John Dehlin and Faith Reconstruction

Here’s my summary of Part 1. If I’ve misquoted, please let me know. It’s not my intention, I’ve not proof read it or listened a second time.

John says that he starts his faith crisis as a seminary teacher when reading books like Fawn Brodie, Michael Quinn (both of whom have left the church after writing their books). His wife is an interesting example of a wife of a member in crisis. She chose to prioritise the family over church activity and in 2006 they all went into inactivity (before establishing staylds and interviewing Richard Bushmann).

He compares his faith trial to being like Frodo carrying the ring… but is aware that he sometimes did it in a superior, prideful way. He mentions that by the time he did his second interview of Palmer he was just angry and looking for faults. He felt that he had plugs in his ears to the warnings from some people and was motivated by people in need.

He mentions the Richard Bushman interview being a turning point. Bushman was in the process of writing Rough Stone Rolling and after a few hours of interview stopped the interviews because Dehlin was focusing too much on the negative questions (and perhaps because Bushman was busy trying to finish his book). Dehlin says he was in a hostile place and his faith unravelling to the point of not being certain there is a God or an absolute standard for morality, an afterlife etc. He questioned many decisions that were based on faithful motives.

By 2009/2010 he says his belief had unravelled and he had decided to leave the church. After staylds started and getting the family out, he went inactive again. He says a 3rd quorum of the seventy, from Western Europe, who had recently been released reached out to him. The seventy said that he was having doubts and that there were a lot of members in his country having a faith crisis and wanted his help. Apparently a senior GA came out to help but seemed to offend more than were helped. Dehlin realised this was a bigger problem.

At 00:35 he talks about how in 2010/2011 they decided to run a survey of dissaffected members and says the European former GA said he wanted to meet Dehlin in New York and do an interview, invite a senior GA to the meeting and have all these issues laid on the table.

He then backtracks for context to 2009-ish and mentions that his brother had previously offered him the chance to meet an apostle. He was unsure he wanted to meet ‘the wizard’ and ‘look behind the curtain.’ He was agonising over asking the Apostles the really tough questions and have an awkward situation of not getting satisfactory answers. He met the apostle for an hour and a half. The apostle aknowledged the problems in Chile of ‘invalid’ baptisms and how hard they were working to strike a balance between letting people run their own programs and keeping things in reign. He also discussed the issue same sex attraction. He said the brethren wanted to step away from judging why and how people have their SSA. He also talked about the need for love and support, but also to stick to questions of theology or doctrine and not sources.

Dehlin in the interview with the GA listed all the problems that people have with the church (evidences against, foundational issues etc) and he asked whether the apostle wanted those sorts of people with doubts to still be in the church and to ‘stay.’ The apostles reply was, “if the church is a tent, I don’t care if you’re in the furthest corner of the tent or if your backside is already outside of this church. We want you in this church. If you’re on the edge and you can’t live it fully we still want you to stay.” He told Dehlin ‘don’t go out and buy a printing press’ to publicise your problems to the world. Not deceitfully, but be sensitive and respectful. He finished by saying to Dehlin (with another tent metaphor) that if his family were in a tent that if they could at the very least have the doors pointed towards the church and to leave the tent flaps open. He said they were aware of the issues and ‘we want you.’

Dehlin says that in addition to charisma, whit, charm, intelligent… he also felt the apostle’s love and spiritual nature and Dehlin left feeling ‘on board.’ He said that later the apostle gave a conference talk addressing the things that cause people to leave and was pounding the pulpit, which Dehlin found devastating. Although he’s being tactful to not name the apostle, I’m guessing he’s talking about Elder Holland and his address here: http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2009/10/safety-for-the-soul?lang=eng&media=video – Dehlin felt that the talk gave a different impression to what he gave at the lunch. He gave a literalistic viewpoint of the church that was different to the meeting.

