Mormon. Like he said, no beard, clean cut.

John Dehlin [01:10:18] Yeah, man.

Guest 4 [01:10:19] He has a big heart. And that's the most important thing. That's the most important thing. If paying a certain amount of tithing or wearing a white shirt is getting in the way of love, that's a problem. And I think it's a problem because it's coming from the very top right now. But this grassroots movement we know, I mean, you know, John, you push and the church does eventually pay attention because they have to, but they're. They're not there yet. But someone like him, in his position where he has his connections, I love that he is able to do this. And actually, I've seen him on a lot of very faithful podcasts, and I'm so glad. I, like, I give him all the praise because he is in that middle ground, and he just is exuding this love and empathy and connection. And we as people, our connection is bigger than what the church is trying to give us.

John Dehlin [01:11:21] Yeah. My big two questions around Torn. The first is, is Jeff going to get in trouble? In other words, whenever somebody. It's kind of like the. The king who has no clothes. Whenever I've seen. I mean, it's hard to call Jeff a whistleblower because he's buddies with a few apostles and he's a former mission president and has been a special assistant counselor consultant to the 12 of the first Presidency. So it's hard to call him a whistleblower. But on the other hand, he's speaking truth to power. Like, what he's saying is that the church is hemorrhaging. That's how I'm interpreting what he's saying. And that the church active membership is in free fall. And the problem is that's different than the spin that Apostle Quentin Cook and other church leaders are giving. Have you heard what Quentin Cook, the head of the missionary department for the church, is telling the world about the church's missionary program?

Quentin Cook on the Church's Mission Program

Guest 4 [01:12:28] Oh, yeah. Yeah. Record. Using the term record. Record converts, record baptisms, record missionaries, record number of missions. Everything is roses and rainbows when he opens his mouth.

John Dehlin [01:12:40] So is he just lying? Is Quentin Cook just lying to the world? And I know the answer to that. He's not.

Guest 4 [01:12:47] Right.

John Dehlin [01:12:48] Because what they're doing is this is my belief, and I want to do an episode about this is what the church is doing. I believe with their missionary program, number one, is they reduced again the age of missionary service now Women are able to serve at age 18. I believe that's a move towards desperation to just try and number one, get more missionaries serving earlier for that temporary bump of an increase in missionaries also, don't you think Megan, they're trying to lock in, you know, young, young people, in this case young women before they have a chance to leave the church or you know, make choices that would keep them from serving missions or even leaving the church.

Guest 4 [01:13:33] Well, yeah, Dallin Oaks came out and said you need to look for your spouse on your mission. So women don't wait anymore. Go at 18. And when you're on your mission, if you see someone you like, well, I mean, obviously meant a boy. If you see a guy you like, you go for it. And so then they've gone on a mission which pushes them even further into the rhetoric. Then they get married and they're supposed to have kids right away they're really concerned about the birth rate. And once you're in the church, married to a returned missionary and you have a child, makes it a lot harder to leave.

John Dehlin [01:14:05] Yeah, so some of that is going on. But, but I think also the bigger thing going on, anybody who was a missionary in the 80s and 90s knows that the crazy baptismal numbers that happened in the 80s or 90s or in the British Isles in the early 60s, the baseball baptisms in the early 60s or the Latin America, Philippines baptisms of the 80s and 90s was, you know, was basically largely corrupt. It's very easy to go to Latin America, the Philippines or Africa, or to immigrant populations in Western Europe or the United States and these white hot or cute or handsome, relatively wealthy, clean looking blue eyed Mormon missionaries going into impoverished areas and projecting wealth, projecting prosperity and convincing immigrants or poor people or children, 8, 9, 10 year olds to get baptized in droves. We all know that the church can play with the numbers by lowering the standards of who they baptize. And it happened in the 80s and the 90s. And what happened? Jeffrey R. Holland was called to Chile for three years to close over 30 stakes in Chile alone because of low quality fraudulent baptisms in Chile and in Latin America that were really just a numbers game to inflate the church's growth statistics. Elder Oaks, of all people, President Oaks was called to the Philippines for multiple years to clean up the shoddy fraudulent baptismal practices that were going on in the Philippines. And I would be willing to bet $10,000 of my own personal money if I had it, that what we're going to see is, is that in Africa in the United States, in the Philippines and in Latin America. What Quentin Cook did is he's starting to ramp up these low quality fraudulent baptisms to inflate the numbers so that we could then, from a PR perspective and from a statistics perspective, brag to the world that, that the missionary program has never been more successful. When what we're going to see from these baptisms, domestic and overseas, is extremely high attrition rates and extremely low retention rates in the, in the number of 10%. And it's, it's all done to inflate the numbers. And they're going to pay for it in 5, 10, 15, 20 years when we see that the Church is going to continue to decline in everywhere but Africa. In everywhere but Africa, the church is going to go flat or decline. And with the biggest, most ironic rub of all is guess in what mission Quentin Cook served?

Guest 4 [01:17:27] No, in Africa.

John Dehlin [01:17:28] He served in the baseball baptism British Isles in the early 60s. He himself was a missionary during the baseball baptism fraud scandal of the early 1960s, along with Jeffrey R. Holland. He knows better and yet he's now leading, in my opinion, baseball baptism like missionary fraud worldwide to inflate the numbers.

Guest 4 [01:17:55] Yeah. Well, you had Dr. Gatia from Kenya on your show last year, and he said when a white missionary comes to Africa and goes into an impoverished area, they'll do whatever they have to do to have a relationship with that person because they look at them and they see wealth and they see maybe some upward mobility. So maybe it's not baseball they're offering now, but it's BYU pathway.

John Dehlin [01:18:22] Yeah. And to be honest, there's a degree to which I, as Joseph got to you, Dr. Gatia said, there's a degree to which some African people, some Latin American people, some Filipinos, some immigrants here in the US and in Europe, there's a degree to which some are going to benefit from BYU pathways and from LDS Church affiliation. That's great. I wish them well. The problem isn't that per se, it's in what's very obviously going on, which is a statistical numbers game where the Church is using these inflated baptisms as a way to signal or to create the impression of overall growth. When we know that in the United States over the past 12 months, for the first time ever, it's been reported that the Mormon Church shrank in the United States over the past 12 months, and it's going to likely continue shrinking. And so from, from people who are insiders, who I've spoken with, they believe that, that Quentin Cook is being deceptive and trying to project Mormon Church growth, when really what they're doing is they're inflating statistics in Latin America and in other developing countries and they're trying to hide and mask the decline of the Mormon Church, not just in the United States, but in Utah and in, and in the surrounding areas. Not overall in Utah, but in many parts of Utah as well.

