Mormon News Podcast

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Mormon News Podcast. I am one of your co hosts for today, Dr. John Dehlin. It's June 26, 2026. So 626 26. And we're here with Meggan from Generally Unquotable. Hey, Meggan.

Guest [00:00:19] Hi.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:20] Happy to be here today.

John Dehlin [00:00:22] What a treat. I tell everybody jokingly that this series is Meggan explaining the week's news to me because I'm so busy with lawsuits and other secret things that I. I don't have time to stay up with Mormon news. So what we do is we rely on Meggan from Generally Unquotable to gather the week's news, and then she shares with us her favorite stories and maybe a few that I throw in each Friday. So thanks for joining us.

Meggan Hayes [00:00:54] Yeah, I am so steeped in the news that it's hard for me to only do five or six stories.

John Dehlin [00:01:02] Are you saying the church generates news like a machine every. Every week? Is that what you're saying?

Meggan Hayes [00:01:07] Every day. Every day. I actually have people ask me, how is there enough content? And I said, just start listening. You'll see.

Dallin Oaks and Abusive Mormon Dentist

John Dehlin [00:01:15] All right, well, let's see if we could record today's episode without having to remove half of it later. That's an inside joke. It's all my fault. But today, the thumbnail we came up with is Oaks True Church. That's down H Oaks and Abusive Mormon Dentist, question mark. Those are the teasers, but the truth is we've got at least five stories. Do you want to set them up for us today, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:01:46] Yeah. So we'll be talking about Dallin Oaks and the missionary leader training seminar that happened. And then we'll talk about Robert Bruce Howell, a dentist from Utah, and what he's been up to. And then a somewhat related article from young women worldwide where they're helping young women get to know their bishops better and be more comfortable with them. And then a story that I just threw in this morning about some young men and young women going on trek while there are really big Utah wildfires going on not far from where they were trekking some Minerva Tigert paintings that have been stolen. And then two tiny little stories at the end about some changes to the temple names and changes to the ecclesiastical endorsement process at byui.

John Dehlin [00:02:34] Oh, all right. I'm excited. Well, let's get into it. Let me just remind everyone. Please like and subscribe. Please comment, please share. Please like and subscribe. Both Mormon stories, podcast, YouTube channel, and generally unquotable. And everything that we do here is thanks to our donors. So if you're a donor to Mormon Stories podcast, thank you. If you're not and you want to see this series continue, just go to MormonStories.org donate, become a monthly donor and we'll be able to afford not only this very expensive lawsuit, but also to pay Meggan and staff to deliver this type of content. We are live streaming, so we will share comments and questions as we're able. Super chats will obviously catch our attention best, and that's just a way to donate through YouTube. It's also a way to have your voice be heard. So can I just tell you a tiny little story, Meggan, before we start?

Mormon Stories: Donor's Edition

Mormon Stories: The Case Against The LDS Church

Meggan Hayes [00:03:36] Yeah, of course, of course.

John Dehlin [00:03:38] So it's funny that we're talking about mission president training seminars. Some. Some will know that just recently

Guest 2 [00:03:48] I

John Dehlin [00:03:48] and the Open Stories foundation filed on Monday our response to the LDS Church's lawsuit against us. So they sued us a few months back for alleged trademark and copyright violations. And so it took us know, we took a couple months, but we filed our response this week. I hope to cover it soon. But for those who follow Mormon Stories podcast that has been filed, you can read about it from the Washington Post. They did a story. Tamara Kemsley did a really good story in the Sally Tribune. ABC News did a really good story, interestingly. But but. And also het meta from the Friendly Atheist. There are sources that have covered this and we're really grateful for that. Check out those stories. Maybe, maybe Julia can put a link to some of those stories in the show notes. But in there I, I start. There's this middle part that's kind of a narrative, Meggan, of my background history interacting with top leaders of the church. Because part of the central issue with the lawsuit is how long the church has known about Mormon Stories podcast than me over 20 years without ever expressing any concern about our usage of the word Mormon or the use of rays in our logos, or the use of blue in our past branding and logos and all that. So we have to establish that the church has known about me for over 20 years because that's central to the lawsuit. So we start prior to the creation of Mormon Stories, where I was a missionary in Guatemala, experienced really corrupt mission practices, basically fraudulent baptisms. My mission president, Gordon Romney, was trying to become the top baptizing mission president in the world. We were competing with the Chile Vinha Del Mar mission that was getting over a thousand baptisms a month. And so long story short, I saw a bunch of corrupt APs and zone leaders doing a bunch of corrupt baptismal practices. Challenged my mission president on it. He sent me home four months early. I finished my mission in Arizona, but went to byu, kind of a broken, disillusioned, but still believing Mormon. And a couple professors there convinced me to write a letter to an apostle to tell them what happened on my mission. Because by no means was the fraudulent baptisms that I experienced in Guatemala a new thing. The British Isles had experienced what were called baseball baptisms back in the early 60s, when Elder Holland and Quentin Cook were mission missionaries under T. Bowering Woodbury and Marion D. Hanks and others. And the church has battled with fraudulent baptisms for its entire modern existence. And that's why 2/3 of people baptized into the Mormon Church. That's largely why 2/3 of the worldwide members baptized into the church are no longer identifying as Mormon, because they never really had testimonies to begin with and were just baptized in developing countries by missionaries and not really converted to the church. So, anyway, these professors at BYU convinced me to write a letter to an apostle. And ironically, the apostle that was chosen was Dallin A. Jokes. So I wrote a letter to Dallin a. Jokes in 1992 telling him about these corrupt missionary practices. And he ended up, while I was on a seminar in Washington, D.C. doing a congressional internship, Elder Oaks ended up calling me on the phone while I was in D.C. and he basically thanked me for my letter and told me that he was going to do his best to. To keep this kind of stuff from happening again. So what he ended up doing was he wrote a talk. Here's where this comes in to the story. He wrote a talk for the upcoming Mission President Training Conference that was going to happen in the summer of 1992. And he ended up mailing that talk to me after he gave it. And then he, in future correspondence I had with Elder Oaks, he told me that he ended up giving my letter to the entire quorum of the 12. And that whenever he spoke to mission presidents and their wives in the future, he would always make sure they knew not to use corrupt corporate marketing and sales techniques to get missionaries to do fraudulent baptisms. And that's all relevant because it shows that Dallin A. Jokes and I have a relationship going all the way back to 1992. And fast forward to the end of that narrative in the lawsuit. It ends with Dallin A. Jokes giving his first talk to the entire worldwide membership of the LDS Church. Making people afraid of what? Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:08:58] What? Dallin?

John Dehlin [00:09:00] Yeah, Dallin H. Oaks's very first talk. Sorry, I. I'm. I know I was going Long. So I don't fault you for.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:06] No, no, no. I. You're asking me what? His first talk to the Mormon church

John Dehlin [00:09:12] as prophet warned the church members against what?

Meggan Hayes [00:09:17] I should know this, but now you're putting me on the spot. I got all nervous.

John Dehlin [00:09:20] Podcasts.

Meggan Hayes [00:09:21] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. At byu.

Guest [00:09:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:09:25] He spoke to the worldwide membership at byu. He warned members about dangerous podcasts.

Guest [00:09:33] So.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] So it. In a way, not that it's all about me at all or us, but it really does come full circle because there are, you know, people are asking, why now? Why is the church suing me almost 21 years after the, you know, after Mormon stories has been, you know, was. Was put in existence? And one of the simplest answers is that there's a new sheriff in town, a new prophet down, H. Oaks, who happens to be an attorney, who happens to be litigious, and he and I happen to have a relationship that goes back to 1992. And who knows if he's been frustrated with how things ended up with me and the podcast, and he's been biting his time to come at me as soon as he was made profit. Now we don't know, but it's fun for me to see Oaks at mission president training conferences, you know, being brought up in a totally different context during the. During the time that the church is suing me. And this is all part of the lawsuit. So I would encourage people to download. You can go to mormonstories.org I've released. We've released a press release and a Q and A. I think they're very well written. But most importantly, download the lawsuit that's linked to on those two blog posts. Jump to the middle section that starts with my story about me and Elder Oaks and read that sucker through. It talks about Marlon K. Jensen, the Swedish rescue, Hans Mattson, so many other cool, interesting things, I think, and I just encourage people to read it. And it also, I think the. If I understand the lawsuit correctly, the church is being. The question is being raised of whether the LDS Church engaged in trademark fraud when it attempted to extend its trademarks over the word Mormon after it apparently has clearly abandoned usage of that term. And so we raise. I think in the lawsuit, we raise the question, has the church actually engaged in fraud? And we have several countersuits where we're actually suing the church back. And so we'll cover that on a future episode. Meggan, thanks for allowing me to kind of provide that little detour this morning as a starting story.

Mormon Stories: The Mission Seminar

Meggan Hayes [00:12:05] Now, I love it as a backstory to what we're going to talk about. Plus, I've listened to all of the Mormon Stories episodes. I think I'm in, like, January of this year, so I'm not totally caught up.

John Dehlin [00:12:16] But that's almost 10,000. That's 10,000 hours, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:12:20] That makes me an expert. Right. Or a professor.

Guest [00:12:23] What is it?

Meggan Hayes [00:12:24] But when I started Mormon Stories, I already knew that you were going to get excommunicated. Right. Because I'd seen that. But then I started listening at the beginning, and it was so interesting to listen to how things went, to how things changed, and just follow the story through already knowing what was going to happen. So now to push it even further, now there's the lawsuit, and then we're going to talk about this mission seminar. I just. Seeing the whole evolution of Mormon stories has been fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:12:55] Thanks. I should give a call out to the Mormon newscast with Bill Real, RFM and Rebecca Biblioteca. They did a great breakdown of the lawsuit. Four hours on Monday's episode. Check them out. Yeah, because they. They did a great job as well. And. And I think Colby Reddish is going to be covering this, and then we'll cover it on Mormon Stories in the coming week or two. But anyway, life's fun. Life's fun, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:13:24] It is. It really is.

John Dehlin [00:13:26] Let's jump to the story, shall we?

The Church's Announcement That They Have More Missions Than Ever

Meggan Hayes [00:13:28] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:29] All right, Here we go. Take it away, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:13:32] Okay, so this is from the church news coverage of the 2026 seminar for new mission leaders. This article has snippets and stuff, but there is. I'm assuming they made video footage of the entire thing that is not available to the general public. But let's go to the next slide, because I was.

John Dehlin [00:13:56] Do you cover the church's announcement that they have more missions and more missionaries than ever? Is that in this?

Meggan Hayes [00:14:02] So, Quentin Cook. No, no, no. Was it Rasband? Rasband talked about it, but I don't know that they put out a video clip. We'll have to see what clip I got of him. The. The video clips are so few and far between of this whole seminar.

John Dehlin [00:14:18] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:14:18] It was hard. Yeah. To find video footage.

John Dehlin [00:14:20] I just wanted to make sure we touched on it. Tell me if this is right, Meggan, because you're an expert in the Mormon news that. That the church recently in the past year, lowered the age of missionary service for women from 1918, which means there's an influx, a temporary influx of extra Mormon women who are serving missions, which is artificially spiked. The number of Mormon missionaries and subsequently of Mormon missions, which gave the church an Opportunity. In this sort of press cycle world, we have more missionaries and more missions than ever.

Meggan Hayes [00:14:57] Yes. Okay. Rasband is going to talk about that. I'm fairly certain. I've just read so much about it. I'm trying to remember what I was able to find, but I'm pretty certain he talks about that in his four. What does he call them? Not fallacies, but he's trying to debunk things. And he has four, and I believe that's one of them.

John Dehlin [00:15:15] All right, well, that's a little context, so let's. Yeah, let's go ahead and dive in. So what's this first clip?

Greg Matson on the Mission Leader Seminar

Meggan Hayes [00:15:20] So this is where the video clips came from. This is from Scripture Plus. I'm pretty sure that's the first clip.

John Dehlin [00:15:30] Should we play it and then we can talk about it?

Meggan Hayes [00:15:32] Yeah. Yes, please. Oh, no, no, no. This one's Greg.

John Dehlin [00:15:36] Oh, do you want to set it up while you picked Greg to start with?

Meggan Hayes [00:15:40] So Greg Matson from Quick Media did his own breakdown of the mission leader seminar. And this is the beginning of his video where he sets up how he's going to talk about it. And I figured we'd just start with him and then we will listen to what the leaders say, we'll talk about what they say, and then we'll see what Greg has to say about it.

John Dehlin [00:15:57] And I'll just mention I, I, Greg Matson was kind enough to come on Mormon Stories and I did an interview with him. Meggan, that, that's funn. One of the things that made me decide to collaborate with you more was your critique of me in that interview with Greg, because I thought it was a fair critique. But kudos to Greg for coming on Mormon Stories. Check out his episode. But for those who don't know, Greg Matson is kind of a neo fundamentalist, as I would call him, Mormon. He's kind of a hardliner conservative and believes in kind of, in my opinion, the old school, Bruce R. McConkie, Joseph Fielding Smith hardline type Mormonism. And I don't want to necessarily associate him politically with maga, but sort of this BYU has become too liberal. BYU is poisoning the minds of our youth to become too woke. A critique of postmodern education and, you know, secular worldliness in higher education. That's, you know, and also just generally disdain for sexual or gender diversity beyond kind of the binary gender and the binary sexuality kind of worldview. I don't think Greg would even object to that characterization. I also think he's a sincere guy, but. And a committed guy. And I actually listened to this episode and I asked you to include some clips from him because I think it's interesting. So anyway, that's for those who don't know that's who Greg Matson is. So do you want to respond to that characterization? Do you agree? Do you not agree?

Meggan Hayes [00:17:43] I agree. I agree. I get the. I've never actually spoken to him in person, but I do get the sense from him that he's very sincere and that he is trying with that worldview to navigate a place where he can still be kind to people, even if he doesn't agree with the way they live their lives. But he does have a very, very, what I would say, like traditional. Just because I was raised that way with a lot of the same thinking that he has. So he has that very traditional, hardline view of Mormonism. It's very. One way or the other. There's not middle ground. And yeah, let's. Let's listen to him.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] Back to the old type of.

Meggan Hayes [00:18:17] Yes, yes. Back in my day.

John Dehlin [00:18:19] Yeah, yeah, yeah. And yeah, I, I love that he isn't relying on ad hominem like so many of the other YouTubers and apologist Social media people. All right, let's run the clip.

The Church is True: President Oaks speaks

Guest [00:18:32] Yes, the church is true. Just like the gospel is true. The church is true. I know there's a cultural regurgitation of this idea. Well, the gospel is true. That doesn't mean the church is true. No, the church is true. I've been saying that for years. We're getting it direct here from President Oaks and of course, it's in the Doctrine of covenants in Section 1, right at the beginning. We've got some real delivery of truth, of real meat here from President Oaks, from President Christofferson and from Elder Bednar that we're going to cover things that we don't always hear at your own ward or even stake level.

John Dehlin [00:19:14] He's saying that as he's got a Book of Abraham papyrus over his head. Did you notice that? Like, the church is true. And here's the Book of Abraham papyrus. Like the, the biggest smoking gun that Joseph Smith wasn't a prophet. So let me include the papyrus. I don't mean to mock him, but I just. That was ironic. Meggan, what did you think of that clip? I, you know, what do you think?

Meggan Hayes [00:19:38] I, for me, I had to stop and think about what does it even mean? Because it's a phrase that I said so many times when I was active. The church is true. What does that even mean? Because I even. I wrote down some Notes, because things that can be true, ideas, claims, historical events. But can you imagine saying the hospital is true or the university is true? Like it's such a weird phrase that we have in Mormonism. I don't know if other religions say that, but I think what he means is the church is what it claims to be. Maybe, I don't know. The church is true is such a strange phrase, which I grew up just thinking it was totally normal.

John Dehlin [00:20:20] I used to ask the question in my Mormon liberal days, is a ham sandwich true? No. But I think we know what Joseph Smith meant. And I think it's clear in the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith meant that there can't be 5,000 true churches. God's only going to give his franchise imprimatur to one true church, and it's us. And all the other churches, therefore, are false. Their creeds are corrupt. Their authority is invalid. Non Mormon marriages don't count in heaven. Non Mormon baptisms don't count in heaven. And we're the only church led by God with priesthood authority, and our ordinances are the only ones. And I think that's basically what Greg Matson would say. He acknowledges that there's goodness in all traditions, but that only one church has the authority. And in that sense, they basically are making a franchise argument that God only has authorized franchises. And it just happens to be a church based in. Of all states in the United States, Utah. And it just so happens that the total membership of that church is less than like 1/4 of 1% of the world's population. And that's generous. And it's shrinking. Such a weird almost. I was going to say it's almost an anachronistic argument in 2026, because what does it mean about God if his only true church that he guides is accessible to almost none of his children?

Meggan Hayes [00:22:00] Yeah, he's. He has not been very successful.

John Dehlin [00:22:03] He's the worst God ever. He's the most ineffective God ever. And Meggan, I did this math as a sophomore in high school, and it just. It. I still believed, but it never made sense.

Meggan Hayes [00:22:15] I did the math after I'd left, and I was like, whoa, wait a second. But that was the first time I'd done it. I had already stopped going to church.

John Dehlin [00:22:23] Yeah. Yeah. Well, anyway, so that's. That's the. That's how Greg feels, and he's just loving this talk. So let's keep going.

Elder Oaks at a Presidential Seminar

Meggan Hayes [00:22:33] So this is just a picture of all of the Quorum of the twelve and First Presidency sitting at this seminar at Oaks. Isn't up there. And then on the right hand side, it has the lineup so you can see every single one of the Quorum of the twelve and First Presidency speaks at this seminar. This is a big deal.

John Dehlin [00:22:53] Is Irene there? There's Uchtdorf.

Meggan Hayes [00:22:57] Yeah. I'm like, I was looking through it. I knew Oaks wasn't there.

John Dehlin [00:23:02] Huh. Yeah. I'm curious if Eyring's there, because I'll just say, I don't think this is breaking news. I've been told by a reliable source that Elder Oaks has Parkinson's disease, that he can't walk unassisted, that his hand shakes uncontrollably, and that he's just not in a state to be viewed without supervision and tight controls. And that Eyring is also has a foot in the grave. And I don't say that with any joy or happiness, but their health is really bad. So.

Meggan Hayes [00:23:34] Yes. And I have heard the same from my source about Oaks at least. So.

John Dehlin [00:23:40] So anyway, that. That would explain potentially why. Why they're not there. There might be other reasons as well. What's this next clip?

Meggan Hayes [00:23:48] So, okay, so this one is Scripture plus, which is the only place, one of the only places I could find video footage of this. And this gentleman from Scripture plus is going to tell us what this seminar is. And it's just short, but I love his explanation.

The First Presidency's Conference for New Mission Leaders

John Dehlin [00:24:03] All right, let's roll it.

Meggan Hayes [00:24:05] One of the most important annual church events began this morning, and you probably don't even know about it. This event is one of only three times each year that the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the twelve Apostles meet and give addresses that directly benefit the entire world. The event, the seminar for new mission leaders, which will go throughout the whole weekend.

John Dehlin [00:24:26] I mean, it's so amazing. It sounds so amazing. If only they would share the video to it. Right?

Meggan Hayes [00:24:31] I know. I didn't realize that he said this is one of three times a year that everyone is together, and yet this is very exclusive. And I'm sure they probably gave that same speech about don't record this. Don't, you know, don't share any of this outside of here.

John Dehlin [00:24:48] I mean, there's all sorts of instruction that they're going to give mission presidents and their wives that they don't want the general public to hear. And I think part of it is because there are embarrassing things or probably dishonest things or cringy things that they need to train the presidents and their wives to say and to do that, that they don't want the general public to know, is there any other. Is there any other possibility?

Meggan Hayes [00:25:21] I don't know. I think you're probably right. There's just things that they're going to say to that group, because if you have agreed to become a mission president, you're likely fairly loyal to the church.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:32] So there are things that they would say to them that they wouldn't want other people to hear. It's just wild to me that it's one of three times they're all together and, you know, that guy says it's going to impact the whole world, and yet there are things they can't say publicly that they'll say there.

John Dehlin [00:25:46] Yeah, it's wild. All right, so let's keep going.

Jonathan Schmidt Named Executive Director of the Mission Department

Meggan Hayes [00:25:50] So, yeah, this was my. My whole question is, why is Scripture plus announcing this and not official? Church channels.

John Dehlin [00:25:58] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:25:58] I had such a hard time finding. So it came out in the Church News afterwards, and they have little snippets, but they don't publish the talks. They don't publish video or text of the talks. They just do little pieces.

John Dehlin [00:26:10] How so? Other than what we've already talked about, do you have an answer for that question? Why are they using Scripture Plus? Theoretically? Is Scripture plus official or unofficial?

Meggan Hayes [00:26:25] Like their affiliation with the church? Yeah, I think it's unofficial.

John Dehlin [00:26:29] Yeah. So I. I have a theory. Do you have a theory for why Scripture plus and not Church News?

Meggan Hayes [00:26:36] Because then they have a buffer.

John Dehlin [00:26:38] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [00:26:38] Right. They get some space between whatever they say here, whatever gets leaked from here, and what the general public sees, and they can kind of say, well, that was Scripture Plus. They're not an official site. I'm sure there's a disclaimer on Scripture plus that says that. And so. Yeah, but if you. Let me look here, if you go back to that last slide.

