The Church and Politics

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Thank you.
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Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out.
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My name is Jim Bennett.
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I'm here as always with my partner in crime, Mr.
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Ian Wilkes.
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Ian, how are you, sir?
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I'm very good today, Jim.
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How are you?
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I am doing very, very well.
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So you had suggested the topic here being the church and politics.
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And I'm very, very nervous about this.
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Because as I've shared this podcast with my wife, particularly, she said, it's good, but you, Jim, talk too much.
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I want to hear more from Ian.
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And I want to be mindful of that.
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And yet now you've suggested a topic where I could talk about this all day long and twice on Sundays.
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So can you help me make sure that I don't do that?
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I will.
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So bring me in.
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I'm interested in hearing your perspective from the outset, particularly from somebody who has not been involved in the church and American politics.
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Because we've talked about the fact that we're perceived worldwide as an American church.
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We function in many ways as an American church.
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And when we talk about politics...
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We're usually talking about American politics.
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So as someone who is not an American, what has that meant to you?
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I
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joined the church when I was 16.
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And within a few weeks, I was asked, what is my political persuasion?
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And I said, so this is north of England.
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It's working class community in the north of England, coal mining community.
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There are three main parties in the UK.
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There is the Conservatives, which are more right wing.
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You could argue maybe some Republican policies in there, etc.
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Then you have Labour, which is a part of the claim for the people, the working class, which is in the communities I was raised in, was Labour, this is working class.
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And you have now, over the years, a developed third party, You have lots of other parties, but the main three parties in the UK are the Liberal Democrats.
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Joining the Church of 16 in a working-class coal-mining community.
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I wasn't sure if I was conservative or Labour at the age of 16.
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I think I was more conservative.
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You know, Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister.
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Depending on who you talk to and where you live, she was either the devil or she was God.
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She promoted the concept of free enterprise, which I liked.
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getting an education, not necessarily expecting to go down the pit of the mine, which a lot of kids did back then, you know, when I was growing up.
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There was a lot of distrust towards her and her policies in the communities that I was raised in.
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And again, at that time, I wasn't sure if I was Labour or Conservative, but when I joined the church, within a few weeks, I was asked, what was my political position?
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And I said, I think I'm leaning towards Conservatism.
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And they said, this is good because the church is conservative.
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And I was a bit confused by that.
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I didn't know what that meant.
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And they explained that a lot of the doctrines, this is the, I think a council on the branch of presidency explained that a lot of the doctrines and policies are very much geared towards the Republican conservative positions and principles around essentially what Margaret Thatcher was advocating at the time, which a lot of that, not all of it, a lot of that thinking of those principles appealed to me because that's how I felt and thought at the time.
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And by the way, Jim, my thinking, my leaning towards traditional conservative values, principles was quite unique, I think, in the communities I was raised.
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So it was very politically sensitive.
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There was a national strike which happened in 1985, I think, where Margaret Thatcher took on all the unions and It was a brutal battle between national government and the labor unions at the time.
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It was the miners' strike, the National Union of Miners.
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My brothers were on the picket lines trying to stop the coal trucks from entering the power station called Ferry Bridge Power Station.
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I remember that.
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I was just a young kid at the time.
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But going into the church and meeting with people who at times advocated for you know quite openly you know for traditional conservative and republican policies was was quite interesting and and then being told that the church was didn't have a position on politics you could vote any way you want in which direction you want you know when you're 16 okay you can you can get the vote and so that was my first uh exposure to you know modern politics i i asked as i got older you know what's that historical relationship.
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And as you know, there is an historical relationship between the church and the early church leaders.
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You know, Joe Smith, I think, tried to run for being president.
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He was a Republican, felt that the church had a significant role to play in American politics.
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I've studied a little bit of that, not extensively.
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And then, of course, Brigham Young's position about, you know, American politics, et cetera.
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I think he was a governor.
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He had a number of other political positions.
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There was a quote attributed to Joseph Smith that I think is worth just touching upon here.
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It's associated with a prophecy called the White Horse Prophecy.
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And it's attributed to, or at least some of the claims attribute this to Joseph Smith, that Joseph Smith said in 1843 that the saints would go up to the Rocky Mountains and become a great and mighty people.
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And he continued in the statement, and he said that, he predicted, rather, that the U.S.
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Constitution would one day hang like a thread, end quote, and then would be saved by the Latter-day Saints.
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There's also frequent references, as you know, to where the leaders have made references to the Constitution of the United States, and have said very clearly in articles in the Ensign, there's references to the Scriptures, lots of references to what the church leaders believe the Constitutionalism is by the God.
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I remember reading a fascinating account in the Ensign, George Washington, I think Abraham Lincoln, some of the first presidents of the United States appeared to Wilford Woodruff, I think it was.
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And there was an appearance.
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They appeared to Wilford Woodruff and were accepting the work that had been done on their behalf.
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And so all this, the reason why I'm sharing this with you is that there's a very unique and distinct relationship and significant relationship between Mormonism and politics, and Mormonism and the earlier mindset and thinking of Joe Smith and Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff, and the relationship with the Constitution.
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This came through, American politics came through very strongly in the first few years when I was joining the church and never changed.
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And all the doctrines and policies and the principles that we learned about, I was told often, that that was rooted in conservative, orthodox, traditional thinking through everything, through the programs, through the scriptures.
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It's all there, and it shapes and influences how members think, how they feel, and where their position is politically.
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So that's a long answer to your question.
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It's always interesting to me to see the impact of politics outside of the United States, because I remember when we were missionaries, for instance, The Sunday Times did an insert about the church, particularly about the church welfare program.
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And the church reprinted copies of this and asked missionaries to distribute it.
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Do you remember
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this?
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I do.
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It was the picture with the big guy, the big member, who sat on a tin of beans, I think.
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Yeah,
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sitting on this mountain of tins.
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Grant.
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Yeah, Grant.
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His son was a missionary with us.
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That's right.
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Nick.
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Nick, yeah.
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Yeah, but he's sitting on a tin of beans and he's showing the church welfare program.
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But the problem was, you open it up, in the first paragraph, it essentially endorsed Margaret Thatcher.
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She's trying to do point for point what we're trying to do as a church.