There was a second meeting after the apostle asked Joel’s brother how ‘big Johnny’ was doing. He asked about the rhetoric the church uses and the risk of using language that can offend those who struggle. He asked about what to do with families who are divided by one spouse losing their faith. The apostle said that an apostle can’t tell someone what to do because as soon as an apostle makes a blanket declaration then there will be people who follow blindly, which is why it’s avoided. He also told him that he approved of what he was doing and felt it was a positive move. All of this still sounds like Elder Holland who has given the PBS interview where he say there is the option for a ‘middle way’ and welcomes people with a different faith perspective. E.g.: “I think you’d be as aware as I am that that we have many people who are members of the church who do not have some burning conviction as to its origins, who have some other feeling about it that is not as committed to foundational statements and the premises of Mormonism. But we’re not going to invite somebody out of the church over that any more than we would anything else about degrees of belief or steps of hope or steps of conviction…” http://www.pbs.org/mormons/interviews/holland.html

Anyway… back to the interview, John get’s back to the plan to do the interview with the european 3rd quorum Seventy and run the research project into why disaffected people leave. The meeting between the 3rd quorum Seventy and the GA happened, but Dehlin was ‘dis-invited’ from the meeting over the Seventy’s doubts and concerns. Dehlin felt he was excluded because he wasn’t trusted and too close to the loyalties of the people who were struggling.

The feedback from the meeting was that the GA was shocked at the ‘level’ people who were leaving the church.* The people who were dissaffected were highly educated and highly involved in the church. The profile of those leaving was apparently a shock to the GA. He felt that ‘the best and brightest’ were leaving the church. The GA asked for the results to not be presented or sent to the press and wanted to present the data to the other apostles. They sat on the results for a while and Dehlin says he got increasingly angry that they were apparently sitting on this information and he felt they weren’t listening so wanted to make a big splash, got impatient and got very prideful (this is around 2011). He said he was sick of waiting and said he was going public with the data. The GA who had been in the meeting then offered to meet for lunch. Dehlin said it was amazing because the GA just sat and asked questions for 2 hours about Mormon Stories and who it reached. He offered 3 messages for the brethren. Dehlin was amazed by his love and sincere care. The data was then presented to the Brethren and Dehlin released the data to the press. I’m not sure who the GA is in this part of the story. I’d speculate that it was Marlin K. Jensen. Given his role as church historian/recorder, he’d have an interest in the impact of church history on people’s membership and has expressed concerns about this elsewhere. He also seems like one of the most compassionate men in the GA group. This was all in late 2011 and early 2012. Dehlin then presented the data at UVU: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gVUuWd2gP0

Part 1 ends with him saying… “That’s when the whole thing happened with Daniel Peterson.”

Part 2:

The first 15-20 minutes of part 2 starts with Dehlin discussing his ‘moment’ with the old guard at Neil A Maxwell Institute (or FARMS as I still like to call it). So the story went like this (if my memories works)… John Dehlin had not long been working on the research project and continuing his podcasts when one Sunday he was approached by a friend who works at NAMI who warned him that Dan Peterson had prepared a 100-page attack on him and Mormon Stories which was due to be published in the next journal. His friend called it a ‘hit piece.’

Dehlin took exception to what he expected to be an ad hominem attack and emailed Peterson directly, copying in the General Authority who he’d previously met with. Dehlin says that his concern was that if the BYU, church sponsored organisation printed such an aggressive attack it would lead to many people with doubts feeling like the church was after them. He also said that if anything libellous had been printed he would have been willing to take legal action but wasn’t going to block publication through the courts.

Dehlin also says that at the UVU conference where he presented his research findings that Louis Midgley also confronted him about the whole Mormon Stories approach and was very critical. There was also an odd story about Midgley wanting to link Dehlin to the death of a missionary and also trying to link him to a conspiracy with Grant Palmer in the 90s when he was at BYU. Dehlin felt concerned that the church’s name would be on a bunch of lies about him.