John Dehlin [00:27:02] Not the video, the previous one.

Meggan Hayes [00:27:04] Yeah. So this gentleman on the left. So Elder Jonathan S. Schmidt was named the executive director of the missionary department this morning by Elder Ronald A. Rasband. So that also happened at this seminar, and this was the only place that it was announced. In all of the articles on the Church News, they talked about him just calling him the executive director, but they never announced that he became the executive director because he replaced this other gentleman who passed away. And the only place I saw an announcement for that was Scripture Plus.

John Dehlin [00:27:41] Huh.

Meggan Hayes [00:27:42] Which was just another strange thing. It's like they replaced this very big position and the person or the group that announces it with Scripture Plus.

John Dehlin [00:27:53] Okay. And of course, I had to. I had to look it up because these days, it's all about Lawyers. And so I just looked up whether or not what his profession was and. Meggan, can you guess what Jonathan Schmidt's profession is or what? Huh?

Meggan Hayes [00:28:13] He's a lawyer.

John Dehlin [00:28:14] Yeah. I didn't even know, but I looked it up and Elder Schmidt received a Bachelor's of Science in Agriculture and Resource Economics and a JD from the University of Arizona. Go, go Wildcats. Blah, blah, blah. So the church, like, really loves lawyers these days. Do you remember what Jesus said about lawyers? I forget, but I don't think it was favor.

Meggan Hayes [00:28:33] Yeah, it wasn't real positive. Yeah. The other thing. So whenever I see someone who's coming into a position like this, I always just end up going on, you know, a little bit of a deep dive about them. And when he and his wife, I think they were mission presidents previously, they talked about the interview that they had with David Bednar. And they didn't call it an interview. They called it like a exploratory interview or something like that. And it just made me realize again, I know that Mormon Stories has talked about this, that it's not so much discernment, it's that they've got this couple and they brought them in and they did this extensive interview, which I think is good. I mean, you want to vet your people, but it didn't allow a lot of room for discernment. So just some of the language they used was really interesting.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] I do want to say that I love a good lawyer. Like, I have amazing lawyers for my lawsuit and I have nothing against lawyers per se. I think if you have. I think good lawyers can be life saving and can be really amazing people. So.

Meggan Hayes [00:29:36] Absolutely. I just. I think they would benefit from some diversity.

John Dehlin [00:29:40] Absolutely. Absolutely. All right, should we play the next clip?

Meggan Hayes [00:29:43] Yes.

Oh, Uchtdorf's Revenge!

John Dehlin [00:29:45] All right. Dear friends, we all desire to take part in this marvelous work and the wonder, and we all desire to follow Jesus Christ. The path is both strenuous and miraculous, refining and inspiring. And with each step, we draw closer

Guest [00:30:06] and closer to him, that when he

John Dehlin [00:30:08] shall appear and we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. I testify that this is the Church of Jesus Christ. It is his work that we represent.

Guest [00:30:26] It is by his authority exercised by

John Dehlin [00:30:29] his prophet, President Dallin H. Oaks, today that we are called to serve. May you find great joy in this sacred service. I humbly pray and leave you my blessing. In the sacred name of Jesus Christ, our Master.

Guest [00:30:47] Amen.

John Dehlin [00:30:49] I'm dying to know why you included that.

Meggan Hayes [00:30:51] So there were very few clips I could find, and the reason I put that in there is Because I tried to play the clips in the order that these speakers spoke and it's showing kind of the progression of how they started, who they chose to go first, and just the, the fervor of the meeting in the beginning. Plus there were just so few clips that I thought whatever's out there is what the church is trying to present to everyone. So I thought I would just put that short little one in there. Vuktor Nothing really controversial, same stuff we've always heard. But he was very early on in the seminar and that was the message that, you know, this one out of three times a year they gather together. That's what he decided to say. At least that's the part they decided to share with us.

John Dehlin [00:31:40] I will say I, I hear Uchtdorf speak with some sadness because he was such a rising star and such a hope for thoughtful, progressive Mormons that the church might change. And he, in our, you know, again, this is covered in our lawsuit, but in our work with Marlon Jensen and Cook and Ballard to help build faith crisis research that Marlon could use to convince the apostles to do the gospel topics essays, Uchtdorf became the recipient of the findings of our faith crisis study. And then he gave that famous talk that fall showing support for people in faith crisis. So he was instrumental in the essays coming out and he was instrumental in showing hope for people in faith crisis. And that of course his reward is that he gets demoted from the, from the first presidency when Russell M. Nelson becomes profit to make room for Downey jokes. And I just wonder in his brain how he's doing because it has to be humiliating and sad. He has been silenced and so now he just has to be a second rate low level apostle now who gets special assignments, but who clearly was shamed and demoted. And I just wonder how he copes with that in his own brain. And maybe he's just fine, but it's almost impossible for me to believe that mentally he hasn't had to fight some battles with being marginalized and minimized after being in the first presidency. Do you think I'm projecting there, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:33:30] No, I, I would think the same thing because when he gave that talk, I think he was very sincere and really felt that way where he was really trying to spread kindness and tell people to be gentle and loving. And yeah, his reward was getting pushed out and, and put in a position where he didn't have as much pull. And I would think that would be hard. Especially, you know, he talks about his past and he fought really hard to get to where he Was, you know, and yeah, for him to put all of that into it, be so loyal and think that he was doing the right thing and then to get demoted, I think it'd be really hard.

John Dehlin [00:34:10] There is this idea of Uchtdorf's revenge because. Because Holland was supposed to be the next long term prophet but he passed away because his health was so bad and because eye rings health isn't great and Oaks is so old. It very well could be that Uchtdorf becomes the next prophet and then we'll see if he brings back the old progressive Uchtdorf or if he's been changed too much and humiliated too much in the process. But we'll see. Look for the possibility of Uchtdorf's revenge in the future. What's this next? What should we look for in this next slide? False narrative one. That looks like Razband.

Four False Narratives Debunked by Raz Band

Meggan Hayes [00:34:50] Yep. Yep. So this is the beginning of Raz Band's comments and he's going to try to debunk four false narratives. This is the first one.

John Dehlin [00:34:58] All right, let's get some debunking. I'm sure it's solid.

Guest [00:35:01] Today I would like to speak directly to several of these false narratives and for the lack of a better term, debunk them with the truth. False narrative number one. The rising generation in the church has less faith and interest in Jesus Christ than previous generations. The truth. Currently we are in a season where more young missionaries are serving than we've seen in many years. Even without the recent age change for sister missionary service, which allows sisters to begin missionary service at the age of 18, total missionary numbers would have increased significantly.

False Narrative #4: More Missionaries Than Ever

John Dehlin [00:35:46] What do you think? Why is that? Is that valid or not valid? And why?

Meggan Hayes [00:35:51] So first of all, he presents this false narrative as saying that young people, teenagers and. And missionaries have less faith. And then he tries to prove that wrong by saying that we have more missionaries than we've ever had, which is so binary, because when people go on missions, when young people go on missions, they don't. They cannot measure their level of faith. A lot of, you know, kids go on missions for a myriad of reasons. Maybe it's because their parents won't pay for BYU if they won't. Maybe it's because they'll get a car when they get home. Maybe it's because they just feel the pressure to go because they live in Logan, Utah, and 91 other people from their high school are marching in front of the Logan Temple with a flag saying where they're going and they don't want to be left out. So just because there's more missionaries doesn't mean there's more faith. He's trying to compare those two, and I don't really think there's a comparison there. But then he does say, even with the sister missionary, even without the sister missionaries, our numbers would be huge. And my problem is that he won't actually present us with all the data. I wish they would just, if that is true, if all of your numbers are so wonderful and bright, present us with the data. Just show us. Instead, he uses words like significant and. But he has no backing for any of that. It's just his word against what we see. So, yeah, it's interesting. And the fact that he calls the first one a false narrative and then he says he's debunking it, the whole setup is interesting.

John Dehlin [00:37:26] My response is, first of all, I don't need the church to have less missionaries now than ever before. I loved my mission. I'm grateful I got to serve. I think there's a lot of good things that come from missions. And even if the church narrative isn't true, I think it can be healthy. Just like, you know, the African gentleman that I interviewed who. Who became a doctor and says, yeah, the church isn't true, but I'm sure glad I found the missionaries and got baptized into the church as an African, because now I'm a doctor in the United States. Joseph Gatti, I think was his name. But so I want to start by saying if the church has more missionaries now than ever, I'm fine with that personally. But I think he's comparing a lot of apples to oranges here, because if we're going to compare the past, let's just say 70 years, first off, they added women as mandatory forever. It was only men that were really encouraged to serve missions, and women weren't encouraged to serve missions. So to Compare now with 10, 20, 30, 50 years ago, tell me if I'm wrong, but that feels like apples to oranges first and foremost. The second is they lowered the age, and so still they're lowering the age. And he did acknowledge that, so I'll give him some credit for that. But, you know, lowering the age is going to also make a difference and definitely a temporary bump. I don't think they can keep lowering the age to 17 and 16 and 15. And I don't think there's another gender that can open up missionaries service to now, at least not a major one. And so, you know, they won't be able to play with these numbers very long. But don't you think it's pretty clear that they were like sitting there five or 10 or 15 years ago saying, oh my gosh, birth rates down, youth are leaving the church. We've got a. We're hemorrhaging the number of missionaries. What do we do? Let's lower the age. Okay, now let's add women. Okay, now let's lower the age for women again and again. And also I should say they added different types of missions now. Now they're having service missions for people who can't serve full time missions, but they can stay home and, I don't know, work in a food pantry. And they call that a mission, which I think is great, but I think it plays with the numbers a little bit. And then they're just really pushing senior service missionaries. I know my own sister and brother in law are serving as service missionary right now and still our birth rate is increasing. So there's just going to be some increasing. But I agree with you, Meggan. We just can't trust their numbers to really know what the picture is. And again, I think this is why they choose lawyers as leaders. Don't you find Rasband's comments very lawyerly and carefully crafted?

Meggan Hayes [00:40:33] Yes, yes. The words he uses, like he chose every single one to say exactly what he wants people to hear without saying anything that you could prove to be not true.

John Dehlin [00:40:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just think lawyers are taking over the church and I. Why? Okay, what's this next slide? False narratives 2. Should we just play it?

False Narratives vs Straw Men

Meggan Hayes [00:40:54] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:40:55] Okay. All right, let's play false narratives 2. Should we call this false narratives or straw men? What should we call?

Meggan Hayes [00:41:03] I think either is fine.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] All right, just one second.

Meggan Hayes [00:41:08] There you go. False narrative too.

False Narratives #2 and 3

Guest [00:41:11] Okay, false narrative number two. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is declining as interest in organized religion generally decreases. Truth. With the release of the 2025 statistical report, there were more convert baptisms in 2025 than in any year in this dispensation year to date. Global convert baptisms in 2026 are far exceeding where we were at this same point last year. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is growing as God's children around the world enter into the waters of baptism in increasing numbers.

John Dehlin [00:41:57] I want to hear your reaction, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [00:42:01] Just because people are joining doesn't mean people are leaving. And they never tell us the other side of the story. So yes, possibly people are getting into the waters of baptism. Are those baptisms akin to the fraudulent ones in the past? Some of them, probably. I'm certain they Are if you're baptizing, you know, more people in a month than there are days in the month, I think there's probably something going on.

Guest 2 [00:42:25] I love it.

John Dehlin [00:42:25] Yeah. And it's so fun to have in this lawsuit. My mission experience with Oaks interwoven because that's when the church started announcing Quentin Cook started announcing record breaking baptism numbers. Knowing that Quentin Cook served in the baseball baptism scandal clad missions of the British Isles in the early 1960s, I immediately smelled a rat. And isn't it ironic that like when the church called, when the church opened missions in Africa. Meggan, tell me if you know this. This came out in Matt Harris's wonderful book Second Class Saints. When the church opened up missions in, in Africa, do you know what areas they targeted?

Black Missionaries: hypocrisy

Meggan Hayes [00:43:18] Oh, no, no, tell me. I have the book. I haven't read it yet.

John Dehlin [00:43:21] Countries with white people.

Meggan Hayes [00:43:24] Okay. I was going to say South Africa, but yeah.

John Dehlin [00:43:26] So do you know where the first major missionary efforts for the church in Africa were?

Meggan Hayes [00:43:33] Yeah, why? They had. Well, I mean, when. Okay, so when did the first mission open in Africa? I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:43:41] I mean there's going to be historical details that I get wrong.

Meggan Hayes [00:43:45] No, but was it before the ban?

John Dehlin [00:43:48] Yeah, before the ban. Before the 1988 priesthood ban was lifted, the church had a policy. We don't teach black people. We don't, you know, if they come to us, we'll reluctantly. But we're not going to set up missions to convert black people to the church because they can't even be members in full standing. So we'll let them come in if they kind of really insist and push their way in. But I know all sorts of people that serve missions in North Carolina in the 70s and 80s and they were told kind of stay away from the black areas, just focus on the white areas. And that's how it was in Africa. They stayed away from the black countries and literally focused on the countries with white people. I talked about this. In the 1940s or 50s, the church wanted to open up a mission in Cuba. And so they find the church's expert on Cuba and do you know what they asked him?

Meggan Hayes [00:44:43] How many black people are there? Or how many.

John Dehlin [00:44:44] Where are the white people in Cuba? So I mean, just like the church several decades ago or years ago were like, oh my gosh, missionary numbers are tanking. How do we get the number of missionaries up? They saw the same thing with baptisms. They're like, we're dying in America, we're dying in Canada, we're dying in Western Europe. We're dying in educated, developed Asia. We can't really go to communist China. We can't really go to India. We can't go to the Middle East. Where do we go, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [00:45:21] We go to Africa. We go to Africa. So we have to make sure that our doctrine will allow us to go to Africa.

John Dehlin [00:45:26] So we go to Africa and we really start increasing baptisms in Africa 10 or 20 years ago.

Guest [00:45:33] Right.

John Dehlin [00:45:33] And, and it's just, in my opinion, it's a numbers game because we're hemorrhaging so bad in the United States and in Western Europe and in Japan and in all the developed world. And we're kind of staying flat in the Philippines and in Latin America. All our meaningful growth is coming from Africa. So first of all, it's just like new colonization to exploit. But then also, you know, you know, also it's, it's, it's a numbers game in the sense that these people haven't yet learned about the priesthood ban. They haven't learned about our historic races past. And most importantly, I guarantee you, these African missions under Cook, right, are employing the same fraudulent techniques that were employed in the baseball baptisms in the British Isles, in the baseball baptisms of Japan and in the soccer baptisms of Guatemala, the beach party baptisms in Chile, Vinha del Mar, the cheeseburger baptisms in North Carolina. Like, I guarantee you, the activity rates, the retention rates in Africa are abysmal, but the church will not be sharing that information. And we already know from Jeff Strong that over the past 25 years, 40% of the latter Day Saints raised in the United States have left the church. That's a million people. And so again, this, this narrative, this narrative thing that Ras Band's doing is ultimately deceptive because it's Africa, Africa, Africa. It's just new neo colon colonization of a previously discriminated against audience. We're just exploiting a new group until they get. Get wise to us. And I guarantee you are taking Africa out of it. The number of members per ward or per branch or per stake or per district is going to keep declining because everywhere else in the world, I believe we're, we're hemorrhaging and we're shrinking in, in converts. Right. In retention.

Meggan Hayes [00:48:00] I was listening to the Italian Mormon story this morning, and yeah, she was talking about how her ward in Italy had 60 people. Yeah, that's not even a, that's barely a branch. Well, and then the other thing that I was thinking about, just talking about missions is that. So I have a nephew who did A service mission. And if they sent everyone out to do service missions, I think it'd be fantastic if there was no trying to share the gospel. No sharing the gospel at all. Send them out, charge them the same amount of money, have them show up in their white shirt and tie and just serve people.

John Dehlin [00:48:41] Well, I love the idea of service missions. I even don't mind if they're teaching lessons to people, especially if the lessons are more about just general Christlike love and service and forgiveness and kindness and patience and the importance of family and of honesty. Like, I, I think that's good. So I love service missions. I don't even mind general Christianity being taught. I think that anything uniquely or distinctly Mormon becomes problematic because it's either false or fraudulent or bigoted or just untrue. But, you know, every church has its flaws. So what are you going to do?

Meggan Hayes [00:49:29] Yeah.

1. False Narrative 2. Truth

John Dehlin [00:49:32] All right, let's go to the third straw man or deceptive so far if it, if it follows.

Guest [00:49:39] False narrative. False narrative 3. Even if we are increasing in baptisms, these new converts aren't being retained.

John Dehlin [00:49:46] Oh, okay.

Guest [00:49:46] Truth. New members actively participating after baptism in ways that are as high, if not higher, than previous years. More new members attend sacrament meeting after their baptism. More of our new male members receive the Melchizedek priesthood. More new members attend the temple to make and keep sacred covenants, as well as performing proxy ordinances for ancestors.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:16] Meggan, I was trying not to laugh when you were bringing this up a second ago, because I was like, oh, he's gonna address that. I just say prove it again and again. Like, show me the numbers.

John Dehlin [00:50:28] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was gonna say we'll see. Right? We'll see.

Meggan Hayes [00:50:33] Right. Well, and if it's been in the past year, how long do they have to go to church? How many times do they have to go to church in a year to be considered active? So what is he counting as? We are retaining them. And then if it's only been six months, how do you know they're retained? I mean, six months in, they don't even, you know, they don't, they, they haven't been endowed if they're a brand new member. You know, I don't, I don't know how he can stand up there and say this with a straight face. I mean, I do, but he is saying we're retaining all these members, but we got most of them in the last year, so how do you know that?

John Dehlin [00:51:10] I love it. Yeah, I, I, I'll just say again, I'm not necessarily a fan of Secularism per se, because I love community and I love morals and values. And I don't know that secularism has really figured out how to create lasting, sustainable community and that sort of thing. So I'm not in any hurry for the Mormon church or religion to be in demise. If the church had better retention than ever in the coming five to 10 years and it was more Christlike than ever, less Joseph Smith than ever, more generic Christianity than ever, I'd be okay with that. But I, but I just am skeptical that we can really trust anything until we just see the results. And the problem that the church is facing is not just a Mormon problem, it's the secularization of the world. And I was texting my brother in law who's a missionary for the church today, earlier this morning and I was just, you know, he was basically, there's going to be a slide about this where he basically talks about how population growth is shrinking and that's going to be a big problem for the world. And, and I, I'm just, my, my point is it, I wish religions did a better job of not being corrupt, of not protecting child abusers, of not being financially fraudulent, of not hiding its history and excommunicating its critics and having scandals and sexual scandals and cover ups. But more importantly, I wish churches put out a better product because if they put out a better product, they would do better. But instead of putting out a better product, they hire lawyers, protect child abusers, create secret shell companies, get charged with fraud, grow their bank accounts and blame critics and shoot the messengers while their product becomes more and more Pablo, more and more weak, more and more, less and less compelling or interesting or entertaining. And so secularism is on the rise not just because Satan lives, not just because, you know, leftist progressive ideologies are causing the world to be more secular. Religions are dying because they suck at being ethical. Too often they suck at creating a compelling product and they suck at keeping their audiences engaged. And I wish, I wish religions did better. I wish they were more ethical, less scandal clad. That's my take. And the Mormon Church is included in that?

Meggan Hayes [00:54:03] Yes. Yeah, I, I've looked into and done some studying about countries, especially maybe Nordic countries, where they have, they're more secular and they have for I would say decades at least, fostered more secular community. They've just had more time doing that than we have in countries that are largely Christian or religious. And they're coming along in ways where community outside of religion is getting really strong and they have really good social supports in place. I just think in the US we have relied on religion for so long, and there are possibly other countries too, that now we are abandoning religion, but we don't have the supports put in place yet to catch all those people who are coming out of religion. So here we are living in this time of in between and it is, it's messy and it's hard and people are lonely and they're getting left behind. So I don't think that religion has to be the answer to that. I think it's what we've had for a really long time. But I also think it's going to be super messy in this in between time when the world is becoming more secular and people haven't figured out what to do next quite yet. There are some who have and I think there are places where community is, is more a part of society without religion. And so I, I find hope in that and I've found my own community where I live now where we're all secular and you know, we band together and we all kind of live in this same neighborhood and it's possible, but it's, it's not something that we have been shown how to do growing up in a society that is community comes from religion in a lot of ways.

John Dehlin [00:55:51] Yeah. Well, I'm getting some comments so let's go ahead and just share a few of the comments now. They're fun. So. Bull curtain. McCookie Sheet, best name on YouTube. He writes beach party, baptism. What the flip? Why didn't I think of that? Yeah, in Chile Vinha Del Mar Mission, the missionaries would just go to beaches, find young people, teach them one discussion, challenge them for baptism and baptize them right there at the beach. Wow. And you know, it was why we're missionaries at the beach. Like oftentimes it's the most disobedient rule breaking missionaries that are the highest baptizing because they know that if they can just generate the numbers, their mission president will like them and so that lets them be disobedient. So anyway, that's what happened in the Chile Vinha del Mar mission in the late 1980s and early 90s. Check out my Mormon Stories series with Roger Hendricks and with Ted Lyon. Those are two former mission presidents who served in Chile. They can talk about some of that stuff and maybe Julia can include those in the show notes. Bulkhart McCookie sheet also says some of the most rewarding points of my mission were helping people, picking up trash, service, etc. Totally true. McDouey 1012 writes running out of dupes to harvest. Same as most religions. Cast a big net. Yours creaking More Any that are directed by men exerting power without question. Okay, I don't know. Some of that I don't understand, Rodney. James McGuire writes, if they have 85,000 recruiters but only 350,000 new recruits, then they are only one half as effective as 40 years ago. So he's basically making the claim that I've read I haven't verified, so that conversions per missionary are down.