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And I don't know if we were ever told not to pass that out, but we stopped.
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I got that when I was up in Thurso, and everybody who read it read that paragraph and went, if you're Margaret Thatcher's church, then piss off.
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And so it was a very instructive thing to this American that aligning yourself with those kinds of values wasn't necessarily something that played well in the rest of the world.
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But when you talk about the church as a conservative church or a Republican church, those two things were not necessarily synonymous.
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back at the time of the church's founding.
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In fact, the Republican Party in the United States was founded on a specific platform to get rid of the twin relics of barbarism, and they were slavery and polygamy.
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The Republican Party was initially launched as an anti-polygamist party, and members of the church were uniformly Democrats.
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Now, 21st century Republicans versus 19th century Republicans, it's kind of hard to see ideological consistency there.
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It's really hard to apply sort of the modern interpretation of what those labels mean to those guys, particularly when Joseph Smith, when you talk about the white horse prophecy, and we're going to have to get into that because that's still is one of the driving forces, if not of American politics, certainly of Utah politics.
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But Joseph Smith was a theocrat.
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There's a great book by Benjamin Park called Kingdom of Nauvoo that talks about the fact that Joseph Smith was crowned king of the world before his death and envisioned this political kingdom of God on earth as as well as the spiritual kingdom of God on earth.
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And I actually think that that was fulfilled by Brigham Young, because when Brigham Young arrived in the Utah Territory, they named it the State of Deseret, and he was the territorial governor, he was the president of the church, and he had essentially absolute power.
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And Utah, some would say, is still a theocracy.
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I don't think that's true, but in the early days, that's exactly what it was.
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So when Utah tried to become a state, they absolutely had to repudiate polygamy.
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That's where the manifesto came from.
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The manifesto initially was not presented as a revelation.
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It was, okay, we're just going to live according to the law of the land.
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If you read the language of the manifesto that's in the Doctrine and Covenants, it's not spiritual language.
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It's, oh yes, we will comply with the law of land, and that's about it.
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There was a United States senator that was elected who was a monogamist.
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Reed Smoot, and they refused to seat him in the Senate because they thought he was going to be an advocate for polygamy, and they thought that he was going to have more loyalty to the church than to the government.
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And they actually interviewed, they called before Congress, the president of the church, Joseph F.
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Smith, went and testified before Congress and had to admit in front of Congress that he had not seen Jesus Christ, You know, he sat there and grilled him.
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So you're a prophet.
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Have you seen Jesus?
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Have you done all these things?
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Under oath.
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Under oath, yeah.
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And so he had to admit, no, I haven't seen Jesus.
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So Utah's becoming a state shaped a lot of our politics, a lot of church politics for a very long time, because we got rid of polygamy, we jettisoned polygamy, and tried to become sort of mainstream Americans.
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All of that is kind of interesting from a historical perspective.
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I always like to tell this story.
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Every time I've run for office, I talk about the fact that the first person in my family to run for office was a man named Daniel H.
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Wells, who joined the church in Illinois at the time of Joseph Smith, was a counselor in the first presidency, was the third mayor of Salt Lake City.
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His nephew, I think, was the first governor of Utah.
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But Daniel H.
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Wells was a practicing lawyer in Illinois at the same time as Abraham Lincoln.
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And the family story is that when he met Abraham Lincoln, he said to him, you are a dead man, for I swore to myself, if I ever met a man who was uglier than I was, I would shoot him on sight.
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To which Abraham Lincoln replied, shoot away.
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If I'm uglier than you, I don't want to live.
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And, uh, I tell that story because I was told that story by my uncle telling me how much I look like Daniel H.
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Wells.
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And I do look quite a bit like him.
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But, you know, so all that early history is kind of fun and interesting from a historical perspective.
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But in terms of what animates the Latter-day Saint political mind today...
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we are still, I think, paying a price for Ezra Taft Benson.
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Because Ezra Taft Benson, he was called into the 12 and used his office to try to shape political attitudes.
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He gave a number of conference talks that were blatantly political, not at all doctrinal.
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And he was obsessed with communism.
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He was obsessed with the communist conspiracy that was out to destroy the world and out to destroy the church.
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And he had aligned himself with the John Birch Society, which is a far-right, hard-right group.
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I don't know who John Birch is.
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I think he was like a soldier who died in World War II or something.
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But Ezra Taft Benson tried to align the church and get an actual formal alliance between the church and the John Birch Society.
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and had David O.
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McKay's picture put on the John Birch Society newsletter.
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And my grandfather, David L.
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McKay, who went by his middle name Lawrence, Lawrence McKay went ballistic when that happened.
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And he went to his father and said, this is disgusting.
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This is a cancer on the church.
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You need to slap down Ezra Benson for doing this.
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This is not appropriate.
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We are not aligned with the John Birch Society.
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And the church never really slaps down anybody.
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in that high of a leadership, but David O.
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wrote, wow, I didn't realize how much Lawrence hates the John Birch Society.
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So I'm very proud of that, that in my family lineage, it was my grandfather that stood up to David O.
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McKay to say we can't do this.
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But Ezra Taft Benson, his ideas about communism, and this is maybe a bit of a tangent, but he pushed the Book of Mormon when he was president of the church.
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And everybody went, oh, he's mellowed, he's softened, he's not talking about politics anymore, he's just talking about the Book of Mormon.
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And okay, yeah, that was true, but what they don't realize is that he saw the Book of Mormon as a political tract.
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He saw the Book of Mormon as a metaphor for our current situation, it was written for our day, and it's warning us that the Gadianton robbers and the secret combinations, these are the communists.
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This is exactly, he saw a one-to-one relationship between Gadianton robbers and communists.
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And he had a whole following of people, and he was also, he got permission from the first presidency to serve in President Eisenhower's cabinet as the Secretary of Agriculture while he was an apostle.
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And I was just thinking, wow, a apostle must not be that demanding a job if you can also be a cabinet secretary at the same time.
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And after he left, he said that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist.
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Everybody was a communist except for Ezra Taft Benson.
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I mean, it's nuts.
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And he wanted to run for president or vice president, actually.
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He wanted to run on a ticket with Strom Thurmond.
