Digital Social Hour - Mormon Wealth vs. Members: The $1 Trillion Dilemma | John Dehlin DSH #735

Episode Date: September 18, 2024

🔥 Welcome to the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🌟 In this explosive episode, we're diving deep into the controversial topic of Mormon Wealth vs. Members: The $1 Trillion Dilemma. 🤑 Join Sean and his guest, John Dehlin, as they unravel the mysteries behind the vast wealth of the Mormon Church, its real estate empire, and the hidden truths that might shock you!  From shell companies to IRS investigations, this episode is packed with valuable insights into the financial power and influence of the Mormon Church. 💰 Don't miss out as we explore the church's impact on its members and society at large.  Tune in now to hear firsthand accounts of the church's history, its role in shaping Salt Lake City, and the personal stories of those who dared to question its practices. 🤔 Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 Join the conversation and let us know your thoughts in the comments below! 👇 #MormonChurchFinances #LdsFinances #MormonTithing #LdsChurchInvestigations #Exmormon #Exmormon #JosephSmith #MormonChurchFinances #LdsChurchInvestigations #LifeAfterMormonism CHAPTERS: 00:00 - John Dehlin Intro 05:00 - LinkedIn Networking 07:03 - John Dehlin’s Mormon Upbringing 10:39 - Leaving the Mormon Church Experience 15:28 - Racism in the Mormon Church Issues 18:45 - Homophobia in the Mormon Church 20:40 - LGBTQ+ Issues in the Mormon Church 25:20 - Joseph Smith History 28:10 - Excommunication Process 29:29 - Lawsuits Against the Church 32:30 - Church Financial Independence 34:50 - Importance of Community Support 38:30 - Religion and Guilt Dynamics 40:30 - Changes in the Mormon Church 45:00 - Debating on the Podcast 47:10 - Mental Health Crisis in Utah APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: John Dehlin SPONSORS: LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/social Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

think ever, like mainstream religion, ever fined by the SEC. Got it. And the IRS is currently investigating the church. There's an active investigation. Oh, wow. But it was intentionally creating shell companies to hide the money from the members. Yeah. Because the church, and this is all documented in legal documents, the top leaders said,

if the members know how much money we have, they'll stop paying the money. Interesting. All right, guys, got John Dellenellen here all the way from Utah, right? Yeah. Not too far. Salt Lake City. Yeah. Yeah. So you're still there even though after everything happened. It's where the action happens. Yeah. It's like Mormon Vatican, basically. If you're going to interview people who are Mormon, you go to Salt Lake City. Right. They probably do not like you being there. I mean, people are really nice there. So the people that don't like me, they don't let me know because constantly people are saying thank you for what I do. Wow. Because I think a lot of

people are probably thinking it, but they're scared to speak out, right? Yeah. That's the problem. A lot of the Mormons don't even know that I exist because the bubble, the Mormon bubble, is really strong. Wow. So until you start questioning, you kind of are oblivious to everything around you that isn't approved by the church. It was a big eye opener for me because I came back from Salt Lake a few months ago and I did not know it was like that over there going into it. It's a great and a weird place. Yeah. It seems like they've really got a hold on their citizens there. Yeah. Yeah, they do. I've never seen a city where the religion has so much influence over its residents. Yeah. It does and it doesn't because every once in a while medical cannabis was approved kind

of against the church's wishes. So every once in a while something kind of slips through. But overall, the church, it's a theocracy. The church absolutely controls the state for the most part. Yeah. I heard they own a bunch of real estate out there, right? The Mormon church, it's a theocracy. The church absolutely controls the state for the most part. Yeah. I heard they own a bunch of real estate out there, right? The Mormon church, fun fact, the Mormon church is the first or second biggest landowner in pretty much every state in the United States. Every state? Pretty much. That's my, I mean, the church isn't public with its finances, but there's a really

good report called the widow's might.'s Might that's done its best to search land records all throughout the United States. And that's what my understanding is they're coming up with. The Mormon Church owns somewhere between 2% and 4% of the public land in Florida. Wow. 2% to 4%. Think about that. That's a lot. Yeah. I mean, this is one of your questions, but the Mormon Church is estimated to be worth $250 billion right now, and within 30 years, a trillion dollars.

It'll be a trillion-dollar church. So it's one of the biggest industries. It's the richest church in America. Wow. And it's pushing against the Catholic church for one of the wealthiest churches in the world. I thought the land thing was just a Utah thing. So you're saying every single state, they own a percentage of land.