McCookie Sheet On The Mormon Church

Meggan Hayes [00:57:48] Oh, yes. Yeah. Was that in the information from Jeff Strong's book? Where did we see that?

John Dehlin [00:57:53] I'm not sure. I'm, you know, blurred for me these days.

Meggan Hayes [00:57:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:57:59] Jcvq2cs writes John, that is a false dichotomy. My secular world is filled with community. Religion does not do this without lies and coercion. Ugh. I'm gonna just say, yes, there's secular community out there. Yes, there's bowling leagues and yes, there's running clubs and yes, there's secular communities. And society appears to be lonelier than ever, more depressed than ever, more anxious than ever, more isolated than ever. A lot of that is social media, but also, in my opinion, according to the sociologists I study, a lot of that is also the decline of religion that used to serve the purpose of providing community. And while I'm not saying there is no viable secular community, I am saying that I have not seen sustainable secular community sufficiently rise to replace the role that religion has played across the centuries. So it can be both. And that's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it. But Meggan, you can tell me I'm full of garbage.

Meggan Hayes [00:59:05] Nope. I mean, what I just said, I, I agree with that. I, I think religion has provided community for such a long time that we're letting religion go, people are leaving it, and there isn't something else set up yet. And it's just going to take time.

John Dehlin [00:59:18] Yeah, it's going to take time. And that's fine. That's fine. I'm not saying that corrupt, fraudulent, lying child abuser protecting corrupt financial churches should rule the day. I want healthier, more ethical religions. And that's why I, well, I think that's why we do what we do to make the Mormon Church more ethical and less corrupt. Yes, but, but until these second organizations come up, we have to just try and make religions as ethical as possible. Material writes he said retention numbers are the same rates as previous years, but previous years had terrible retention rates. And that's true. I think the retention race rates outside the US have been like 10%.

Meggan Hayes [01:00:05] Yes. And when I do the math, that's what comes out. Like right now, if you go to the church stats for Chile, there should be a thousand people in every congregation in Chile. That's just. We know that's not happening. A huge majority of those are branches.

John Dehlin [01:00:20] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:00:20] And it's because of those baptisms that you talked about where people never even went to church. They're just on the rolls.

John Dehlin [01:00:26] Yeah. Yep. It's true. Okay, one more comment, John. As Meggan pointed out, Nordic countries in the Netherlands show that happiness tied to good social benefits. And also, Carlo, denser urban areas.

Does the United States Need to Become Scandinavia?

Meggan Hayes [01:00:43] Yeah. More walking, more biking.

John Dehlin [01:00:47] Suburbanism is a big factor.

Meggan Hayes [01:00:49] Hey.

John Dehlin [01:00:49] I mean, you know, and I've talked to Trevor, our model, about this as well. I absolutely think there's a lot of good things about Scandinavian countries and their happiness levels. And they're very secular also. They're very white. They're very ethnically and culturally monolithic. And so. And they're small. They're relatively small countries that are a lot easier to manage. And so that's great. But how do we turn the United States into Norway or Denmark or Sweden? Like, good luck.

Guest [01:01:26] We're more.

John Dehlin [01:01:26] We're more polarized and religious. Religiously polarized than ever in the United States. So screaming Scandinavia. What do we do with that here in the United States? I just don't know.

Meggan Hayes [01:01:40] Yeah, there's a chasm between where we are and where they are. How do. How do we get over that?

John Dehlin [01:01:46] And if we can't make the United States, Scandinavia, then we have to figure out micro solutions that meet the needs of local populations. Because the government isn't going to become. The US Government isn't going to become Denmark anytime soon.

Meggan Hayes [01:02:05] No. No.

"The False Narrative"

Guest [01:02:09] All right.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] Should we go back to when we have a false narrative? Is that Rasband's false narrative or the world's false narrative? I'm getting confused at this point.

Meggan Hayes [01:02:18] He just. He just made him up. I don't know.

John Dehlin [01:02:21] No, no, I'm saying.

Meggan Hayes [01:02:22] Right.

John Dehlin [01:02:22] That false narrative has a double meaning for me.

More Missionaries Coming Home Early Than Ever

Meggan Hayes [01:02:24] Yes.

John Dehlin [01:02:25] I think noise is a bit of a false narrative.

Guest [01:02:29] Four more missionaries come home early than ever before. Truth. Don't you believe it? And overwhelming majority of missionaries are completing their service to the Lord Jesus Christ. Presidents and sisters. I add my testimony to that of the First Presidency. I testify that the growth of the church will continue to accelerate. So buckle up, hold on tight, because as we go forth from this seminar to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the world, I firmly believe the best is yet to come.

John Dehlin [01:03:11] I'm dying to hear your reaction to that.

Meggan Hayes [01:03:14] More missionary. My what caught my ears was when he said overwhelming majority. What does that even mean? Does it mean 51? I don't know. He just chooses his words so carefully. And I know that in the ex Mormon community we've heard otherwise that many missionaries are coming home early.

John Dehlin [01:03:38] So yeah, it's almost like if the church is denying something, that's more evidence that it's true.

Meggan Hayes [01:03:46] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:03:46] And I'll just share several comments. Caught it. The Sandy Stone says notice he didn't refute it. Right.

Meggan Hayes [01:03:54] Yeah, he. The first thing he said. Don't you believe that just like this chummy, like those people don't know what they're talking about. We know, right? He's trying to be real chummy with these mission presidents.

John Dehlin [01:04:05] Ryan Scott, PNW says that's not an answer. Ronald Kolob, choir queen writes, you know, you can believe him because he gets emotional. You know, I'm just gonna say that both of the things can be true that more missionaries are coming home than ever. And his answer which is that an overwhelming majority of missionaries come home, fulfill honorable or full mission because what that leaves is 40% coming home early. Right. It could be an overwhelming majority of 55 or 60% which means that it could be up to 30 or 40% that come home early, which would be more than ever. So it seems like he's being really deceitful, Meggan. And I think you just saying continually show us the numbers that that would solve all the problems. But it seems like they want to hire lawyers and give lawyerly answers to. It seems like to deceive. I don't know what else to conclude.

Meggan Hayes [01:05:12] Yeah. I don't know. I, I wonder when he's standing up there saying that what he really believes because he's. Has he seen the numbers? I don't know. Or is there, or is there a low level person who saw the numbers and thought wow, these don't look good and then they made him look a little prettier and then they gave them to him as a graph and he just thought oh, this line's taller. Yes. I mean who knows what's going on behind the scenes.

John Dehlin [01:05:35] In 2, 3, 4, 5 years we're gonna see, I think for sure Africa is going to grow.

Guest [01:05:40] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:05:40] I think Africa growth in Africa because it's so big and it's so unexploited and there's such an economic disparity between rich white Americans and you know, Africans that the Church is going to grow there with the same types of rates they grew in Latin America and the Philippines historically. So. But what we're going to see likely is the church continuing to hemorrhage everywhere else or flatline. And it's going to be more and more just Africa as our growth. We're going to become a more and a more black church, which I think is awesome. But whether they're. Whether what they're trying to sell, which is the church is healthier and stronger than ever and growing everywhere, I would bet $100,000 that that doesn't end up being true.

Meggan Hayes [01:06:33] Yeah. What do you think I would join you in that bet. Yeah. I don't. I don't think that they're going to be able to hold the narrative forever because like you said, they. They can't lower the mission age anymore. And eventually Africa will go the way of the other countries, you know, South America, or they will get into all the spots that they haven't been in yet. And then what, then what are they going to do?

John Dehlin [01:07:02] Yeah. All right. Our own Trevor is correcting me, and I love being corrected. Trevanon writes, he's from the Netherlands. I just looked it up. 28% of us are born outside of the Netherlands or have at least one parent outside of the Netherlands. Trevenant, I'm curious to know how racially diverse the Netherlands is compared to the United States. So how many people of color. What percentage of the Netherlands are people of color versus non people of color? That. That's just what I'm curious about. And then he also writes another interesting stat here in the Netherlands. 5 or 6% Muslim. In the United States, it's only 1.3%. Yeah. That I. You may very well have more of a Muslim population than the United States. I'm talking about overall ethnic diversity as a country. And I will. I will eat my hat. I will eat my. What is this mug? I will eat a mug. If. If the Netherlands is more racially diverse than the United States. And he can't argue that it's smaller. It's just easier to do things in a smaller country, and it's harder to do big things in a big country. That. That's my point, anyway. Well, we love you, Trevanon, and I could be wrong. So if you want to prove me wrong, I will welcome it. All right, what's this next slide? It's basically. Do you want to tell us what we should look for in this next slide?

Netherlands Is More Racial Diversity Than The United States, Correct

Neil Anderson: What to Look for in the Next Slide

Meggan Hayes [01:08:28] Oh, this is the one clip I found from Neil Anderson and just. It says it there on the side. Just listen to one of the very last things he says, because this has come up in church rhetoric a lot lately, and it's making me wonder why this is such a big talking point in the church over the past, I don't know, six months.

John Dehlin [01:08:48] AI. We're talking about AI?

Meggan Hayes [01:08:49] Yep, we're talking about AI.

John Dehlin [01:08:51] So we've covered Garrett Gong as kind of the AI Apostle. So it looks like Anderson's getting in on that. Anderson's a lawyer, by the way. Right?

Meggan Hayes [01:09:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:09:01] Okay. I'm not sure about that, but I think so. All right, let's play it.

A message for the coming year

Guest 2 [01:09:05] It was significant to me that President Oaks did not say you might be deceived or you could be deceived. He said, if you don't have the Holy Ghost, you will be deceived. Help the missionaries come to recognize the quiet, yet certain spiritual voice of the Holy Ghost. The Lord said, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart. Nephi taught the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. The Holy Ghost will show unto you all things what you should do. This precious gift, which comes as we are pure and believing, is vital to being a lifelong disciple of Jesus Christ. The scriptures speak of the confusion and commotion of our days. In President Dallin H. Oaks talk at BYU this past February, he warned many obstacles lie ahead. The distractions will be many. These noble missionaries serving with you will live their future experiencing the happiness and joys of life, along with the common issues of mortality, such as failing health, family disappointment, and financial concerns. They will also need to navigate a world that has largely dismissed the law of chastity, a world immersed in secularism that at times scoffs at the belief in a personal God, a world of smartphones and social media, and the unknowns of future technology, including AI companion bots. The scripture reads, it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that they must build their foundation. There is enormous joy in turning outward in the cause of bringing others to Christ. He promised, for whosoever will save his life shall lose it. But whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. Help those noble sons and daughters of God see that there is a great happiness in making covenants with God, following the teachings of Jesus Christ and feeling the spiritual changes coming into their lives. Their journey is leading them to become more like their beloved Savior.

Mormon Church Leaders' Criticism of AI

John Dehlin [01:11:37] All right, Meggan, what's your critique?

Meggan Hayes [01:11:39] I don't. AI companion bots. I have heard that from no one else except leaders of the church. And maybe that's because I'm steeped in Mormon news. I will acknowledge that. Why are they, why do they keep bringing that up? Is this something that missionaries are confessing to, to their mission presidents? It's just such a specific thing that I've heard so many times that I'm like, this has got to be a problem or they wouldn't keep talking about it.

Guest [01:12:07] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:12:09] So my, my take, and this will be a bit of a repeat of what I said before, was, first of all, it's clear that the Mormon apostles are insecure and the Pope, frankly, are insecure, that the role the bishops and young men's and young women's leaders and apostles and prophets, the role that they used to play in counseling and guiding members, is dwindling. And members are finding more value in the Council of AI than they are in church leaders. And to be honest with you, that makes me sad because I am not like starry eyed about all aspects of AI and I would much rather have real life people giving good counsel and advice to other real life people than having to rely on artificial intelligence. Especially when I find the leaders of so many of these big tech companies to be so deeply problematic. So I'm not starry eyed about all aspects of AI at all. Having said that, I think that Mormon church leaders have shot themselves in the foot. They've stabbed themselves in the eye. Instead of listening to critics, instead of getting wise, instead of being self critical and not just building a healthier church over time, but also developing deeper wisdom and advice and doctrine and theology and counsel for their memberships. They've chosen to silence and excommunicate and marginalize their most thoughtful critics and voices and focus where their heart truly appears to be, which is in protecting and growing their financial assets and in protecting child predators so the church's reputation can be preserved somehow. And so they've undermined their own moral authority and they have not developed enough wisdom or perspective to compete with AI as a, as a source of wisdom. Like who, if you had a kid who was struggling, would you send them to Meggan or Natasha Helfer or Britt Hartley or you know, you know, pick Noah Rachetta? Would you send it to, would you send your kid to one of those people? Or would you send one of those people to freaking Neil Anderson or or Dallin Oaks for wisdom? So I think they're just showing their hand that they're insecure, but I think it's their own fault that they're Losing the battle against AI. They just haven't stayed sharp because they swim in a monopoly of wealth and of power that's unchallenged. And so that echo chamber of wealth and power is just making them intellectually, psychologically lazy and weak.

Meggan Hayes [01:15:14] Yes, actually. And that's what really led me out of the church, was because I wanted to be a good parent. And so I started reading parenting books. And then I learned that I could gasp, say no sometimes. I didn't know that. Right. Because the church didn't give me the tools to actually be a good parent, to show up in my relationships in a healthy way. It didn't have any of that. It had all this surface level stuff that I kept reading and reading and reading and thinking, oh, this is going to be the thing that's going to help me in my marriage. This is going to help me navigate the teenage years with my kids. None of it did. I had to go outside of the church to find that. So I agree, I agree that they have based. They put all their eggs in this basket of this church doctrine and theology, and they haven't expanded it in a way that actually helps us navigate our lives with real tools in today's world.

John Dehlin [01:16:08] Yeah. Well said. Yeah, I, I just, I wish the church is so wealthy, so powerful. I was going to say, you know, with parenting, would you rather listen to Shefali Sabari or the Gottmans? Would you rather take parenting advice from them or marriage advice from them or. Or from Esther Perel or. Or from Garrett Gong and, And, And David Bednar?

Meggan Hayes [01:16:42] Like, I tried all that. David Bednar and Gong and Bednar was the president of BYU Idaho when I was there. So, like, I went to family home evenings with him. And my marriage was really hard. I had to look outside the church to improve that relationship.

John Dehlin [01:17:00] Yeah. My advice to Mormon prophets and apostles is get wiser, get better consultants, get better advice, go deeper, become more psychologically curious and curious and people will listen to you more, I promise. I mean, don't you think Mormons would die to take the advice on marriages or parenting if the prophets and apostles just had smart, interesting, useful things to say instead of read your scriptures and pray, pay your tithing and go to the temple.

Meggan Hayes [01:17:34] Right. Like, when I stopped attending the Mormon church, I went to a handful of churches for a very short period of time. And the first one I went to was this mega church. It was in Fairbanks, Alaska. So it really wasn't that big. But their sermon was so dynamic. They quoted Brennan Brown and, you know, I was sitting There thinking, this is amazing. How was I a member for 37 years and I never once got a sermon like this? It was great. It was great. It actually was mirroring the tools that I was already learning. And I thought, this is amazing. I stopped going because they were not LGBTQIA plus affirming, but their sermon was amazing.

Guest [01:18:09] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:11] Okay. Well, I, I can do without Neil Anderson with, with all due respect, but I'm glad we, we heard from him. What's. This is so Christopherson.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:23] Yeah. So there were no clips for Christofferson. These are tidbits from the church news article of what he said, if you want to read it.

John Dehlin [01:18:32] Can I just speculate?

Meggan Hayes [01:18:33] Yes, yes, speculate.

John Dehlin [01:18:35] Do you have a theory for why they didn't share clips with Christopherson

Meggan Hayes [01:18:41] because of the news with his brother. What, what are you.

John Dehlin [01:18:43] I mean, I, I, I. When I ask a question, I don't ever want you to think there's some right answer. You know what I mean? But, like, I think Christofferson's having a bad PR year.

Meggan Hayes [01:18:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:18:53] And, you know, we all know now that his, you know that, that his brother was a known child abuser and that Elder Christofferson probably had a hand in getting him rebaptized and getting his record expunged and then in having him get promoted to a bishopric that led to further child abuse, probably of other Mormon church members, but certainly others close to Wade Christofferson. And that, and that D. Todd had a hand in it. Certainly had to have had a hand in it. And now he's in the First Presidency. So I'm just speculating that they're basically saying, lay low for a year until this talk about your brother dies down. But I'm speculating.

Meggan Hayes [01:19:40] Right. But they are a PR machine, so I wouldn't be surprised 100%.

D. Todd Christofferson on Repentance For Pedoph

John Dehlin [01:19:45] Okay, so D. Todd in text, shares the following. Repentance is not only a doctrine, it is central to fulfilling our divine purpose. I think it's funny he's talking about repentance, because that's. What else can people who protect child abusers fall back on? It's Jesus and love and forgiveness and repentance. And honestly, I need to be fair. We all make mistakes. We're all sinners, or we all harm people with our decisions. And what I love about Jesus is this idea of, let's forgive each other. Let's try to repent and do better. And I love all that. But what's wrong with applying that to pedophiles? Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:20:35] Oh, man. There is a big difference between, forgiving someone and putting them in a position of power when they have sexually harmed

John Dehlin [01:20:44] a child because, you know, they very few of them can be cured. Right? Yeah. And so it's just. It's so dangerous to push this repentance forgiveness narrative when we're talking about child abusers. Anyway. Repentance is the pathway to perfecting our obedience and therefore the development of a Christlike character. Missionaries must themselves understand the doctrine and experience the joy of repentance to grasp their role as someone called to help others pursue a conversion from present existence to new life in Christ. Repentance is necessary because it is a matter of preserving justice and agency. Repentance is a prerequisite to grace and forgiveness. Some believe God will pardon all but the most serious sins. But the truth is the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance. I wish the church and D. Todd Christofferson could not look upon child abuse with the least degree of allowance. But I digress. Meggan, what's your response to Christofferson?

Meggan Hayes [01:21:49] Yes, I was thinking that too. The church doesn't follow those rules. And then the other thing he said right there at the end where he said something about the most grievous of sins. Let's see. But the truth is, the Lord some believe God will pardon all but the most serious sins. Isn't that what they say in the second anointing? Yeah, yeah. They're given a pass. So it was interesting to me that he said that. But yeah, his whole thing is about repentance. And then in the next slide, it's going to be. We're going to get back to Greg from Quick Media now and see what his thoughts were about what Christopherson said.

The Stake President Who Failed to Report Child Abuse

John Dehlin [01:22:25] Okay. Yeah. I just want to share that the last week, last Monday, we released one of the most important episodes we've ever released on Mormon stories that's tied to this subject. And it's basically a man who abused a married Mormon man who abused two teenage boys sexually. And then he went on to become a member of a stake presidency and then a bishop and prosecuted child abusers as a bishop, by the way, called the hotline on child abusers as an unrepentant child abusing Mormon bishop. And when this went, only when the stake president found out about it, you know, when the stake president find out about it, he did release him and excommunicate him. However, he didn't punish him or tell any of the ward or stake members what happened. And for two years, until the man was put in prison, and then the stake President sends an email to the stake, and all it said was, I hear there's rumors that someone in the stake has been imprisoned for abuse. But he never mentions the name of the abuser to the stake until he's. Until he's forced to. And the stake president ends up being arrested for violating the mandatory reporting laws. And then he's got. He's exonerated with church legal support and becomes what, Meggan? You know he gets promoted to an area authority?

Guest [01:24:18] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:24:18] Wow.

John Dehlin [01:24:19] You just can't make this up because he.

Meggan Hayes [01:24:22] He showed how loyal he is to the church. Wow.

John Dehlin [01:24:27] I mean, we don't know. We don't know for sure, but it is kind of weird. You know, I. I just can't. I can't believe that the church, of all the people the church could call as an area authority, and this is in Pennsylvania. They're going to call a stake president who had been arrested for failure to report child abuse. They're going to call him as an area 3070.

Meggan Hayes [01:24:50] It just seems irresponsible.

John Dehlin [01:24:53] Even if he. I don't know. I just. It's just the hubris. The church has so much wealth and power, it feels like it can do whatever it wants. So, anyway, please check out that episode if you haven't seen it. All right, so this is Greg from Quick.

Meggan Hayes [01:25:08] We're seeing Greg Matson's response, his response to Christofferson's comments.

Greg Matson on Repentance and the Church's

John Dehlin [01:25:14] All right, let's. Let's roll it.

Guest [01:25:16] We're going to move on to President Christofferson here. And he is my favorite speaker. So he's putting repentance front and center. And we have demonized this idea of repentance for so long. And it's. No, it's. It's improving.

Guest [01:25:29] Right?

Guest [01:25:29] Repentance is simply improving. We don't look at repentance and forgiveness just as a. Just as transactional. There is a spiritual economy, I believe, but it's a matter of purpose. And then I love what he says here. The call to repentance implies first that divine law exists. So we need to realize that there is law and we can align ourselves with it as God does, or we can rebel against it. And then he says this. The goal is not just to return to Heavenly Father. It is to return in a condition to dwell with him eternally. And that's not a mean God, a mean parent. That is not what that is at all. It is. Again, are you aligning yourself with truth and order?