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Does that name mean anything to anybody outside the United States?
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No.
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Strom Thurmond was in the United States Senate until he was about 106.
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My father served in the Senate at the same time Strom did and said that the Senate essentially became his nursing home.
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He was just this doddering old man in the Senate.
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But when the Democrats in 1964 passed the Civil Rights Act, Southern Democrats rebelled and were furious.
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because they were all racists and they were all defenders of segregation and defenders of slavery from way back.
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It was the Republican Party that had gotten rid of slavery and the Democrats.
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And that all shifted in 64 when the Democrats backed the Civil Rights Act and Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and wanted to run for president on a segregation platform.
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He called himself a Dixiecrat.
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And he wanted Ezra Taft Benson as his running mate.
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And Ezra Taft Benson wanted to run.
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And David O.
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McKay said, absolutely not.
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No, you can't do that.
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That's a bridge too far.
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But that did not stop this whole just kind of grotesque, really conspiratorial movement that Ezra Taft Benson's a big player in it, and another big player that still has relevance today is a name that many Latter-day Saints may not recognize, but a man by the name of Cleon Skousen.
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Does that name mean anything to you?
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Oh, yes.
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Well, his grandson actually served a mission with us.
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There was an Elder Skousen in the mission.
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He was Cleon's grandson.
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But Cleon Skousen ran for office.
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He was the police chief of Salt Lake City for a while.
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And Ezra Taft Benson kept trying to get him into the 12.
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And David O.
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wasn't having it.
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He wasn't going anywhere.
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But Cleon Skousen wrote a bunch of books about the Constitution hanging by a thread.
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and how the communists were taking over.
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The Naked Communist is a book by Cleon Skousen.
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And just this conspiratorial mindset that really created this rancid mixture of religion and politics that still endures to this day.
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And it endures in the form of Glenn Beck.
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Does that name mean anything to you?
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Yes.
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Glenn Beck was counseling people in his program, read The 5,000 Year Leap by Cleon Skousen.
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This has all the answers.
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You know, he would go on, and Glenn Beck, for a time, he's a convert to the church, and he was what Tucker Carlson is today.
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He was the most prominent talking head.
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He had a Fox News show where he'd get out a blackboard and draw all these lines and all these conspiracies, just huge conspiracy theories.
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And my father was running for re-election to the United States Senate in 2010 when this was all happening.
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And I was his campaign manager.
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And Glenn Beck was the de facto head of what we'd call the Tea Party movement, which was this huge backlash against President Obama and this idea, we're going to start a new Tea Party, we're going to start a new government.
00:20:56.057 --> 00:21:00.501
And the leader of this movement, the de facto leader of this movement is a Latter-day Saint.
00:21:00.993 --> 00:21:01.835
It's Glenn Beck.
00:21:03.156 --> 00:21:08.923
And we were terrified of what Glenn Beck might say about my father as he was running for re-election.
00:21:10.164 --> 00:21:21.077
And so my father, he had just written a book about the Book of Mormon, and he gave a signed copy of it to John Huntsman Sr., who was a friend of Glenn Beck's.
00:21:21.199 --> 00:21:23.580
John Huntsman Sr., the billionaire guy.
00:21:23.601 --> 00:21:25.604
His son was the governor of Utah.
00:21:25.624 --> 00:21:27.165
I mean, a lot of players here, so I'm hoping...
00:21:27.425 --> 00:21:28.567
You're not getting lost.
00:21:28.827 --> 00:21:28.968
I've
00:21:29.028 --> 00:21:30.650
met John Huntsman Sr.
00:21:30.730 --> 00:21:32.432
in Germany once at an event.
00:21:32.832 --> 00:21:33.913
Well, John Huntsman Sr.
00:21:33.952 --> 00:21:39.439
was my stake president when I went on a mission, and he asked me three times about whether or not I masturbate.
00:21:40.400 --> 00:21:44.305
So that's really my interaction.
00:21:44.325 --> 00:21:44.365
He
00:21:44.904 --> 00:21:45.685
shared that story.
00:21:45.705 --> 00:21:45.905
That's
00:21:45.925 --> 00:21:47.607
interesting.
00:21:47.647 --> 00:21:48.829
That's a story in and of itself.
00:21:48.890 --> 00:21:50.111
That's not a political story.
00:21:50.692 --> 00:21:53.634
John Huntsman Sr., obviously, he's a huge deal.
00:21:53.674 --> 00:21:56.478
He's a very wealthy man, very prominent in Utah.
00:21:56.834 --> 00:22:00.318
And he was a state president who called my father to be a bishop.
00:22:01.059 --> 00:22:02.922
So my father was very good friends with John Huntsman.
00:22:02.961 --> 00:22:04.484
John Huntsman was very good friends with Glenn Beck.
00:22:04.505 --> 00:22:10.792
So my father gave John Huntsman a copy of his book and said, can you give this to Glenn Beck and arrange a meeting?
00:22:10.873 --> 00:22:12.476
I would love to talk to Glenn Beck.
00:22:12.635 --> 00:22:14.557
I would love to have a conversation with him.
00:22:15.440 --> 00:22:20.205
John Huntsman came back to us and said, Glenn Beck says, thank you for the book.
00:22:20.707 --> 00:22:25.073
Don't worry, he's not going to get into the Utah race and you don't need to have a conversation with him.
00:22:25.113 --> 00:22:25.773
Don't worry about it.
00:22:26.690 --> 00:22:29.012
All right, so, fade in, fade out.
00:22:30.054 --> 00:22:34.198
I'm still, if you could tell by the tone of my voice, I'm still a little bitter about this.
00:22:34.858 --> 00:22:34.939
Okay.
00:22:35.420 --> 00:22:38.163
Glenn Beck had Mike Lee on his program.
00:22:38.222 --> 00:22:42.607
Mike Lee, who was the sitting senator who, spoiler alert, defeated my father in 2010.
00:22:42.807 --> 00:22:51.998
And Mike Lee was running against my father, and he had Mike Lee on the program, and he said, Oh, I hope you win.
00:22:52.018 --> 00:22:55.281
I'd vote for a mouse before I would vote for Bob Bennett.
00:22:55.970 --> 00:23:01.435
I just, Bob Bennett, and he just, and then he said, I will never forget it.