Dehlin then called the General Authority that had been supporting the research and told him about Peterson’s plan to publish the article and said he felt this was unfair when he had only been trying to help the church.

The GA promised to take care of it. It’s rumoured an Apostle got involved. Peterson and Midgley were told they couldn’t publish the article and were later fired from NAMI. (They now have started their independent website: http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/).

At about 00:12 it moves on to the next topic of John’s spiritual ‘sickness.’ He was angry and ready to take on anyone who opposed him. He discusses spiritual experience during that time. He had stopped attending church, paying tithing, reading scriptures, praying, going to the temple. He was even questioning basic morality and whether he wanted to stay with his family. He was spiritually neglectful, and emotionally disconnected from everyone. He went through phases. Initially when they went inactive they tried to keep the best of mormonism. He had FHE, paid tithing to charities, singing hymns/having spiritual thoughts.

His conclusion, when you haven’t done the ‘soul work’ for yourself you struggle to maintain that for your family.

He says that the conferences were a response to knowing that people struggle when they have doubts or leave to replace with anything. He says that it wasn’t his fault that there are historical problems, it wasn’t his intention to lead people astray, but he’s aware that people still struggle with it. He didn’t want people to throw morality away. He recognised that once his faith in Mormonism had been damaged that he started questioning his morality. What was sex with other people, in other ways like? Better, was he missing out? What about alcohol? (He’s still never tried it). There’s a world out there he hasn’t experienced yet. Maybe he wouldn’t have married his wife and wondered whether they should stay married. He started thinking about other attractive women and experimenting sexually. It’s enticing and looks fun… but then the ‘good mormon boy’ would make him feel it would feel dangerous.

People were leaving church and then sleeping around, drinking and doing drugs. And he felt responsible.

His communities were created to provide support for doubting/struggling Mormons. He wanted the conferences to be inspirational and offer a support network after losing the one offered by Mormonism.

He discusses the struggle he and his wife went through and how he was emotionally unavailable and how patient his wife was, but that he nearly threw it away.

There’s a discussion about the interview with John Larsen and other key events in 2011 (I’ve not heard it so don’t know the relevance). By mid-2011 he says he was ready to leave everything.

The interviewer asks whether he regrets doing the conferences. For the most part he felt that they had a constructive tone. He feels there many good friendships and beautiful in many ways. He doesn’t regret them. What has been hard are 3 things. 1) They came at a heavy cost to his wife and kids and regrets that. 2) He wasn’t comfortable how much the conferences became a cult of personality and a thank you John event. He didn’t want people to trade one prophet for another. 3) To witness what happened after the conferences. People left the church, lost their faith, got divorced. People held parties, smoked weed, wives made out, had open marriage. He doesn’t judge that but he felt sad that people were trading down. He felt that they created more problems for themselves. Adultery, open relationships, drugs seemed to be the outgrowth of these communities. Beautiful, good things also happened, but Dehlin felt responsible for the bad events. The discourse in the forum became angry post-Mormonism groups. The enterprise which was intended to be support questioning Mormons became a post-mormon group, which Dehlin didn’t want to run.

The interviewer said this hadn’t been her and husband’s experience (leaving the church, abandoning morals, fooling about), but she still gets that judged by members as being like that. Dehlin says categorically that leaving the church means you can be either moral or immoral. He doesn’t want to stereotype this.

00:40 Goes back to his personal spiritual journey. And a part that is most relevant to each of us on our own journey. He says that by about March 2012 he had reached ‘rock bottom.’ His son’s 8th birthday was Feb 2012. He felt he should be able to baptise his son and his son wanted him to. Initially his Bishop was going to let him baptise him but not confirm him (AP ordinance, not MP). Then he was asked to meet his Stake President. He was convinced he was going to be excommunicated. He brought in a recording device ready to expose the church discipline process. In this process he found that the Bishop had appointed two members of the ward to track Dehlin’s online content to gather information on whether he could stay a member or not.