John Dehlin [01:26:15] Meggan, tell us why you picked that and what you think about it.

Meggan Hayes [01:26:20] So Greg says we've demonized repentance. And I don't know who he's talking about when he says we, but is he maybe talking about the book the Miracle of Forgiveness? Because this random we out here is the leaders of the church who have very often presented repentance in a way. Well, I mean even if, if you're in the repentance process with your bishop and you can't take the sacrament, that's a public shaming. That's not just changing and getting better. It's a public shaming. So the we who is demonizing repentance is the leaders of the church. Maybe not every single one of them, but that, that's what was passed on to us. We didn't make that up. It was given to us that repentance is hard, it can involve public shaming and that we should feel really terrible.

John Dehlin [01:27:10] Well, also the sexual sin is next to murder in severity, right?

Meggan Hayes [01:27:16] Yeah. I mean, unless you talk to Jasmine.

John Dehlin [01:27:18] No, but I mean that's part of the PR remake. And this actually goes core to Mormon doctrine and Joseph Smith because there's a whole branch of evangelical Christianity that says works are dead, Jesus died for us, doesn't matter what we do, if we just accept Jesus's atonement for us, we're saved. And Joseph's like, no, no, you also have to do stuff in addition to repent. And so it's partly Jesus's sacrifice and then partly you following the steps of repentance. And so that, you know, that's an age old battle. And it's one of the reasons why Protestant Christians often haven't included Mormon as Christian because Mormons focus on works a little bit more than I think Protestant Christianity has felt comfortable doing. But, but yeah, you're so right to, to invoke here Meggan Spencer B. Kimmel's A Miracle, Forgiveness and the Church's long multi decade march of putting people through the the shame Parade of Mormon Repentance. Whether it's can't go to a temple to see your daughter's marriage, can't, or if you don't pay tithing or you can't pass the sacrament if you're a 12 year old boy, if you masturbate or you know, you, you can't take the sacrament if you're a 21 year old BYU girl who went too far with her boyfriend on Sunday night, like, or, or you have to delay your marriage a year if the bishop finds out that you, you know, you, you and your fiance slipped up a little bit, you have to send out new invitations or you can't go on your mission for a year or you get sent home from the MTC because as a missionary you didn't confess the time you touched a boob or something. Like the church has, you know, has used repentance and confession as a way to kind of coerce and almost torture its members for decades and threatens.

Meggan Hayes [01:29:29] Right, Yep.

John Dehlin [01:29:30] The chickens are coming home to roost. Greg Matson, I like what he's trying to do here, which is let's be more compassionate, let's be more loving. But you're right. Where's the atonement of the church leaders saying, hey, ultimately we created this culture. Bruce R. McConkey, Boyd K. Packer, Spencer W. Kimball, Joseph Fielding Smith, we all created this culture that we're now rejecting. Where's the accountability? Where's the forgiveness?

Meggan Hayes [01:29:59] No, it just is quietly disappear into this more happy, loving thing. I mean, we want it to become better. But part of repentance, which I feel like maybe Christofferson just talked about, is acknowledging you can't just pretend like it didn't happen. That's not repentance. But like you said, the church doesn't want to participate in real repentance.

John Dehlin [01:30:24] Yeah, yeah. So I think the church is moving in the right direction here. I wish they were doing it for sincere, good hearted reasons. I think they're doing it because they've been shamed by the Internet because of porn shoulders and because of masturbation tears and because of the shame garbage for so long and they've just seen so many people leave they're having to get nicer. But I'm glad they're moving in that direction. I just wish there was some accountability.

Meggan Hayes [01:30:58] Yes, same. Well, and we're gonna see how far they are or maybe are not moving in that direction when we continue on in this.

John Dehlin [01:31:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, well, here's all of our favorite apostle Bednar.

Apostle Nate Bednar on True Doctrine

Meggan Hayes [01:31:12] Oh boy.

John Dehlin [01:31:13] What do you want to say about him?

Meggan Hayes [01:31:14] So there was also not a clip of Bednar. I don't know if you want to speculate about that.

John Dehlin [01:31:19] No, I don't know.

Meggan Hayes [01:31:20] Yeah, but here you can read. But these are the, the little quotes that I got from the church news.

John Dehlin [01:31:27] Okay. What this is Bednar. What is true doctrine? True doctrine is enduring and does not change. I, I mean the list of true doctrine in Mormonism has gotten very tiny over the years. The ever shrinking Mormon doctrine such that the book called Mormon doctrine is out of print. You know. Secondly, what are the sources of true doctrine? The standard works of The Church repeated teachings of the prophets and apostles and authorized declarations and Proclamations of the First Presidency of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. We could pick holes in this all day long. 132 Doctrine. When the First Presidency repeatedly affirmed the priesthood ban against black people in the temple band, was that doctrine? Like, what he really means to say is whatever we're saying right now this year is doctrine is doctrine. That's really what he's saying. Do you agree or do you not agree, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:32:26] No, I agree. I don't. I think a year might even be a long time. It might just be what we're saying this month.

John Dehlin [01:32:31] Yeah. Yeah, this month. 3. How can we learn true doctrine? Revelation is conveyed through the Spirit. Holy Holy Ghost. That epistemology of just whatever you feel is true is so problematic. You and I, Meggan, feel very different things. They're going to call our feelings inspired by Satan, but so many believing faithful members feel different things. Feelings are just not good epistemology.

Meggan Hayes [01:32:59] Right. Feelings are not facts.

John Dehlin [01:33:01] Yeah. Or truth. Finally, how should we teach true doctrine? Proclaim true doctrine by the power of the Holy Ghost. What is that? Emotional charismatic talks. Trusting God in what we know and in what we don't know is a great protection against doubts based on mistaken ideas instead of on what God has chosen to reveal. All right, what's your thoughts, Meggan? I'm done with Bednar.

Meggan Hayes [01:33:23] Yeah. Well, let's. Let's hear what Greg had to say about him.

Greg Smith on Traditional Families and LGBT People

John Dehlin [01:33:27] Okay.

Guest [01:33:28] So he answers four questions about learning and teaching true doctrine. He says gospel teaching should be centered on Heavenly Father and his plan. It's important to bring this up because we don't always talk about the Father. We have moved in the last 30 years or more from talking about Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ to just talking about using the term God.

John Dehlin [01:33:52] Whoa. Okay. So Greg's saying that's a problem. I'm trying to figure out what he means by that.

Meggan Hayes [01:34:00] So I think it's part of this transition to we're mainstream Christians that the church is doing. Because when I was a member, I didn't use the term God, no Heavenly Father. And I said the Savior. I rarely even said Jesus. It was either the Savior or Jesus Christ.

Guest [01:34:19] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:34:20] And Greg is noticing this transition that they've made where now in. Not just in their speech, but in their. You know, the way the missionaries talk and the things that they're. The pamphlets and the emails and those things will say God, because that is a mainstream Christian word. And it has not always. I mean, at least in my experience, it was not a word that I used when I was an active, believing member.

John Dehlin [01:34:44] Yeah. But I just wonder how he's tying that somehow to, to doctrine. I mean, I guess, I think I understand. He's basically saying, I mean, I, I, to me, what Greg's all about is transgender stuff is bad. LGBT people are sinful. He loves them. I don't think he's a homophobe. I just think he's a traditional families guy all the way. He thinks that progressive liberalism, he calls it wokeness, you know, gender affirming stuff or LGBT affirming stuff, non traditional families, feminism. He thinks they're all harmful and dangerous. And I think along with that is he, he doesn't want to back away from. Heavenly Father is a married heterosexual couple. And we need to talk about traditional families, Mother, God and Father, God and exaltation, because that's what it's all about. It's about one man and one woman becoming God someday in exaltation, in a traditional heterosexual union.

Meggan Hayes [01:36:02] Right. Because God could be the term. God could be gender neutral. I mean, that's not the way people use it. But if you say Heavenly Father, that implies gender.

John Dehlin [01:36:12] Yeah. And he's a big believer in, in traditional gender roles, traditional marriage, traditional sexuality. And again, I'm not against traditional sexuality. I'm not against, you know, I understand why gender exists and I'm, and I understand why society benefits from there being clear roles, even organized around biological sex, which is kind of what, what gender is. It's social constructs that change over time, organized around biological sex to try to make society more efficient. And I'm not against traditional families, I'm not against, you know, society trying to figure out a sense of gender roles. I just also think there's always going to be sexual variance, sexuality variance. There's always going to be gender variance. There's always going to be untraditional families, always. And so you just have to order a society where it's, yes, and where, yes, traditional families and yes, other types of families, yes, traditional gender roles and yes, other types of gender roles. Yes, traditional sexuality and yes, other types of sexuality. It doesn't have to be either or, you know, scarcity model, zero sum game, sort of, you know, make, make minorities feel bad and wicked so that the majority can feel good and thrive. We can, I think we could do both. Is my, yeah. What do you think? What do you think?

Meggan Hayes [01:38:03] No, I, I, I agree. I think if, because when I got married, I, my only plan was to stay home because I didn't know anything Different. And then I ended up working a lot because we couldn't afford, you know, six kids in 10 years. And then I felt bad for working because I wasn't supposed to be, because I was supposed to be staying home. And if there had been more nuance months in my upbringing and what I thought was available to me, I could have thrived and done a lot better because I wouldn't have had shame around just trying to support my family.

John Dehlin [01:38:41] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:38:41] So if someone can stay home and they can be the, this, you know, 1950s traditional stay at home wife and mom and that's really what they want and they feel fulfilled, then. Yeah, I have no problem with that. I just don't want people to feel bad if that's something that they either don't want or can't have.

John Dehlin [01:39:00] Yeah, yeah. And I'll just add it's, it's, it's. You know, right now it's more conservative political groups that are advocating more traditional families kind of the, the tradwife phenomenon seems to be coalescing around more conservative politics in the United States. And again, I have no problem with tradwise. I have no problem with conservative politics. I think there's good reasons to be on all sides of the political spectrum per se. But, but if, if conservative religious groups, who tend to be conservative politically, want conservative traditional families, they're going to have to work to create an economy where families can afford to have one breadwinner and one one member of the marriage, stay home to raise all the oodles of kids. And so I just wonder whether the politics and the political policies are lining up to make it easier for traditional families to thrive.

Meggan Hayes [01:40:07] Yes. Yeah, I agree.

John Dehlin [01:40:09] I'm not seeing that right now. Conservative politics in the United States are making an economy easier for traditional families to survive economically. Are you?

Meggan Hayes [01:40:22] No, no, absolutely not. And that's why you see so few people who get married now and do like I did and have six kids. And we have been very frugal over the years and struggled. And I have always worked. A lot of times I worked from home, but there was no way to get married at 20 years old and have six kids in 10 years and have one breadwinner in the profession that my partner has.

John Dehlin [01:40:53] Yeah. All right, so we have another clip from Greg.

Another Quick Talk From Greg Bednar and Oaks

Meggan Hayes [01:40:57] Yes. So this one is a little bit longer, but hang in there because he's gonna expound on this heavenly father plan of salvation doctrine. And then we're gonna have two little clips, one from Bednar and one from Oaks, that just expound on what he's saying really quickly.

John Dehlin [01:41:12] I'm going to ask everyone to please share. Please subscribe to this channel. Please like this episode. Please comment and share. And if you want us to read your comment, please consider sharing it as a Super chat under YouTube because we want to see your comments and it's just hard to catch them all. Anyway, thanks for all the active discussion in the chats, in the live stream. Let's play the next clip.

The Plan of Salvation

Guest [01:41:38] It's the Father's plan. It's not Jesus's plan, right? It's not like the Father comes out and says, okay, well who's got a good idea of how to do this? What should we do? And Jesus comes up and says, hey, I've got a good idea. Let's do this. And. And Lucifer comes up and says, no, I don't like that at all. Let's do this instead. That's not the way it is. That's another doctrinal point that seems to get muddled up quite a bit.

Guest [01:42:01] I've often heard it expressed that in

John Dehlin [01:42:03] the Premortal council two plans were presented that Jesus presented a plan and Lucifer presented a plan. But I don't find that in these verses what we have is the Eternal Father presenting His plan. It is important to recognize that Lucifer did not present his plan. He rebelled against the Father's plan.

Guest [01:42:26] Through inspiration, we can understand this roadmap of eternity and use it to guide our path in mortality. The Gospel teaches us that we are the spirit children of heavenly parents. Before our mortal birth, we had a pre existent spiritual personality as the sons and daughters of the Eternal Father. We were placed here on earth to progress toward our destiny of eternal life. These truths give us a unique perspective and different values to guide our decisions from those who doubt the existence of God and believe that life is the result of random processes. Our understanding of life begins with a council in heaven. There, the spirit children of God were taught his eternal plan for their destiny. We had progressed as far as we could without a physical body and an experience in mortality. To realize a fullness of joy, we had to prove our willingness to keep the commandments of God in a circumstance where we had no memory of what preceded our mortal birth. To reclaim us from death and sin, our Heavenly Father's plan provided a Savior whose atonement would redeem all from death and pay the price necessary for all to be cleansed from sin on the conditions he prescribed. Satan had his own plan.

Guest 2 [01:43:51] Oops.

John Dehlin [01:43:53] Okay, okay. So I'm. I'm guessing Greg didn't play that clip from Elder Oaks.

Meggan Hayes [01:43:59] No, he did not. I just. It was interesting because I saw that Bednar clip and was listening to it recently, and then Greg reiterated what Bednar said, and I was like, I was taught that Satan had his own plan. I was always taught that.

John Dehlin [01:44:15] Wow, great find, Meggan. Can I just react to it as an old Mormon? You know, I've been Mormon for 56 years now.

Meggan Hayes [01:44:22] Yeah.

I Can't Help But Think That Satan Had A Plan For The

John Dehlin [01:44:24] So, first of all, this idea that Satan didn't have a plan is now causing me to have a crisis of faith in the My Turn on Earth musical that Carolyn Pearson wrote. Because I think that the My Turn on Earth musical popularized I think this idea that Satan had a plan. I have a plan. We will save every man. I'm sure younger people have no idea what I'm talking about, but Carolyn Pearson did a musical like Saturday's Warrior called My Turn on Earth. But the point I was going to make is what you just played, which is that, where did we all get that idea? Like, didn't the church teach that for what, 100, 200 years? Like, how long? We didn't just make that up. Like, we learned that from the church, didn't we? I feel. Am I being gaslit by Bednar here?

Meggan Hayes [01:45:11] Yes, absolutely. So when I was in seminary, we had to take turns giving the devotional at the beginning of class. I did release time seminary in Utah, and one of the kids decided to do this object lesson. He invited up two volunteers, and he had them each sit in a chair. And one of them was just sitting there. The other one, he put a blindfold on and he tied their hands to the chair. And then he gave the one who was just sitting there without any blindfold or anything a Twinkie and said, you're welcome to eat this. And then the other person, he told them to open their mouth and he shoved the Twinkie in it. And he said this one where the person got to choose how they. The Twinkie was Heavenly Father's plan. And this one where I shoved it in their face was Satan's plan.

John Dehlin [01:45:57] Yeah, exactly.

Meggan Hayes [01:45:58] Yeah, it was that over and over and over again. Heavenly Father's plan. Satan's plan.

John Dehlin [01:46:04] So this is like. This feels like. This actually feels like the. The Nelson Hinckley feud, where Nelson had this pet doctrine that actually contradicted the teachings of a. Of a current prophet that he's floating and someday when he becomes prophet, he's going to popularize it. And whether he gets smacked down now, like Nelson did when he tried to say, don't use the word Mormon, we'll see. But my understanding is Bednar is surprising in that he actually has a lot of contempt for a lot of the ways the church is run and teachings that are popular. And he's just biding his time to, I think to annihilate a bunch of doctrines that he doesn't feel are very scriptural. Because I'm sure he has scriptural support for his position. And I'm sure this idea of Satan having a plan is just someone's interpretation along the way of something they read in the scriptures or something Joseph Smith said. And so I'm sure Bednarge is biding his time to share with the church his new direction of killing a bunch of stupid policies and sharing a bunch of pet doctrines that he thinks are really crucial. That's what's going on here. But somebody needs to tell him that he's contradicting. There's just no accountability with these guys. They never, when they know that they're contradicting their past fellow colleagues, they never just own up to it, you know?

Meggan Hayes [01:47:42] No. Well, and his other pet is the moral agency. That's the one he's really driving. Because I, when I was a kid it was free agency. And then when I was a teenager, we weren't supposed to call it free because it wasn't free because Jesus paid for it. And now it's morally, you can see, it's like, make up your mind. Yeah, I mean I would get in trouble as a teen. My dad would call us out if we said free agency.

John Dehlin [01:48:06] Yeah, yeah.

Guest [01:48:07] And then.

John Dehlin [01:48:08] Yeah. There's so many little pet projects like that. Like there's no such thing as unconditional love. I remember. And that was a big deal where God and Jesus don't love you unconditionally.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:17] That's Nelson.

John Dehlin [01:48:18] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:48:18] I mean divine love, that's the name of that talk.

John Dehlin [01:48:22] These guys just are making. They're making up. They really are. You know what I mean?

Meggan Hayes [01:48:27] Right.

John Dehlin [01:48:27] Yeah, but, but good, good luck with that, Bednar. I mean, who. I mean, okay, so what does it mean that Satan didn't actually have a plan, but the God had a plan and then Satan rebelled against it? I don't know. It's like, did the hobbits use swords or did the hobbits use javelins? Like let's have a debate over myth and fiction and fairy tale. Like nobody knows what happened in the pre existence. So debating about whether Satan was there and had a plan, it's kind of silliness. Is there something deeper that he's. That Oak that Bednar's trying to do there. Besides silliness of like preexistence fables. Like what?

Dan McClellan: Satan Didn't Have a Plan

Meggan Hayes [01:49:13] Just I think maybe assert that Satan didn't have the, you know, he wasn't smart enough to have his own plan. All he did was rebel. Maybe. I don't know that that came out at the beginning of this year. And his. He was part of the come follow me for that week. That's where that video comes from. It's just, it's strange.

John Dehlin [01:49:34] Yeah, yeah. I mean the truth is thoughtful progressive Christians don't even believe there is a Satan, don't even really believe there's a Lucifer. Because it's so problematic, this idea that even Dan. Dan. I think Dan. What's his name, the Bible guy. Dan. Scholar Dan McClellan challenges this idea of a Satan or a Lucifer. And I think he says that in the Old Testament there isn't one. I think I saw that recently. But, but just the idea that God's all powerful but yet he allows this evil being to tempt a third of his children away and he can dwell in our hearts and do we have agency if we could be tempted? But then we have the teaching that we could ever be tempted above what we're able, which is kind of like blaming us for bad things that happen to us because we can't make God look bad, that it's unfair, that we're overcome by drug addiction or whatever. The thing is like the whole idea even Job where like God's sitting around and then is it Lucifer or Satan who shows up and says, hey, let's let me tempt Job and see if he'll, you know, see if he'll apostatize. Like, or Jesus is like, Jesus is fasting and all of a sudden Satan shows up and is tempting him. Like, if Jesus is all powerful, could he really be tempted by Satan? Would God give in the pre existence? Would God allow one of his children to counter his plan and to take a third of them away? Why would God just shut up? If God can excommunicate me or Natasha or Bill or Jeremy, why couldn't God have just shut Lucifer up in the pre existence even if he was just countering his claim so that less of his children, a third of his total spirit children wouldn't have been eternally tempted away? Like it's just such a problematic teaching to begin with.

Meggan Hayes [01:51:43] Yeah, it's so. It's because when I think about it, I'm like, okay, as a parent I have, I'm in heaven and we all know everything because I'm God and. But I have a child who's rebelling. That doesn't. I don't know, it doesn't make any sense to me. He. Because Satan knew everything, but he just wanted to be really bad. But that's such a human way to look at things. And if there is a God, that just doesn't make any sense. But yes, he's Bednar is splitting hairs and he was reading in the book of Abraham, I believe so.

John Dehlin [01:52:21] Which again, yeah, the final thing I'll say is, like, going back to the AI. Why are people turning to AI? Why are Mormons turning to AI? It's because our apostles are spending their valuable time advancing stupid mythological pet theories about whether Satan had a plan or Satan just rebelled on God's plan versus, like, coming up with actual wisdom. Teach us how to, like, minimize screen time and minimize the influence of social media in the world. Teach us how to have less depression and anxiety. Don't spend your time as an apostle advancing stupid pet theories from fake fraudulent scripture that we know. Joseph Smith falsely translated like, that's why people are turning to AI Mormon apostles.

Meggan Hayes [01:53:13] Yep. Yep. Amen.

Oaths of the Seminar

John Dehlin [01:53:19] All right, what's. What's the next clip? Is it. Is it anticipating Christ return?

Meggan Hayes [01:53:26] No, no, it's the one before.

John Dehlin [01:53:30] Okay, this one?

Meggan Hayes [01:53:32] Yeah. So this is actually Oaks, the one clip of Oaks that came out of this entire. Yeah. Seminar.

The Real Church of Jesus Christ

John Dehlin [01:53:40] Okay.