00:23:02.596 --> 00:23:03.357
There was a whole issue.
00:23:03.397 --> 00:23:05.359
There was a guy named Cass Sunstein.
00:23:06.701 --> 00:23:08.143
He doesn't matter, really.
00:23:08.182 --> 00:23:16.872
But Glenn Beck was convinced he was a communist, and my father voted to confirm him in the Obama administration.
00:23:16.971 --> 00:23:18.373
He was a nominee for something.
00:23:18.453 --> 00:23:19.414
I can't even remember what it was.
00:23:19.875 --> 00:23:26.013
But Cass Sunstein was going to destroy the whole world because he's a communist and he's going to infiltrate the American government.
00:23:26.094 --> 00:23:27.674
And Bob Bennett voted for him.
00:23:28.717 --> 00:23:31.058
And so Glenn Beck gets on.
00:23:31.098 --> 00:23:32.461
He says, you have Bob Bennett.
00:23:32.520 --> 00:23:35.944
You have a man who looked me in the eye.
00:23:35.964 --> 00:23:40.369
He looked me in the eye and he said, Cass Sunstein's not a big deal.
00:23:40.410 --> 00:23:41.351
He won't be a problem.
00:23:41.791 --> 00:23:43.193
That's not a problem at all, Glenn.
00:23:43.233 --> 00:23:46.778
And I sat there and I went, he looked you in the eye?
00:23:46.798 --> 00:23:50.321
You've never, and I called, Dad, Dad.
00:23:50.721 --> 00:23:55.648
Glenn Beck is saying you looked him in the eye and told him that he says, I never met Glenn Beck.
00:23:55.709 --> 00:23:57.030
I have no idea what he's talking about.
00:23:57.751 --> 00:24:00.957
He just made this up, pulled it right out of his butt.
00:24:02.038 --> 00:24:05.983
And later on, I've had people I'd never been able to talk to Glenn Beck.
00:24:06.023 --> 00:24:07.086
Other people talk to him.
00:24:07.105 --> 00:24:10.671
And later on, he's saying, oh, I was mistaking him for Orrin Hatch.
00:24:12.193 --> 00:24:17.981
It's like, dude, you went on the most powerful political platform ever.
00:24:18.145 --> 00:24:21.971
and skewered my father based on a conversation you never had.
00:24:22.011 --> 00:24:23.334
You lied.
00:24:23.374 --> 00:24:29.021
The least you could do was say publicly that you mistook him for Orrin Hatch.
00:24:29.482 --> 00:24:30.785
But you didn't do that, Glenn.
00:24:31.586 --> 00:24:34.289
And anyway, I mean, this went on, this campaign.
00:24:34.329 --> 00:24:47.730
Mike Lee was leaning into all this Cleon Scouser and Ezra Taft Benson junk and was hinting to everybody that, oh, golly, I'm the guy.
00:24:48.193 --> 00:24:51.958
I'm the guy that's going to save the Constitution as it's hanging by a thread.
00:24:52.939 --> 00:24:55.020
And he would never overtly say that.
00:24:55.661 --> 00:24:57.803
But he'd always quote the Doctrine and Covenants.
00:24:57.843 --> 00:25:06.511
He'd always talk about the wise men who were raised up unto this very purpose to create the Constitution.
00:25:06.711 --> 00:25:08.894
And just all this stuff.
00:25:09.634 --> 00:25:11.757
And Utah politics eats it up.
00:25:12.798 --> 00:25:15.560
Utah politics just devoured it.
00:25:16.501 --> 00:25:25.471
And And the interesting thing was, so you have a convention where delegates vote on who the two primary candidates are going to be.
00:25:26.393 --> 00:25:36.884
And going into that convention, we had all kinds of polling that showed that my father was dead in the water, wasn't going anywhere, and that Mike Lee was just...
00:25:38.326 --> 00:25:44.314
If you get 70% in the convention, 60%, I'm sorry, there is no...
00:25:44.993 --> 00:26:25.299
primary and you go straight to a general election and Mike Lee was pushing the envelope and was probably going to get 60% and my dad was going to lose and Mike Lee was going to go straight to the Senate without even having to go through a primary well right before the convention somebody not us but somebody sent out a postcard that put a name on everything Mike Lee had been doing The postcard showed Mike Lee standing in front of, so my father, it was two pictures on the front, showed my father standing in front of the U.S.
00:26:25.339 --> 00:26:25.740
Capitol.
00:26:26.642 --> 00:26:29.786
And then it showed Mike Lee standing in front of the Salt Lake Temple.
00:26:30.748 --> 00:26:34.573
And the headline was, which one really represents Utah values?
00:26:35.413 --> 00:26:43.445
And on the back, it just slathered on the Mike Lee is the guy who's going to save the Constitution as it was hanging by a thread and all this kind of stuff.
00:26:44.066 --> 00:26:56.603
And when you put a name on it, when you said, this is what you are doing, this is what Mike Lee was dog whistling and hinting at, but when you overtly put a name on it, it really turned people off.
00:26:57.463 --> 00:26:58.705
And they were really disgusted.
00:26:59.507 --> 00:27:03.571
And Mike Lee barely scraped his way out of that convention.
00:27:04.232 --> 00:27:08.298
The bad news for us is that it didn't send any votes to us.
00:27:08.398 --> 00:27:13.685
It sent votes to Mike Lee's other competitor, a guy named Tim Bridgewater, who no one remembers anymore.
00:27:14.306 --> 00:27:22.415
He almost got 60% because everybody left Mike Lee, but my father still, he didn't get anywhere and we lost.
00:27:23.376 --> 00:27:44.122
But you look at now how what animates Republican politics, what animates church politics, it's all still rooted in that Ezra Tapp Benson anti-communist conspiracy theory garbage, which is one of the reasons why so many American Mormons have embraced Donald Trump.
00:27:44.961 --> 00:27:56.192
Donald Trump is the natural extension of all of that bile, of all of this sort of paranoia, conspiracy, everything else.
00:27:56.432 --> 00:28:00.718
Donald Trump opens his mouth, and all he does is spew nonsense conspiracies.