50 states, first or second position. That's my understanding. If I'm wrong, let me know. So they must be buying it anonymously then? No, no. Oh, they're putting in their name? Yeah. Well, I mean, there's subsidiaries. Yeah. But people know that they own the subsidiaries. Yeah. So what does the flow of money look like from bottom all the way to the top? How does that work? I mean, the church requires its members to pay 10% of their income

to the church, or you can't witness your own child's wedding. So there's sort of this extortion that goes on. It's sort of soft extortion, where they just teach you, Heavenly Father wants you to give 10% to build up the kingdom. But if you don't do it, then there are punishments kind of on the back end. And then culturally, there's a lot of Mormons that believe you pay 10% of your gross income, not your net. So pre-tax versus post-tax. That's a big difference though. So that's how the church made billions. And then the church set up this investment arm called Ensign Peak, I don't know, somewhere in the 80s or made billions. And then the church set up, uh, this investment arm called Ensign Peak. I don't know, somewhere in the eighties or nineties. And they started with a

few billion as I understand it. And, uh, just hired a bunch of really good Mormon wall street brokers and fast forward, just Ensign Peak alone. This was leaked through a whistleblower just in the past few years, but it's like $150 billion just in cash and stock and real estates. And it was hiding all that from the members. And so the church has already had an SEC fine of like $6 million for fraud. No, but it's like the first religion I think ever, like mainstream religion ever fined by the SEC. Got it.

And the IRS is currently investigating the church. There's an active investigation. Oh, wow. But it was intentionally creating shell companies to hide the money from the members. Yeah. Because the church, and this is all documented in legal documents, the top leaders said if the members know how much money we have,

they'll stop paying the money. Interesting. And that's fraud. Yeah, I mean, that's a ton of money. IRS investigation, though, churches don't pay taxes, right? Yeah, but the church has a lot of commercial interests and investments like all these properties. The church owns cattle ranches and, you know, some property tax, a luxury. All right, guys, shout out to LinkedIn today's sponsor as a B2B marketer. You know how noisy the ad space can be. If your message isn't targeted to the right audience,

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LinkedIn, the place to be. Mall of $2 billion in Salt Lake City and like entire housing developments that it owns through subsidiaries. So, I mean, L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology said, you know, if you want to get rich, start a business. If you want to get really rich, start a religion. That's crazy. Yeah. What was the money supposed to be used for, the 10%? I mean, what'd Jesus say? Like clothing the naked, feeding the poor, helping the widow,

like feeding the hungry. I mean, that's how it starts. But then you got to build buildings, you got to build chapels, then you got to build temples, and then you got to build universities, and then you got to build commercial shopping malls with, you know, Gucci and, you know, just all churches become corrupt over time when they become too wealthy. Just because of money. Yeah, money corrupts. Wow. When did you start realizing this? For people watching this that don't know your story? Could you give a quick summary of that? Yeah. So I'm a sixth generation Mormon. My ancestors crossed the plains as pioneers. My

grandmother was the daughter of a third wife in a polygamous marriage. So, so I knew my grandma before she passed and she was in a polygamous household growing up in Southern Idaho. My parents grew up in Salt Lake in Idaho, but they raised me in Katy, Texas. Fun fact, I dated, Renee Zellweger and I were peers in high school. She's an Academy Award winning for you young people. A little light flex there. No, but it's a fun little thing because I brought her to a church dance once.

And they turned her away. Why? Because she was wearing a dress that showed her shoulders. This is like we were 16. So it's my little fun brush with fame. It's all been downhill since then. So yeah, I grew up in Katy, Texas, near Houston, and always had questions about the church, but I was super devout and served a mission and went to BYU, which is like the Notre Dame of Mormonism. Got married, had kids, but I was working for Microsoft. I was in the tech industry. And in about 2001, I started studying the church history

in depth and it all just started to unravel because I'd been, Mormons are warned, don't read certain books. This is kind of pre-internet. Like stay away from anyone who's ever left the church. Don't doubt, don't question. But I was just ready to answer a bunch of questions I'd had growing up and just all unraveled in 2001. And I got super depressed, lost, you know, I was like new Steve Ballmer, the CEO of the company. I was traveling the world and I didn't want to do it anymore. Dang, because they were sending you off to places to convert people, right? That's how it works. No, no, no.

I mean, for Microsoft, I was working with high-level executives, but I was depressed because my whole world had been turned upside down. Right. I thought the Mormon church was God's one true church and that I had a place in it and that we were going to usher in Jesus' second coming, that sort of thing. Right. So when all of a sudden you realize none of it's true and you've given your whole life to it,

married in the temple, served a two-year mission, got married in a Mormon temple, raised your kids in it, it's not like a normal Protestant religion. Right. It's a total mindset. The best way I can liken it is like Truman Show or The Matrix or Tangled, Pleasantville, any of those movies, they all have the same plot. You're in this artificially constructed false reality that makes you feel safe and makes

you feel special. And you live several decades thinking you understand the environment you're in. And then all of a sudden, in adulthood, you look around and realize the light falls from the sky, and you realize you've been in an artificial reality based on lies. Not only that, but six generations. Yeah, for six generations. So I realized it wasn't true in 2001 and got super depressed, left Microsoft in 2004, thinking other people are going to go through this. The Internet's on the rise.

I'm right at the cusp of the Internet taking off as more people learn the problems at the church. And so I started the podcast in 2005. It's actually one of the longest surviving podcasts on Earth. That's before Rogan. Yeah. Oh, yeah in 2005. It's actually one of the longest surviving podcasts on earth. Wow, that's a long time. That's before Rogan. Yeah. Oh, yeah. 2005. It was like the second year podcasts existed. Wow. Well done. Yeah. So yeah, that's kind of- 20 years.