Guest 4 [01:20:04] Yes. And I see that because every time they say they're going to build a temple somewhere, I'll go to the church stats and I will take the members that they claim and divide it by the number of congregations, half of which are usually branches. And the numbers say that there are branches all over the world that need to have anywhere between 500 and 1,000 people showing up every week for those numbers to be accurate. That's what you say. They went down in Chile and closed a bunch of things. But if you look at the numbers in South America, there is no way that those congregations have that many people showing up every week. The numbers do not make sense.

John Dehlin [01:20:42] No. In Latin America, my understanding is the same like 10% activity rates and huge percentages of those countries, Brazil and Chile and Argentina, when they've done census, a fraction of those that the Church claims as members self identify as members today. Yeah. Let's go ahead and show a couple more slides from Jeff Strong's study. This one is particularly shocking. What it shows is that since 2009, the percentage of U.S. citizens who claim membership in the church, the LDS Church, has declined more than any other denomination or group. And so it's showing large religions, small religions and non religious, such as the rise of the nuns, the seculars, the atheists and agnostics, they are all experiencing some, some form of overall decline. But, but look at that. The, the yellow line. The LDS is experiencing the most severe decline. And again, this goes in the face of apologetics I've heard many Mormon apologists claim, which is that the, they're claiming that in the US the Church is losing people. They're basically saying, yeah, all religions are in decline, but the Mormon Church is losing people at a slower rate than other religious traditions. And what this slide tells me is that those people are flat out deceiving or lying people. Maybe they don't know any better, but hopefully this puts them on notice. Any Mormon church leader or apologist that's claiming that the Mormon Church is losing people at a lesser rate than other religious traditions, I think they're just wrong.

Guest 4 [01:22:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:22:39] And. Or lying or deceiving people. Yeah. Because the numbers don't Numbers don't show that. Yeah, so this shows, you know, a percent change from 2009 to 2025. And what it shows is, is that in the United States, you know, Hindus are growing, Muslims are growing. Orthodox Christians are growing, Buddhists are growing, atheists are growing, the nuns are growing, Agnostics are growing. Interestingly, Jews are growing. Other. Some other, you know, nondescript general religions are growing. Pentecostals are growing. So all those. All those churches are growing as a percentage of overall, you know, affiliation in the United States. Who's shrinking? The Catholics are shrinking. Non denominational Christians are shrinking. Baptists are. And this is in. This is in order of increased shrinkage. So the Catholics are shrinking the least. But non denominational Christians are shrinking more. Baptists are shrinking even more. Presbyterians are shrieking even more. Other Protestants even more. Methodists even more than them. Lutherans even more than them. Episcopalians even more than them. And who, Megan, who is shrinking the most of all religious or non religious groups in the United States since 2009? Who?

Mormons Are Shrinking More Than Other Christians

Guest 4 [01:24:12] That giant yellow bar at the bottom next to it says Latter Day Saint.

John Dehlin [01:24:17] Why do you think Mormons are shrinking more than evangelical Christians, more than Protestants? You know, why is the church taking on the chin so hard?

Guest 4 [01:24:30] I have been thinking about this, but Catholic was also in there, but the LDS church is more. And there were so many reasons, but one of them that I hadn't really thought of before was that the church is so. The Mormon church is so young. Right. So a lot of other religions have been around for a long time, and they've had a long time to deal with their messy histories. I feel like we've just started doing that because we're so young. We're just a little baby church. And so we are in the midst of all of this turmoil as Mormons, culturally and as a church where a lot of other religions have dealt with that and eased up. You know, in the Jewish community, you can have a range of belief and have a Jewish community to be part of. And in Mormonism, we haven't gotten to that point yet. And so I know there are a lot of reasons, but that was one that I hadn't considered maybe until, you know, just this week when I was looking at these slides.

John Dehlin [01:25:19] Yeah, yeah, it's really shocking. And, you know, the king doesn't like to be told he has no clothes. And so again, I'm a little bit concerned for Jeff's. I don't think Jeff is concerned about his status in the church. And I think there's A lot of reason to believe that he's kind of untouchable, but in my experience. Oh, go ahead.

Guest 4 [01:25:41] Uchtdorf got demoted.

John Dehlin [01:25:43] That's right.

Guest 4 [01:25:44] I mean, Jeff's not Uchtdorf.

John Dehlin [01:25:48] Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying is, in my experience, when you tell the king they have no clothes, when, when you tell the king that he has no clothes, you get punished. You either get silenced or marginalized or threatened or alienated or shut out. And so I just, I'm hoping that that doesn't happen to Jeff.

Guest 4 [01:26:08] Yeah, same, same. Because he's doing a very good work.

John Dehlin [01:26:12] But history shows that he's gonna suffer some consequences for this really quickly. We've covered this in Mormon stories before. Recent data showing that even though historically women tend to be more religious than men, Jeff is also reporting that data show a sharper decline in retention among younger Latter Day Saint women than men. In other words, Latter Day Saint Women in 2026 are more likely to disaffiliate than are men. Can you explain that? Megan, you're a Latter Day Saint or a former Latter Day Saint woman. Why do you think these younger women are less willing to stay in the church than younger men?

Guest 4 [01:26:57] Well, and this is something I mentioned before, in 2006 was the MeToo movement, in 2013 was ordained women, women, and you know, young women, girls, females are coming to this point where they are finally ready to say something about this doesn't feel right. It's taken all of these years of progress to get to the point where women are finding their voice. And so they're not willing to sit back and watch a 12 year old pass the sacrament when they don't have that ability because they can't have the priesthood. They're not, you know, they. Now they can witness baptisms along with 8 year olds. It just, the inequality is so blatant now, you can't unsee it anymore. And women, they don't want anything to do with it anymore. They don't want to be second class. They don't want to be second class anymore.

John Dehlin [01:27:47] Yeah. And this number has to be disturbing to the church that at age 18, retention is 60% for men, 40% for women. How, how are all these young Mormon faithful young Mormon men, I shouldn't say so many because a ton of them are leaving the church too. But if a, if, if they're 20 percentage point difference between faithful young Mormon men staying in the church and young women staying in the church or leaving, who are all these young Mormon faithful men? Returned missionaries going to Marry if all these women are leaving the church in droves.

