Reply All - #55 The Line

Episode Date: February 18, 2016

This week we have a story about a big group of people with the same questions. Difficult, complicated, heartbreaking ones. These people all have one thing in common — they’re Mormons. Reporter Karen Duffin tells their story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the barn journal.org, the website with general information about barns and traditional farm architecture, there's only one frequently asked question listed. Why are Barnes read? North Korea's propaganda webpage at one point had an FAQ aimed at people in the West. Question 24. Is it true that all citizens of the DPRK work for the government? Answer, government and people are one. There is no distinction of them. It also answered the question, can I travel to North Korea as a backpacker?

The answer is no. Frito Lay's FAQs are filled with longing and loss. Where can I find a Frito Lay snack? Why was my favorite snack discontinued? I think that the reason that I love frequently asked questions so much is that unlike most pieces of writing, which tend to tell you a lot about the writer, FAQs tell you a lot about the readers.

Reading them, you can imagine this enormous mob of people. Maybe they know each other, maybe they don't. But they're all united because they have seen the same thing and together they have not understood it. This week we have a story about a big group of people who all have the same questions. Difficult, complicated, heartbreaking ones. And these people have one other thing in common.

They're all Mormon. So we asked our friend Karen Duffin to look into this. In addition to being a brilliant reporter, she also has the best Mormon credentials of anybody I know. She's no longer in the church, but she grew up Mormon. She was a student body vice president at Brigham Young University, and she's a direct descendant of the bodyguard of Joseph Smith himself.

Karen, hello? Hi, PJ. Hi, Alex. Hey, Karen. So we heard that there was this huge crisis in the Mormon church that has something to do with the internet. So we got in touch with you because you are way more equipped to tell a story than we are. Yeah, so I looked into it and I called several people at the Mormon church and none of them would talk to me. But we were able to gather a lot of emails.

and documents and talk to lots of people on and off the record. And what I found was super fascinating. But it'll really only make sense if I give you a blazing fast Mormon 101. Okay. Let's do it. The premise of the Mormon church is that when Jesus died and left us, his church, like, everybody went into apostasy and went astray. And there was this guy named Joseph Smith was living in New York. He's 14 years old, and he's like, I don't know what church to join. And so the story is that he went into the woods and he said, God, what's the true church? Because, like, I don't think there is one. And Jesus and Heavenly Father, God, appear to him and say, there's no true church.

Like, you get to start Jesus' new church. Is the reason that it's called the Church of Jesus Christ, the Latter-day Saints, because the Saints are relatively recent? They're actually Latter-day Saints. It's like Saved by the Vell of New Class. It's a lot like saved by the Bell in New Class. But actually, that's kind of true. I mean, that's what's at the heart of this story. because that moment when Joseph walked into the woods, that was less than 200 years ago. It was 1820.

Wow, that's super young church. That's Abraham Lincoln Times. Yeah, and the fact that it's this young, it means that all of the miracles, Joseph Smith's story, like a lot of this is fact-checkable. Right. I guess that if there is like government documents and things like that. DeGera types. There's probably DeGera types. Yeah, sure. DeGera types. Right, right. And these documents that the church is built on, they still exist. So, you know, there's birth certificates and diaries. There's the actual original manuscript of the Book of Mormon. So if you're a Mormon, can you just, like, go look at them? Well, that's the part that's a little bit complicated. And I'm going to get to that. But first, I want to introduce you to this guy I met named John DeLyn. He lives in this small town in northern Utah. He grew up normal, faithful, happy Mormon. You know, I graduated from high school, never trying alcohol, never having anything close to sex, never trying tobacco, never trying drugs, and served an LDS mission in Guatemala and ended up at BYU, Brigham Young University. It was like I lived the Mormon dream. I have to say as a former Mormon that a lot of times when people hear that kind of a list, they think it sounds oppressive.

But what they don't realize is that this life. that he's describing, it can actually be kind of great. Like, I loved it. It just, it creates this really tight community because you're all living this really different lifestyle together. And that's how John felt about it. Until one day in the early 2000s, John is preparing for a church lesson and he finds this book in the library. It's a biography of Joseph Smith and it has all of these historical documents and it's telling him things that are not in the standard church story. I started to learn things that were deeply troubling and, more importantly, things that in 30, 31 years of being an active devout Mormon I had never known before. Okay, so one thing was about the Book of Mormon.