Short version. We can get into some of the problems with the church, but- Yeah, that is crazy, man. I've been doing this for 20 years, yeah. 20 years. And back then, without the access to information, it was probably a lot harder to leave. Yeah. I mean, shunning, your spouse would leave you. Your parents could disown you. Your siblings wouldn't want you around.

So did that happen to you, all that? With different family members, absolutely. Dang. Yeah. And your spouse left you? No, no, no, no. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones. My parents were super supportive, even though they're still in the church today. And my wife read the same books I read. And

bizarrely, she's like, I get it. Oh, okay. Yeah. But here's the thing. We stayed in the church for another 13 years after we stopped believing. Why? how, that's, well, I mean, we were conditioned to believe that you can't raise happy, healthy, moral children outside of Mormonism. So like I, to this day, I've never tried alcohol, never,

never tried weed. Like, well, those I agree with. Well, I'm just, I guess you're in this bubble where you're made to feel safe if you follow the rules.

Yeah. Like don't, you didn't masturbate before I was married, that kind of thing. Oh, you can't masturbate. Well, if you follow the rules. Like, didn't masturbate before I was married, that kind of thing. Oh, you can't masturbate. Wow. No. Well, I mean, people do, but I didn't. And it's just, if you follow the rules, you're told you'll be safe and that God will be happy with you. So even if you don't believe it anymore, if you're 30, 40 years in, you're conditioned to think safety resides within the bubble, even if it's not true so we just said hey

we're in utah we'll raise our kids here we'll be like a secular jew you know they're secular jews or um you know even progressive christians that don't believe in the literality of it all but they're like yeah i'll bought myths bought myths for my kid or i'll i'll observe sabbath or you know pick and choose kind of cafeteria Catholic kind of idea. And I just figured we'll do that within Mormonism. And, uh, you know, I had a good 10 year run. Yeah. And then they caught you. What was that? Did you make a video that pissed them off or something? What was that moment? No, no, no. I mean, the start of the podcast in 2005, the idea was to just provide Mormons

with informed consent. Cause when I was at Microsoft, I learned all these dark, horrible things about the church that I'd never been taught. And I felt lied to and betrayed. So I figured I'll stay in it, but it'd be unethical for me to stay in it and just keep quiet. Plus, I learned about the way the church was harming the LGBT community, all the racism and the bigotry in the church, the way it treated women. There were just ways the church was just harming people in addition to deceiving people. So I said, all right, I'll stay in the club, raise my kids in it, but the tax I'll pay is I'm going to speak openly about it. So I started the podcast in 2005, and it started becoming really popular. And over the years,

the church got more and more comfortable as more and more members were learning all the things the church tried to hide from them. And I started advocating for same-sex marriage, advocating against the church's racist teachings. And the more followers I got, the more people became informed, the more the church got uncomfortable. So it came to a head in 2014. The church called me in and said, you know, stop advocating for same-sex marriage and LGBT people and for women and take the podcast down and never speak publicly again about any of these issues or we're going to excommunicate you. And I politely declined. I couldn't do that ethically, even though I didn't really want to leave the church, weirdly,

because it just felt like my tribe. But they pulled the trigger in February of 2015. Wow. You and your wife, or just you? Just me. Women, I joke, it's a dark joke, but she wasn't even important enough to the church to excommunicate. In other words, women are like total second class citizens of the Mormon church. I didn't know that.

They can't have any leadership positions of significance. It's a total patriarchy from top to bottom. I did not know that. There's a prophet, male prophet. He has two counselors. And then there's a quorum of the 12 apostles, all men. And there are like several quorums of 70. And they're almost all white men. I mean, there's a feworum of the 12 apostles all men and they're like several quorums of 70 and they're almost all white men i mean there's a few minorities just kind of token minorities but it's just male leadership from top to bottom um yeah so women are just totally

kind of i mean they're there's kind of this benevolent patriarchy where it's like hey you go help the sick and the needy and you have your little meetings with other women and do little service knitting women sorts of things but in terms of power control decision making money it's all it's all white men basically so she wasn't important enough margie wasn't important enough to excommunicate which was really disturbing for her because she believed everything i believed or didn't believe and supported everything I was doing. But they're like, yeah, she's fine. Wow, please don't care about women.

And you said they're racist too? So yeah, so from the very earliest years of the church, Brigham Young started teaching that black people were cursed with the curse of Cain. So in other words, Cain kills his brother Abel. The Bible says God put a mark on Cain, and then Mormons sort of take that to 11 and say that that mark that was put on Cain

is how black people started like 6,000 years ago. And so all the Africans basically somehow descended from Cain. Interesting. And so that's the curse from Cain. Interesting. And so that's the curse of Cain. Mormons as late as the 40s and 50s and 60s taught that that curse of Cain was from God. And so they excluded black men from the priesthood for about 150 years. It wasn't until 1978 when I was nine years old that the church let black men be members of full standing. So that's in my lifetime. But they've never renounced the curse of Cain. So that

doctrine's still on the books. And they actually teach that the reason why they have to have some reason, I mean, God's not just a jerk. So like, why did God give those black men and women black skin? Mormon church teaches that it's because in a pre-life, when they were spirit children of God and heavenly mothers, they were less righteous in a previous life. And so they were assigned to black skin in this life as a consequence of their bad behavior in a previous life. Wow, karmic debt. And that's, what's that? Karmic debt, they call it, right?

