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I have a question for anyone here: Does anyone here still follow John Dehlin or Bill Reel? I’m only asking because I used to watch Mormon Stories and Mormon Discussions quite a bit, but, since they’ve gone in anti-Mormon or over-critical direction of the church for the most part, I hardly watch them now. Although I still agree with some of the points both shows talk about, they overly critical directions have been giving me bad vibes. So does anyone here watch any of their shows anymore? Hi. I half-followed John Dehlin for a while – but ultimately, his stuff wound up feeling more unhelpful to me and I didn’t connect with it. I did follow Dan Witherspoon for a while too – but stopped eventually. I engage in other sites a bit, but just felt that I had less attention/resources to focus on those topics that they are focused on. The notes on this site and other internet conversations have been invaluable to me navigating a faith transition – and I am so grateful about that AND eventually it became easier to “move on” from specific topics for a bit.
I also listened to Dehlin and Reel for a while but likewise became disenchanted as their stuff became more antagonistic. These days the Salt Lake Tribune’s Mormonland is the only church related podcast I somewhat follow. I wouldn’t say that I ever followed John. I did listen to a few of his interviews especially when it was linked to a thread here. The interviews that I listened to weren’t what I would call anti. They tended to be about peoples experiences of faith crisis and yes, eventually leaving the church. I did listen to more of Bill Reel. That also coincided with his interviews/podcasts being discussed and linked in threads here. I was sad to see Bill get excommunicated but not surprised. I see patterns where people start out trying to help the disaffected and the church with the losing membership problem. The countless hours of listening to people that have been burned by the church eventually takes a toll. More than that, the church is suspicious of your “help” and you might get treated differently. It tends to push a helpful activist type person out the door.
Ironically, it was on Bill’s podcast that his interviewee described this phenomenon as it applies to Faith Crisis. You start out with these rose colored glasses towards the church. You see much more positive than negative and the negative you do see is able to be justified in some way. People may start having more negative then positive experiences with the church or they may hear the negative experiences of others and live them in a vicarious way. Eventually this person tends to be suspicious of the church and its motives. Even positive steps are questioned and interrogated by the mind of the beholder. This is like wearing dark colored glasses and it skews one’s perspective just as much as the rose colored glasses. Individuals that recognize this trend in themselves can attempt to create balance in the information that they expose themselves too.
For myself, I feel that the footprint that the church occupies in my mind is just smaller. Church used to be a big part of my life. During my faith crisis and for some time after, it was still a big part but I was reading and studying and discovering a new version of the church that I felt had been hidden before. Now, I think that I have achieved the balance. The church is an organization made up of people and almost all of them are doing what they think is right. I feel less inclined to invest my time in reading, learning, digesting church stuff – good or bad. I think that, in addition to the church footprint in my mind getting smaller, it has also gravitated away from the core of who I am. I am able to disassociate and be less inclined to take church stuff personally. As if to say, “Cool story, Bro.”
Anyway, that’s a long way to say that I am less interested in listening to podcasts relating to church matters than I have been in the past.
Roy wrote:
For myself, I feel that the footprint that the church occupies in my mind is just smaller. Church used to be a big part of my life. During my faith crisis and for some time after, it was still a big part but I was reading and studying and discovering a new version of the church that I felt had been hidden before. Now, I think that I have achieved the balance. The church is an organization made up of people and almost all of them are doing what they think is right. I feel less inclined to invest my time in reading, learning, digesting church stuff – good or bad. I think that, in addition to the church footprint in my mind getting smaller, it has also gravitated away from the core of who I am. I am able to disassociate and be less inclined to take church stuff personally. As if to say, “Cool story, Bro.”Anyway, that’s a long way to say that I am less interested in listening to podcasts relating to church matters than I have been in the past.
I found this quote by Amos Oz:
“We have inherited a household of furniture from the Jewish past. We must now decide what will go into the attic, and what will go into the living room.”
To me, it became even more useful when I re-phrase it slightly this way:
“I have inherited a household of furniture from the Mormon past/the Mormon culture. I must now decide what will go into the attic [Is not useful], and what will go into the living room [what I see and value every day from my Mormon past/my Mormon culture].”