Guest 4 [01:28:30] Yeah, that when I went to Rick's and byui, that was opposite, right. If you got a guy, you were the lucky one because there were twice as many females as males. And now with that change. Yeah, the guys are starting to understand what that feels like. I don't want to say maybe it's their turn, but maybe it's their turn. But also the guys, the men at the top, right, they have to be struggling with this because women have provided invisible labor in the church since its inception. I mean, at first they had more power, but the church has been built on the power of men and the work of women. And now the women are saying, I want it to be even or I'm not going to be here anymore. And the men are like, but we were comfortable. So yeah, it's a bit of a reckoning and I think that it was coming and if they don't deal with it, this is going to continue.

Mormon Women Speak Out About Polygyny

John Dehlin [01:29:40] Yeah, absolutely, it's going to continue. All right. Yeah. It is just mind blowing to me that. But I mean, just in society in general, like, oh, this idea of Rosa Parks and sit at the back of the bus, well, that's just outrageous. Or separate drinking fountains. How in the world could a high school have ever had a drinking. Drinking fountains for blacks and drinking fountains for whites. That's outrageous. And yet in 2026, some religions like Catholicism and Mormonism still have a majority of their members. The women, as second class citizens unable to wield power, make the most influential decisions. The fact that in 2026 an entire gender is consigned to second class citizen status, it really just blows the mind. It's a truly mind blowing reality. And I just, I don't know what humans are thinking sometimes.

Guest 4 [01:30:45] Yeah, I don't know. And there in Mormonism we have this wonderful doctrine, right, that there is a literal heavenly Father and he has a wife or wives. As Oaks slipped up in a little meeting recently and said, but we can't even acknowledge the Heavenly Mother. The men in the church get to identify with someone who they can see themselves in. And the women, it's too sacred to talk about. What it really is is leaving half of your members without the same type of role model. And society is catching on, right? We see commercials nowadays with people of people of color and women and people of every size. And the church as always is lagging so far behind. The very least they could do is let women have a role model in a heavenly mother and they won't do that.

John Dehlin [01:31:42] Yeah, and you bring up a really good point, Megan, because I think that has to do with polygamy. I think the church realizes that Joseph Smith believed in polygamy. All the prophets until today still believe in polygamy. Dallin H. Oaks is a celestial polygamist. Russell M. Nelson is a celestial Polygamist. D&C132 remains canonized scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants. The Mormon Church is a polygamist church, full stop, which means that Heavenly Father has multiple wives in heaven. So there's multiple heavenly mothers. And that is why we have to continue as a church de emphasizing heavenly mother, because it really is heavenly mothers, and that's embarrassing. But then the other thing is, I think I bet a huge chunk of these young women who are leaving the church are. Are leaving the church, not just because of the fact that they're prohibited from holding the priesthood and leading in the church. I think they're also learning about polygamy from CES, letter from podcasts, from YouTube, from TikTok, from Instagram, and they're saying, this church is a polygamous church, and I want nothing to do with the polygamous church. Don't you think that makes sense?

Guest 4 [01:32:54] Absolutely, yes. Because it wasn't something I even considered as a kid. It was just a given, right? Oh, there was polygamy way back then.

John Dehlin [01:33:03] Yeah.

Guest 4 [01:33:04] And it was never discussed. I had no context for what it would actually mean in my life. As I got older, there were jokes. Oh, you know, when I got married, my husband would say, system signs. And it was supposed to be funny, like, oh, you know, she'll be my second wife. But it wasn't something we actually wrestled with. It wasn't something that we pictured being part of our own lives. And now that's changed. It's changed. People can listen to the Year of Polygamy podcast and they can, you know, read through the books, Carolyn Pearson's book that has been written, and actually conceptualize what that would look like and think, yeah, no way, I'm not doing that.

John Dehlin [01:33:43] I also have to refer people to the Joseph Smith podcast I did with John Turner, because John Turner goes into depth. He's a never Mormon historian. He goes into depth on Joseph Smith's polygamy. And it's shocking. Also, the LDS discussion series that we did on Mormon stories, we do multiple episode deep dives into polygamy. And, you know, there's just so much to learn there and so much of it that's. That's troubling.

Leaving the Church with a Negative Impact

John Dehlin [01:34:41] NA A couple other slides really quick. This is a slide that's attempting to show how conversion how the church was declining in its convert baptisms, reaching a historic low. By the way, this chart's a bit deceptive because the Y axis doesn't start at zero. So these differences are exaggerated, which isn't necessarily a big problem, but it is something to always note is that the differences or the trend is a little bit exaggerated because the Y scale is cut off here and doesn't go all the way to zero. But what this shows is the church's convert baptism rate was in decline, reaching a nadir in Covid, and then all of a sudden it spiked up. And again, we've already addressed this. I believe that this is two things. This is low quality fraudulent immigrant or third world or developing world baptisms that are going to almost immediately fall inactive with super low retention rates. And then also the shell game that the church is engaging in, which is lowering and lowering and lowering the mission age to try and have these temporary spikes of additional missionaries in the field that ultimately is going to catch up with the church. But also, this chart shows that despite recent improvement, converts per missionary remain half of what they once were. And so even in spite of these fraudulent, you know, low quality baptisms and an increase in total number of missionaries, where our rate of baptisms per missionary is still in decline. So it's showing that that's kind of a shell game. And then this again is reinforcing a point we've already made, which is that now this is just stunning, Megan 56% of Latter Day Saint youth ages 18 to 29 who were raised in the church, 56% remain active. So basically half of all those youth who are between 18 and 30 who are raised in the church have already left the church. And that doesn't even talk about how they're going to leave. How many of those 50% are on track to leave the church in their 30s and 40s and 50s when life starts unraveling. And again, I love this slide because it talks about what resources were helpful versus not helpful for people who did lose their faith and leave the church. And it shows, you know, that official Latter Day Saint sources were overwhelmingly either neutral or not helpful. And that what was helpful, what was most helpful were non official LDS sources, non LDS religious sources, and even social media or ex Mormon sources of information were overwhelmingly, by factors of 2, 3, 4, 5, were more useful to people who were questioning or leaving the church. So the church is just not the gospel topics, essays, the Saints book, all the apologists, Fair Farms, you know, Jasmine Rapely, Ward Radio, Jacob Hansen. None of those resources are being found to be useful for people really questioning. And then, you know, the question asks, will these people ever return? Overwhelmingly, people who have left the church knows they're never coming back. But for those who say that they could come back, what they're asking for is a less rigid and legalistic church culture, more love and compassion. And by the way, is that what Ward Radio is preaching? Is that what Jacob Hansen is preaching? Is that what Mattie Packer is preaching? So many of these prominent or even quick, you know, with, with Greg Matson, it's so bizarre that for those who are even showing a potential willingness to return, what they're asking for is a less rigid, less legalistic culture, more love and more compassion. And then you have youtubers like Greg Matson and quick mocking Teddy Bear Jesus. You've got Maddie Packer who we're going to show in a minute, mocking Charlie Bird or condemning Charlie Bird as a same sex married Latter Day Saint couple, he and his partner who want to have a child and stay faithful in the church. And you know, you know, you know, Mormon influencers becoming more and more legalistic. What are your thoughts on that tension between Jeff Strong calling for a less legalistic, less strict, more loving, more accepting culture and how the Mormon Church seems to be funding and supporting influencers that are calling for the exact opposite?