Yeah, and that's Mormon doctrine. So the church tries to downplay or dismiss that now, but it's never renounced it. And that's just black people. The Book of Mormon, which is the most sacred of all Mormon texts, Mormons prioritize the Book of Mormon over the Bible, teaches that a bunch of Jews from Jerusalem sailed over to America about 600 years before Christ was born and started building up their populations here in America. And there was a good group and a bad group. According to the Book of Mormon, God gave the bad Native Americans a skin of blackness as a curse for their wickedness so that they would appear loathsome to the white Nephites or the

white Native Americans. And so the Book of Mormon has institutionalized racism in it. And then eventually in the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites, the dark-skinned, cursed Native Americans killed off all the white, light-skinned Native Americans. And that's why when Columbus came over, according to the Book of Mormon, he found dark Native Americans because of God's curse. And you can't take that out of the Book of Mormon. So yeah, Mormonism is steeped in racism. Even though you ask the average Mormon, they would say, oh, I'm not racist. I love all people. And the church is totally baptizing like crazy in sub-saharan Africa so the church would say they love black people but it's doctrine it's history it's theology is unrenounced yeah horrible racism

so you got racism sexism and they do not like gay people homophobia I mean it it runs a gamut yeah what's their take on that was that in a text or something? LGBT stuff? Yeah. Yeah. So the church has taught since the 40s and 50s that homosexuality, as they called it, was an abomination, was like bestiality, was like child abuse, was like a perversion. They would teach that masturbation makes you gay, interestingly. Yeah. masturbation makes you gay, interestingly. But there are only options for gay people up until basically the 2000s when we started podcasting. You had a few options. You could marry a woman

if you're a gay man and enter into a mixed orientation marriage, which would make you want to die. Or you could be celibate, which my research says also makes you want to die. It's actually worse than marrying someone you're not attracted to. In terms of mental health outcomes, my PhD dissertation was on the LGBTQ Mormon experience. And celibacy was the worst possible option for mental and physical health and well-being of LGBTQ Mormons. So you had three options, four really. You could marry a woman or a man if you're a lesbian and be in a mixed or mixed orientation marriage. You could be celibate or you could kill yourself or you could leave the church and then face sort of being totally rejected and cast off by your parents, your grandparents, your siblings, all your friends

and family, and just be kind of like sent away. And that's, that's, or you could do conversion therapy. So the church sponsored camps where men would go chop wood and throw the football and hug each other as a weird intervention for trying to treat your homosexuality. The idea was, is that it was like some malformed, uh, attraction because you had a weird relationship with your dad and mom. And so if you hugged men long enough, you would sort of like exposure therapy, kind of hug the gay away. And of course those dudes would go do the types of things they would do behind the scenes, totally bankrupt, mentally unhealthy, abusive treatment for homosexuality. But the church did that for decades and decades and decades.

And it wasn't until the internet, podcasts, researchers like mine and others, that the church realized it had a huge lawsuit. It wasn't like the well-being of the LGBTQ community that the church really cared about. In fact, when the church started fighting same-sex marriage in California in 2008, Prop 8, there was a spike in LGBTQ Mormon suicides. So from 2008 to, like, 2015, you can just track.

LGBT suicides, like, tripled. Jeez. Like Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons here, Las Vegas boy, he did a whole HBO documentary on the LGBT suicide crisis. Holy crap. Tyler Glenn from Neon Trees was one of the participants in that. I was in that. But, yeah, we put the heat on the church really hard between 2005 and 2015.

And slowly they've backed off on conversion therapy. They've backed off on overtly promoting mixed orientation marriages. They've backed off on overtly promoting celibacy and even claiming that they know what causes homosexuality, but it's still a perversion. It's still a sin.

You can't get married. They fight same-sex marriage wherever they can and they teach gay people that they're broken and bad still and that it's you can you can be gay but you just can't act on it wow and that's where the church is today so that's crazy and there's a lot of mental health issues right yeah it's like i said it's the the suicide rates are like have been historically two to three times in ut, the national average outside of Utah.

I met a teenager there that his own father kicked him out at like 17. Yeah. Estimates that I read were like a third of the youth homeless in Utah are LGBT youth that were kicked out of their homes. Wow. A third? By Mormon parents. Oh my God.

Of the youth homeless. Right. Yeah. Which is really high. Yeah. Because I mean, no parent, no Mormon parent wants their kid to come out as gay. It's an embarrassment to everybody. Wow. I mean, it's weird because David Archuleta, Steve Young, Osmonds, Mormons,

they're good, and there's a lot of good in the church. But there's this dark side that nobody knows or people don't talk about. Yeah, I think that's every religion too well i think there's a category like scientology jehovah's witness mormons that's for me in order of magnitude worse than like presbyterians and lutherans and episcopalians yeah you You know, like progressive Jews, for example. So like, and I would put like maybe ultra-Orthodox Jews potentially. I don't want to start naming names necessarily, but like there's an intensity of a high-demand religion or cult for me that goes beyond.