Guest [01:53:43] I will speak today about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth. The fashionable opinion of this age is that all churches are true. If that is so, then all religious messages that identify differences in religious doctrine like ours are unimportant. That conclusion can cause us and others a serious loss of religious freedom. So what does it mean that the restored church of Jesus Christ is the only true church? Three points. 1. We have the fullness of his doctrine, including the purpose of mortal life. This mortal life has a purpose. Our highest destiny is to become like our heavenly parents. Following the necessary experiences of mortal life, all sons and daughters of God will be resurrected and go to a kingdom of glory more wonderful than any mortal can comprehend. 2. Priesthood authority. When lost, priesthood authority had to be restored by resurrected beings who had held its immortality and who were sent to convert it. That happened as part of the restoration of the gospel. That priesthood authority, together with the keys necessary to direct its operations, are in this restored church and no other. 3. Testimony of Christ. Our testimony of Jesus Christ is based upon the revelations of God to his prophets. And to us individually, this makes it different, in greater or lesser measure from the teachings of many in various Christian denominations and other philosophies. He lives, and his gospel is true. He is the light and life of the world. He is the way to immortality and eternal life. The Holy Ghost has given us a witness of its truthfulness, and I rejoice that I can spend my life in proclaiming it, which I do, in the sacred name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Greg Matson: Every Other Church Is False and Dead

John Dehlin [01:56:32] All right, Meggan, let's go through that. So what's his first point? The fullness of the doctrine is around what? Becoming God someday. Did he just start with theosis and say we're the truest church because we believe that. That Mormons can become gods and goddesses? Was that the first point?

Meggan Hayes [01:56:53] Yes. We are the true church. Like capital. The capital church.

Guest [01:57:00] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:57:02] But, but, but he. To me, he's talking about exaltation there. And back to what Greg Matson really likes. He likes gender binaries and traditional families and traditional marriages because it's all about us being resurrected with our bodies and then using our corporal bodies as spiritual gods. And I hate to say it this way, but this is what I was taught to have endless celestial sex. Why else do you need your full anatomy if you're not going to use it? Why do I need a penis or a vagina in heaven if I'm not going to use it? Why? What? The value proposition of having a full body restored, it's to use the body parts. And you're going to do that because you're going to become a God, an exalted God someday or goddess, and populate worlds. That's what I think he's saying there. And I believe that's a big reason why they're always fighting gay marriage and fighting transgender stuff, partly because it's the only way that the plan of salvation anatomically works, but that also, I think they like as many babies in the church as possible because that helps with growth of the church. So that's number one. What would you say, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [01:58:21] Yeah, I just was surprised. I mean, not surprised. They have just spent so much time in the past year, two years, saying, we are mainstream Christian, we celebrate Holy Week now, and we love all churches, and there's truth everywhere. And jk, we are the only true church. Like, they just can't keep going down that road. They can't help themselves but say. And he said the only true and living. So the opposite of that would be untrue or false and dead. So what he said was every other Church is false and dead.

John Dehlin [01:59:02] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [01:59:03] Which is a big deal. If I was a member of another church, I would find that offensive a thousand percent.

John Dehlin [01:59:09] And this is like. This is one of the toughest implications of Mormon doctrine and theology that I realized as a teenager because I'm going to Katy High School in Katy, Texas, and all my other friends, the Holy Ghost tells them their churches are true and their baptisms are valid. And they're telling me my baptism isn't valid. And, you know, and I'm like, well, how do we know what's true? Who's right if we're all basing it on feelings anyway, we can't all be right. And so it's got to be that we're right and they're wrong. But then the numbers don't work. And the implications are that the majority of the world, the Christian world, their baptisms are illegitimate. That is the implication of Mormonism is that all Christian baptisms are illegitimate and don't count in heaven and that all Christian marriages and all marriages anywhere in the world don't count and are illegitimate and dissolve in heaven. And that all creeds are, in a sense, corrupt. All religious creeds that aren't Mormon creeds are corrupt. And that is just factually the implications of Joseph Smith's teachings around the one true church. It is insulting. But if you get out, if you say, hey, Mormons, tell the world that these are the implications of your beliefs, they'll go, oh, no, that's not. We love everyone, and everyone's got truth, but those are the implications. And it's just weird that it seems like Hinckley was getting us away from that. Remember when he was asked about that, and he's like, hey, bring all your goodness and see if we can add to it. Right. That's how Hinckley would frame it. But it seems like Oakes is retrenching and going back to the you're all false and we're all true and we're better Christians. That was his third point. It just seems like he's saying we do Christ better than all the other Christian churches. We know Christ better, we worship Christ better, and we believe in Christ better. It is insulting. So it's no wonder why other Christian churches hate us and don't respect us because we don't respect them.

Meggan Hayes [02:01:24] Exactly. Yes. There has been a lot that has happened in Mormonism over the past year, and ex Mormons and anti Mormons have gotten this backlash that it's our fault that bad things happen to the Mormon people and I think there is a combined, you know, everybody needs to take responsibility for what they've done. However, standing up and publicizing this to the world, that we're right and you're wrong, there are going to be things that happen because people will feel like they've been insulted. So I him standing up and saying that with he thinks he has God on his side, but it doesn't make it kind to other people who feel that what they're doing and their religion is what they need to be doing.

John Dehlin [02:02:13] Yeah, but there's a reason, there's a reason Joseph Smith said those things. It's because he was growing up in an era where there were a gazillion Protestant churches. No one knew what was true. No one knew who goes to heaven. No one knows who doesn't. No one knows which baptism, who has the authority. And so Joseph's like, this is confusing. Is it Presbyterians, is it Methodists, is it Lutherans, is it Catholics? He's like, there's got to be one true church and we can't be all true and there can't be God in all churches because there needs to be a franchise. So let me create the franchise and God's one true church. It makes sense. It's clean, right? It's clean that God would have one true church and one prophet on the earth and one theology and one doctrine. The problem is that it's just who is it really? Is it Mormons? Is it the church started by the guy who is a sexual predator that created, that couldn't, that couldn't create scripture without racist teachings of dark skinned curses? And that literally created fraudulent scripture that we now know was plagiarized. Like that's God's one true church. That's changed significantly over time. Like he talks about Mormon doctrine being eternal and this being the restored gospel. Really, it's like we're undoing more revelations in the modern times than we are actually generating revelations. How is this the fullness of the gospel? I thought it was an uncontinuing revelation. Like show me some new revelation again. AI is winning because Mormon prophets and revelators don't create new revelation anymore. Serious question. What was the last time the church issued new revelation?

Mormon Story: New Revelation

Meggan Hayes [02:04:10] I not, not in my life. I mean, can you count the proclamation on the family? That's a legal brief. They haven't. They haven't. They have not. They have not done what Joseph Smith did, promising it. They keep saying it. It's always in the future, but they're not doing it. They change policies and they lower mission ages. That's not revelation. And I've, I've said this, I think every time we've done this newscast together is the church, if you look at it like a corporation, everything they do makes sense. And if you look at it like a church, it doesn't really look like a church because they're not doing the things they're promising they're going to do. There's all this scripture that was in the hill that Joseph Smith saw that hasn't come forth yet, and Holland made some references that it might come out right before he died, and it hasn't. Every single person who's been a faithful member of the church and has heard that has gotten excited only to pass away before it ever comes out.

John Dehlin [02:05:11] Yeah. Yeah. Rolling back. Polygamy is not a revelation. Undoing polygamy is not a revelation. Canceling a racist priesthood in temple ban is not revelation. A legal brief declaring traditional families is not a revelation. We haven't really seen meaningful revelations since Joseph Smith. And our prophet seers and revelators don't prophesy, they don't see, they don't reveal. The fact that they didn't see the Internet and the fact that so many of us were trying to get them to get ahead of the faith crisis problem and the fact that they refused to pay attention to it until it became a tsunami is just one another example of them always being behind the times and not only not being prophets, but being the opposite of prophets of seeing everything late, making all the changes late and having to undo things like the November 2015 exclusion policy that was just an abomination that they had to undo four years later. Like they couldn't. The one revelation they tried to advance, they had to undo within four years. And it was. It was bigoted and, and uncruel.

Meggan Hayes [02:06:26] Right, right. It was. It was deadly. People died because of that.

John Dehlin [02:06:30] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:06:31] Saying that comes from God is just terrible. It's terrible.

Guest [02:06:35] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:06:35] Either God's a terrible parent or the church is not channeling God.

Guest [02:06:40] Yeah.

Utah: Adoption Tourism in Utah

Meggan Hayes [02:07:42] I actually did a report on that. It was probably a year ago before it came out in this documentary. There was a news story about it. And it's about vulnerable young women, mostly in the south, who are pregnant and want to place their child for adoption. And they are recruited to Utah, where they are then kept in certain apartment complexes until they have their baby so they can place them for adoption. And it's, they're talking about how it's exploitative, how these young girls are often not really told what's going to happen. It's, it's a big deal and it's happening in Utah. And then these babies get to go to wealthy families who can afford them.

John Dehlin [02:08:22] That's interesting. I'm glad they called our attention. Well, back to Greg Matson. Like, I can see why Greg Matson is celebrating Oakes retrenchment on the one true church thing, because that's what fundamental fundamentalism is. It's basically saying let's get back to the basics. And I know polygamists are associated with fundamentalism. I'm talking about lowercase fundamentalism and Mormonism, which is let's get back to the early church's teachings before they changed to accommodate society. And the good thing about the one true church thing is it makes us feel superior. It makes us feel like things are clear. It makes us feel like things are simple and we're the good ones and everything's true and follow the prophet. So I see why he likes that. I don't think in 2026 that duck that dog hunts, as they say in Texas, I don't think that sells well. I think it comes across as exclusionary, as judgmental. And I don't think younger generations are just buying this idea of like, it's a very corporate McDonald's franchise like idea that, oh, our baptism's true because we have authority. You know why? Like, God's not powerful enough to give Baptists and Lutherans and Presbyterians and Catholics authority. Literally, it's because Joseph Smith had Peter, James and John Lay their hands on his head. Does anybody know that even, even John Whitmer, one of the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon, doesn't believe Joseph Smith's account that Peter, James and John actually laid their hands on his head? Because Joseph never told anyone that until years later after it allegedly happened. Does everybody know there's no priesthood Melchizedek priesthood ordination date? Because likely Joseph made it up afterwards to justify authority. So to put our, our, to hang our hat on priesthood authority as what makes us true, makes God look really small and makes God sort of a favoritist small God and it's a sandy foundation because we don't even really know if Peter, James and John ever gave Joseph Smith any authority. Because even you can't say that you believe in the Book of Mormon because three witnesses testified to it and then discount John Whitmer, John Whitmer's testimony. Was it David Whitmer or John Whitmer? Which one? David Whitmer. You can't simultaneously say you believe in the Book of Mormon because three witnesses claimed it was two true. And then when one of those three witnesses says that whole Peter, James and John thing never happened and just like discount that and believe Joseph Smith's narrative. You gotta pick. And if Joseph, if Peter, James and John never actually did lay their hands on Joseph Smith's head, then there is no Melchizedek priesthood, which means our authority is suspect.

Greg Matson on Oakes Retrenchment

Meggan Hayes [02:11:32] Yeah, I learned that after I'd left the church. I had no idea. I was listening to an episode and I was like, hold on, I'm gonna have to rewind that. Did they just say that?

John Dehlin [02:11:43] That?

Meggan Hayes [02:11:43] Oh yeah. I was blown away.

John Dehlin [02:11:47] So check out the LDS discussion series. It's one of the best things we've ever done on Mormon stories and it explains why. I just, I just think Greg, unfortunately it makes him feel good. It's not going to help the church grow. So he's gonna, he's going to be an overconfident, self satisfied member of a continually dying church. Yeah, that's my opinion. And I think he's a good hearted guy and I see why he likes it. Yeah, it makes you feel like you're better than everybody else, which ultimately isn't Christian, you know?

Meggan Hayes [02:12:21] Yeah, it's not, but it is. It just presents a really clean, like organized, seemingly organized package of how to live your life. We're just going to present you with this one way and these very black and white yes or no doctrines and you don't have to think about anything else. You don't have to worry about anything else. So it can be a way, like, if you. I don't want to say lazy, but just, like, you're just handed everything. And so I. I understand why it's appealing. And if you have God on your side, then you also don't really have to be like, I have to defend this or I have to look at the other side and I have to do research and I have to make sure I'm right. It's like, God said it, so I'm good.

John Dehlin [02:13:11] Yeah. And the final thing I'll say is, like, Mormon church history is just too problematic for it to be God's one true church. If God commanded polygamy, polyandry, child brides, polygamy denials when we were practicing it, the Mountain Meadows Massacre cover up, or

Meggan Hayes [02:13:32] even the Martin Willie handcart company. Like, you couldn't have just told them, like, wait, just wait.

John Dehlin [02:13:37] Or the priesthood in temple ban on black people, like, fighting the era, all the LGBT suicides. If this is God's one and only true church, God sucks. So I just don't think our church has the history to support that. That claim.

President Oaks' Message on The End Times

Meggan Hayes [02:13:57] All right, okay, so we're gonna get to Greg's reaction, but I put this one in here real quick because this is another faithful LDS podcaster anticipating Christ return. 19.2k subscribers. Yeah, you can go to the next clip. And this is her reaction to Oak's words. It's a pretty quick little video.

John Dehlin [02:14:16] I love it.

Meggan Hayes [02:14:17] In preparation for this video, I kept getting this distinct impression that President Oaks is the perfect prophet for right now. We don't have time anymore to sugarcoat the gospel, the doctrine of Jesus Christ. We are running out of time. We are running out of time to not declare boldly and fully what we believe to be true and what we know to be true. This video from President Oaks is what I've been cravings. His bold, unapologetic truth.

John Dehlin [02:14:57] Oh, my gosh. All right, I want to hear your reactions, Meggan, then I've got mine.

"This is What I've Been Caving For..."

Meggan Hayes [02:15:02] Yeah. When she says, this is what I've been craving, I can understand that from a faithful perspective. Because like I've said, they've been. The church has been.

Guest 2 [02:15:11] We're.

Meggan Hayes [02:15:11] We're more mainstream Christian now. And you can wear a cross and you can have a tattoo maybe, and. But the folks who were raised the way I was, that doesn't. That wouldn't have made sense to me. I would have been like, no, there are rules. There are rules for a reason. I followed the rules. You better be following the rules. So for her to say she's craving this, it's like this return to the safety of there's one way and we all better be doing the same thing. I think it's felt a little bit maybe chaotic to people who've been following all the rules, and they're like, why are we not just declaring this and being this peculiar people? And for her to say that, you know, it's, we don't have time and we have to declare it. And I've been craving this. I understand. I probably likely would have said the same thing, you know, two years before I left the church.

John Dehlin [02:16:04] Yeah. Well, first of all, can someone tell this woman that, you know, we've been running out of time for 2,000 years, that, like, people thought Jesus was coming back in the lifetime of His 12 apostles? Like the 12 apostles in Jesus's day thought he was coming back in their lifetime. And ever since then, Catholics and evangelicals and everyone has thought that Jesus was coming back any minute. Joseph Smith predicted that Jesus would come back in his lifetime. You know, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists, like every Christian and their dog for the past 200,000, 2000 years has believed that Jesus was just right around the corner. And I was taught by my seminary president that Jesus would come in his lifetime, and guess what? He's dead. Like, since the founding of the Mormon Church, people have been given patriarchal blessings, telling them that they would live to see the second Coming, and they died. Like, can somebody give this woman the memo that we're not running out of time, that Jesus is not coming anytime soon, likely to save us? But, but, but more importantly, again, going back to Greg and Oaks and this fundamentalism, this is the tension, Meggan, that I, that I see. On the one hand, how do you keep your current members strong? You make them feel like Jesus is coming any minute? The stakes are really high. Satan's out to get us. Let's be more righteous and more faithful and go to the temple more. The more you demand of your members. And the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses teach us this. The more you demand of your members, the more commitment they have to your faith. And so there is a positive element for the Mormons who believe and really believe, this doubling down and retrenchment that Oaks is doing is going to help them stay strong. So the church is not. It is not good for the church's retention of its current devout members to become progressive or liberal if the church becomes gay Friendly and feminist and, you know, states that the scriptures are no longer historical and reduces tithing to 5%. Guess what happens, Meggan? Does the church become super strong and grow in leaps and bounds?

Meggan Hayes [02:18:56] No. No. It loses all of these members. It loses. Greg. It loses anticipating Christ's return. All of the ones who were grounded in the very binary doctrines of the church.

Guest [02:19:11] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:19:11] Loses every single one of them.

John Dehlin [02:19:13] The church is stuck between Iraq and a hard place. If it gets liberal and progressive, like we saw with the. With the loosening up of LGBT support, just a bunch of people like. Or when it overturned polygamy or when it, you know, the priesthood ban, would it really see Gospel topics essays? What do we see? A hemorrhaging of the membership. When the church doubles down and becomes more fundamentalist, it's going to slow the hemorrhaging, but it's going to increase the hemorrhaging with young people who don't buy the orthodoxy, they don't buy the bigotry, and it frankly makes missionary work harder. Really? Now that we know what Joseph Smith did, who's going to buy this one true church, only true church narrative. Less and less people, once they know who Joseph Smith really was, and once they know that the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham are almost certainly frauds. So the truth is, the church leaders have a hard job. Bless their hearts for going more neo fundamentalist. It probably is going to slow a little bit, the hemorrhaging, but I just. I think they're going to hemorrhage either way. It's just a matter of how fast. What do you think, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [02:20:30] No, I think the same thing, because I look at Greg and this gal, and they're so excited that Oaks has just laid down the law. But then there are those younger generations. You know, my kids, when we were still going to church, they didn't want to have anything to do with that kind of stuff because they had friends who weren't members. You know, we didn't live in Utah, and they had friends who were lgbtq. And they're like, it just. The world doesn't present that way to me, and I wasn't being a hardline parent enough to have them swimming in those waters. So, yeah, there's a. A big change that's going on, but it depends on what generation people are in for. A lot of it.

John Dehlin [02:21:16] Yeah. Yeah. I think the church is. I think they're doing the best they can to deal with modernity. They have an impossible job. And even though I am very critical of ways they Harm people. I'm actually very sympathetic for how hard their job is, because I don't know if they hired me, if even I have the solutions for stopping the hemorrhaging.

Meggan Hayes [02:21:44] Yeah, I don't know that I would.

John Dehlin [02:21:46] I think I could slow the hemorrhaging, but I don't think I could stop the hemorrhaging.

Meggan Hayes [02:21:51] Well, and it would have to be a little bit at a time, because if you do anything quick, then people just leave.

Guest [02:21:56] Yeah.

Greg's Reaction to Oaks' Statement

John Dehlin [02:22:00] Okay. Well, should we go to the next clip?

Meggan Hayes [02:22:02] Yeah. So the next one's going to be Greg's reaction to the Oaks. His. Yeah, a couple clips of his final words. I think there's more than one.

John Dehlin [02:22:10] Yep.

Meggan Hayes [02:22:11] Yeah, there are there.

Guest [02:22:12] Right.

Guest [02:22:12] So is the church true? Yes, the church is true. Oftentimes in the halls of the chapels or in class, at the fast and testimony meeting or a talk, we get this idea that we want to separate the eternal truths of the gospel from cultural issues and maybe bad decisions by leaders in the church. So, hey, the gospel's true, but that doesn't mean the church is true. And I think we need to be really careful about that, because it's not true. That is a cultural fallacy. The church is true, and it is the only true and living church on the earth. President Oaks lays it down here, clearly. And so it's very nice to hear this directly from them.

John Dehlin [02:22:58] All right.

Meggan Hayes [02:22:59] He said at the beginning, and then he says it again. I think he was relieved. I think he just loved it. Like, this is what he bases his channel on, and he's like, now I'm backed up, and I. It makes me nervous when people think that they have God on their side, because sometimes terrible things come out of that. I don't think Greg is. I mean, they're probably people who are hurt by what he says on his channel, especially if they're in. You know, if they're LGBTQIA plus. Because there is danger when someone thinks they have God on their side. I think it doesn't allow for curiosity and nuance.

Guest [02:23:47] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:23:48] Like, I. I think about all the time the. The pickle. Because I. I've talked to Greg. He. He has a soft place in his heart for LGBT people. He has people close to him that identify as lgbt. He wants what's best for them. He wants them to live happy, healthy lives.

Guest [02:24:08] For sure.

John Dehlin [02:24:09] He just loves the church, doesn't like the way society is moving. He doesn't feel like the church accommodating minority groups, feminism, you know, LGBT people, science. Progressivism is going to lead our society in a good direction. And I, I think I get where he's coming from because I, I think there are perils with all forms of progressivism. I think that feminism can, is I identify as a feminist and feminism can sometimes overreach or do harm or some types of feminism or some feminists. I think that racism, I'm anti racist. I think that we still have a big racism problem, and sometimes the way we deal with race or talk about race can not lead to the outcomes we want. And I am for traditional families. But just fact of life, being LGBT is often or almost always biological and not a choice. And I think we're finding that with, with much about gender as well. And so how do you deal with gay people as a Christian? How do you deal with transgender people? How do you deal with feminists and non traditional families as a Christian? And how do you deal with racism when your founding scriptures are all racist? Joseph Smith could not create scripture without having dark skin being a curse. He wrote dark skin is a curse into the Book of Mormon and Cain into the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price and the Book of Abraham. He wrote dark skinned curses into every scripture he produced. What do you do with all that? What do you do with that? And so there's got to be a better answer than bigotry or exclusion. Mm. And I think we just. My advice to Greg is don't go with exclusion.