Guest 3 [01:40:13] Right.

Guest 4 [01:40:14] Well, you've talked about this before, where they're stuck in this place where if they become more compassionate, people like Greg Matson don't like it. He had this whole podcast he did about a shadow faith in the lds, which what he was referencing is active, faithful LDS people who honestly believe that someday there will be same sex marriage in the temple. And he was calling this like an uprising, like, you know, a Trojan horse almost, that it's sneaking up on us. And so if you have more people like Jeff Strong, which I think would be amazing, then the people who are the most devout, the ones who have followed all the rules, the me from 10 years ago, are like, well, why am I working so hard if I could just sit back and love everyone and I didn't have to do all of these things. But that's really what the church needs. But if the church does that, every time they lean a little bit less rigid and a little bit less conservative, they get kickback from all of the people who have follow the doctrine to a T. All of the ones who still remember what Kimball and Benson and Hinckley said. And all of those people get in an uproar when things get loosened even just a little bit. So do they want to lose those that really faithful contingent to please the other side? That's the struggle that they're stuck in. And I wouldn't want to make those choices. I would just want to be Jeff Strong going around saying, can we just, can we just be more loving?

John Dehlin [01:41:55] Yeah. I'll just end this segment with at least one or two other really interesting slides. The one slide that I do want to show is that most respondents believe that literal belief is more valued than character in the church. In other words, the question is, is, is, is high character so being a moral, ethical person more valued than. Than, you know, being being a literal believer? And my understanding is, is that, you know, 53% of of faithful or attending Latter Day Saints believe that literal belief is more important than being someone of high character. And ironically, that seems relevant to that first story that we covered today on Mormon Stories Podcast. We've got bishops and stake presidents and deans of BYU law school saying, hey, you know, don't worry about the fact that this child abuser or child porn connoisseur, you know, broke the law and, you know, is into child porn. He attends church, he attends his meetings, he serves in his calling, he pays his tithing. You know, that just shows how much Mormons value faithfulness over anything else and even over character. Am I misunderstanding that slide, Megan?

More Mormons Value True Belief Than High-Character in the Church

Guest 4 [01:43:43] No, I don't think so. Because, I mean, we've seen this in the excommunications. Yours, Bill, Real Nemo. When Landon, one of the most recent ones. When people are excommunicated, it's not because their character has. They've had a slip in their character from what we've seen in these high profile, ex Mormon ex communications. It's. They're leaving because they're following their integrity out of the Church and they're no longer willing to say, I, I don't. You know, I think the brethren are doing everything right. They, they want to tell the truth. So it's this high level of character that's pulling people out of the church. And the Church doesn't value that because want. They. What they want is correlation. They want obedience. So I think that graph is showing that again in a number situation where that's the feeling we've been having and now we can see it in the numbers.

John Dehlin [01:44:45] Okay, I'm getting real time feedback from Jeff, so I'll just give a general disclaimer that it's likely that I have misstated or that there's nuance to some of these findings that I'm sharing. I wanted to have Jeff on immediately. He doesn't feel ready to come on Mormon Stories yet, so that's why I'm having to interpret these data instead of him. I'm looking forward to him, you know. And Jeff, if you want to change and decide to come on earlier, I'd love to have you on sooner. To clarify my misstatements. He's also urging me to say that this slide that we discussed of 3x and then 6x and then XX 11x disaffiliation, he's saying that the data has to be very cautiously interpreted because there could be a response by us that overstates the numbers. So I'll just also clarify what Jeff is saying is that don't take these numbers as gospel. They're suggesting possible findings or possible trends that may be overstated that could have other explanations. And again, we will just warmly welcome Jeff to come on Mormon Stories to clarify or correct anything that we've said wrong because we really, really, really want to do that. Anyway, I'm Jeff may have a couple other corrections before the end of this episode, but I think we've covered enough of of of torn for today. Please buy the book. Buy it for bishops. Buy it for Relief Society presidents. Buy it for general authorities, area authorities. Buy it for your faithful parents, your faithful siblings, your ward members. Buy it for everyone. Tell them that a return mission president, you know, special projects leader for at least one, if not multiple members of the Quorum of the twelve has published this book. Share with him this or other episodes. Share with him the Faith Matters episode. Share with him the ward Radio episode. Share with him any of the faithful episodes. We don't care. The more Jeff Strong, the better. More cowbell. More Jeff Strong. More Torn. Buy it for everyone. Share it with everyone let's make this book an international Mormon bestseller. Agreed, Megan?

Buy Jeff Strong's book

Guest 4 [01:47:20] Absolutely.

Young Men's Presidency and Bishops

John Dehlin [01:47:21] All right. All right, so we've got a couple kind of stories to close on. Maybe we can cover them relatively quickly. What's the first one, Megan?

Guest 4 [01:47:30] Yeah, bishops and youth. One on one ministering supports better relationships. So the general young men presidency came out with interesting because there's a general young men's presidency, but they don't have young men's presidencies and wards anymore.

John Dehlin [01:47:43] Right.

Guest 4 [01:47:44] So the upper guys, they get to have that extra help. But if you're a bishop, sorry. So anyway, the young, the general young men's presidency came out with a video because bishops are struggling. They young young men presidencies were done away with and all of that responsibility was put on the bishop to foster these relationships with the youth and basically run the entire young men's program with him and his counselors. Mostly him, though, they really were focusing on the bishop. And so what bishop started doing was getting around that by calling advisors to be in the young men's. So they technically didn't have a young men's president, but they knew they couldn't do it all, so they put in these advisors and a lot of complaints went up to the church. And so you can go to that next slide, John. And then I think I put one of the complaints there that went up because it wasn't just. This wasn't just affecting the men. This is from a young women president. She said, I'm just curious if anyone else feels the struggle of not having a young men's presidency. The bishopric is just so busy and have good intentions, but balls constantly get dropped when it comes to giving time to the young women, communication, activity planning, et cetera. We have had young men advisers, but they're literally warm bodies. How is this working for your wards? I feel like this was such a misstep by the church to do away with the young men presidency. So when the young men presidencies went away, it was a fiasco. And now the general young men presidency has heard all of these complaints and they're coming out trying to fix the problem. And so what they did was said, you can call advisors, which is what the church has already been doing kind of on the side. And I don't think it's going to fix the problem.