Yeah, so those four you would consider a cult and then? Kind of. I mean, yeah. If you just go back to the beginning of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, um, he was a charlatan. Like he, he, this is the founder of our church. He would take people on these treasure digs, say, Hey, I can see buried treasure underground. Uh, I I'll put a stone, a magic stone in a hat and I can tell you where to dig.

And then they would all pay him money that he dig here, kill the chicken, draw a pentagram, dig for the treasure. I I'm, you where to dig. And then they would all pay him money. He'd dig here, kill the chicken, draw a pentagram, dig for the treasure. I'm just saying there were rituals that he'd have them perform. They would dig, and then he'd say, you're almost there, you're almost there. And then it was like, oh, you messed up. And then the spirit took the treasure away. But somehow they all still believed that he had the power,

even though no one ever found any treasure. That was before he started the religion. He starts the religion and then just a few years in, he starts taking extra wives. By the time he is killed, he has over 30 wives. Several of them are 14, 15, 16 years old. Up to 11 of them are other men's – you know, women married to other men at the time he takes them on, mother-daughter pairs, sister pairs. I mean, Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, absolutely qualifies as a sexual predator. And that's a really hard thing for

a Mormon to admit because we're taught next to Jesus, he's the most righteous man who's ever lived. But if you look at David Koresh, Warren Jeffs, Keith Raniere, L. Ron Hubbard, like pick your cult founder. Joseph Smith can line up with any of them, match them toe-to-toe in terms of fraud, sexual predation. So I don't know how else to say it. That doesn't mean there aren't good things about the church. There aren't nice Mormons.

But it absolutely meets the criteria of a cult. Yeah. And there's sexual abuse within it too. Yeah. So just Boy Scouts alone. Like, you know, there have been something like 90,000. You know, the Boy Scouts are, you know, they kind of like filed for bankruptcy. Oh, did they?

Because they were like, just in the modern era, like 90,000 young boys claimed to have been sexually abused. Holy crap. So the Mormon Church had 20% of the total U.S. registrations of Boy Scouts. So 20% of 90,000, that's 18, 20,000 abuse cases within the Mormon church right there. And then you add to it the non-Boy Scout related instances of abuse. Michael Resendez, who was a reporter on Spotlight, which was a Catholic version of sort of pedophilia and child abuse, he started reporting on the Mormon church. And there's a good indication that the Mormon church can match the Catholic church toe-to-toe on prevalence. I know you like chat

GPT. I chat GPT'd estimate how many modern instances of child abuse in the Mormon church. And it came up with like 30,000. Wow. You're pretty close to that number. Yeah. I mean, it's an estimate because the church has a law firm called Curtin McConkie. It's right in downtown Salt Lake City. And it's been uncovered by Michael Resendez and others that the Mormon bishops used to be given a 1-800 number for whenever abuse was reported. So imagine a little 14-year-old kid goes to the bishop, says, I'm being abused. And the church says, here's the number to call. Guess where the number went to the law firm of the church. And they produced the little worksheet of what the lawyer on the other end says when the bishop calls. And it's like,

was it on church property? Was a church person involved? Don't tell anyone anyone don't report it to the police holy crap like you know you know what what we found is this decades-long pattern of mormon church leaders being counseled by attorneys to pressure the victims to stay quiet to pressure the victims families to stay quiet to pressure the victims and their families to forgive you you know, Jesus would say, forgive. So forgive your abusers and don't talk about it ever again. And in many instances, if the abusers, sorry, if the victims or their families speak openly about the abuse they experienced, the church would punish the victims for speaking out and shame them for not trusting and having faith in Jesus's atonement to forgive the abuser. So the church has been harboring and protecting abusers for

decades. That's terrible. What does punishment look like in that setting? That's the weird thing. Like I can name, you know, 10 activists in the past five or 10 years that were excommunicated. I was excommunicated for supporting LGBT people. My friend Natasha was excommunicated as a sex therapist for teaching positive sexual mental health. My friend Sam Young, a former bishop, was excommunicated for advocating for children, like child abuse. My other friend Jeremy was excommunicated for just trying to get the church to be open and honest about its history. Thousands of predators, pedophiles, have never been excommunicated by the church because the church doesn't want the scandal.

And so the church is more likely to just keep a predator quiet, not tell anyone, let them continue serving in the church, a little slap on the wrist. Whereas if you speak out against the church, that's when you're most likely to get excommunicated. So activists get treated worse than predators in the Mormon church. Wow, their priorities are just messed up, man. I mean—

They just want a safe face. I mean, if you look at it like a church, it's disgusting. If you look at it like a corporation, it's what corporations do. They protect their assets. They protect their image. They protect their brand. They use high-powered lawyers to— Scare people.

To protect their assets. Yeah. So-powered lawyers to protect their assets. So it just depends on if you look at it as a church or a corporation. Makes sense. Have any of these lawsuits against them stuck, or has anyone ever beaten them? Oh, yeah. I mean, and more and more, there are several class action lawsuits, not just for sexual abuse, but for financial fraud. There are several class action lawsuits that are now,

and every day, every day, there's a, you know, Curtin McConkie, the church's law firm, settles with the sex abuse victim, pays them off, has them sign it. Every day? My understanding is there's at least a settlement a day. Holy crap.