It's supposed to be this literal history of Israelites who came to America and they found this huge civilization a couple thousand years ago. And there's hundreds of thousands of people, but then the civilization collapses. So if that's literally true, then there should be bones everywhere. They should be archaeological remains. There should be DNA evidence. Oh, right. That is so checkable. Right.

And another thing that John ran into is polygamy. Joseph Smith's supposed to be like the most sacred person to ever live besides Jesus. And John is now reading stuff that says that Joseph was a polygamous, which, you know, people basically know. But now he's reading details like Joseph Smith married teenagers and he married other people's wives. These are not details that the Mormon church talks about. Right. And you can fact-check this stuff because there's birth certificates and marriage certificates. So John is holding this book that he feels basically rewrites the Mormon history that he was taught.

Yeah, I just remember sitting there with that book cracked open, getting towards the end, staring at the wall, and just sort of realizing I'm going to have to tell my wife. And he's scared. The thought of publicly disagreeing or doubting the church. is almost incomprehensible, the threat of having your spouse divorce you and take the children, the risk of having your entire community, now view you not just as someone who no longer stands with them, they will view you as a danger and as a threat. Doubt is treated like as seriously as a disease.

So your friends kind of keep tabs on you. There's a regular checkup with your bishop. and to fully belong, you kind of have to believe. And John really wants to belong. But then he thinks, does it really have to be this literal? After all, if we have reformed Judaism, you can be a reform Jew and not believe in God. So I'm thinking, well, Mormonism can abide that sort of transformation. And so I set off on a quest to carve that pathway for myself and maybe for others. And then he keeps thinking about this song. It's this Mormon song. from when he was a kid.

Do it so bravely, so kindly so well. Angels will hasten the story to tell. We need to stop hiding in the dark, acting like we can't talk about this. Mold and disease grows in the dark. We need sunlight. So it's 2005. He logs on to eBay.

He buys a microphone, and he goes down to his basement. And he records his story about when his doubts began. I just remember sitting there with my finger on the mouse, ready to publish, thinking what is going to happen? Like, will I get killed? Will I get excommunicated? Will this change Mormonism forever?

Like any of those things literally seemed possible. And then he hits publish. What does he call the podcast? The podcast is called, Mormon stories. And it's just like him and different guests talking about Mormon policies or beliefs. Hello and welcome to the inaugural Mormon stories podcast. And it's interesting because even though I left the church like seven years ago, I'm hearing him say these things and I'm like, you can't say that. Really? Yeah. He's like the third podcast that he does in his series is with an anti-mormon.

And it's not like I want to lead everyone away from Mormonism. Please understand that I know that it's a cult, but... And, like, that would be like inviting Satan to be on reply all. Wait, but actually, that wouldn't even be that bad. You guys would love to have Satan on Reply Al. I keep emailing. He's just not getting back to me. He's a bad

emailer. Anyway, so as soon as John hits publish, he starts getting flooded with all these emails and phone calls and dozens of people actually drive up to Northern Utah where he lives just to see him and really to thank him.

What had you tapped into? I tapped into a huge reservoir of pain. It was just like this huge water balloon of pain in the sky. And as soon as you puncture it, all the water starts gushing to the ground. And his audience, these people who were previously silent, these are people who were just like me. This is me who sat in my congregation and didn't even tell my twins. sister who was queer and wasn't Mormon at the time that I had doubts because I was so afraid. Did all of those ewes just not know how legion they were?

Yeah, you actually think you're alone and you think you're crazy. But what does the church do? Well, so John gets called into his bishop's office and his bishop says, you know, what are you doing here? Are you trying to take down the church? And he says, no, no, no, I promise I'm actually trying to help. And so he goes on to his blog and he says to his listeners, if I've helped any of you stay Mormon. Will you please send me a letter? And he says he gets hundreds of letters back and

his bishop looks at a couple of these and he says, okay, all right, you're okay. Really? So he continues to make the podcast? Yeah, so he continues to make the podcast. It wasn't a second way of feminism really coming into it? It was. And it's funny because certainly in a hardest way, I think I'd ever done the most difficult decision. And so John's audience is growing. It's thousands and then it's tens of thousands, and it's not just him, actually. At the same time, there's all these other Mormons around the world making podcasts and websites. And so at this point, it's not just like your weird Joseph Smith-truther uncle that's talking about this stuff. It's like ordinary mainstream Mormons. And eventually, church leaders start hearing about this groundswell.