00:28:01.739 --> 00:28:07.544
And it's the natural language of so many Latter-day Saints.
00:28:07.644 --> 00:28:12.209
And I've got to tell you, Ian, it's one of the biggest trials of my faith.
00:28:13.049 --> 00:28:13.150
Right.
00:28:13.410 --> 00:28:18.457
I mean, we are the church that says we follow, we have the gift of the Holy Ghost.
00:28:19.137 --> 00:28:20.519
We have the gift of discernment.
00:28:21.300 --> 00:28:23.063
We can tell truth from evil.
00:28:23.163 --> 00:28:25.527
We know what's right and what's wrong.
00:28:26.067 --> 00:28:29.030
What are we doing embracing Donald Trump?
00:28:30.272 --> 00:28:35.440
The most vile, you know, it's just repugnant to me.
00:28:35.460 --> 00:28:42.650
I tell this story, and a lot of people have come to me and they said, okay, your dad would be so disappointed in you.
00:28:43.586 --> 00:28:46.730
Because I have very publicly left the Republican Party.
00:28:46.810 --> 00:28:48.334
I started a new party.
00:28:48.374 --> 00:28:52.279
I'm one of the founders of the United Utah Party.
00:28:52.359 --> 00:28:58.169
I ran for Congress as their first candidate and broke all records for third party candidates in the state of Utah.
00:28:59.049 --> 00:29:00.913
And I'm very proud of all of that.
00:29:01.674 --> 00:29:07.284
And people come to me and say, well, your dad, he was a Republican and he'd be really ashamed of you.
00:29:07.364 --> 00:29:09.247
And I said, no, I think dad and I are good.
00:29:10.268 --> 00:29:17.693
And I tell the story that I was asked to tell, I actually went on MSNBC and told this to Andrea Mitchell and Lawrence O'Donnell.
00:29:18.674 --> 00:29:20.659
I'd been on national television discussing this.
00:29:21.942 --> 00:29:29.998
When my father died, well, he suffered a stroke that left him incapacitated and he passed away three weeks later.
00:29:30.018 --> 00:29:46.763
And we all rushed to his bedside and we were all there And at one point, my mother and I were standing there, and he turned in his hospital bed to us, and he asked us, are there any Muslims in this hospital?
00:29:48.025 --> 00:29:50.708
Which was a bizarre question, right?
00:29:50.728 --> 00:29:53.411
And I just kind of went, this is the stroke.
00:29:53.590 --> 00:29:54.571
This is the stroke talking.
00:29:55.773 --> 00:29:57.194
And I said, I'm sure there are, Dad.
00:29:57.255 --> 00:29:58.557
We were in Washington, D.C.
00:29:58.636 --> 00:29:59.317
And he said, well...
00:30:00.546 --> 00:30:06.615
I want to go up to every one of them and apologize on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump.
00:30:08.297 --> 00:30:09.459
And it was just heartbreaking.
00:30:10.140 --> 00:30:21.396
He spent the last few days just in tears about what the Republican Party that he had devoted his life to and what it had become, what it had devolved into.
00:30:22.637 --> 00:30:31.267
Politically, the Republican Party ideologically bears no resemblance to to the party that I remember from my youth.
00:30:31.406 --> 00:30:40.220
I was a proud Reagan Republican for a very long time, and I believed in free markets and free trade.
00:30:40.901 --> 00:30:46.549
Donald Trump doesn't believe in free markets and free trade, so now the Republican Party doesn't believe in free markets and free trade.
00:30:47.270 --> 00:30:56.925
It was Ronald Reagan who called the Soviet Union an evil empire, and Donald Trump was a huge apologist for Putin.
00:30:57.314 --> 00:31:01.798
And Republicans in Congress are calling on us to stop giving aid to Ukraine against Russia.
00:31:02.638 --> 00:31:05.461
And I'm like, so what does it mean to be a Republican anymore?
00:31:06.242 --> 00:31:14.170
The ideology has just gone so many different directions that now it's just all about the tribe.
00:31:14.210 --> 00:31:19.234
It's just all about, okay, well, I'm a Republican because I'm a Republican.
00:31:20.076 --> 00:31:22.198
And it doesn't matter what the Republicans believe.
00:31:22.218 --> 00:31:25.401
It just matters that I'm a Republican.
00:31:25.721 --> 00:31:38.897
And We tied our tribal identity as Mormons to the church in such a way that there are so many members of the church who are Republicans first, so many American members.
00:31:39.598 --> 00:31:42.844
They're Republicans first and they're Latter-day Saints a distant second.
00:31:43.865 --> 00:31:46.671
And one last quick story before I let you...
00:31:46.691 --> 00:31:47.913
Sorry, this is what I was afraid of.
00:31:48.653 --> 00:31:53.662
But I interviewed for a position with the church.
00:31:54.337 --> 00:31:59.203
the director of church governmental relations, essentially the church's lobbyist.
00:32:00.105 --> 00:32:02.807
The guy holding the position at the time was a guy named Bill Evans.
00:32:03.729 --> 00:32:08.515
And the interviews went very well, but then Bill Evans decided he wasn't going to retire for a few more years.
00:32:08.595 --> 00:32:13.040
So I didn't get the position, but I had some very interesting conversations with him.
00:32:14.041 --> 00:32:24.648
And he said, look, as the church's lobbyist, I know that I can walk into the state legislature and and tell them to do something and they will do it at the drop of a hat.
00:32:25.631 --> 00:32:28.232
He says, and that's why I don't tell them to do anything.
00:32:29.255 --> 00:32:33.398
We know we have the biggest stick in the state and we choose not to use it.
00:32:34.339 --> 00:32:42.848
He said, however, the flip side to that is when we choose to use it, it's a very deliberate decision.
00:32:42.930 --> 00:32:46.794
We know how significant it is and it's gone all the way to the top.
00:32:47.554 --> 00:32:51.978
You know, when we do that, the first presidency is the one making that decision.
00:32:52.979 --> 00:33:04.029
And the church decided to back what was called the Utah Compact, which was a very liberal approach to immigration.
00:33:06.031 --> 00:33:15.342
You know, Republicans, the build the wall, Trump Republicans are, you know, the illegal immigrants are destroying our country and build the wall, build the wall, build the wall.