Now, you know, again, the church keeps all these numbers, but I have insider sources that tell me definitely hundreds of settlements per year where they pay off a victim, make them sign an NDA, and then nobody knows that it happened. And then not tell anyone about the abuser either. Yeah. Yeah. So the church is just in the modern era because of the internet, because of podcasts, because of YouTube channels. Yeah. There's documentaries coming out now. Documentaries all the time calling the church out. The church is now starting to have its feet held to the fire.

But prior to 20 years ago, the church could do whatever it wanted. Right. So with this momentum, it could really put them out of business, you think? Well, you know, if you think about it, this is the weird thing. And if you watch the documentary Going Clear about Scientology, Scientology is shrinking in membership, but it's growing in wealth. Now, they're only $2 or $3 billion. We're $250 billion. But like right now, let's just say the current operational budget for the Mormon church is $8 or $9 billion a year. Well, what's 7% of $250 billion in assets, right? The church doesn't need tithing anymore.

It can just, on the interest of its current assets, support its annual budget. So in a weird way, the church doesn't need its members anymore. Right. So- They already have the money. They've got more money than God. I mean, really, a quarter trillion dollars. Think about that.

Nuts. Like, you stack up, like, my understanding is, like, Harvard's endowment, Stanford's endowment, like, Walmart's. Like, stack up, like, several high Fortune 500 endowments. They don't touch what the Mormon church has, just at Ensign Peak. Wow. Yeah. So this is bigger than all the companies in America. I mean, not all in aggregate, but if you look at how much wealth this church has,

it's in stocks and real estate and bonds. Yeah. And they've done it in a pretty short time, right? Like 100 years? The church was found in 1830. Okay. So 200 years. But as late as the 1950s, the church was like almost bankrupt.

Oh, so pretty much 100 years. So it really, starting in the early 1960s, the church started its growth. That's like 70 years, actually. Yeah. Not even. Holy crap. To amass that amount in 70 years is nuts. Yeah, yeah.

Wow. Because, yeah, 10% from everyone. That adds up. You've got some rich people in there. Marriott's and Stephen Covey. John Huntsman Jr. was a billionaire. There are a lot of wealthy Mormons. A lot of wealthy Mormons, a lot of wealthy businessmen and women. Yeah. What age did you stop personally tithing out? How old were you?

I mean, yeah, it was around in my early 30s. I stayed, I would give to the poor kind of thing, but in my 30s, I just realized the church doesn't need my money. I mean, they don't need anyone's money anymore. And that's the weird thing. They'll teach in Latin America today, pay your tithing before you buy food, buy your groceries, before you buy shoes. I've got video clips on my YouTube channel of the church telling super poor Latin American people, you know, pay your tithing before you buy shoes. That is scary. Yeah.

And is that how they're acquiring a majority of members, going to poor countries? It's always been that way. So I went to Guatemala, you know, and there were missionaries baptizing 40 people a month in my mission. And you thought you were doing a good thing at the time. Yeah, yeah.

And the truth is, that's what's hard, is that it can be a good thing. Because if you join a U.S.-based wealthy church and you can get an education, you can get a community, you can get support. Like let me pivot for just a second and say I could talk all day long about the good things about the Mormon church. The Mormon church gives you a sense of identity. It gives you a sense of morality. It gives you meaning. It gives you purpose.

It gives you community. It gives you resolution sense of morality. It gives you meaning. It gives you purpose. It gives you community. It gives you resolution about the afterlife. Like if your mom gets cancer, they'll deliver casseroles. They'll watch your kids. They'll help you roof your house. If you're youth, you're taught to stay clean, don't drink, don't do drugs, don't have premarital sex. And you'll go to a really good school. And family values, There's so much good

in the Mormon church. So that's what's disorienting is if it's working for you, if you're not an ambitious woman, if you're not LGBT, if you're not black, if you're a straight white male or a woman who just really wants to have a lot of babies and stay home you're set you're loving life it's a great organization and that's that's what's conflicting about it is there's so much good and then there's so much toxicity got it and that's why it's so successful i mean it honestly it wouldn't be so successful if it if it weren't adding value true to its members. So that's the rub, is it's not all bad. Yeah, that community aspect is hard to find.

And just take Mormonism out of it. I have a psychology background, and it's a well-known fact that people who are active in a religious tradition, on average, are a little bit happier than people who aren't. Really? And they've teased out the ingredient in its community. Wow. Because, you know, for all the people I know who have left organized religion, they struggle sometimes to find the same type of community and support that they had when they were in a tight-knit religious tradition. I can see that. That's the rub.

Isolation kills people, man. That loneliness. Yeah, the past 5, 10, 20 years with social media and just the way the world has turned, I think religion evolved with our species because it was healthy and overall adaptive for our species. And we all know now that in 2024,

religion's on the decline. They say the largest and the fastest- fastest growing religious group in America is people who no longer identify with any religion. Wow. It's called the rise of the nuns, N-O-N-E-S. Oh, yeah? People who check none on the box for what religion are you. But the Pew Foundation says that's now both the largest single group and the fastest growing. So we're moving towards Western Europe in terms of

secularization. And the problem is, as a species, we haven't figured out how to evolve community without religion. So it's actually a real problem. You know what's worse than a high-demand religion? None. Loneliness. Right. Like isolation and despair from having nobody in your life. Yeah. That's more deadly than cigarettes or alcohol.

