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Gospel Tangents published a short post with snippets of an interview he did with John Dehlin, and part of the discussion included this forum which John originally created many years ago. I thought the post was great with a lot of interesting factoids, so I thought I’d link it here: https://wheatandtares.org/2022/08/01/in-depth-with-john-dehlin/ In their discussion, John talks about the baseball baptism scandals he whistleblew during his mission, his former dating life with Renee Zellweger (who was humiliated at a stake dance by a leader’s modesty shaming which makes me want to build a time machine and punch somebody in the face), the evolution of apologetics, his own podcast’s evolution from kinda neutral to definitely-not-positive, and his ongoing affection for the StayLDS essay at this site.
Was there anything that stood out to you?
To me, it was interesting how he paid respect to the site and also to how he had changed throughout the years (in terms of faith and worldview). This site was hugely helpful to me because it explained the rules that someone was supposed to tell me but never actually did (so I knew what to expect and all that to a degree) and it provided a place to think through some things.
To land a faith transition (or other paradigm shift) gently, a few things are required:
- A place to “mourn” and an empathetic community to connect with/mourn with you and your experience.
- A place of knowledge and intellectual curiosity.
- A place that reminds you that your faith transition was one of a sequence of many – not the first one, not the last one. This is very grounding actually.
Sometimes there are a few people in the stake that function like this – or others in a person’s life who do so.
But I owe this site a fair amount of credit for helping me land as safely as I did.
All the other stuff in the article was interesting, and John is an interesting guy. But I wind up back to the personal connection I have with this community.
Quote:I kept the website up, and I let other people manage it.
JD is the founder of StayLDS (along with Brian Johnston, I am not totally sure what the division of duties was but Brian seems to have been the primary administrator). JD has not been active in site administration for a long time. As of a few years ago StayLDS is no longer supported financially by the Mormon Stories umbrella. StayLDS is a “sister site” to Mormon Stories and we do link to them. Given JD’s excommunication I feel it is important to provide that context for people thinking about using StayLDS and wondering about the connection to JD.Quote:I realized that I was propping up a set of recommendations that were only viable for a subset of people. But by putting the website up, it would allow other people to say, “Hey husband, all these other people are staying Mormon. Why can’t you?”
I agree with this sentiment. The middle way is somewhat like having one foot out and the other foot in. I also feel that church culture and church leaders do not tend to make such a middle way position easy. It can be like walking a tightrope with continuing tension and establishment and defense of boundaries. I do imagine that the percentage of individuals that can make this tightrope walk work in a long term and sustainable manner to be a minority.Quote:I found that many, many, many people could stay for a while. But, then they couldn’t do it anymore. At some point, I lost my confidence in being able to really say [that] this is a path that I recommend. It wasn’t a path that I, even to this day, have denounced. But it’s a path I could no longer recommend as being viable for most people.
I feel that StayLDS can be helpful for those others that are transitioning to not Stay LDS in some form by helping them to do so in a way that manages the anger and hurt that comes along with the process. I have heard this described as finding a “soft place” to landChanneling a little Buddhism, nothing is permanent. A person may not be able to permanently sustain staying LDS but the idea is that different people will cycle in and out of periods in their lives where they need to stay LDS.
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