In perfect honesty, a respectable amount of the values/processes/ways of doing things I was raised with didn’t even make it to the attic – but were cleaned out in the spiritual spring cleaning that was the first part of my faith transition.
I am still sorting out what goes into the attic vs what gets put with the trash while living out of boxes in my metaphorical living room:)
I have been at it for a few years now, and I have reason to believe that I will be at it for a least a few more years (though the “boxes in the living room” are really, really important to me).
My attention span doesn’t do so well with podcasts but I’ll watch one from time to time. “Anti-Mormon” is in the eye of the beholder. I haven’t heard enough podcasts from either to make an honest judgment but my drive-by judgement based on limited exposure…
Dehlin: His podcasts seem to be more focused on processing the emotions that result from a faith crisis. When that’s the subject, reasons for a faith crisis will be shared again and again with each new person being interviewed. A part of healing from a traumatic experience is getting validation. By nature he does a lot of validation of people’s experiences. If you interview a lot of people that ended up leaving the church, you end up validating many reasons for people to leave the church. Is that anti-Mormon?
Now, he could temper some of that by interviewing more people that have had a faith crisis and decided to stay or by interviewing orthodox people for their perspectives on the issues (and keeping the focus on validating their experiences). Maybe people in those camps don’t need as much support as the people that just can’t make it work. I know when I was first starting out I felt completely alone, maybe that’s one purpose of Mormon Stories, helping people recognize they aren’t alone. The more orthodox mindset gets validated every single Sunday and the experiences of a person experiencing a faith crisis are often
invalidatedevery single Sunday. It’s good that Mormon Stories is a place for people to get some validation in their experiences. I will say that I think Dehlin does have a tendency to “lead the witness.” Quite often, very often in fact, it feels like Dehlin is putting words in people’s mouths instead of letting them tell their story and usually when he does it, he’s pushing them towards the narrative he wants to tell. I try to think what it would be like if I were on Mormon Stories. My biggest fear would be losing control of my own narrative. Being made to look like I have an opinion that I don’t really hold or an opinion that is much more nuanced than the direction Dehlin was steering me.
Reel: His podcasts (with Radio Free Mormon) seem to be more focused on meticulously proving specific Mormon truth claims false. RFM really tries to spell it out for people with repetition of simple, easily digestible pieces to help the listener arrive at a conclusion. He’s a lawyer by trade…
I think they could gain some balance by picking a Mormon narrative or truth claim where a deep analysis showed that the story was mostly on the up-and-up. Maybe you can’t really prove a truth claim but there’s got to be a story out there that’s good for more than just showing how a claim is false.
But they obviously can do what they want. Neither one of those guys has to strike a balance. That and one man’s balance is another man’s anti-Mormon (or orthodoxy for that matter).
Roy wrote:
I see patterns where people start out trying to help the disaffected and the church with the losing membership problem. The countless hours of listening to people that have been burned by the church eventually takes a toll. More than that, the church is suspicious of your “help” and you might get treated differently. It tends to push a helpful activist type person out the door.
I’ve seen many orthodox members try to second guess people’s motivations. It’s an almost instinctual or reflexive response. The reaction to the CES letter is an extreme example of this phenomenon but it plays out all the time. When someone has questions they’re not seen as being genuine, they’re perceived as mounting a backhanded or veiled attack.
It can be very damaging when your genuine questions are interpreted as attacks by the very community that you went to for help. It can be the first “break” you experience with your tribe.
And I suppose you gave the mirror image of that phenomenon.
Roy wrote:
Eventually this person tends to be suspicious of the church and its motives. Even positive steps are questioned and interrogated by the mind of the beholder.Guessing motives.
I like to believe that everyone is doing the best they can with what they’ve got to work with. Church leaders and critics alike.
nibbler wrote:
And I suppose you gave the mirror image of that phenomenon.
Right. The church has been burned by questioners and questioners have been burned by the church. Both are suspicious of the other.
In my effort to StayLDS, I try to give the benefit of the doubt. My family has probably been talked about in ward council but that doesn’t mean that it happens often or that every visit or invitation from missionaries and ward members is part of a coordinated effort. Someone could honestly want to get to know us better.