It's just chronic loneliness. So we need to figure out a community aspect without religion involved because once you bring that in, it gets weaponized. Yeah, we do. But how? Like I've tried. Like for the past, I don't know, 10 years, I've been trying to create secular communities in Utah. And I've actually created

several. And people will come at first. But then it's like, hmm, would I rather have brunch or go on a hike in the mountains or go watch some dude give a talk or some woman give a talk in a setting where they sing and it feels kind of churchy and maybe triggers my trauma a little bit from when I was in a religion. So they all end up kind of dying out. Wow. So I'm not saying there aren't answers, but it's a complex problem. Yeah, because you need a common purpose. And with religion, it's easy to have that. You need a common purpose, a common identity, common myths, shared myths, but also you need guilt and shame. It turns out that the guilt and shame that is like the secret sauce to the wealth of the Mormon church is also the secret sauce to the unity because Christianity starts by saying you're broken

and you need Jesus to fix your brokenness. And I'm not anti-Christian, by the way. This is just what I've observed, right? So you're broken. You need Jesus to fix it. But Jesus isn't here. So how do you know what Jesus wants of you? Well, us, the church. We're going to tell you. And so then you get the people on this hamster wheel of like, oh, I swore. Please forgive me, Father. Oh, I masturbated. Oh, please forgive me, Father. And then they've got you relying on them to feel whole right and that's how they get you so that guilt and shame is what makes you show up on a sunday morning and set up the chairs it's what it's what makes you deliver that casserole it's like i'm i'm building up points in the afterlife heavenly father is going to be happy with me right and so that's that's the most sort of dark and morbid thing about religion is it needs the guilt and shame, and that's what makes it successful.

For sure. Well, that's in life, too. When you live in guilt and shame and fear, you're easier to control. Absolutely. Look at the media. A thousand percent. I remember going to school, like, honestly depressed after watching the news every morning. What guilt and shame did you?

I was Christian, then I went atheist, and then now I don't even know what to call myself. I'm in a similar position as you. Interesting. So you were raised Christian? Yes. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but it was, I wouldn't say cultish, but it was just too much. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry to question you. And even progressive ideologies like veganism or environmentalism, I've had friends that are totally atheist, but they feel super guilty if they fly in a jet plane

because it's bad for the environment or if they slip in their vegan diet. You know what I mean? Guilt and shame is hard to shake. I wouldn't say I'm atheist now. I believe in something. How do you describe it? I believe in afterlife.

I believe in past lives too, so reincarnation yeah so that's kind of buddhist right yeah in a way but i do believe in a higher power you could call it god or whatever but yeah do you pray uh meditate manifest meditate yeah yeah i like i like the idea of i would love there to be an afterlife wouldn't it be amazing? It'd be great. Yeah. And I like, I mean, it's clear there's some power propelling creation, organizing things. Yeah, we didn't just appear.

I mean, it's possible that this is all random, but I've always felt like it's as absurd that everything is random by chance as it is that there's some sort of power or force. So I've never identified as an atheist or as an agnostic. Yeah. I'm just kind of open. Got it. So you don't have a label? I don't like those labels. They kind of separate people.

Right. Agreed. Yeah. Once they group you up. It's a way believers can sort of dismiss you. If you're like, oh, he's an atheist. True. It's a conversation ender.

Yeah, it is. Yeah. Have you seen the Mormon church take any action based off what you've been bringing to light? All right, check this out. So 2011, 2012, the church spent millions and millions of dollars on I'm a Mormon campaign, right? The Book of Mormon musical comes out. It's like one of the top five, six most successful Broadway musicals ever.

The church is like, hey, we're gonna take advantage of this marketing opportunity. Times Square, I'm a Mormon. So like recently the Mormon church abandoned the label or the brand of Mormon. Wow. The new prophet, Russell M. Nelson, got up and said, yes, we've spent hundreds of millions of dollars building the brand of Mormon, and now we're going to kill it.

And he told all the members that using the word or the identity of Mormon is a victory for Satan. Whoa. Now, do you know why he did that? No. Because all of us podcasters and YouTube channels took over the SEO for the word Mormon. And so it was already kind of damaged goods because a lot of people outside of the church just thought the church was homophobic, sexist, racist, bigoted. But also we were dominating the ex-Mormon podcast, ex-Mormon YouTube channels, ex-Mormon TikTok channels.

Amazing. We're dominating the church. And so they just abandoned their brand. So that's a starting place. That's a huge win. Mormon stories, you know what I mean? Yeah, well done. So it's not just me.