00:33:15.905 --> 00:33:19.211
And the church's position is exactly the opposite of that.
00:33:20.112 --> 00:33:23.376
It's very much more in line with the Democrats than with the Republicans.
00:33:24.337 --> 00:33:34.673
And he said, and then when we issued that and we backed it, every single elected Republican in Utah ran away from it and said, oh, this is just the church.
00:33:34.713 --> 00:33:35.894
They're just speaking as men.
00:33:35.934 --> 00:33:38.038
They're just, oh, this is the...
00:33:38.479 --> 00:33:40.702
And he said, they think we went rogue.
00:33:40.722 --> 00:33:45.630
They think that the government relations group just was...
00:33:46.018 --> 00:33:49.442
pulling something out of their rear and they don't realize it came all the way from the top.
00:33:50.423 --> 00:33:51.586
And so it was very clear.
00:33:51.645 --> 00:33:55.230
And you saw that during COVID, right?
00:33:55.611 --> 00:34:02.540
The church said, you need to get vaccinated and you need to wear masks.
00:34:03.923 --> 00:34:09.369
And you had this huge rebellion from all of these people who call me a cafeteria Mormon.
00:34:09.811 --> 00:34:12.233
They're like, oh, President Nelson is a fallen prophet.
00:34:13.135 --> 00:34:14.617
Oh, you know, I can't do that.
00:34:14.637 --> 00:34:15.038
I mean...
00:34:15.202 --> 00:34:30.137
The political venom that has infected the church is really toxic and I think really problematic, particularly if we want this church to survive for generations to come.
00:34:30.217 --> 00:34:40.429
Because the rising generation has no patience for Ezra Taft Benson conspiracy theory looniness and has no patience for Donald Trump.
00:34:41.570 --> 00:34:44.634
And that's where we are and we need to be somewhere else.
00:34:45.538 --> 00:34:49.465
So that end of rant, I hope it wasn't too long of a rant.
00:34:50.106 --> 00:34:51.307
I'll turn it back over to you.
00:34:51.347 --> 00:34:51.407
Yes.
00:34:51.929 --> 00:34:56.297
Get your reaction or other insights.
00:34:57.659 --> 00:35:06.414
Vicky, I listened intently and I just want Alyssa to know that it was my idea to talk about this.
00:35:06.454 --> 00:35:07.476
It wasn't your idea.
00:35:07.496 --> 00:35:08.217
It was my idea.
00:35:08.237 --> 00:35:10.262
Notwithstanding your...
00:35:10.690 --> 00:35:17.496
history with and relationship with politics, which the folks that know you know you've got this passion for politics.
00:35:17.976 --> 00:35:19.097
Politics runs in your family.
00:35:20.619 --> 00:35:22.121
Church politics runs in your family.
00:35:22.260 --> 00:35:25.463
I think it's quite distinct, quite unique in many ways.
00:35:25.903 --> 00:35:42.952
Just going back to the Edgastaff Benson thing, when I was on a mission with you and President Benson was pushing the Book of Mormon and just listening or hearing some of the quotes, as a missionary from the UK, without the experience of being in the U.S.
00:35:43.413 --> 00:35:44.094
or living a U.S.
00:35:44.134 --> 00:35:44.974
life or seeing U.S.
00:35:45.014 --> 00:35:51.903
politics, certainly not at that age and not ever to the extent that you have or you guys have in the U.S.
00:35:52.605 --> 00:35:59.414
I saw Ezra Benson as an anti-communist, which appealed to me, anti-socialist.
00:35:59.634 --> 00:36:04.159
I haven't grown up in a socialist community, which didn't appeal to me, frankly.
00:36:05.240 --> 00:36:19.233
And Having teachings or thoughts or principles around free enterprise, hard work, at the time I thought his position was less government interference in people's lives, more autonomy to the people.
00:36:19.253 --> 00:36:21.175
That's what I took from his talks.
00:36:21.476 --> 00:36:29.088
There were elements of Margaret Thatcher's principles that I actually subscribed to, but there were many other things that she did which I certainly didn't.
00:36:29.188 --> 00:36:34.516
As you know, in Scotland, when we were on our missions, Thatcher introduced what they called the poll tax.
00:36:35.157 --> 00:36:35.838
Oh, I remember that.
00:36:36.034 --> 00:36:43.621
1988, I think we were on our missions at the time, and she used Scotland as a testing ground for that policy.
00:36:43.641 --> 00:36:46.684
It was pretty awful, the poll tax.
00:36:46.724 --> 00:36:47.184
Well,
00:36:47.666 --> 00:36:49.628
and missionaries were being asked to pay it.
00:36:51.188 --> 00:36:51.909
Yes.
00:36:51.929 --> 00:36:54.652
And we were told, okay, don't worry about it, you don't need to pay it.
00:36:55.514 --> 00:36:55.614
Right.
00:36:55.634 --> 00:36:58.157
But then they came back and said, no, you absolutely do.
00:36:58.677 --> 00:36:58.896
Yes.
00:36:58.916 --> 00:37:02.141
And so I think maybe I still owe poll tax from the 80s.
00:37:02.481 --> 00:37:03.362
I never paid anything.
00:37:03.650 --> 00:37:04.311
I think you do.
00:37:04.371 --> 00:37:07.376
And when you die, Margaret Thatcher's going to come up.
00:37:07.396 --> 00:37:10.940
She's quite a very forthright lady.
00:37:10.981 --> 00:37:13.105
She's going to be chasing you down.
00:37:13.184 --> 00:37:16.188
I think there's a lineup of people that want to see you.
00:37:16.208 --> 00:37:19.775
It's probably Margaret Thatcher first and then Satan second.
00:37:20.436 --> 00:37:23.159
But I think Satan would be scared of Margaret Thatcher.
00:37:23.440 --> 00:37:27.246
But the policies of Thatcher did not go down well in Scotland.
00:37:27.326 --> 00:37:32.094
And still to this day, there's a lot of strong negative feeling towards Margaret Thatcher.
00:37:32.577 --> 00:37:33.960
So, you know, S.F.
00:37:33.980 --> 00:37:37.523
Benson, I thought, was like a Thatcher-type person in some respects.