John Dehlin [01:49:28] Can I just say one thing that I'm starting to notice? Whether it's the Mormon Church suing me for usage of the word Mormon in my title, you know, or whether it's, you know, this sort of, apparently, you Know, backstepping a little bit or showing concern with Nelson president, you know, the late President Nelson's decision to get rid of the ward young men's presidents and have the bishops take that on. Do you ever get the sense that Oaks, President Oaks and his administration are kind of uncomfortable with some of the changes that President Nelson made and that we're going to see the church slowly walk back some of those changes that Nelson made in a way that tries to not undermine prophetic authority. To not claim that Nelson got things wrong, to not admit that Nelson probably made some pretty big mistakes, you know, but to, but to still try to correct the damage that. That maybe Nelson did a little bit.

Guest 4 [01:50:42] Yeah, I don't think it's going to be the Nelson Hinckley war where it's so open and we're seeing it happening. But I do see a lot of that. Even when Oaks at the very first conference, Russell Nelson had only been gone just a very short amount of time. And Oaks says we're not going to be announcing temples in conference anymore. And he tries to make it kind of light hearted. But I do think that he thought that was a pretty big mistake to get up in every conference and announce 15 temples or 20 temples. And he'd seen it, he'd seen it play out in the news with what's going on in Fairview and all those different things. And he absolutely has his own ideas about how things should be run. And he's being a little bit gentler about it maybe than Nelson was when it came to Hinckley and the word Mormon. But yeah, I think he's trying to rein it in a little bit.

John Dehlin [01:51:33] Yeah, we'll call it the Great Undoing. I mean, the weird thing is, is that it was Oaks and Nelson, even though it happened under. Under Thomas S. Monson, the November 2015 policy and its reversal, they both happened under Nelson and Oaks. And so these guys have to be careful because they're messing with the church's, you know, they're messing with the church's history, they're messing with the church's traditions, they're messing with the church's longstanding policies. And they're getting a lot wrong and they're causing a lot of damage. You could argue that oaks and Nelson's November 2015 policy, along with its reversal is one, are two of the most damaging things that have ever happened in the church in the past hundred years in terms of driving people away. And it's so weird that apologists like to blame me or you or Alyssa Grenfell or Radio Free Mormon or Julie Hanks or whoever for causing people to leave the church. I can guarantee Russell and Nelson and Downey jokes have caused more people to leave the church than me or you or Elissa Grenfell. Just with the November 2015 policy and its reversal alone. And that's, that's the irony here.

Guest 4 [01:52:55] Yes. Because people don't come to us first. They come to us when the policy comes out and they're struggling.

John Dehlin [01:53:02] Yeah.

Guest 4 [01:53:02] I mean, that's what I've seen. When people come to my channel and they're still all in. They make insensitive comments. They don't stay there and get enticed out. They come to me when they're willing and more open to listen to something that's not church correlated. And it's because the church has done something that has caused them enough cognitive dissonance that they're willing to listen. They don't. I'm not the first place they come.

John Dehlin [01:53:25] Yeah. No, absolutely not. They, they come to us after, but by like 90% or more, they come to us after they've already lost their faith. Yes, that's been my, that's been my experience. Okay, so we've got a couple, a couple stories left. The next one is another example of fraud happening in Utah and across the country. Tell us about this story.

Utah Jury Convicts Business Owners of Fraud

Guest 4 [01:53:50] Yeah, Utah is the capital of affinity fraud. So this one says Utah jury convicts business owners of fraud after victims were scammed more than $30 million. They set up a, well, they had a couple of these Noah's event centers and they were promising people that they were going to be more and that they were very successful, but they were only getting more money into the company by getting more investors. The event centers weren't actually successful. So if you go to the next slide, it will show you here. Here they are. Christopher J. Ashby, 52, current LDS calling in the Sunday school, previous bishopric first counselor and A stake presidency second counselor. Jordan S. Nelson, 45, current LDS calling in the young men's previous high counselor, a bishop and assistant ward clerk. Scott W. Banon, 49, current LDS calling in the young men. Each found guilty on all charged counts, 17 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. So I, whenever I read stories like this on my channel, I always just say, can we please agree that the way the LDS Church teaches discernment isn't real. And the last time I said, I'm probably beating a dead taper at this point, but can we please.

John Dehlin [01:55:01] Hey, that's my line. That's my line.

Guest 4 [01:55:04] I know. I thought of you when I said it. Can we please agree that the way that I was taught discernment in the church is not real? Look at these people's callings and what they were doing.

John Dehlin [01:55:16] Yeah, absolutely. Well, all right. And I think we've still got at least. Let's see. So did, did we cover the slide?

Guest 4 [01:55:29] I mean, this is just a plot of land that they were going to build one of the event centers on. And in the trial they showed there's no event center there.

Guest 3 [01:55:36] So.

Guest 4 [01:55:36] Yeah, it was just more of that same story.

John Dehlin [01:55:38] Okay. Yeah, yeah, we really are, from what I understand, one of the fraud capitals of the country. And part of it is because we have close knit networks and we just have a history of that sort of thing. But I also think it's because historically the church teaches skepticism to evidence and skepticism to truth and an affinity towards magical thinking and even conspiracy thinking. And I just think if you teach members to value evidence and to be opening the questioning and doubt and skepticism, they're going to be less, less vulnerable to fraud. But if you have a founder who was legally incarcerated for fraud, and then you continually teach members to be skeptical of those who doubt or question and that science is in and of itself problematic, then I think you culture, you foster a culture that doesn't do due diligence, that doesn't value due diligence, and that doesn't ask questions and that just believes and trusts their leaders and their influencers. So I think the church bears a lot of cultural responsibility for what's going on here.

Guest 4 [01:57:03] Absolutely. Because the elders quorum president talked to them about this event center and then the person got a good feeling, so they invested and there went their money.

John Dehlin [01:57:13] Yeah. What's going on in Fairview? Fairview, Texas?