On the other side of this, sometimes some people at church are more standoffish than I would like. My bishop is like this. I can pass him in the hallway and he doesn’t acknowledge me or say “Hi.” I could interpret this to his being offended by my lower church activity and feeling too aloof to do pleasantries. However, the truth is probably that he just has a lot on his mind and he does not have a warm personality.
I could question motives when people are overly friendly or question motives when people are not friendly enough. For my effort to StayLDS, I try to give others the benefit of the doubt AND be somewhat detached (IOW even if someone did do something to make it clear that they thought less of me, I am trying to build up a thick shell against what fellow members might think of me).
I do not. They aren’t geared toward active members like me. Thank you, everyone, for the comments. It just gets hard for me after awhile to be bombarded almost constantly with hearing stories from Mormon Stories about people resigning from the church or being excommunicated from it and hearing Bill Reel picking apart so much of church doctrine just to prove Mormonism isn’t true. Roy, I agree completely. The church and questioners both have been burned pretty badly. Leadership roulette from the top to bottom either makes these things better or worse when it comes to this. More often than not, it seems to make it worse. I just wish we better ways within the church system to makes better. I know there’s sustaining and not sustaining people in the church, but in too many cases not sustaining is take seriously when it comes to not sustaining the brethren. Especially cases where there might some serious corruption in the system that needs to be arrested.
Well, through a lot of this, prayer and practicing meditation daily has helped me and is continuing to help me be patient and find peace through all this.
🙂 Ilovechrist77 wrote:
More often than not, it seems to make it worse. I just wish we better ways within the church system to makes better. I know there’s sustaining and not sustaining people in the church, but in too many cases not sustaining is take seriously when it comes to not sustaining the brethren. Especially cases where there might some serious corruption in the system that needs to be arrested.
I think I know what you mean. When we do the sustaining votes for leadership, it is almost universally understood that you vote to sustain unless you are in apostacy. I am not sure exactly what you mean by “serious corruption in the system that needs to be arrested.” If you are talking about bribery, fraud, or other criminal behavior then the church would generally be happy for you to expose those things. If you are referring to “corruption” more metaphorically as in “anything less than the pure gospel of Jesus Christ” then I think church leaders would prefer for you to keep that to yourself.
Ilovechrist77 wrote:
Thank you, everyone, for the comments. It just gets hard for me after awhile to be bombarded almost constantly with hearing stories from Mormon Stories about people resigning from the church or being excommunicated from it and hearing Bill Reel picking apart so much of church doctrine just to prove Mormonism isn’t true.Roy, I agree completely. The church and questioners both have been burned pretty badly. Leadership roulette from the top to bottom either makes these things better or worse when it comes to this. More often than not, it seems to make it worse. I just wish we better ways within the church system to makes better. I know there’s sustaining and not sustaining people in the church, but in too many cases not sustaining is take seriously when it comes to not sustaining the brethren. Especially cases where there might some serious corruption in the system that needs to be arrested.
Well, through a lot of this, prayer and practicing meditation daily has helped me and is continuing to help me be patient and find peace through all this.
🙂
A)
Grief Processing– those stories are in part grief. Grief about the church and/or a relationship with God not being what the individual expected on some level, in some specific area. Those stories get picked up because they can be interesting, and have drama as a byproduct (generally). When I hear something or read something from some of those people (I do follow Jana Reiss), part of what they are saying/writing is processing their experience in real time and sharing it with us. Sometimes that is useful like a support group. Sometimes that is not helpful because our grief is processed (for now) or we are not in a stage where we have grief to actively process in that way. 
Select Club (sorta)– Before my last child, I had a miscarriage. Up until then, “miscarriages happened to other women – I had some magic fertility ward”. And then I experienced one myself and joined that club of women (many women actually) who had had a miscarriage and had mourned that loss. I finally could really “mourn with those women” rather then try to be supportive awkwardly from the sidelines. Faith transitions are no different – there is point where the change in faith matters, certain questions cannot be unasked or unthought about. A lot of active members will not reach that point or choose not to stay in that space of accepting the easy answers to those questions. [This is the Stage 4 Deconstruction from Stage 3 Activity). In Fowler’s model, eventually a person who goes into a Stage 4 situation will have the chance to marry/thread together their Stage 3 and Stage 4 experiences to achieve Stage 5 and 6 depths of meaning and a variation of activity levels. This isn’t even the .02 cent tour of that process, more like a tour guide sign of a map destination].