Meggan Hayes [02:26:22] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:26:23] Don't go with, with bigotry or don't, don't go with just feeling comfortable cutting out groups of people, because that, that's not the way. It's not Christian. It's not the impulse of Christ. And every time you exclude a gay person, you're making friends and family of them want to leave the church as well. Clearly, a huge chunk of the hemorrhaging of Mormonism is LGBT people and their sympathetic friends and family over the years. And the single largest cause of disaffection over the past 20 years, in my opinion, is the 2015 November policy, and it's reversal. So whatever the answer is, it's not that garbage. It's not the exclusionary garbage. You've got to find a way to say traditional families and let's give LGBT people the happiest, healthiest families they can have. Traditional genders. Yes. And let's find a loving and supportive place for non traditional genders. Right. It's got to be. And like doctrine and theology. Yes. But also science and higher education. Not like it's a war between secularism and Joseph's pure doctrine and theology. Those are false dichotomies that are not going to lead us anywhere good. Greg Matson, in my opinion, him.

Meggan Hayes [02:28:06] Well, and now it's putting him into this spot because you say you've met him, he's a really nice guy. He's very kind. He really does want the best for people. And then he has this Mormon doctrine sending him down a path where he can't be accepting of those same people that he wants a really good life for. And that, like, that just breaks my heart because then the Mormon Church and that system has taken someone who would maybe otherwise be the biggest ally and has put them in a position where they don't feel like they can. And that's. That's hard. That's where the harm comes in, where otherwise good people would be doing better, more inclusive things if they didn't have that one true church, one true family, one true doctrine pushing them in a different direction.

Do LDS Church Leaders Know They're Deceived?

John Dehlin [02:29:02] Yeah, we have a super chat. I want to hear your answer to this. Meggan J. Moyle, 11, writes, My eight kids and I left the church. My ancestor, John Moyle, carved holiness to the Lord in the temple. The question is, Meggan, are LDS Church leaders knowledgeable about the deception, or do they honestly believe? And I would say that could be a false dichotomy, but I want to hear your answer first, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [02:29:32] So I know someone who is very close to Dallin Oaks, known them for a long time, and I was having a conversation with them recently, and I asked them that question. I said, does he believe? And they said, 100%. 100. He believes it. He loves it. He's a true believer. And I'm gonna take them at their word, because if I. If I look at what Oaks does, then that makes sense to me, that he's grown up in it and he believes it and he's all in.

John Dehlin [02:30:08] And I'll just add my. My brother, and I won't talk about his status with the church, but he's someone I trust and believe. He worked at the highest levels of the church as a managing director of the church's it for, like, 10 years. He's worked with the First Presidency of the Quorum of the Twelve intimately. And he believes they believe. And I trust my brother as well. Now, the one caveat I would say is they know that the church leaders historically have deceived the world and the membership. They know, they believe in this idea that lying or deceiving for God is sometimes justifiable to protect faith. And so they do know that they deceived the world in the membership over time in its dealings with history and theology and doctrine and stuff. And they also know that they. This is my belief. They know that they don't talk to God and Jesus in the ways that members think they talk to Jesus and God. And they allow this false perception to be had that they have more direct communication with God and Jesus because they want, like the wizard of Oz, they want the members thinking that they've got the bat phone to call God and Jesus whenever there's a problem. And they want members having that perception. So they say things like, I know Christ's face, or I know more now than if I died and saw God. You know, they'll, they'll speak in lawyerly code to give us the impression that their communications are more direct and clear than they know the direction and communication really is. And they know that there's all sorts of horrible, bad, corrupt stuff going on that they hide from us. But I do think they're sincere believers. That's my, that's my answer.

Meggan Hayes [02:32:11] Yep. Yeah, I agree.

Greg Matson on President Oaks' Statement on the Family

John Dehlin [02:32:14] All right, well, what's the next. What's the next clip, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [02:32:18] So the next couple of clips are just different parts of Greg's response to Oaks.

John Dehlin [02:32:23] Okay, let's go ahead and play the next clip.

Guest [02:32:28] Then he goes into the family. President Oak said that the church of Jesus Christ is properly known as a family centered church. Properly known. But what is not well understood is that our family centeredness is not just focused on our earthly relationships, but is a matter of a fundamental theology. To me, this is part of the doctrine of Christ. In many ways, it's the temple. It is a fundamental matter of theology for us. It goes on here. The article says, under God's plan, the mission of his restored church is to help all obtain exaltation in the celestial kingdom. That is the purpose of the church. That can only be accomplished through an eternal marriage between a man and a woman. Some people say, oh, well, we should never say this. Some would even say, oh, you're using this as a club President Oaks for traditional marriage. And not everybody fits into this definition. You're using this as a bully club, like the family proclamation. You cannot let first things be made as second things. As CS Lewis said, you can't do that. You always have to keep the ideal. And it's not a matter of trying to offend anyone or using it as a bully club. It is holding on to eternal truths, but you don't give up the ideal. And I just love that he is putting that out there.

John Dehlin [02:33:43] Meggan, your. Your reaction to that?

Meggan Hayes [02:33:46] He uses words like can't, always, eternal, very concrete words. And that's why I think he identifies so much with what Oakes is saying, because it doesn't leave room for anything else. It's just so binary. It's so sure. And I remember feeling that way, but I love now not knowing things. I love not knowing things and, and not being sure and being able to say, let's look into it, or. Or that doesn't even matter to me right now. And he just. There just isn't space. His space is so small.

John Dehlin [02:34:33] Yeah. To me, this reminds me of, like, Fowler stages of faith. Their stage three is like, you know everything, and you believe everything, literally. And then you have a crisis of faith, which is stage four. And then stage five is you reassemble everything in a more literal, mythical, non literal, mythical, metaphorical way in a more progressive way. Richard Rohr has a book called Following Upward where he talks about first half of life and second half of life. And first half of life is kind of Fowler stage three, and second half of life is more Fowler stage four or five. And all I can say is what. What Richard Rohr says is Mormons do first half of life, which is more fundamentalist, rigid, literalistic, better than anyone. And I think Greg. Greg Matson is. Is just a stage three, is just a mature stage three, first half of life Mormon. And that's great, like it. A lot of people, you and I included, Meggan, come out of stage three, Mormonism, first half of life, Mormonism. And we go on to become, I'd have to say for us, really good people, really sharp, committed, good peoples, smart, honor, you know, ethical, you know, to the best of our abilities. Like Mormonism, I believe, creates great people.

Meggan Hayes [02:35:57] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:35:57] But at some point, if people are thoughtful and empathetic. Stage three, religion, first half of life. Religion doesn't go deep enough, doesn't explain all the complexities and difficulties of life. And so praise be to Greg Matson and Elder Oaks if, you know, they want to reinforce stage three, first half of life Mormonism. The world needs that. Until they find something better, it's just never going to be adequate for people who have a more mature, advanced, nuanced, inclusive worldview.

Meggan Hayes [02:36:36] So for the past six months or so, I've been listening to the Words of the Prophets podcast, which is a faithful podcast, doesn't have a lot of followers, but there are three or four episodes in there where one of the hosts mentions that there is a couple in his stake, I believe, who took Fowler stages and just shortened them down to three and went around the stake preaching about Fowler's three stages of faith.

John Dehlin [02:37:02] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:37:02] And I was like, that is the most warm thing I have ever heard.

John Dehlin [02:37:05] Well, nobody talks about stage one or two because they're kind of infant, you know, adolescent kind of stuff. And then stage six is like being Gandhi or Jesus. There's really only three stages anyone ever talks about, really. So that makes sense actually to me.

Meggan Hayes [02:37:22] Yeah, but they don't like, they, they, they shortened it just to the part that we're talking about though, where they, where there's never a graduation, you get to three and that's where you stay.

John Dehlin [02:37:33] Oh, you stay in stage three. That's funny. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, people need stage three until they don't. Until stage three doesn't work for them anymore. So whatever. That makes the Mormon Church good for people who haven't developed empathy, haven't traveled much, don't know about science, don't really see and haven't really thought deeply about these things. And there's a lot of Mormons like that. And the church is going to be fine for them until it isn't. The only other thing I want to say is that again, what Greg Matson is really talking about here is Mormons teach that Mormons become exalted, become gods and goddesses, rule over their own worlds and have celestial sex. That's the teaching of theosis. That's what he means when he talks about temples and the endowment and exaltation. And weirdly, over the past two or three decades, the church has distanced itself from that teaching largely because of the God Makers movie. And so it's weird that the church has wanted to downplay that, even with Gordon B. Hinckley saying when asked about it, I don't know that we practice, I don't know that we teach it, I don't know that we emphasize it. Now it's got, I guess, theosis and the God Makers has a comeback and that's fine. But again, we're never going to make headway with the, with the evangelicals if we're emphasizing this, this polytheism where not just there's God and Jesus as gods, but we're all gods too, in embryo. We're never going to be able to make good headway with evangelicals and that's fine. It probably makes most sense for us to stick with our unique stuff because becoming a weak sauce non denominational Christian church will only accelerate our demise. So I think Greg's on the right side of Mormonism. I just don't think it's going to play well with the world.

Meggan Hayes [02:39:35] Yep. No, I agree. I think it's the idea of. I mean, I've had six kids. Okay. The idea of going into heaven, and that is what heaven is, is just having more children. Like, I don't. I don't want that. So I'm okay not being Mormon, I guess. I don't want to have to populate a world. No, thank you.

Alex Oakes on Women in the Book of Mormon

John Dehlin [02:39:59] Yeah. Yeah. That does not seem attractive. But it's just Mormons need certainty. And, yes, Joseph was a materialist, and he takes it all away. And Joseph likes sex, so he wanted sex in heaven. You know what I mean?

Meggan Hayes [02:40:14] Yeah. I don't think he really consulted all the women and their true feelings before he signed them up for. For an eternity of giving birth.

John Dehlin [02:40:24] I. I'm sure you've heard this before, and I don't mean to put you on the spot, but, like, pop quiz. How many women are mentioned in the Book of Mormon? Just roughly.

Meggan Hayes [02:40:37] Roughly. I mean, I know, Sarai.

John Dehlin [02:40:41] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:40:42] And then there's like, the women, the Lamanite women whose virtue was taken.

John Dehlin [02:40:47] So, I mean, named. I mean, actually named. How many named women in the Book of Mormon versus how many men? Six women are named in the Book of Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [02:40:57] I was gonna say three. So. And.

John Dehlin [02:41:00] And that counts Eve and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Right. Like, there's only, like, four women named Julia, said Abish. And one's. One's like, there's harlots, you know, Isabel. Harlot. Right. Sariah murmured. So, like, there's only one or two actually righteous women named in the Book of Mormon. How many men are named in the Book of Mormon?

Meggan Hayes [02:41:27] Oh, you got me. A lot.

John Dehlin [02:41:29] Over 200.

Meggan Hayes [02:41:30] There's even one named Moron. I mean, like.

John Dehlin [02:41:34] Like, Joseph told us what he thinks about women and women's voices from the very beginning in the Book of Mormon.

Meggan Hayes [02:41:43] Yep. When people tell you who they are, you should believe them.

John Dehlin [02:41:47] Joseph did not consult women when he came up with the plan of salvation because he thought very little of women, which is also indicated in DNC132, where women are literally given and taken like cattle by God, you know, in. In the law of polygamy. So, yeah, we. We know what Joseph thinks about women. Oh, man, are we going long? We're going long, but I love our content.

Meggan Hayes [02:42:20] There are a few more great clips. We can go there or not. It's just him finishing up about us.

Guest [02:42:24] It says that a knowledge of God's plan gives Latter Day Saints. A unique perspective on marriage and children. We look on the bearing and nurturing of children as part of God's plan. Multiply and replenish the earth. Right. And a sacred duty of those given the power to participate in it. The sacred duty. It's a commandment. Dealing truth. Thank you. Dealing truth. He says at a time of political, legal and social pressures for changes that would alter the definition of marriage, de. Emphasize its importance, confuse gender, or homogenize the differences between men and women. Hallelujah. Our eternal perspective sets us against such changes. I would love to hear these exact words of the entire church, but this is going to these mission leaders and they are laying down the doctrine and making sure that then these mission leaders can turn around and lay down this doctrine to these missionaries. You can teach it to the missionaries and build a foundation of doctrine with them instead of letting the world and our universities do it.

John Dehlin [02:43:30] Meggan.

Guest [02:43:31] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [02:43:32] He's just so thankful that he was just backed up by Oaks and everything that he said. He loves having that certainty. And I think needing to be that certain about things shows a fear of uncertainty and that it is an uncomfortable feeling. But the more that I sit in uncertainty, the more curious I can be and the more magical life has actually become. So I, I think there's, there are many things to be missed when certainty is the goal.

John Dehlin [02:44:14] Yeah. Well said. And I'll just say, like I wish, you know, Oakes has been so homophobic, proudly homophobic. He encouraged, he signed off on an IRB for electroshock therapy in the 70s for gay people. He's the architect of our anti same sex marriage policies for decades. He supported, you know, conversion therapy for gay people and mixed orientation marriages for gay people, which have been by and large a disaster. And celibacy for gay people. Like I, I don't, I don't know that Greg Matson really understands how cringy and psychologically disastrous and deadly Oaks has been over the past decades to be celebrating that he and Oakes are on the same side of an issue. You, you could argue that Oaks has been one of the most deadly apostles ever, along with Boyd K. Packer and maybe Spencer B. Kimball. So I, I love, I love Greg Matson and I just wish he didn't celebrate. I don't know that being on the same side of Oaks of history as Oakes, it deserves the celebration and the happy dance that he seems to think it does. Even if you don't. You know, I understand if people have concerns about gender or, you know, procedures with children or even Just societal order. Like, I understand matters of gender are polarizing, insensitive, and complicated. I do. But you just. You just have to realize that gender is fluid. Gender is not the same thing as sex. It's just not. The founders were wearing silk stockings and had long, curly, powdered hair, you know, just 300 years ago. Like, gender changes over time. It's a social construct, and there's nothing eternal about gender, not even in this life, let alone in the next. And so because these people are so vulnerable, I just. I have opinions about gender and societal order, but also have it with compassion and care for groups that are often very vulnerable to mental illness and. Or depression or anxiety. And I. You know, we shouldn't be doing happy dances when we're talking about discriminating against mar. And excluding marginalized groups, especially if we're Christians, if we're calling ourselves Christians. What. Did. Did I say any of that offensively? Do you. Would you change anything I said to be more affirming?

"I Don't Think Gender Is a Social Construct"

Meggan Hayes [02:47:22] I. I don't think so. I think that, yeah, you really shouldn't be having a party celebrating someone else's harm because it makes your life easier. And I. Hold on. Let me grab.

John Dehlin [02:47:42] That's so well said. I'm going to read a couple comments while you're grabbing it.

Naked Pastor Art: Gay and Transgender Sheep

Meggan Hayes [02:47:44] Okay. I have this. I don't know if anybody follows this guy called the Naked Pastor.

John Dehlin [02:47:50] Oh, yeah. I love that guy.

Meggan Hayes [02:47:51] He does this great art.

Guest 2 [02:47:53] It is.

John Dehlin [02:47:53] Tell us for people that are listening, describe what you're showing.

Meggan Hayes [02:47:58] Oh, okay. So his name's David. He goes as the Naked Pastor on social media, and he does this fantastic art that just shows Jesus being inclusive and allowing love to be love and.

Guest [02:48:12] What?

John Dehlin [02:48:12] What? Describe the actual photo of what? What?

Meggan Hayes [02:48:15] Oh, oh, oh, sorry. Yeah, it's. He. He has a lot of different art pieces that he does with Jesus and sheep. And in this one, there is a sheep that is rainbow and one that is transgender, and he's throwing them into the air and he's playing with them, and they're all there with him.

John Dehlin [02:48:29] So the white sheep is like the norma. Normative sheep. And then there's a rainbow sheep and a transgender sheep. And Jesus is loving them all.

Meggan Hayes [02:48:37] Yep.

John Dehlin [02:48:38] Isn't that. Doesn't that have to be what it means to be Christian?

Meggan Hayes [02:48:43] Yeah. And I. It's. It can become easy to marginalize people when they are a group that is somewhere else, that is in someone else's home, in someone else's family, but when you actually meet, know, and get to love somebody who is part of the marginalized group, it's a lot more difficult to shove them out. And I think even you talking about how you've talked to Greg and you appreciate that he's a kind person. If I just was sitting out and watching Greg, I could have a lot of poor feelings for Greg because of the stuff that he says. But when you move in closer and get to know somebody, then you can have a lot more compassion and empathy. And so excluding these people when they're all leaving the church, it's to going creating an easier way for people who are in the church who are not associating with this marginalized group to leave them marginalized because they're somewhere else. They're literally somewhere else. And so I just think pulling them in closer and getting to know people helps with that a lot. But it's difficult when you have a prophet who you think speaks to God stands up and says these things.

John Dehlin [02:50:08] Yeah. Really quickly. A couple comments. Sarah Boyden writes, watch Greg's episode on patriarchal, Patriarchal order. There shouldn't be women in the Book of Mormon. I guess she's saying that's Greg's position, that it's the stories of the men passed to the sun. So that's fascinating. I don't think I'll be watching that. Olga an writes, thank you both for this conversation. As a nevermo, I find Greg cringy. I can understand that point of view. Olga Anne, thanks for sharing. And then random 7113 writes, the church disavows these practices publicly, but privately they must still believe in it. I think they're talking about celestial polygamy and theosis specifically becoming gods. They won't apologize for any of it, which is telling. Thank you, John. All right, thank you, Random. And also, Christina Cruz gave us a super chat, so. All right, well, I love this conversation. I know we're going long. I know we've only covered one story, Meggan, but I love our chats. I just do.

"I Love Our Chat

Meggan Hayes [02:51:19] Yeah, it's. It's so good for me. I still get nervous before we start every time. And then as soon as we get talking, I really enjoy it. And watching the chat and seeing other people chime in. This is part of what community looks like for me and I really love it.

Guest [02:51:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:51:36] Yeah. Well, you, you do great work and I'm honored to be associated with you. All right, let's hurry and try and finish this.

Oakes on Theology

Guest [02:51:43] We have a unique and true testimony of Christ. This is the key to everything else. Our knowledge of the nature of God. He's talking about the Godhead and the relationship between the Father and the Son. It's what distinguishes us from the formal creeds of other Christian denominations. Of other Christian denominations. So you see how he's doing this. We are separating ourselves by doctrine while considering ourselves Christian. That is the way.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:12] This is the way.

John Dehlin [02:52:13] This is the way. This is the way.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:18] I forgot I put that in there.

John Dehlin [02:52:20] I love that. But then he's emphasizing that we're polytheists, that we believe that God has a God, Heavenly Father has a body, Jesus has a body, and that ultimately we all become exalted gods. And he's saying that's why we are the true church. And I just think the church is embarrassed by that teaching. They're not proud of it.

Meggan Hayes [02:52:41] Right. But it is the core. It's part of the core doctrine. Has that one changed? It has, because the first being that appeared to Joseph Smith was not Jesus and Heavenly Father in his original. So that is one of the doctrines that has changed.

John Dehlin [02:52:57] But also it just makes no sense that God has a spleen and a penis and a scrotum and a rectum and an appendix.

Meggan Hayes [02:53:09] Right. He's eating celestial food, and maybe he had to have his celestial appendix taken out at some point.

John Dehlin [02:53:14] Does he have celestial power taste buds? Does he have celestial excrement, like celestial semen? I don't mean to be gross, but, like, does he have a celestial digestion system? Or does he get celestially, like, in embalmed so that his circulatory system and digestive system don't function anymore?

Meggan Hayes [02:53:35] No, when you're in heaven, you eat celestial food and your body doesn't have to excrete any of it because it's. It's perfect. But I just made that up just now.

John Dehlin [02:53:44] No, just like John Larsen made this point, and we're having. I'm interviewing him today on Mormon stories like the. The. Joseph's teachings about exaltation make no sense. When you scratch them just a centimeter deep, it don't make any sense. Celestial babies for women make no sense. Like living eternity makes no sense. Like people living in the celestial kingdom and the terrestrial kingdom for eternity makes no sense. None of it makes any sense. But we don't think deeply about it. Greg is an intelligent person, but I don't think he's thought deeply about these things. And honestly, I don't think Oakes has either.

Meggan Hayes [02:54:31] No. Well, the night oaks is kind of running out of time, so I think we're going to keep getting the same things from Oaks.

John Dehlin [02:54:37] Yeah. So I just don't know, I just don't think this Theosis thing is the thing he thinks it is, you know?

Meggan Hayes [02:54:44] No, but it makes him feel safe in the world that he lives in.

John Dehlin [02:54:49] Yeah, but just try, try teaching that message to educated people in the world. Theosis, you know.

Meggan Hayes [02:54:57] No, when I have conversations with my never Mormon friends here in my neighborhood, their reactions are very valid, validating to me because they're like, wait, what? Yeah, say that one more time.

John Dehlin [02:55:07] Yeah, yeah. It just, it at some point. These teachings are ridiculous anyway. Greg's proud of them.

Make Church Interesting, Fun and Connective

Guest [02:55:14] All right.

John Dehlin [02:55:14] Hopefully. I think this is his last clip.