The Texas church's fight with the town

Guest 4 [01:57:17] Oh, man, this is the longest story because it's been going on for so long. So the church went in to Fairview, which is a small town, I think it's about six hours north of me. And they wanted to build 174 foot temple. And the town said, we're a small town, there's nothing in this town minus the water tower that is that height. And so. And it goes against the city code for that plot of land. And eventually the church came back and said, well, because of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons act, we can sue you if you don't allow us to build the temple the way that we want. And the town mediated at that point, conceded to 120 foot tower. But now the mayor who was not mayor when all of that was happening. He's the new mayor, John Hubbard. He's wrote a letter to the top church leaders saying this has created so, so much animosity in this town. Can you please just lower the steeple a little bit? Because relationships of the people in this town are more important than the building. And I doubt he will get a response. And I don't think the church will change it, but I think that if they would were doing what Jesus would do, that they would look at the people in that town and do whatever they had to do to heal those relationships. So it. At this point, it just kind of breaks my heart.

John Dehlin [01:58:44] Yeah. Yeah. Especially as a. As a fellow Texan. I'm also a Texan, so, yeah, it's a little bit sad to see, you know, Texans feeling disrespected.

Charlie Bird and The Mormon Church's Gay Marriage Policy

John Dehlin [01:59:31] All right, well, the final story is kind of one. I don't know. Is it a cause for celebration or is it a cause for concern?

Guest 4 [01:59:40] Well, I mean, from my point of view, I think this is fantastic. I am so, like, okay, the other day I made a video where I told everyone I was going to be a grandma because one of my plants is having a little baby, right? And everyone was like, I thought you're going to be an actual grandma. I get so excited about things like this, where we can share in collective joy. I think collective joy is so important. And so, Charlie Bird, tell us who Charlie.

John Dehlin [02:00:05] Remind us who Charlie Bird is.

Guest 4 [02:00:08] Oh, Charlie Bird was Cosmo, the mascot at BYU and was phenomenal. Did backflips in the. I've been in costumes like that before, and I tell you what, they are not easy to move around in. So anyway, he became really well known because of that. And he is a gay Latter Day Saint. He's faithful. He attends church with his husband, and his husband has a big. Had a big social Media following before and then when the two of them came together, they've been online a lot. Like they're very well known.

John Dehlin [02:00:39] Yeah, yeah. And, and of course, just we've covered this multiple times in the past. But like, number one, the church has a long history of excommunicating gay members. Decades and decades and decades and demonizing, you know, same sex love as perverse and like bestiality and evil. And the church has a long history of supporting conversion therapy which tortures and even can kill, you know, gay people. So a horrific history of carnage, literal carnage, with, with gay, lesbian and bisexual and transgender Latter Day Saints. So that's the history. And then we already Talked about the November 2015 exclusion policy and its reversal. That was in reaction to the legalization of same sex marriage nationwide. But weirdly, even though today the church in some places of the United States is still excommunicating gay Mormons for being same sex married, certain same sex married Mormons are not only not being excommunicated, they're being allowed to participate as faithful ward members in good standing. And this includes Charlie Byrd and his husband, who have been legally same sex married and as far as we know, are active and serving in their wards. So that's the history which we applaud. Good job, Mormon Church for showing more love and support to gay Latter Day Saints. I think we all want that, that the church just let gay Latter Day Saints love and marry who they want without having to choose between the church and their, their love. So what's the new news with, with Charlie and his husband?

Charlie Bird And His Husband Are Trying To Have A Gay Baby

Guest 4 [02:02:37] Well, do you want me to say it or should we watch their little video? Because the way they announced it.

John Dehlin [02:02:41] Let's watch it. Let's watch it. Here we go. Can I tell everyone what we just did?

Guest 4 [02:02:47] We're pregnant.

John Dehlin [02:02:50] We just had an appointment with the fertility clinic. It's actually a local, local clinic that is super, like, highly rated. So we got in with a doctor and we just had an hour talking to her about like, the process, what it's going to look like. So the next steps, they're going to call us and give us access to

Guest 2 [02:03:03] the egg donor database, talk about, like, financial things.

John Dehlin [02:03:05] We have to get scheduled for some blood work. Just make sure that everything is good

Guest 2 [02:03:10] to go with us. You want to have a baby?

Guest 4 [02:03:11] Yep, I do.

John Dehlin [02:03:13] That's so crazy. Okay, so let me be clear. Is somebody pregnant or are they just saying they're going to, to start the process?

Guest 4 [02:03:21] Well, I, I think that that was just kind of a little joke. Just Some fun they were having. We're pregnant. But no, they're just starting the process. So. Yeah, they're still going through the initial phases of blood work and egg donors and all of that. And they didn't specify, I, I tried to read as much as I could about it, but they didn't specify how exactly all of that was going to work. But they will obviously need a surrogate. So, yeah, I, I think it's amazing. I, I would hope that every single gay couple in the church could go and publicly announce that they were going to have a child and, and still just be accepted in their congregation.

John Dehlin [02:04:02] Yeah, yeah. Well, I, you know, I too think it's amazing. Congratulations Charlie and you know, partner, I celebrate you and congratulations to Mormon Church to at least allowing their gay celebrities to be members in decent standing with the church. And you know, because if Charlie and his husband are public and vocal as faithful attending Latter Day Saints, that's going to make less bishops and stake presidents want to excommunicate same sex married gay couples, lesbian couples and it's going to build tolerance within the church for gay couples. So all of that seems really, really good. And again, I think we are all happy for them that they are going to attempt to have a child. So all of that is amazing. It does bend your brain a little bit. Can you imagine 10 or 20 or 30 years ago a faithful same sex Mormon couple celebrating that they're going to have a surrogate child and this somehow not causing a problem in the church?

Guest 4 [02:05:17] Absolutely not. No.

Guest [02:05:19] Well.

Guest 4 [02:05:19] And I think there are still a lot of gay couples in the church now who still, who aren't afforded that privilege and who still don't believe that it's happening. I would think they're probably happy for them and they're trying to hold both things like, I'm so happy for you. Why don't I get to do that too?

John Dehlin [02:05:37] Yeah.

Guest 4 [02:05:39] It would be a hard, if I can imagine if I was in that position. It would be a hard thing for me to hold both of those truths at the same time.

John Dehlin [02:05:48] Yeah. Yeah. And again, I interviewed David Archuleta, you know, national pop star, international pop star David Archuleta, recently, even though he's left the church and has said he doesn't believe in it, doesn't believe in his truth claims, he has bizarrely never been excommunicated. Many, many, many, many, many people on Mormon stories have been excommunicated for far, far less. Including like Leah and Cody Young. All they did is create a support group for their local, you know, Ohio church members and they were excommunicated. David Archuleta is publicly discussing having gay, you know, openly gay relationships with men and is an apostate. But he has celebrity privilege just like Charlie Bird. Just like, you know, Tyler Glenn was never excommunicated as far as I know, so.