People like this guy. My name is Hans Herbert Johnny Mattson. Hans is the name they call me. and I come from Gothenburg, Sweden. For years, Hans was one of the highest-ranking church leaders in Europe. I met Hans, and, like, think of Santa Claus. Hans is this big guy with white hair. He's jovial. He's, like, probably going to give you a bear hug, and you're going to love him. Beard or no beard?

No beard. Okay. Off-season Santa Claus. Off-season Santa Claus. Like, the sweetest guy that you've ever met, and the people in Europe just adore him. And so they're coming to him and they're like, Hans, can you help us? Because we found this stuff online. What is this polygamy, polyandry, Joseph Smith married teenagers?

Joseph Smith married other men's wife. So the Mormons in Sweden are starting to have the same questions that John and his listeners have had. And when they come to Hans with these questions, he goes to church leaders for an answer. And he says that they told him, stop asking these questions. And so he's like, I guess I'll just Google this. But when he does that, he finds the same documents and contradictions that everybody else has. And so now Hans is freaking out. I was so thirsty and hungry after the truth.

My whole body aching for answers, not to prove the judge's wrong. The only reason I was seeking was to prove it's just wrong. was seeking was to prove it's just right. And so he goes back to church headquarters and he says, you guys have to answer these questions because people are leaving. And, and, you know, usually the response from the church is just trust us. So that's why what they do instead, this time is crazy, which is they send the church historian to Sweden to have an open conversation about these questions. Is that like their best guy? Like, is that the guy who extinguishes doubts? Yes, so the church has this giant archive of historical documents.

They're actually kind of obsessive about recordkeeping. So this archive has, you know, meeting minutes, Joseph Smith's diary, like everything about the founding of the church. And some of these files are restricted. So some of these are things that only a handful of people have seen. And Marlon Jensen, the church historian, he's one of them. The church historian, this is the guy who knows everything. you know, and we were so excited to ask those questions. So it's November 2010, and the church sends Marlon to Sweden with another historian,

which is basically like the church giving Hans and the Swedes like a day pass to the restricted archives. But Hans says the church had one condition. This is a secret meeting. No one else would know about it. So we'll answer your questions, but the answers can't leave the room. But the thing is, somebody in the audience secretly recorded the meeting. After the break, we get to hear tapes from a secretly recorded secret meeting. Stick around. Welcome back to the show.

We were at a secret meeting. Karen has the tape. I'll let her tell it. And so it's a Sunday night, and the church opens up when nobody else is there. and everybody files into the chapel, which is where they usually have church and, you know, they sit down. And what's the mood in the room? Like, is it, are people like, please just talk me back into this? Or people like, you're going to answer for this? Like, what does the room want from this person? This is a group of people who just want nothing more than the church to be able to explain this so that they can stay.

These people don't want to leave. They love this church. So in walks the church historian Marlon Jensen. He looks like a professor like gray hair, wire rim glasses. And I want to say how grateful Brother Turley and I are to be invited here, to be sent here actually. And by all accounts, Marlon is someone who welcomed these questions.

He wanted the church to be open. I feel like we're among friends, brothers and sisters. I don't feel like this is a meeting of adversaries. We're all Latter-day Saints. But he also says, you need to remember what's at stake here. And he

walks up to the whiteboard and he draws a line down the middle. And what he essentially says is, on one side, there's Jesus and God and the church. And then on the other side, there's Satan, and it's evil and it's the world. And we'll answer all of your questions, but when we're done, you have to pick a side. Oh. Yeah. And so then the Swedes start asking their questions. You didn't say why you present this view? Why does the church present the view? Why doesn't the church say about the atheist or Mormon issues?

In the early days of the church, they talked about it often. You get to a second generation. They presented the way that they tell the story. And I have to say, like, in all my 30-something years of being a Mormon, I have never heard a conversation like this. You know, they're asking all the hard questions, and the historians aren't just saying, you know, just trust us because the prophet said so, you know.

So they're actually answering these questions in detail, like the one about polygamy. Did Joseph Smith practice polyam? The answer is yes. Joseph Smith did practice polyam. So he's saying directly, yes, he did marry other people's wives. And then there's that big question about the Book of Mormon. If there really was an ancient civilization in America, shouldn't there be not just archaeological remains, but also DNA evidence?