00:37:37.764 --> 00:37:41.126
A lot of this thinking that you're talking about permeates...
00:37:41.387 --> 00:37:44.871
American politics permeates the church across the world.
00:37:45.452 --> 00:37:46.413
A couple of quick comments.
00:37:48.474 --> 00:37:51.659
The church states that it's apolitical, yet it's been involved.
00:37:52.420 --> 00:37:55.103
I think it's very selective in terms of what it...
00:37:55.282 --> 00:37:57.686
you know, the kind of issues it wants to get involved in.
00:37:57.726 --> 00:38:01.168
If you look at Prop 8, which is the...
00:38:01.922 --> 00:38:11.277
You know, that California ballot proposition, a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage, passed in November 2008.
00:38:11.317 --> 00:38:20.893
The church was very concerned about that, and I think it was involved providing funding to influence that.
00:38:21.675 --> 00:38:27.244
And so there are a number of topics or issues that the church chooses or selects to get involved in.
00:38:27.304 --> 00:38:28.085
I think that's one of them.
00:38:28.737 --> 00:38:33.425
Our listeners will know that the church has got limited influence, if any, outside of the U.S.
00:38:33.965 --> 00:38:36.230
The church is not dominant outside the U.S.
00:38:36.250 --> 00:38:37.532
in terms of politics whatsoever.
00:38:38.172 --> 00:38:39.974
It's mostly Utah-centric.
00:38:40.376 --> 00:38:41.637
I think that's how it's
00:38:41.898 --> 00:38:42.079
viewed.
00:38:43.039 --> 00:38:44.141
No, I think you're right.
00:38:44.442 --> 00:38:45.063
It's interesting.
00:38:45.344 --> 00:38:47.827
This is just conjuring up all kinds of wild memories for me.
00:38:48.789 --> 00:38:51.512
When I was an intern on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
00:38:51.652 --> 00:39:03.704
for Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, Elder Ballard came to Washington and wanted to have a meeting with all of the congressional staffers who were members of the church.
00:39:04.945 --> 00:39:07.068
And there was a sizable number of us.
00:39:07.128 --> 00:39:08.831
There was probably 200 or so.
00:39:08.851 --> 00:39:18.702
And we all met in a room in the Capitol, and it was just a nice little lunch, and he opened it up for a Q&A.
00:39:18.963 --> 00:39:27.233
And I asked a Q that still rankles me to this day.
00:39:27.969 --> 00:39:48.295
So this was around 1995, and 1995 was the year the church issued the proclamation on the family, largely because they were responding to a ballot initiative in Hawaii that would have made same-sex marriage legal in Hawaii.
00:39:48.335 --> 00:40:02.376
And the proclamation was filed as part of an amicus brief to give the church sort of standing to be able to weigh in on legal challenges to this proposition.
00:40:03.056 --> 00:40:05.259
I'm sure I fumbled that from a legal perspective.
00:40:05.699 --> 00:40:07.601
But anyway, that's the environment we were in.
00:40:07.621 --> 00:40:17.135
And we were in Washington, D.C., and so politics was on my mind, and I asked what I thought was a perfectly reasonable question.
00:40:18.235 --> 00:40:25.545
And it was, you know, the church has weighed in on political issues in the United States and Hawaii most recently.
00:40:26.369 --> 00:40:33.782
Does the church, as a worldwide church, does the church have plans to weigh in on political issues in other countries?
00:40:35.105 --> 00:40:37.829
And Elder Ballard just lost it.
00:40:38.731 --> 00:40:40.594
He got angry, visibly angry.
00:40:40.614 --> 00:40:45.242
I mean, I was a 26-year-old intern.
00:40:45.262 --> 00:40:48.626
I mean, I'm a kid, essentially.
00:40:48.666 --> 00:40:50.090
I'd just been newly married.
00:40:50.818 --> 00:40:56.686
But I didn't have the kind of confidence to withstand an apostle yelling at me in front of 200 people.
00:40:57.626 --> 00:40:58.407
But he just...
00:40:59.188 --> 00:41:01.512
That's absolutely wrong.
00:41:01.572 --> 00:41:03.195
We never get involved in political issues.
00:41:03.534 --> 00:41:06.177
We've never gotten involved in political issues before and we're not going to get involved.
00:41:06.599 --> 00:41:08.922
But what's happened in Hawaii, that's a moral issue.
00:41:10.143 --> 00:41:12.085
So it doesn't count, I guess.
00:41:12.726 --> 00:41:17.434
But it was how dare I even think that the church would ever get involved in political issues.
00:41:17.914 --> 00:41:20.498
There are legal financial reasons...
00:41:21.346 --> 00:41:43.369
why the church can't endorse candidates, the church, because then they'll lose their tax-exempt status, but they can advocate for positions, and clearly they got involved in all of the gay marriage initiatives and lost every single one of those in every way it is possible to lose.
00:41:44.411 --> 00:41:49.936
You know, it's just so funny when anybody brings up gay marriage as if it's a going political concern.
00:41:49.956 --> 00:41:50.657
It's like...
00:41:51.362 --> 00:41:53.264
Yes, we've had that fight.
00:41:53.826 --> 00:41:54.467
We've lost.
00:41:55.467 --> 00:41:57.050
The church's position lost.
00:41:58.233 --> 00:42:00.916
And that's just the reality that we're living in.
00:42:00.956 --> 00:42:04.682
But one other story.
00:42:04.722 --> 00:42:06.445
We're coming up close to the end here.
00:42:06.465 --> 00:42:13.996
I used to write editorials for the Deseret News, which is the church's newspaper.
00:42:14.036 --> 00:42:15.460
The church owns that newspaper.
00:42:16.661 --> 00:42:27.128
And Usually, editorials for the Deseret News, I used to say, the goal is to write something that will offend the least amount of people.
00:42:28.168 --> 00:42:30.932
You end up writing just bland stuff.
00:42:31.074 --> 00:42:35.018
I had to write 450 words about how human trafficking is bad.
00:42:35.059 --> 00:42:38.565
What's the flip side to that?
00:42:38.605 --> 00:42:41.728
Is there a pro-human trafficking argument that I have to refute?