When asked why he wanted to baptise his son, given all the doubts he had, Dehlin said that he had intellectually deconstructed the church, but still emotionally and spiritually held on. He said that he wanted the stake president to love him and accept him with all his doubts.

When he met the SP, he had a transcript of the John and Zilpha Larsen interview (it should be here, but the file has been removed: http://mormonstories.org/312-mormon-expression-interviews-john-dehlin/ and the chronology jumps from 311 to 313: http://mormonstories.org/episodes-list-chronological/ anyone know why?).

The SP read out Dehlin’s comments in the interview about God, Jesus and the Atonement. The SP said he would be irresponsible to let him baptise his son while believing those things. Dehlin says at the time he had let God go, spirituality and his family go. He felt he was keeping the behavioural ‘good guy’ aspects of the church. He thought his discussions with the SP would last a few weeks/months and then he’d either be ex’d or would be allowed to baptise his son. But it has taken a lot longer. By Jan 2013 he still hasn’t baptised it son. He has now been having a weekly hour-long meeting with his SP for a year. He was impressed with his SP fully engaging with his podcasts, issues, problems, critical sources. Dehlin had said ‘you talk about leaving the 99 and going after the 1.’ So the SP took him up on it. He started by recording the conversations and being antagonistic. The SP would review the criticisms and said he could see why they bothered people. He never seemed to doubt or be disturbed for his own testimony. Dehlin didn’t want that, he wanted his concerns to be acknowledged as legitimate and to be accepted with his doubts. Dehlin thought there would be more conflict leading to a court.

Eventually, Dehlin lost interest in raising problems and the SP starting teaching him principles about the plan of salvation, starting with teaching him his views on God. This was after a few months and once Dehlin had aired all his grievances. Dehlin recognised that his SP is a man who has been transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The SP cried and his emotions were sincere. He wasn’t moving Dehlin intellectually, but was moving his spiritually and emotionally. Dehlin felt the love and friendship was the biggest influence. Dehlin then found that he started confessing sins and expressing ways he had fallen off the track or ways he felt spiritually in decay. He was starting to trust him and receive spiritual and emotional support.

*Footnote on research project… see my next post.

Good topic, but let’s be careful of ascribing motives for someone else.

Good point Ray – I didn’t want this to be a thread about judging John. Plenty of other boards are already doing that. I’ve removed the question about motives from the OP.

Instead I’m interested to see if others feel that seeing someone as high profile as John leave and then return to the ‘fold’ offers hope and, if so, why.

I’ve had 24 hours to cool the jets. Probably shouldn’t be posting because it wasn’t enough. But so what..you asked. Here is what I said at NOM. It applies here as well.

Personally, to the John the man… I think John can do whatever he wants…it is his life and good luck.

That doesn’t mean there are not consequences. I feel burned. I do feel a little betrayed about what he said and how he went about it. I was not giving up time and money for John’s sake…I was fighting for a cause…and John was the spokeman of that cause…that was HIS choice. I supported mormonstories and stayLDS financially for a reason…a cause…I was not supporting “John Dehlin” the man or his personal pet hobby.

If he felt he couldn’t hack it anymore and needed to go back to full activity, fine. But don’t throw the entire “middle way” cause under the bus on your way out. The whole rhetoric about “drugs and wife swapping and divorce and pain” and the bashing on MS groups and how “the middle way is not a option and does not work…” Sure. That is true in some cases, but in my observation, not most…and now JD has just reconfirmed and lended legitimacy to every TBM’s unfair impression of “apostate” middle mormons. Thanks a lot buddy…I’m sure when this spreads in Cache Valley, that I can start expecting the worried phone calls from family members to start up again.

Well hell…I guess I wasted my money. I’m not making that mistake again.

That is how I see it. I will not be sending money to support podcast or pet projects for a long time.