Meggan Hayes [02:55:16] Yep.

Guest [02:55:17] Our testimony of Jesus Christ is based on the revelations of God to his prophets and to us individually. This makes us different in greater or lesser measure from the teachings of many in various Christian denominations and in other philosophies. Just, just fantastic truth that, that he's laying out here. This is, I have got this marked and copied and it's, it's, it's. I wish I could have heard the entire thing.

Guest 2 [02:55:49] Yeah.

John Dehlin [02:55:50] Your thoughts, Your thoughts, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [02:55:53] He just, now he's got it bookmarked. So this is going earlier he said he didn't want to use it as a bludgeon and I don't know whether or not he's going to mean to, but that is what he's describing there. I've got it marked, I've got it bookmarked. So when people come at him with something, he's going to say. But Oakes said, and Oakes talks to God. So it just, it creates a space where he doesn't have to look outside of that and he's just got these words and he can just throw them out there and then he can move on.

John Dehlin [02:56:21] The last thing I want to say is actually complimenting Oaks and complimenting Greg Matson because there's something honest, there's, there's a degree of integrity and honesty with fundamentalism. It's basically saying our founding was divine and we should not cave on our founding to, at the whims and at the, at the changes of society. And so even if the truth is societally awkward, we're going to go with the truth and we're going to declare it boldly and not weaken it and change it caving under the pressures of social pressures and of society. And that's all Greg is doing. He's being honest, he's having integrity and he's saying, Joseph taught these things, the Scriptures say these things. This is our 200 year legacy and we shouldn't be changing it now. And it to me, that's an act of integrity. And even with Oaks, as little as I want to compliment him, he's basically just saying, joseph said it, we need to stick with it. And, you know, it's kind of like dying on that hill a little bit, but there's integrity in it. What do you think, Meggan? Is that a hot take?

Meggan Hayes [02:57:45] I think there is integrity. And I think that what good could be done if that integrity was put toward protecting and bolstering and loving the marginalized instead of continuing that marginalization? So, yes, I understand that they, in their hearts, likely believe that they're doing exactly what God wants them to do. And when they go to sleep at night, that's how they go to sleep at night.

John Dehlin [02:58:19] Yeah. Yeah. Well, and. And I. I'll just add this, like, yes to love and support and inclusion of marginalized groups, no to bigotry. But I'm going to add something. Make church interesting. Make church fun. Make church compelling in the lives of the members. Make church relevant. You've got assets of $300 billion. Make Church interesting. Compelling, fun, relevant. Like, I don't think you're gonna. I don't think the more progressive the church comes by default, the better, healthier, stronger it's gonna be. You've gotta make it be creative, be entrepreneurial in developing worship models and theological and doctrinal models and organizational models that people just love being a part of. You've got endless money and power. Make it interesting, fun and relevant.

Meggan Hayes [02:59:27] Right. We could have the most interesting church. It could. There could be, like, language immersion church, you know, congregations, and there could be. We could be the most beyond ADA accessible churches in the world. And yet.

John Dehlin [02:59:44] Yeah, but also just charismatic. Interesting, intellectual, stimulating, Entertaining.

Meggan Hayes [02:59:51] Right?

John Dehlin [02:59:52] Just entertaining.

Meggan Hayes [02:59:53] Yes.

John Dehlin [02:59:55] Make it uplifting.

Meggan Hayes [02:59:56] I know they, like, put a few new hymns in, but I. I think they've got a long way to go. Like I said, when I went to other churches, it was fun. People got up and moved around and the sermons sounded more like marriage counseling or something from Brene Brown than, you know, there was scripture involved. But that mix was really awesome. I felt like I learned something when I went there instead of just regurgitating the same things I'd been hearing for 37 years before.

John Dehlin [03:00:27] Yeah, it's tricky. Just make it. Make it interesting and relevant. Is my. Is my. All right, we've taken way too long. Let's get to the next story. This is something I think I sent you. What, this morning or last night? When did I send this to you?

Mormon Dentist Accused of Sex Abuse of a High School

Meggan Hayes [03:00:43] Yeah, last night.

John Dehlin [03:00:45] Go ahead and Tell us the second story about. Wait, wait, let me just get this right. Is there another instance of a. Of a church leader being involved in sexual abuse of a minor and. And. And grooming teenagers or children into sexual abuse, using spiritual, you know, authority.

Guest 2 [03:01:09] Is that.

John Dehlin [03:01:09] Is that what's happening here?

Meggan Hayes [03:01:10] Meggan, I don't know what his calling

John Dehlin [03:01:12] was, but the church in Utah county is.

Meggan Hayes [03:01:15] Yeah, it's definitely involved. His Mormonism is involved. You did skip a slide. Did you want to go on to that?

John Dehlin [03:01:21] Let's just move on, okay? If it's okay, I.

Meggan Hayes [03:01:24] It was the one you asked me to add in.

John Dehlin [03:01:26] I know, I know, I know, I know. Just for the sake of time, we'll cover.

Guest [03:01:28] Okay.

Meggan Hayes [03:01:29] Okay.

John Dehlin [03:01:29] That's okay. Sorry I made you do that.

Meggan Hayes [03:01:31] No, it's all right.

John Dehlin [03:01:32] I would eat my hat if this guy hasn't at least been an elders quorum president or a high priest group.

Meggan Hayes [03:01:37] Right.

John Dehlin [03:01:38] Group leader or a bishopric member or even a bishop. I don't. I'll wait for Floodlight to come out with it, but let's hear.

Meggan Hayes [03:01:45] Exactly. Yeah, I looked in with all my sources and we couldn't confirm what his calling was, however. Orem dentist accused of abusing high school intern. This is of him here, Robert Howell.

John Dehlin [03:01:58] And should we just say with the disclaimer that this. These are allegations. They haven't been proven yet, but we're just going with the news reporting.

Meggan Hayes [03:02:05] Yes. And this video is from his website. I did put a filter on part of it because there are people other than him in it and I didn't want anyone to be able to see them. So we can. Look how he introduces himself.

John Dehlin [03:02:16] All right. My name is Robert Bruce Howell.

Guest 2 [03:02:20] I'm a pediatric dentist and I've been practicing for 38 years.

John Dehlin [03:02:24] I completed my dental training in 1985 at University of Washington, and I went into the Army Dental Corps and served

Guest 2 [03:02:31] as a general dental officer. After that, I went to my pediatric dental residency at University of New Jersey in Newark, New Jersey, which is now known. Known as Rutgers University.

John Dehlin [03:02:43] Since then, I have become a senior master provider with fast braces and have

Guest 2 [03:02:49] been practicing for 10 years now as seen great success for the parents and patients.

John Dehlin [03:02:57] What vibes. What vibes do you get from him? What vibes does he give off, in your opinion?

Meggan Hayes [03:03:02] He gives off, you know, first counselor in the stake presidency vibes to me a little bit with the, you know, clean cut and soft voice. He's got a suit.

John Dehlin [03:03:13] Totally Mormon vibes for me as well.

Meggan Hayes [03:03:16] Yep. Yeah. And if you go to the next

John Dehlin [03:03:18] slide, it Will show him that he works with children.

Meggan Hayes [03:03:22] What's that?

John Dehlin [03:03:22] It's chilling to me that he works with. Knowing what we're about to cover, he's accused of. The fact that he works with children is just chilling to me.

Meggan Hayes [03:03:32] And that wasn't what he did right out the gate. That was something he went into later. So he got his dentistry licensure and started practicing and then decided, I want to work with kids.

John Dehlin [03:03:44] So tell us more. What's this next slide?

Meggan Hayes [03:03:47] So this is just from his LinkedIn profile saying that he graduated from BYU. I mean, that gives him the Mormon street cred. So I just wanted to throw that on there.

John Dehlin [03:03:56] And then dentistry at the University of Washington, a respectable school. And then some type of master's in oral infectious diseases and a military. A distinguished academic professional degree. All right, what are the claims?

Meggan Hayes [03:04:14] So this is actually previous to what just happened. This was from filed in March of 2022, and it was two counts of falsifying medical benefits. So there was some sort of fraud that he was accused of in his practice previous to the current charges that came up when I got his police report. So I just wanted to put that in there.

John Dehlin [03:04:37] So, I mean, the fact that Mormons do more. More fraud per capita and especially more affinity fraud per capita looks like there's some potential smoke there.

Meggan Hayes [03:04:50] Well, and I did an episode where I had, I think, 22 Mormon dentists and their various crimes, all the way from Medicaid fraud to sexual abuse to one who poisoned his wife. Mormon dentists. There's something going on there. So I do have an episode. I think it's called 22 Mormon Dentists.

John Dehlin [03:05:10] And there's probably a lot of great Mormon dentists. There's just a lot of Mormon dentists. Mormons gravitate towards dentistry and orthodontia. And I'm sure there's a lot of good ones. I have a really good orthodontist. Mormon, ex Mormon. His name is Jerry Johnson. He lives in Bremerton. And I. I have a invisalign thanks to Jerry Johnson. He's an amazing orthodontist. Anyway, he's one of the good ones. Keep going.

An Orthodontist's Invisalign

Meggan Hayes [03:05:35] Yeah. So then these are the more current charges. This comes from the affidavit of probable cause. It says, during the time the victim, a high school senior, worked at Orem Pediatric Dentistry, she was under the direct supervision of Dr. Robert Bruce Howell. Very shortly after beginning the internship program, Dr. Howell and the victim began exchanging text messages. These messages quickly turned personal, with Dr. Howe pursuing the victim, using religion as the basis of their conversations. Dr. Howell also provided religious and personal advice outside the scope of a professional and student contact.

Dr. Robert Bruce Howell Charged with Sexual Assault

John Dehlin [03:06:12] So he's like, first of all, I don't think as a married man, I would ever have a teenage high school girl under my supervision. I just. It just doesn't seem smart. But maybe. I don't know. What. What do you think? I. I'm not a woman, so tell me if that rubs you wrong. I just. I would be concerned about the optics of that and the power differential and just the possibility of, I don't know, false claims or. Or improprieties. Like, I just want to avoid the risk. That feels risky, but boy, too. Like, I don't know. What do you think?

Meggan Hayes [03:06:52] Well, I. So my partner in his job has brought interns actually from byu, Idaho, in years past, and they were, you know, young, not high school age, but college age and meant, you know, as an internship. He mentored them, he taught them a lot about the field. And I think it can be done very ethically. But he wouldn't, number one, be having conversations outside the scope of work in text messages, and number two, wouldn't be having private conversations with them that didn't pertain to work and weren't known. You know, so if there was a conversation that was going to happen, HR needed to know. And, you know, these weren't conversations that were happening in this sort of way. I think there's something. Yeah. To be said about mentorship, but not. Not what he was doing.

John Dehlin [03:07:47] Like. Yeah, like the. Let me rephrase that. I like the idea of mentorship, But. But highly structured and supervised.

Meggan Hayes [03:07:58] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:07:59] With the highest of ethical standards. Because private texts and private counseling for men with young boys or men with young girls is inappropriate either way. Right.

Meggan Hayes [03:08:13] Yeah. I mean, that's not his scope of influence. He's a dentist. He's not a counselor.

John Dehlin [03:08:20] Yeah. It's just. It's too risky for power differential, like abuse. And it could be. It could be. Man on boy. We obviously know that. That abusers can abuse the same gender or opposite gender. So I'm. Forgive me, as I'm thinking this through, but maybe this sort of. If there's going to be personal mentorship, it needs to be with consenting adults, not with. With children involved. I guess. I don't know. Even then, dual relationships are just generally a problem.

Meggan Hayes [03:08:52] Right. Like, I worked at a high school and there was. One of the boys at the high school was really good friends with one of my children, and he came up to me in the hallway once and Hugged me and it freaked me out because that is not, I, that is something I would never do, hug a student that wasn't my own child. And it caught me off guard and I talked to him and I said, you know, we can high five, we can maybe do a fist bump, but hugging in the hallway at school, I know you know me outside of this scenario, but it's just not appropriate, you know.

John Dehlin [03:09:23] And so this is a good comment correcting me. Lava Blue 80085 writes, Women often lose out on networking and job opportunities because men don't want to mentor them for different reasons. And I, I, I thought of that as I was saying it. So I, I think hopefully, yeah, coming, coming out with this highly structured part with, with very strong ethical boundaries is crucial. Not some freaking Mormon priesthood guy privately texting a 17 year old girl and, and adding it. Why this is a Mormon story using priesthood authority, scriptures and spiritual stuff as part of the grooming.

Meggan Hayes [03:10:08] Well, and we'll get to later, why there is a likely reason that this girl didn't possibly didn't even see a problem with, well, was happening until it was, you know, really happening.

Utah Pediatric Dentist Arrested for Sexual Assault

John Dehlin [03:10:20] All right, so let's go to the next one.

Meggan Hayes [03:10:21] Okay. Affidavit of probable cause says over the Next several months, Dr. Howell and the victim exchanged over a thousand text messages discussing personal and religious matters. This also included known phone calls where the two would read scriptures together. During this time, the victim indicated she was an athlete at the high school. The two discussed donations. Dr. How would provide oh to discuss donations. Dr. Howell would provide to assist costs involved. Dr. Howell purchased equipment for the victim and at the cost of hundreds of dollars. So he was reading scriptures with her and buying sports equipment for her.

John Dehlin [03:10:57] Which feels like grooming to me. Yes, generosity through grooming. All right, let's keep going.

Meggan Hayes [03:11:04] Prior to the athletic season starting, the victim was required to complete a Utah High School Activities association medical pre participation form. The victim discussed this with Dr. Howell who advised he would assist the victim. Dr. Howell completed the medical exam on March 31, 2024 at his dental office. The exam performed by Dr. Howell included a breast and vaginal exam.

John Dehlin [03:11:26] So just to restate this, he's got a teenage girl who he's mentoring around the the field of dentistry. He's counseling privately with her, giving her money, and then he determines that she needs a breast and a vaginal exam conducted by him, a dentist to help her out.

Meggan Hayes [03:11:49] Because you have a tooth guy. Yeah, yeah. I mean you do have to pay for physical exams. So it's Another part of the grooming process possibly is to get her comfortable with this fact that he's just helping her.

John Dehlin [03:12:04] And we did, we did an interview of a woman years ago now who talked about some Mormon doctor in Utah county who would take new about to be married Mormon women and provide really inappropriate breast and vaginal exams. That. And this doctor has since been charged with like, as I understand it, hundreds of counts of, of assaults because his medical procedures were actually just apparently allegedly sexual perversion. This, this feels of that sort of flavor.

Meggan Hayes [03:12:43] Yes. I'm trying to remember his name. I think it started with a. I can't remember it, but I know who you're talking about. Yeah. So it goes on. Detectives found 3,622 text messages between Dr. Howell and the victim. While a small percentage were related to work, a large number were personal. And investigators determined that some were highly manipulative toward the victim.

John Dehlin [03:13:09] Yeah. And so I, you know, I, Well, I'll just put out a call. Like I was thinking about this. Like, how would you, how would Floodlit find out what callings this dude has had? Right? Because I want to know, has he been a stake president? Has he been a bishop? Has he been a stake presidency? Has he been a high counselor? Has he been an elders quorum president? Is he inactive? And he's never been a Mormon. Is he an atheist? Is he an agnostic? If this is not a Mormon story, it doesn't belong on Mormon stories. It looks like it's a Mormon story, but how would we find that out, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [03:13:45] So the church did put out books for quite some time that published all the bishops and stake presidents, and Floodlight actually has gotten a hold of quite a few of those. So they can just go into their little book and look it up. If he was in any of those years that they have, the more recent ones, they I think would have to have a contact inside the church because they do keep track of all of that.

John Dehlin [03:14:05] Well, if anybody knows anything about the callings or the bio of Bruce Howell, pediatric dentist in Orem, Mormonish podcast is

Meggan Hayes [03:14:16] saying, I think I just found it out.

John Dehlin [03:14:18] Okay, if we love it when, when Rebecca wants to break news.

Meggan Hayes [03:14:22] Yes, please.

John Dehlin [03:14:24] So of course Rebecca and Mormonish would, would help, would help beat the pound the pavement to find the answers. But we'll be looking forward to that information. I just think the Mormon Church has a, a sex problem and an abuse problem and it's just not going away. So.

Meggan Hayes [03:14:44] No, no, because they're not taking steps to make it go away. They're Covering it up and allegedly. And using lawyers instead of, you know, they have a risk department instead of a pastoral care department.

John Dehlin [03:14:58] Yeah. All right, well, that. That leads us to the next story that was much shorter than the. Than the previous one with Oaks and Matson. What's the next story?

"Get to Know Your Bishop Night"

Meggan Hayes [03:15:08] So this, I think, is something that I tied to the story we just had. So on young women worldwide this past week, they had. This is an activity that they put out that leaders should do with girls. We say young women, but these are girls, teenagers ages 12 to 17. That's who we're talking about. And it's called get to know your bishop night. So I put cute or conditioning. And you can go to the next slide because then it'll show us what this activity would look like. Sometimes bishops can feel intimidating simply because you only see them in formal church settings. But the bishop is someone who was once a teenager, young adult, a young husband, and a disciple trying to follow Jesus Christ one day at a time. Turn your activity into a fun get to know unite with categories. Like. And then they have a bunch of categories. So, I mean, look at this picture of this young girl. She's in that room alone with the bishop. That's what this is trying to portray. What if her bishop is Robert Howell? What is this activity teaching her?

John Dehlin [03:16:10] Yeah, yeah. It's grooming. It's basically saying you can be alone with a man in a room and he can ask you all sorts of invasive questions. And because he has authority, you should consider him not just safe, but a voice of God, you know?

Meggan Hayes [03:16:29] Yeah. And. And he's just a. He's just a normal person trying his best. And don't be afraid. So the next couple slides just show you the different categories. We don't have to go through every single one of them, but you can just show them. So they want you to talk about the bishop as a little boy. They're. They're humanizing the bishop, which I think is great. If the bishop then was not allowed to take children behind closed doors alone and ask them really whatever he wants to ask them.

John Dehlin [03:16:55] Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, it's basically teaching the bishop how to build a relationship of trust and confidence. Is that right?

Meggan Hayes [03:17:06] Yes. Yeah. So they have. The bishop is a little boy, the bishop is a teen. And then here are all these questions you can do during the activity. The bishop as an adult, the bishop beyond Sunday.

John Dehlin [03:17:17] Yeah. What does he like to do for work? It's basically encouraging them to talk about things that aren't directly related to the church.

Guest [03:17:28] Right.

John Dehlin [03:17:28] It's kind of leading into friendship slash dual relationship stuff, which I think I'm. I'm worried about knowing what I know about Mormon bishops and teenagers.

Meggan Hayes [03:17:39] Yep. The bishop beyond Sunday, how does he balance his career, the bishop's family? Let's get to know his kids. Because if he has a good job and he has kids, you know, he's a great guy. You can trust him.

John Dehlin [03:17:51] Yeah. Favorite bishop's favorite food. Favorite scripture, Favorite hymn. Can he cook? Can he sing? Can he fix cars? Can he play pickleball? Yeah. This is interesting. I. I don't think Mormon bishops have earned the trust to have this level of familiarity with teenage girls and teenage boys.

Meggan Hayes [03:18:15] I mean, this is directed towards girls, but, you know, the boys could pick it up too. What the bishop wishes young women knew. What does he wish every young woman understood about repentance and talking with her bishop? And then it says add a dessert in a game to make the activity relaxed and welcoming. And then read, read. The goal, John.

John Dehlin [03:18:36] The goal isn't just to learn facts about your bishop. The goal is to help your young women feel safe, connected and comfortable seeking spiritual guidance from someone who truly loves them. Yeah, I. There's a Mormon Stories episode that I did recently, and I'm so bad with names, where I interviewed a woman who was groomed as a teenager by her bishop. He went to work for her and eventually he basically told her that she was a plural. A plural polygamous wife of his, I believe, and groomed her and had sexual experiences with her. And it was just deeply disturbing. And it's. This happens far too often. Is. Is Mormon bishops groom and abuse teenagers and children. It happens just all the time. So Sam Young was right. And of course he got excommunicated for being right. Children should never be be behind a closed door with a bishop.

Meggan Hayes [03:19:40] Nope, they just shouldn't. That's the next slide. Is all the bishops that are on floodlight right now.

LDS sex abuse cases covered

John Dehlin [03:19:46] Oh, okay, the next one.

Meggan Hayes [03:19:48] There you go. 138 LDS sex abuse cases found when you type in bishop.

John Dehlin [03:19:53] And that's just a small representation, right?

Meggan Hayes [03:19:56] Yep. But even that is 138 too many to be telling 12 and 13 year old girls you can trust this guy.

John Dehlin [03:20:05] Yeah. Yeah. And when you talk to members of other churches, they're like, your church does what your church allows. What? Like, it's just, it's just unbelievable that the church is, is doubling down on, on this practice. Let me get a couple super chats in. Starkiller 1423 writes, latter day Chad is getting xed for asking about sex abuse in the LDS Church and got trespassed too. You guys should have him on about that. My understanding is that story is really complicated, so I'm just going to leave that there. I don't know that we can have enough confidence in that. Starkiller also writes, you should talk about Gordon Bowen apostles paying millions and going to Disneyland with the guy that, that the exed that they exed for pedophilia. Again, I don't know enough about that story to say if it's true. And I. I hear it's very complicated. So I am getting a lot of people telling me to cover that story. I don't feel prepared to that I have enough evidence to cover it credibly. Well, you've dug into that stuff a little bit, right, Meggan?