We know some, but not all of the answers here. We're continuing to learn over time. The body of types of DNA for these people is growing. For this one, we have no way of knowing the answer. What he's saying is the Book of Mormon is true, but we might not have scientific proof. And then he explains some of the discrepancies. For a long time, we were a persecuted minority in America.

and our hope was to present our best faith for the world. And our history was often written in what is called apologetic style. We were defending the faith. And in doing that, we were being selective. We were saying the best things about the church. It was a very natural thing, I think, for us to do in those years. But in many ways, we've come of ages of church. He's saying, yeah, in the past we did.

act a little defensively to protect ourselves, but we get it, and we know we have to evolve. And I promise we are. We're working on things. But Hans, he'd come into this meeting with a list of questions, and what he'd been hoping was that he'd be told, no, don't worry about it. There's nothing to your doubts. But instead, most of his doubts were confirmed. How did that feel to have them be like, yes? in a way sad because I would like to hear that we were wrong

I tell a story two years ago we went to Orlando and we went to Disneyland and we went to something called a space mountain you go in kind of a little car there and you go up and down it's dark and we only see stars and things

you don't know what happened it's so fun and suddenly someone put on the light and suddenly I can see all this fake things. There were no stars. There was just some lights behind some things, you know.

They created all this environment, you know. And this is how I felt about the church. Someone turned on the light. So Han says that within a week, everyone who was in that meeting was called into their bishop's office and told, okay, we were open with you. Now you have to decide whether you're in or you're out. And if you're in, you have to be silent because that meeting never happened.

We never said those things. And if you speak them out loud, you're in trouble. But when they get to Hans and say, are you in, are you out? Hans says, neither. He's like looking at the line on the whiteboard and he's like, no, I want to live in the line. Yeah. What he doesn't want is for doubt to be on Satan's side. Yeah.

So Hans leaves this meeting. He says, neither. I want to explore this new option. And I think I know someone who can help. In around 2011, time frame, a really high-level leader in the church named Hans Mattson from Sweden reached out to me. That was sort of the canary in the coal mine. So Hans contacts John DeLind, the podcaster, and tells him about this secret meeting. And John is blown away.

He knows that there's just tons of Mormons who are in so much pain. And, you know, some of them, even their families are falling apart all because they're at. asking these taboo questions. So he's thinking, how can we just get the church to remove the taboo by just saying publicly what they just said in Sweden? And you know, you think of reformers like thousands of years ago. They're like tacking up things on the church wall and being like, this is our reforms. But instead, like, this is a church that loves data. So the way they figure that they're going to reform the churches by doing a survey. Like a quiz of people survey? It's basically So, you know, John's idea was like the reason why the church won't let doubters in is because

they think doubters are bad people. So we're going to bring doubters to life. Like we're going to do a survey of people who've doubted or left. So they make the survey and over 3,000 people respond. One of the major findings from our study for the people who had left the church was that they had felt lied to. They had felt like the church was hiding things from them. And that, you know, just like with Nixon and Watergate, it was never the bridge. that really sunk Nixon. It was the cover-up, right? These results to John and Hans,

they're just proof that talking about these problems isn't going to hurt the church. It might actually save it. So they try and they try, but the top leaders of the church will not look at the data. And finally, Hans says, enough. If they won't talk about it publicly, I will.

So he does an interview with the New York Times and they write a huge article about all this turmoil that's been happening inside the church. This was public on the first page in the New York Times, and the whole world exploded, you know. This article is like a bomb. Like members are passing it around. I imagine the church is freaking out. And then a couple months after this New York Times article, one of the top three leaders of the church says publicly,

we have made mistakes, and, look, doubters are not sinful, lazy people. Like, doubters are good people, so stop persecuting them. One might ask, if the gospel is so wonderful, why would anyone leave? This is Dieter Uckdorf, the church leader, talking at a major church conference. Sometimes we assume it is because they have been offended or lazy or sinful. Actually, it is not. that simple. And this thing, it sounds so tame, but the doubters hear this and they're like, yes, I told you, Mom, Sister Bishop, this stuff is real. I'm not Satan. That's crazy.