Just like when John Larsen had his meltdown…I gave financial support to Mormon Expression/White Fields too…for a cause…

As John L so unelegantly told me over at NOM, I “never understood the mission of White Fields or what he was trying to do.”

They’re right…both Johns…I guess I didn’t understand.

I thought Larsen could have left the church without the press and prestige…and I think Dehlin could have gone all the way back without the press and prestige…and both of them could have done it without throwing THE CAUSE that they were the spokemen of, the “middle way,” and those who struggle, under the bus.

Now I am confused, I guess I’ll have to listen to it. The definition of “Middle Way” implied from what I hear thrown around doesn’t match with the way I’ve always taken it. I’ll have to get some clarity on what John was saying “doesn’t work.” I know in the past he has said faking it doesn’t work, and from that point the implication was most troubled members will eventually leave (I don’t agree with that general description either- that “faking” describes peoples actions or that most troubled members will eventually leave. They may but it is not my experience.)

Now I am confused, I guess I’ll have to listen to it.

Be my guest.

It’s too early for a mild barley drink, friend, but Lamaze breathing helps. 🙂

If I didn’t have to work today…

Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk 2

So I just listened to the podcast in its entirety. I am coming in as an outsider.

JohnD was not a local hero to me…I have never given money, etc. I do feel like I have had an easier time because of his work.

So I will admit to not having any emotional connection to John so may be missing something….but I don’t really understand the rage in the bloggernacle.

My micro-summary:

John discusses good intentions for stayLDS, MormonStories, etc. Looking to understand intellectual issues, help push to reform unfair items in church.

John discusses feeling a sense of responsibility that he has broken up families, given others the excuse to do drugs, change their moral, etc.

John states that he supports people making life changes if it truly brings happines. He states that he understands the process, once you find out about bad church history, you then commonly question many if all of your fundamental belief systems, God, your marriage, etc. He explains that he feels many give up too soon and jump out when with some patience they may find they can be happy where they are…to me this is describing the middle way. I can hardly deny the truth of what he says…I am careful what I say around my family because I know people who are being held together by the structure of the church…true or not…it is working for them…and if I found something I said lead to their family falling apart I would not feel good. I also know what he is talking about…I still find myself arguing internally…is there a god? What of Christ? Can I declare a secret rumspringa to make up for not playing around like all the Utah elders I served with on my mission. He describes very similar feelings and this really helped me.

John explains he doesn’t know if there is a corpreal God, doesn’t know about the divinity of Christ, still has issues with Joseph Smith but finds his life is generally happier living as a believer….

John also mostly seems to have changed his focus. He describes how he believes people need to walk out of the negative middle ground. I think some take this as his abandoning the middle way…I don’t think so. He talks how spending all of your time criticizing the church, pointing out its faults, etc just leaves you bitter and unhappy. He says if it doesn’t work for you then you should leave….find happiness in your own way…if you want to live in the church…then work at that…but don’t just stand on the side throwing rocks at the ones trying to live in the system.

He states he knows that many people do better outside of church and some do better inside of church. He seems to have refocused on the GLBT acceptance acvtivities and less on the intellectual pursuit of pointing out inaccuracies. He admits that his talks to GA’s his Stake president have not answered the intellectual questions about Church history. He pretty seems to have given up on that. He has accepted those as not answerable…he also says the church needs to do more to help people with these issues and that FAIR is doing more damage then good. He basically says that he can’t live in that space any longer without hurting his family. I agree with him…at some time the church needs to own this…the critic movement will live on without John..he just says he can’t handle the negativity any more..he never says “all those concerns are unfounded”. John does speak of the love he has felt from various leaders and how there are good things insided church..love your family, be a good husband and father, etc and says he wants those things.

John describes he is working with GLBT mormons. He says he feels this is the next big Civil rights movement and that over the next 20 years teh church will change its views.

So I give JohnD my support. His goal is to be happy, he has not said the people in his various groups are bad.

JohnH