Meggan Hayes [03:21:16] Yes, yes. And I feel the same way. I listened to Lynn Packer's video about it and I think if people want more information, they can go listen to Lynn Packer talk about Gordon Bowen. But yeah, it's hard to know in that one what the evidence is and what it's saying. And I have looked into it quite a bit because I do. I probably get two messages a day telling me, Gordon Bow and Gordon Bowen. It's complicated.

John Dehlin [03:21:37] And also that story of those Heber twins alleging parental sexual abuse ritualistically, almost like satanic ritual abuse. I'm sure people have told you about that, right?

Meggan Hayes [03:21:50] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:21:51] What have you. What have you. What have you determined as you've tried to study the facts?

Meggan Hayes [03:21:56] I haven't gotten into that one as much. I know where the story is out there and I know where it exists. And I'm like, I. It's just on my list of things to look at. But yeah, I don't. I try not to put stuff out there unless I can be relatively sure that there is at least a little bit of evidence. It's hard. It's hard because I don't want to be putting things out there that aren't true.

John Dehlin [03:22:18] You have. You and I talked behind the scenes about satanic ritual abuse allegations and that whole thing.

Meggan Hayes [03:22:22] Yeah. And I listened to the episode you did on it, obviously, a few years back.

John Dehlin [03:22:26] And we want to believe victims. We don't want to tell them they've not been abused. And, you know, false reports of abuse are rare, but they do exist. And there is such thing as a moral panic and unethical therapy practices. So we have to be careful on what we report.

Meggan Hayes [03:22:46] Yes.

John Dehlin [03:22:47] Yes. VQ2CS writes yes. In Judaism, God is a body. Please interview Francesca Straco Pulo author of God and Anatomy Ancient Belief Smith was onto something, but obsolete. That's interesting. Yeah, thank you for that comment. And then the final one is Rebecca Biblioteca writes he's listed under Bruce Howell instead of Robert B. Howell. So yeah, for those who are maybe going to give us tips on this, how dentist guy, what his church callings have been in the past, that's a little tip. All right.

Meggan Hayes [03:23:30] Yes, it's our Bruce Howell. He went the general authority route. When I do remember seeing that, I think on his website.

John Dehlin [03:23:38] All right, what's this next story?

Mormon Youth Describes Smoke from Iron Fire On Church Pioneer Trek

Meggan Hayes [03:23:39] So this one I threw in this morning, it came out in Utah where they sent these kids on trek while there were wildfires very close by. The title is it went over like a dome. Youth Describes Smoke from Iron Fire on Church Pioneer Trek.

John Dehlin [03:23:58] Okay,

Meggan Hayes [03:24:01] so the, the article says on Saturday the leaders did a gear check and K. Mangus, Sunset 13th Ward Bishop Provo, Utah Sunset Stake said there was ash raining down on us. The iron fire was just miles away, burning across the mountain. Knowing the danger they faced before canceling the trek, Mangus asked the ward to pray that they would have good conditions. He believes those prayers were answered.

John Dehlin [03:24:25] Okay, your reactions to that?

Meggan Hayes [03:24:28] I do not think I would have come to that same conclusion. I don't think I would take children out on trek in the middle of the desert while there was a wildfire going and hope that prayer was going to save us. I as a believing member probably would have done the same thing. But Utah, even the governor of Utah has been having them pray for rain for quite some time now and it has not materialized. So it feels dangerous and irresponsible to me.

John Dehlin [03:24:57] I mean, I understand why people have religious beliefs, but it just seems so dumb to believe in 2026 that prayers cure medical conditions or that prayers affect weather. Like, it just seems like, yes, have beliefs, but not silly ones. And by the way, it's not silly to believe in placebo effect. And so if you want to believe that prayers are good because the placebo aspect of them can contribute to someone's healing, that's fine because there's evidence behind it. The idea that we pray and God cures our loved ones of illnesses through magic juju dust. I don't think there's any real reason to believe that in 2026, and especially that God affects weather patterns or the Salt Lake, the Great Salt Lake would be overflowing with water right now instead of toxic dust. Right.

Meggan Hayes [03:26:01] Well, and then it, it brings up the question if If God does put his magic dust on someone and heals them, why not somebody else? How does he pick and choose?

John Dehlin [03:26:10] Exactly. Like, God doesn't love sub Saharan Africans.

Meggan Hayes [03:26:16] Right.

John Dehlin [03:26:16] They don't pray. Right. Again, why?

Meggan Hayes [03:26:19] They always have Ebola.

John Dehlin [03:26:20] Yeah. They're not praying to the right God. Like, it's weird that these beliefs persist in a modern age, but it's also.

Meggan Hayes [03:26:27] And what would that story have looked like had they gone on that trek and the fire had caught up with them?

John Dehlin [03:26:33] Or just they're breathing probably some pretty toxic fumes. Right. That's not the greatest air to breathe, but I can see Mormon leaders going, hey, our pioneer ancestors had it rough. Let's tough it out and breathe really bad smoke because that makes us more, you know, tough, you know.

Meggan Hayes [03:26:51] Yeah. If you read the accounts, we're going to experience what our ancestors experienced.

John Dehlin [03:26:55] Yeah. All right, let's go. Next slide.

The Fire at Camp Lehi

Meggan Hayes [03:26:57] The Bishop, along with parents were extremely nervous throughout the camp. They saw the fire approximately five to eight miles away from the site. We could see it the whole time we were there, but the cloud of smoke never reached us. It went over us, it shaded us. Mangus said. I told the youth it was like we were the ancient Israelites where we had a cloud of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night. They never had any issues and were never told they were needed to be evacuated. Every day the leaders were monitoring air quality conditions through the air quality control website. Mangus said it never got above the moderate yellow zone in the case of bad air quality or the fire getting closer. They did have an evacuation plan in place place. Missionaries serving in the area were reassuring them and they felt confident they could continue the trek. We had no issues with asthma or any issues with smoke inhalation. Mangus explained. We ate a lot of dust though, but that's typical.

John Dehlin [03:27:51] Okay, well, what are your reactions or thoughts there?

Meggan Hayes [03:27:54] Oh, comparing them to the Israelites, it's just makes. Makes it so noble to put kids lives in danger if you compare them to the Israelites. Oh. Trek track in and of itself, I think is somewhat problematic, but it showed in that for the very first picture of them with their bandanas over their faces. And I'm assuming that's to protect them from the air quality. When I lived in Fairbanks, in the summers we'd get really bad forest fires and there was one time I tried to go running when the air quality was moderate and it was not a good idea. Yeah, I don't think it's important because

John Dehlin [03:28:33] I, I like the idea of like Channeling our ancestors. I'm proud to be a pioneer ancestry and like ethical safe campouts where you kind of larp a little bit, you know, kind of Mormon pioneer LARPing. If it could be done healthily and ethically and safely, I don't mind that. I think it's cool and fun. I never, I had a great Mormon upbringing. For some reason, Trek wasn't part of my Mormon upbringing in, in Katy, Texas. Did you do, did you do Trek?

Meggan Hayes [03:29:03] I didn't. I went to light camp, but that was like a pre missionary thing just for girls that were 16 to 18. But yeah, I never did Trek.

John Dehlin [03:29:12] Huh.

Meggan Hayes [03:29:12] Somehow I missed out on that. It was, it was because they didn't do it. It was like every fourth year or something they did it and I just missed it because of my age.

John Dehlin [03:29:21] Well, I'm not opposed in principle to Trek, but it's one of those things just like I guess teenage apprenticeships. It's got to have really, really strict ethics and structure to not become dangerous.

Meggan Hayes [03:29:37] Yeah, yeah. Because people have died on Trek.

John Dehlin [03:29:40] Yeah, that's just wild. All right, we've got a story about art.

Man Accused of Stealing Paintings by Famous Utah Artists

Guest [03:29:46] Yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:29:46] Man accused of stealing paintings by famous Utah artists, replacing them with copies. So this, I believe this is a short video.

John Dehlin [03:29:56] Okay, let's play it.

Meggan Hayes [03:30:02] Micah Christensen, one of the owners at Anthony's, says there's a well known Utah artist they haven't seen as much of.

John Dehlin [03:30:07] Minerva Tiger may be one of the greatest artists we've ever produced in this area.

Meggan Hayes [03:30:12] Christensen says that's because many of her works are on display in public collections. So he was excited when this painting, a large scale portrait of Tykert's sister Sarah Kohlhepp came up for sale.

John Dehlin [03:30:23] So we thought, you know, we'll buy it.

Guest [03:30:25] We'll probably sit on it for a

John Dehlin [03:30:26] really long time and get somebody to donate it to a museum. That's what, that's the plan until we found out that the plan was otherwise.

Meggan Hayes [03:30:35] The plan changed after they got a couple a call from a detective with the Pleasant Grove Police Department.

John Dehlin [03:30:41] And he had told us that there was a belief that the painting had

Guest [03:30:46] been stolen from the family members that

Meggan Hayes [03:30:48] had it originally before it got to Anthony's. Charges filed by the Utah County Attorney's office allege Lauren Michael Bell told a close family member he was taking the painting to be cleaned along with another Tiger original roses instead. Documents allege he sold sold the paintings and made copies to put back on the wall in his family member's home. Court documents claim Bell sold the portrait for $110,000. And roses for 15,000 and admitted to using the proceeds to invest in his business. The Pleasant Grove Police Department told us Roses is still missing.

John Dehlin [03:31:22] Tell me quickly how this is a Mormon story. Meggan, just so I understand.

Meggan Hayes [03:31:26] Yeah. So, Minerva Tiger, maybe the next slide's gonna. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Pull it up.

Minerva Tiger

Guest [03:31:31] Oh, yeah.

Meggan Hayes [03:31:31] So this is Minerva Tyker. She is famous for the World Room mural in the Manti, Utah temple painted in 1947. Her 42 Book of Mormon paintings now at BYU and being the first woman commissioned to paint a mural for an LDS temple, the Manti Temple.

John Dehlin [03:31:46] Oh, okay, so she's done a lot of Mormon temple art.

Meggan Hayes [03:31:51] Yes, and there was a big to do in Manti when they were restoring the temple because they were going to get rid of her murals, and people put up a huge fight, so. So then they restored them instead.

John Dehlin [03:31:59] Okay, so that's. That's who she is.

Meggan Hayes [03:32:02] Yeah. So that was just a quick. Yeah. Thing on her paintings.

John Dehlin [03:32:05] And then this one's big. Give us the history really quick of Mormon temple name naming. Oh, I think most people still don't know how they used to give Mormons their new names in the temple. You want to give a little history?

How My Temple Name Was Given To Me

Meggan Hayes [03:32:20] Well, do you mean like back when the temple first started where they would just come up with something or, you

John Dehlin [03:32:26] know, 50 years, how they used to do it before the change.

Meggan Hayes [03:32:29] Okay, so if you go to the Temple Oracle, which is that website, it will show you they had.

John Dehlin [03:32:35] What's the website?

Meggan Hayes [03:32:37] I think I always just look up Temple Oracle, but I can.

John Dehlin [03:32:41] Mormon Temple Oracle.

Guest [03:32:45] Yeah.

John Dehlin [03:32:46] Okay. It's fuller consideration.

Meggan Hayes [03:32:48] There you go.

John Dehlin [03:32:49] Dot com, slash, temple name Oracle. Okay, keep going.

Meggan Hayes [03:32:54] Yeah. So the church had, on the specific day of the month, they would give out specific names. One male name, one female name. So let's say it's the fifth of the month, then it used to be, let's see, from June 11, 1983 to December 31, 1992, if you went through the temple on the 5th of the month, then female's name was Rebecca and the male name was Titus. And they've got these lists here, so you can go back and look. Well, this is the day of the month I went in this year.

Guest 2 [03:33:23] Weird.

John Dehlin [03:33:24] Okay, wait, I've never actually looked this up. So I did. I did my endowments. I'm going to test this, but never test it.

Guest [03:33:32] What?

Meggan Hayes [03:33:33] Test it, test it.

John Dehlin [03:33:34] So I went through in 1988,

Guest [03:33:41] And.

John Dehlin [03:33:42] Oh, the truth is, I don't know what day I have to look at my journal for. What day I went through the temple. But what I can say is that I likely went through the temple on the 26th, because I know what my temple name was. What you're saying is that. That if my. Let's just say, theoretically, my temple name was Isaiah, that would mean that I went through the temple on August 26th, because I'm. I'm pretty sure I went through the temple in August right before I entered the mtc, and that's when I was in Utah, right before I entered the mtc. So this would mean that through this, I could reverse engineer how my temple name, how and when my temple name was given to me. And for me, what's relevant about this is I used to think that, like, God gave me my name, my temple name, because of, like, he knew me, and maybe I had a big purpose and having this special temple name meant something personal and significant to me. But it turns out they just looked up on a little grid and gave it to me based on the. The day that I went through the temple. Is that right?

Meggan Hayes [03:34:54] Yeah. I didn't think it through because I thought the same thing. And I literally thought that every single person who went got a different name. I didn't think there were any two that were the same. I. I really didn't think that one through.

John Dehlin [03:35:06] But there aren't that many names. Right?

Meggan Hayes [03:35:09] I know, but my temple name is Rebecca, and I have a sister named Rebecca. So when I got my temple name, I thought it was a sign from God that she was supposed to be someone that I looked up to, which still, there are a lot of things about her I admire, but it gave her an elevated sense in my mind because my temple name was her name.

John Dehlin [03:35:28] Yeah. Well, by the way, this is the first time I've revealed my temple name on Mormon Stories podcast.

Meggan Hayes [03:35:32] I was wondering that. I don't think I've ever heard Tom say anything to that.

John Dehlin [03:35:37] I was subtle. I was subtle.

Meggan Hayes [03:35:39] Yeah. Neither confirm nor deny.

John Dehlin [03:35:42] So if anybody listen to this episode, you want to come up to me and shake my hand, you can use my temple name if you remember it, if you caught it. Okay. The first person that comes up to me shakes my hand and uses my temple name, I'm going to buy an ice cream. Okay, let's go with the story. Keep going, Meggan.

The Church's ecclesiastical endorsement process at BYU Idaho

Meggan Hayes [03:35:59] All right, so that changed because I. I'm sure there are a lot of reasons, but I've heard that there were people who would go out and in front of the temple on the, you know, 12th day of the month, and they would Say have a sign. Welcome so and so. Well, and use the temple names because they could go on this site and look up what they were going to be. So the church has now randomized it. Oh, so they have all of the names and these are the names they're using, the ones that are listed there. But they will not. It will go through a random thing and it will just pop up in the morning. These are the names we're using using today.

John Dehlin [03:36:34] Oh, and that way, does that make it more spiritual if it's ran? If a random number generator creates it

Meggan Hayes [03:36:42] versus they should just put it into to, you know, they should just create their own program. And then, you know, it should be like when they assign missionaries where they just put in the person's information and then it generates a name that is specific to them. That's what I think they should do.

John Dehlin [03:36:57] Basically the God of the random number generator, the God of the algorithm. Now, now it's a little more spiritual. All right, well that's fun. Thanks for updating everyone. I just shared a link to fullerconsideration.com temple name Oracle. If you want to go back and, and test your theories.

Meggan Hayes [03:37:21] Well, and if you've forgotten your name but you don't want to go back and ask the temple what it is now, you can just look it up

John Dehlin [03:37:26] if you know the, the yes year and the day, the date that you went through.

Meggan Hayes [03:37:32] Yep.

John Dehlin [03:37:33] What's happening at BYU Idaho?

Meggan Hayes [03:37:35] Honestly, not a lot. This changes to the ecclesiastical endorsement process. And I don't know if this is just at BYUi or if it's at all of the BYU's because I can only find information about it for BYU Idaho which. Yeah, so this is previously to go to BYU Idaho, you would need to get an ecclesiastical endorsement from your bishop and your stake president and then you're admitted to the school. And then after that you just have to get an interview with your bishop to continue that endorsement while you're in school. That was previous. So that's what this, this is showing as of March 9th of this year. That was the policy. And then if you go to the next slide, the new policy is that you have to get a bishop and a stake president to be admitted and then if you let your endorsement lapse, if it's due on July 1st and you don't get it till July 5th, now you have to get that two tiered endorsement again. But if you don't let it lapse, then you only have to go see your bishop. So it's a strange minutia I don't know if a lot of people were letting them lapse and they're. They want like a late fee type situation or if this is a consequence of more college age members losing their testimonies. And so they're letting them lapse and, and now they know if they let it lapse, they're going to have to not only go through their bishop, but also their stake president. It's just strange. And to me, it's strange that it's only at byu, Idaho.

John Dehlin [03:39:02] Huh. So is this basically wanting people to stay more in touch with their bishops and stake presidents? So it's trying to keep them on the hook, so to speak, more.

Meggan Hayes [03:39:13] Well, they had to previously. They had to get it every year and they had to go through both their bishops, just their bishop, as long as it was just a continuous continuing endorsement. Now they still only have to go through their bishop. Unless they do it late. Yeah, it's like a late fee. It's just weird, huh? And I don't know if they're doing it at BYU too, or not. It just, it came out in the scroll, the BYUI scroll that I get in my email, and I was like, weird, huh?

John Dehlin [03:39:41] Fascinating. Well, I love this final comment. I don't know what it means. They say, great show, Isaiah and Rebecca. Now what in the world are they talking about out there? Like, my name's John. What's your name?

Meggan Hayes [03:39:53] Just, it's Meggan.

John Dehlin [03:39:55] I don't know what, I don't know what they mean by that. But anyway. ED TAL564. Thanks. Anyway, I think you got the wrong names. Or did you?

Meggan Hayes [03:40:06] Yeah, we don't know.

John Dehlin [03:40:07] Did you?

Meggan Hayes [03:40:08] We don't know.

John Dehlin [03:40:09] You did a great job today. Thank you so much for putting this together. We just spent way too long on Oaks and Matson. But I, I had fun.

John Matson on Ex-Mormon Stories

Meggan Hayes [03:40:19] Yeah, I don't know that we did. I think we just spent the time that we spent and we were here and we were discussing and having a conversation with the people in the chat, and I think it was wonderful.

John Dehlin [03:40:31] Well, you're a treasure to Mormonism and ex Mormonism into the world, and you're a treasure to Mormon Stories podcast.

Meggan Hayes [03:40:39] Well, thank you. I was going to say, being in this space for as short a time as I have compared to John, I have seen, seen. I have seen how wonderful it is to be in this space and how it can also be, you know, difficult things can happen where I'm like, wow, I didn't see that coming. And I, without sounding like I'm just, I don't know, having some sort of worship or something. I just want to say thank you, John, for being in this space for as long as you have and opening it up so people like me felt safe to come into it as well. I think it's a really important thing that you've done, and I know there's a lawsuit and there's all of these things, and you just keep showing up, so.

John Dehlin [03:41:25] Oh, thank you. Thank you, Meggan. It is amazing that I don't have more brown hairs. Sometimes people accuse me of coloring my hair. I don't think there's anything wrong with coloring your hair, but I do. I. I don't color mine, but it is. I often say my superpower is not quitting, that. I've been doing this for 20 to 30 years, depending on how you count. And. And thank you for acknowledging that this is a brutal space. It really is. It is a brutal space. It's not. It can be harmful on marriages. It can be harm on mental health. It can be hard on parenting. It can be hard on the pocketbook. It's just hard on so many levels. So I'm. I think it's a miracle that you've lasted as long as you have. Seriously, because how many. How long have you been going?

Meggan Hayes [03:42:15] I started in 20. Late 20. 23.

John Dehlin [03:42:19] So, you know how few people last three years doing the substantive, consistent, meaningful work. It's. It's incredibly rare. So you're incredibly rare.

Meggan Hayes [03:42:32] Well, thank you.

Guest [03:42:33] Thank you.

John Dehlin [03:42:34] And you do great work.

Meggan Hayes [03:42:36] Thank you.

Mormon Stories: Generally Unquotable

John Dehlin [03:42:37] All right, so check out Generally unquotable on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc, Patreon. Is that right?

Meggan Hayes [03:42:46] Yes. Yep.

John Dehlin [03:42:47] Donate and support her. And while you're at it, subscribe, like and donate to Mormon Stories podcast. If you like these series, Please donate@mormonstories.org donate and we'll keep having Meggan on for as long as y' all like it. And Meggan, maybe we'll do an episode next week if the stories demand it. So far, the stories demand it, and we'll see if next week they demand it as well. Do you have a prediction?

Meggan Hayes [03:43:15] I think the church is going to keep doing things that we just have to talk about. They have not failed me yet.

John Dehlin [03:43:22] Well, if that's true, then we'll see you all again next week for another episode of the Mormon News podcast. Thanks, Meggan.

Meggan Hayes [03:43:29] Thanks, John. Thanks, everybody.

John Dehlin [03:43:31] Thanks to Julia and Brooklyn for all you do behind the scenes in post production. Thanks to the Open Stories board. Thanks to all the live chat commenters today in the live stream. Thanks to all. All of you who comment like and subscribe. Please subscribe. Please apply to be a guest on Mormon stories@mormonstories.org apply. Please donate at mormonstories. Org Donate. Please support our legal fund @mormstories.org legal. Most importantly, please be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories and the Mormon News podcast. Take care, everybody.