FINAL POINT: Our church teaches that believe in agency and that we are free to make choices. That is a big deal for us. We value that so much that we believe that an entire Heavenly War was fought for it.
On some levels, this freedom to choose is “sacred” because of that. However, because the church is an organization and is interested in completing staffing requirements, financial solvency, and related concerns, sometimes the message is “Your freedom to choose is important to us – except when your freedom to chose means that tithing isn’t paid and callings are not completed’ (and related circumstances where the choices of the individual and obligations to the church come in conflict”.
Sometimes we have to “stand our sacred ground” (quoting Brene Brown) even when standing there doesn’t feel sacred and doesn’t meet the expectations of church policy and/or church leaders. We don’t necessarily have to get vocal about it, it may not be an aggressive, explicit fight (it usually isn’t). It’s just getting to know yourself and being able to say “No AND” having conversations about what you can do, what you want to do, and what actions are meaningful for you. Your mileage may vary. But just because you aren’t meeting someone’s or some organization’s expectations doesn’t mean that you have to change to do so (or that you do have a really good reason to make different choices and/or have a conversation regarding what that individual/organization can expect from you – actually it can be both). The tension between the health of an organization (and the organization’s priorities) and the individual belonging to the organization is an ongoing internal dialog (at least for the individual).
Sorry, I meant serious corruption in the system that needs to be addressed. I typed “arrested” by mistake. Sorry about that. Haha. What I mean by that is when the brethren, General Authorities individually, and local leaders are guilty of being regularly dishonest or other bad behavior. It just seems in many Mormon Stories episodes the way these things are dealt with are just either not take very seriously or even in Nemo The Mormon’s (He’s a young English member of the church that’s been on Mormon Stories and has his own YouTube channel) case when he chose not the First Presidency because of Oaks’ several dishonest statements. He even wrote Oaks mails back and forth regarding the statements and Oaks kept referring him to a Fair article about the statements he was talking about, instead of actually addressing. Now, I realize everyone, even truly honest people, have been of and will be guilty of some form of dishonesty, a little or huge. But, being regularly dishonest with others is a cause for concern.
So, I was really meaning that I wish there were better ways in the church with dealing with that type of corruption. I wasn’t talking about if the gospel wasn’t taught in it’s pure form. I agree with you there that you’re better off keeping quite.
Ilovechrist77 wrote:
He even wrote Oaks mails back and forth regarding the statements and Oaks kept referring him to a Fair article about the statements he was talking about, instead of actually addressing. Now, I realize everyone, even truly honest people, have been of and will be guilty of some form of dishonesty, a little or huge. But, being regularly dishonest with others is a cause for concern.
I think of Elder Packer’s talk “The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect” to help understand what I believe to be the mindset of many church leaders. In the talk Elder Packer contrasts the approach of a professional historian making pains to remain as impartial as possible with the approach of what I imagine to be a lawyer. The lawyer is not impartial. They are either for the prosecution or the defense. If they are working for the defense then they have no obligation to disclose facts that might help the prosecution. They are also allowed to defend their client by presenting alternative theories on how the crime may have transpired. The defense does not need to prove these theories, it is enough that they are reasonably plausible.
Elder Oaks specifically has been professionally trained as a lawyer and judge in his career prior becoming a GA.
In this way, I don’t think that Elder Oaks is being dishonest as much as he is assuming a role of promoter of faith and defender of the church.
Perhaps there are specific examples that have been made by Elder Oaks that you might want to examine more closely.
Perhaps there are specific examples that have been made by Elder Oaks that you might want to examine more closely.Well, one of the statements Nemo was referring to is where (I know this a sensitive issue, as Staylds has stated several time before) Oaks claimed he didn’t about conversion therapy going on at BYU when he was the school’s president, but ends up saying later on that he knew about it. Which is it, President Oaks? With a different apostle, Elder Ballard, he claims in one video that the church hasn’t hid the true church history from its members, but then in another video he claims the opposite.
I really don’t want this to become an argument. I’m just expressing what I understand in the best way I know how.
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