It's a lot of people. But yeah, the church has softened its rhetoric on LGBT people. Like I said, they're no longer overtly encouraging conversion therapy or mixed orientation marriages. It's become more open on its history. It used to be really deceitful about its history. Now it's becoming more open. It really hasn't moved the needle on women at all, oddly. It hasn't really denounced the racism. It's tried to just pivot and start saying racism is bad, but not denouncing the past racist doctrine. It's shortened church from three hours to two. For a long, long time, it was three. Now it's two. So it's making some baby steps. Is the member count still increasing or

is it decreasing? So the growth is decreasing. In places like Western Europe, the church is in decline. In many places in the United States, like in California, the church is in decline. Not flat, decline. Wow. Yeah, again, like in Scotland, England, France, Germany, all those Western Europe countries, it's dying. In the United States, Mormons tend to have more kids than average, like three kids per family. And so the birth rate, the higher birth rate on average for the active Mormon keeps the growth rate just slightly under 1% in the United States. And then the way that they're offsetting the massive inactivity rates globally is by baptizing like crazy in Africa. So the church

is just, it's like, get this, for like 150 years, the church would not send missionaries to black people. So missionaries were taught, don't teach black people. So they go to South Africa in like the 30s, 40s, 50s, and the missionaries are taught, only teach white people. They go to North Carolina, only teach white people. They go to Cuba, only teach white people. So it's like the untapped market. Now that the church renounced its priesthood ban, and it's trying to change its image of being a racist church, it's now going gangbusters in Africa. And the main benefit it gets is the growth in Africa statistically offsets the shrinkage everywhere else.

Got it. So it's almost a statistics game, but also there's a lot of projected wealth coming out of Africa in the next 50 years. So it's a growth strategy for the church. But I think it's, I don't know that it's rooted in a love for black people. I don't think so. I think it's rooted, yeah.

I think they're inflating their numbers. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, the church claims 17 million members, but estimates are only about 4 to 5 million actually self-identify as Mormon and or attend. Oh, wow. So two-thirds of all the people who have ever been baptized Mormon either don't identify or just don't attend. Wow. That's pretty hot. Yeah.

And the church won't be honest about that. It continues to push the 17 million number as a way to look bigger, way bigger than it is. But yeah, within the next 20 years, the church is going to start being in full decline like Scientology. Have you ever debated an active member on the podcast? Well, see, I've always tried to not debate. I don't like debate on a podcast. I know that's all the rage with like, you know. Patrick McDavid and stuff.

Yeah, like, yeah. I think it makes my guests feel mistreated. I think it makes them feel disrespected. And what I like to do is just bring people on to tell their story. And stories are disarming. They're interesting. You can't argue with someone's story. And I think I,

you know, I don't want an echo chamber where I'm just like ex Mormons are all listening to my podcast. I want Mormons and people looking into Mormonism to feel safe that the podcast is like fair and balanced. So I've always brought on believers. I brought on progressive liberals. I brought on ex-Mormons and tried to host in a way that feels safe to a questioning,

believing Mormon so that I'm not just creating an echo chamber. Interesting. Yeah. So I've challenged a few guests. If they go full conspiracy theory race, like I had a guy, I brought a guy on who literally taught that black slaves in the US liked their jobs back in the pre-Civil War times. There's certain racist stuff or homophobic stuff I just won't stand for. But generally, I don't like to make my guests feel bad. I want them to leave the

podcast feeling good. That's fair. But you're having on active members, though. That's cool. I've tried to do that, yeah, since the beginning. I mean, I started as an active member. Right. So, yeah.

It's harder. Once the church communicates you, for apostasy, by the way, it's harder to get active faithful Mormons to come on the podcast. Because they're not allowed to talk to you, right? They're not supposed to. Yeah. People do anyway. I mean, I have active Mormon bishops who listen to the podcast. Because they're not allowed to talk to you, right? They're not supposed to, but people do anyway. I mean, I have active Mormon

bishops who listen to the podcast. They're leading congregations and they're listening to my podcast. Missionaries, Mormon missionaries that are out as full-time missionaries, they reach out to me and say they love the podcast. That's cool.

It's the most popular Mormon-themed podcast, and because I try and do it in a balanced way, I have listeners all over the spectrum. Well, John, thanks for enlightening everyone on this culture, man. It's really important. Is there anything else you want to close off with? I know that mental health is really important to you. And I think it's worth mentioning that there's a real mental health crisis in the United States right now, but it's certainly true within the church. And whether it's women being taught this toxic perfectionism, whether it's kind of religious-based obsessive compulsive disorder or scrupulosity, that's what I studied for my master's thesis.

Whether it's young Mormon men and women being shamed about their masturbation or LGBT youth wanting to die because they're taught that their core natures are sinful. I think that's an untold story within the Mormon church that really needs to be told. You know, it's tough enough to be a youth or young adult in the world today. You add on this layer of shame, of guilt, of anti-LGBT, anti-women sort of doctrines and theologies. It's a real problem. Utah, believe it or not, for how beautiful it looks and how happy everyone looks, on so many metrics it leads the nation in like prescription drug use, prescription drug abuse, levels of depression, of youth suicidality. So I'm really grateful that you sort of take some leadership in talking about that. And I appreciate you letting me also talk about that because one of the best ways to kind of help address mental health is to talk about it.

Absolutely. No, I really think you're going to save some lives with this episode. So I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. Yep. Thanks for watching guys as always,. I really think you're going to save some lives with this episode so I appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. Yep. Thanks for watching. Guys, as always, and I will see you tomorrow.