Guest 4 [02:06:37] Oh, I didn't know that.

John Dehlin [02:06:39] Yeah. So weird, weird celebrity privilege where the church sort of weighs its cost benefit analysis and says, we'll excommunicate people who are quiet or less known, but if they're a celebrity, we won't excommunicate them. We'll excommunicate Sam Young for advocating for, you know, protecting child victims of sexual abuse. We'll excommunicate Natasha Helfer for advocating for healthy mental health practices. We'll excommunicate Jeremy Young or Bill Real or John De Lynn for talking too much about problematic church history. Kate Kelly for supporting women's ordination. But we're not going to excommunicate Charlie Bird because he's a celebrity and that all causes problems. So we're double standard. And then the final thing is, of course the Mormon apologists brains are breaking and you know, neoconservative trad wife extraordinaire Maddie Packer, you know, one of the leading female faithful apologists for the church, wrote this comment in response to Charlie Bird's celebratory video. Do you want to share what Maddie Packer had to say?

Maddie Packer on Charlie Bird's Celebratory Video

Guest 4 [02:07:57] We can say so the name of her channel is the sure foundation. That gives you an idea of what she's about. And she says, I applaud your desire for parenthood. However, I think it's extremely problematic within the bounds of the restored gospel. And I don't believe that trying to use said gospel to justify it is helpful or accurate in this conversation. Just rain raining on their parade.

John Dehlin [02:08:23] So hate and bigotry is helpful in this conversation. And again I get, okay, let me pull back because that wasn't nice. Let me pull back. Can we empathize with why Maddie feels confused or why Greg Matson of Quick feels confused or why Jacob Hansen goes on homophobic rants on, on his YouTube channel? It's because he's taking the Mormon church's policies and doctrine literally and seriously. So I'm at a switch. I was gonna, I'm gonna take it back. I take back calling Maddie a bigot and a homophobe. I, I, I'm even gonna take back calling Jacob Hansen a bigot and a hobophobe. What they are is they're confused by the mixed messages Mormon Church leadership is sending. On the one hand, it's an excommunicable offense to be same sex married. On the one hand, children. The family proclamation says all children should have the benefit of a mother and a father in the home. On the one hand, homosexuality has been for 200 years denounced by the Mormon Church as evil, perverse, like bestiality as a sin next to murder and severity. And that's what Jacob Hansen and Greg Matson and Mattie Packer are all sitting with in their very orthodox Mormon brains. And then we've got Charlie Bird as a faithful Mormon, not only same sex, married and not excommunicated, but celebrating the fact that he's gonna raise a child literally in contradiction with or from the. The Mormon Church's proclamation on the family. Can you blame Maddie or Jacob or. Or Greg for being. Or Ralph Hancock for being confused?

Guest 4 [02:10:23] No. No. Because even in the last conference, they doubled down on the proclamation to the family. There's. They're still really parroting that. And at the same time allowing Charlie and Ryan to remain members in good standing. They. They don't want to make up their mind on it because then they would likely, like I said before, alienate Maddie or Jor Greg or Jacob Hansen or these people who for so many years have had these views because they knew, not just thought or believed, they knew they had God on their side.

John Dehlin [02:11:07] Yeah.

Guest 3 [02:11:08] Yeah.

Guest 4 [02:11:09] And when you, when you have God on your side, if you say something that society finds hurtful, then you're taking one for the team. You know, you're doing what God told you to do. And how do you not do that if it's really what you believe?

John Dehlin [02:11:27] Yeah. Well, what does the church do with a Jeff Strong and a Charlie Bird on the one hand and a Matty Packer and a Jacob Hansen and a Greg Matson on the other? How does the church straddle liberal Mormons promoting same sex marriage and gay adoption and empathy for ex Mormons? How does the church have them in the tent and then have the faithful neoconservative, you know, trad wife, ultra conservative, almost maga, faithful Mormons expressing concern and outrage at liberal and progressive ideology taking over BYU and the church. How does the church does. Is this just a sign, is this a positive sign that the Mormon Church is just allowing now a big tent in 2026 and we should just celebrate that the church is supporting a big tent and lots of ideologies and is promoting diversity? I mean, that's one way to spin this

Guest 4 [02:12:45] because they're not excommunicating everyone who's a gay couple. It's hard. Like I, I would sometimes imagine if the Brethren got up and said we're, we're sorry. If they simply just said that, right, we, we were wrong and we're sorry and came at it from an, an empathetic place because that's what I, that would be my first inclination. But I still don't think that the people who are so entrenched in the very conservative black and white thinking would think that was a good thing. And that is hard for me to understand because when I meet people who don't believe the same way I do, I mean, John, you did that whole episode with Greg Matson, right? And when you sit across from somebody, it's so hard to have those strong visceral feelings of hate or dislike. When you're in the same room with someone just realizing they're a human doing the best that they can do. And it's hard for me to think that that same group of people wouldn't jump on board if the Brethren got up and apologized and just said we were wrong and we're going to do something differently. So I think at this moment, as much as I would hate to admit it, they are, are doing the best that they can. You know, the Brethren as a church leaving space for all of these people by just saying nothing. They're like doing the sin of omission we were always counseled not to do by just, we're just not gonna say anything because then we won't upset one faction or the other. And I don't know what else they can do with so many people with so many different views.