It is crazy. And it gets crazier because a few months later, those things that they'd said in secret in Sweden, they do start saying them publicly. In fact, they start publishing them on their website. first time acknowledged that Joseph Smith himself had many wives. Joseph Smith was spiking on Twitter, the founder of the Mormon church. Can you actually show it to us? Yeah, yeah. So when you come to the website, there's a long list of, like, gospel topics,

but they have created a special corner of the website generically called gospel topics essays. Right, and this is like the part for doubters. It says recognizing that today so much information about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints can be obtained from questionable and often inaccurate sources, officials of the church began in 2013 to publish straightforward in-depth essays on a number of topics. Right. So if you click on that,

this is basically a collection of essays about the things the Swedes were asking about. And now it lives on the LDS Church website. There was just a lot of signals that the church was changing and moving in the right direction. So John is totally psyched. It feels like this moment of movement

and opening in the church. Call it Glass Nost or Parasroic. I don't know the right word. This sort of cultural. revolution, a new day in the church. And he wants to seize this momentum to get even more change, like ordainment for women. He wants gay members to be able to be in relationships. And he's calling for it on his podcast and then on national media.

I believe I was asked to give this TED talk to help explain how a Mormon can become an LGBT ally. And the more he pushes for this, the angrier he gets. Because these are more human and personal issues. and he even starts saying things like that he thinks the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction and at a certain point the church decides

they've had enough and they excommunicate him yeah the church says to John in his excommunication letter look this isn't because of your doubts this is because of their quote wide dissemination

via your internet presence which has led others away from the church it feels sort of like one step forward, two steps back. Yeah, yeah, and that's what continues to happen. Like, just a couple months ago that the church issued this policy that basically says gay couples who are married are automatically apostates. And it also said that children of gay couples can't be members until they're 18 and then they have to leave their parents' house and disavow their parents' relationship. Oh, my God, that is cruel.

Yeah, but the thing that was so crazy to me was how the members responded. People that I would never have imagined pushing back against the church did exactly that. Okay, here I go. I'm ready to submit my resignation paper here. Within a week, there's a mass resignation at church headquarters. It might be the single biggest mass resignation in Mormon history. 2,000 people show up. In line to get your name off the church records. Right here.

Still a lot of people coming. Dare to do right and dare to seek truth. In fact, that voice you just heard, that's my best friend turning in her letter. For her, this policy was the final straw. We wanted to be honest, the organization, it doesn't define us. And even for the people who have decided to stay in the church, I think they feel like they can have a more open conversation about this, just even just based on what I see coming across my Facebook feed from my Mormon friends. It just seems like you can talk more openly about these things in a way that 10 years ago when I was Mormon, I just never would have done.

When you look at the church now, do you see something that you might be willing to interface with again? Interface is a terrible. Do you see when you Protocol with like would you start programs Yes In their mainframe Would you would you say slash run Mormonism?

Enter human Would I control off the leak? Oh my fucking God We all know what the circuit board of us is Do you see a church that you might be willing to have some relationship with again? You know, no I just, I don't think I want formal religion anymore. But the thing that did surprise me as I looked at this and as I sort of learned about John's community is that I felt really sad.

Like, I just felt like, where were you seven years ago, which he was online, but I wasn't. You know, where were you when I had no one to talk to and I had nowhere to go and I thought I was alone and I thought my life was never going to be good again. I really did. And for years, I was devastated and lonely and skisks. and sad and it didn't have to be that way, you know? Yeah. And seeing these people congregating online now, it just makes me really happy. Like, they have somewhere to go now.

You said people congregating. Like, do you see it as a kind of church? I think they're trying to figure out what it is. I mean, because this is a group of people that never made up their own rules. So it's kind of a bunch of people sitting in a room. and being like, what do I think? That's a question nobody ever asked me before. Is Han still in the church?

Yeah, he hasn't formally resigned, but he doesn't go to church anymore. It's a big step. I mean, you've been indoctrinated, and that's so deep. It's so deep you can't even, I'm still wondering with myself, how deep is this, you know, before we can leave it? And I can't go back to something else because I don't have anything else. I don't know how to live another life. So if you think, where do we stand now, though?

Well, I think a very good word is we are lost. But I mean in a negative way. I mean, we are lost in a way that we are free to find things, you know. We are lost in the world that has so many opportunities. and my dear wife, she finds a very good quote. He says, only when you're lost, you can be found. Reporter Karen Duffin. She's a producer for the podcast Invisibilia.

Reply all is me, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. We were produced this week by Tim Howard, Shruthy Pinnemanani, and Thea Bennett. Our editor is Peter Clowny, production assistance from Mervyn de Gagnos. We were mixed by David Herman. Matt Lieber is a word you finally remember. Special thanks this week to Kendall Wilcox, Derek Clements, and Greg Prince. Our theme song is by the Mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder, and our ad music is by Build Buildings. You can find us on our website, replyall. ninja, or on iTunes.com slash reply all.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.