The Church's Child Sex Abuse Coverup

John Dehlin [02:14:33] Well, I'll just, I'll just conclude with my thoughts about all of this and kind of about today's episode. I think the Church is damned if they do and damned if they don't. If the church clamps down on. I was talking to someone today about this week about this. Let's just say with child sexual abuse, if the church starts to really clamp down on pedophiles and, and really tell all the members in the leadership to report child abuse to police officials. And if the church comes clean about all its cover ups on child sex abuse and if the Church makes restitution for all of its child sex abuse cover ups, I don't think that's good for the church. I think that just, it's basically like the Catholic Church encouraging its own spotlight. It's basically asking the church to commit suicide. So the church is damned if it cleans up the child sex abuse problem, but it's damned if it doesn't. Because if it doesn't clean up the child sex abuse problem, then it just has more lawsuits and more antagonists and more victims coming out and more embarrassment and more national and international news stories exposing the church's cover ups. So the church is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. And I think it's decided that it's going to bleed either way, it's going to hemorrhage either way. It's going to hemorrhage less if it continues to hide and lie and cover up and quietly settle and coerce child sex abuse cases. And I think that's the decision it's made for its own benefit in terms of butts in seats and money and public relations. But it loses either way. And I think it's the same thing with Jeff Strong. Yes, the church is hemorrhaging members. Yes, it's hemorrhaging its women. Yes, it's hemorrhaging its youth. Yes, it's deceiving people with its history. Yes, it's mistreating people who leave. And it's supporting narratives that are damaging to people who leave. And it's still supporting a culture that punishes people who leave. On the other hand, if the church is compassionate and empathetic for people who leave and if it teaches an accurate history and if it is more supportive of women and if admits, if it admits it's been bigoted towards women and if admits it's, if it admits it's been bigoted towards gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender people, and if it admits that it's been racist, and if it provides support for its liberal and progressive members and makes the church more empathetic and tolerant, guess what? It loses a huge wing of its most believing and conservative and fundamentalist and tithe paying membership. And for the entire church, it undermines the belief even further that its prophets and its leaders are led by God. Because it becomes one huge admission that over the past 200 years the church has been deceiving and misleading and harming people. So even though the church is going to bleed either way, by doing the morally right thing and the morally ethical thing, by coming clean, by being Christlike, by showing love, by showing tolerance, by showing support and even progressive tendencies, the church actually even accelerates at a higher rate its own demise. What do you think? Is that. Am I wrong? Is that cynical? Is that pessimistic? Or Megan? Or do you have A more optimistic view of what happens if the church makes positive changes.

Guest 4 [02:18:39] I think a church that is really concerned, any church that is actually really concerned about emulating Jesus, the Jesus of the New Testament. I'm not talking about the God of the Old Testament who was drowning people. I'm talking about Jesus. They would be a church that always struggled because they would bring in money and they would find people who needed it and they would give it to them and they would allow people in who were having crises, who weren't the most, you know, educated people, and they would be more inclusive and they would always struggle. A church who follows Jesus would always struggle. When Jesus was on the earth, the stories that we have, he struggled to maintain a cohesive group of people. So as a corporation, the church to me functions like a corporation and they are doing what they need to do to survive as a corporation. Because if they were 100% a church that believed in following Jesus, they would struggle and they would be okay with it.

John Dehlin [02:19:55] Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the pickle the church is in. And the next year and five years and 10 years are just going to get more and more. More and more interesting. But anyway, Megan. So viewers and listeners, this was just a pilot. I think Megan does great work. I think Megan is an important voice along with Rebecca Biblioteca and Radio Free Mormon and Bill Real and Alyssa Grenfell and Haley Rall, Girls Camp and all the other really useful and important Nemo, the Mormon, et cetera. I love the current crop of young and not so young liberal, progressive and ex Mormon influencers. And that includes the Faith Matters people. I think they're doing amazing work at Faith Matters. So anyway, Megan, you're doing such great work and today's just kind of a pilot. So what I want to end with today is please check out generally unquotable Megan's channels on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. Subscribe here. Like and subscribe here. Like and subscribe on Generally unquotable. I should also say I love. I want to give a shout out as well to Julia. She does. What's her channel?

Generally Unquotable Megan on Mormon Stories

Guest 4 [02:21:22] I'm spacing on analyzing Mormonism.

John Dehlin [02:21:23] Analyzing Mormonism again on TikTok and Instagram and YouTube. Julia does great work as well. Check out her channel. Today was just a pilot and we want your feedback. Do you like doing a weekly news episode? Do you like what Megan brings? And this format of cherry picking five to seven stories, covering some of them briefly covering some of them more in depth. I also want to say the Mormon Newscast is a great show. They broadcast every Monday evening with Rebecca Biblioteca and Mormon Ish. I should have given a shout out to Rebecca Biblioteca. Mormonisch. Check out the Mormon Newscast with Radio Free Mormon Bill Real and Rebecca Bibliotheca. Some might ask, why do this show or why do something like this if there's that? And I would just say I think we need more news, not less. And I love their takes. But I like Mormon Stories Podcast having its own review of news and I like highlighting Megan and what she has to say. And I hope to have Rebecca or RFM or Bill Real or Colby Reddish or others on this show if we do it more. So in my view, it's just about more is better. I like the cross pollination. I think a rising tide lifts all ships. So if you're concerned about why we're covering news when the Mormon Newscast exists, heck, I helped start the Mormon newscast and I'm a big fan of it. So I just think we need more discussion of news, not less. What. What's your thought, Megan?

Guest 4 [02:23:04] Yeah, I agree, I agree. I. I actually had a listener send me a couple of tips one time and they said, hey, is it okay if I suddenly send these off to Rebecca Biblioteca as well? And I said, absolutely. We as an ex Mormon community especially, the more that we collaborate, the more people learn about these things. I don't need it to be a competition. I'm not in the battle of good and evil like I was when I was a member. I'm in the battle of, of maybe this same not even a battle. I'm in this space that maybe Jeff Strong is in as well, where I want everyone to find what resonates with them. And maybe that's Bill and RFM's voice, maybe that's our voices. Maybe it's more Rebecca Biblioteca. I want them to have the choice and I want them to show up where they find the most value. And the more that we offer, the more choice people have and outside of the church. For me, making choices was really new and it's good practice to choose what you want.

John Dehlin [02:24:01] I love it. So viewers and listeners, if you like this format, if you want to see Megan come again on Mormon Stories, please share that in the comments. Also, email us@mormonstoriesgmail.com if you've got suggestions. Please. Again, like and subscribe to this channel and generally unquotable, please donate to Mormon stories podcast@mormonstories.org donate. You can support our legal fund where we're defending ourselves against a lawsuit from the Mormon Church where we believe they're trying to silence and smear us and intimidate us. You can go to mormonstories.org legal to support us there. You can also donate and support generally unquotable. How do people do that?

Guest 4 [02:24:42] I have a Patreon they can look me up on Patreon at generally unquotable. Or go to YouTube and just watch my videos. Yeah, I get a little bit of ad revenue from there and it's awesome. It helped me pay off my kids braces.

John Dehlin [02:24:54] I love it. All right. And yeah, check out other episodes coming in the days, weeks and months ahead here on Mormon Stories. Thanks for joining us. And you know, yeah, we hope to cover more news in the days, weeks and months ahead. So Megan, again, you do great work. Thanks for all you do in the community.

Guest 4 [02:25:16] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:25:17] Thanks, everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again very soon. Take care, everybody.