00:42:42.530 --> 00:42:43.110
What do you say?
00:42:43.130 --> 00:42:44.753
Yes, we know it's bad.
00:42:45.282 --> 00:42:48.666
You have to make sure that it's not going to be offensive to the church.
00:42:49.567 --> 00:42:54.512
You can take a strong position where the church is taking a strong position, like on immigration, for instance.
00:42:55.733 --> 00:43:03.302
But for the most part, you absolutely could not endorse a candidate, one way or the other.
00:43:04.204 --> 00:43:09.130
Well, I left the Deseret News when I ran for Congress.
00:43:10.110 --> 00:43:11.773
I left the Deseret News when I ran for Congress.
00:43:12.052 --> 00:43:12.893
Oh, jeez.
00:43:13.793 --> 00:43:15.135
I have my Do Not Disturb on.
00:43:15.175 --> 00:43:17.721
I'll put it back on.
00:43:19.262 --> 00:43:26.534
I left the Deseret News when I ran for Congress because they weren't going to allow me to be a candidate and write for the newspaper.
00:43:27.817 --> 00:43:29.780
But, you know...
00:43:31.242 --> 00:43:33.306
No, that's not right.
00:43:33.347 --> 00:43:34.708
I left before that.
00:43:37.253 --> 00:43:37.554
Anyway...
00:43:38.657 --> 00:43:43.304
I left the Deseret News when I started working for a presidential candidate.
00:43:43.465 --> 00:43:47.231
I was working for the libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson in 2016.
00:43:48.512 --> 00:43:55.244
And not long after I left, they wrote an editorial calling upon Donald Trump to drop out of the race.
00:43:57.186 --> 00:44:00.753
And, you know, this was when the Access Hollywood tape came out.
00:44:00.813 --> 00:44:05.280
We talked about grabbing women by the you-know-what and all of that kind of thing.
00:44:05.300 --> 00:44:09.516
And they called upon him to drop out of the race.
00:44:09.556 --> 00:44:12.219
And they insisted, oh, no, no, we did this on our own.
00:44:12.239 --> 00:44:13.501
The church had nothing to do with this.
00:44:13.541 --> 00:44:15.202
And I went, oh, come on.
00:44:15.222 --> 00:44:17.605
I used to write articles for you.
00:44:17.644 --> 00:44:26.954
Of course, I mean, there's no way that you could take that strong a position to call on a candidate to leave if you didn't get approval from the first presidency.
00:44:27.695 --> 00:44:32.159
I don't think the current leadership of the church are Trumpers.
00:44:33.240 --> 00:44:39.652
I know that Dieter Uchtdorf got in trouble because he donated money to Joe Biden's campaign, and it became public.
00:44:40.753 --> 00:44:52.248
So I think that the leadership of the church are as concerned as anyone about the influence of this far-right politics and of Trumpy politics.
00:44:53.168 --> 00:45:06.344
And in fact, when I worked for Democrats running for office, at one point Elder Steve Snow said, said he was going to be our unofficial advisor because the church wants to see Democrats do well in Utah.
00:45:06.824 --> 00:45:12.871
They're really concerned about the fact that in Utah it's a one-party state and Democrats can't go anywhere.
00:45:13.353 --> 00:45:16.376
I mean, I don't think that...
00:45:16.697 --> 00:45:26.307
I mean, Ezra Taft Benson was a minority voice in the 12, but had an outsized influence because he was willing to speak up.
00:45:27.028 --> 00:45:27.969
You know, you had members...
00:45:28.289 --> 00:45:29.791
in highest leadership.
00:45:29.972 --> 00:45:32.353
Hubie Brown was a very liberal Democrat.
00:45:34.456 --> 00:45:34.896
James E.
00:45:34.956 --> 00:45:36.559
Faust was a Democrat.
00:45:38.300 --> 00:45:41.364
Dieter Uchtdorf clearly is a Democrat now.
00:45:42.324 --> 00:45:47.610
But the beast has gotten away from them.
00:45:48.833 --> 00:45:51.335
The membership has decided this is where we're going.
00:45:51.375 --> 00:45:54.579
And I think it's a really destructive road.
00:45:54.878 --> 00:46:05.269
I think hitching our star to Donald Trump as a church is going to cost us so much in terms of membership, in terms of integrity.
00:46:05.309 --> 00:46:16.849
You know, when the Tabernacle Choir, I was not a member at the time, remember the Tabernacle Choir decided to go sing at Trump's inauguration, the outcry was huge and I believe justified.
00:46:18.291 --> 00:46:44.871
And we just need to be careful and recognize that the principles of the restored gospel are non-partisan, and that when we make ourselves Republicans first and Latter-day Saints second, we render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and we don't render unto God that which is God's.
00:46:48.554 --> 00:46:49.856
Really excellent points.
00:46:50.177 --> 00:46:51.217
I know we're almost out of time.
00:46:51.237 --> 00:46:53.440
I just want to highlight one key thing, if I may.
00:46:55.202 --> 00:47:09.666
The church's position on church and state, you know, Mormons believe that the separation of church and state is essential in modern societies prior to the millennium, as it's said.
00:47:11.048 --> 00:47:20.706
I've mentioned that the scriptures teach that, you know, the civic laws, the relationship between scriptures and the civic laws, that they shouldn't interfere with religious practices.
00:47:21.538 --> 00:47:24.782
Or should religious institutions manipulate governments to their advantage?
00:47:25.403 --> 00:47:27.226
You know, that separation with church and state.
00:47:27.867 --> 00:47:39.164
My strong feeling on this, Jim, is that the church is selective, deliberate in regards to which topics it wants to talk about that interests itself.
00:47:40.045 --> 00:47:44.211
You know, what is that political safe position to be in?
00:47:44.231 --> 00:47:46.355
I think it screws up a lot.
00:47:47.237 --> 00:47:50.561
I think it comes down to the wrong side, like the Trump position.
00:47:51.458 --> 00:48:01.695
I think it's pretty grotesque, actually, the church thoughts and position, and a lot of members subscribe to the Trump doctrine.
00:48:01.735 --> 00:48:03.157
It's very, very concerning, very worrying.
00:48:04.438 --> 00:48:17.579
And it's difficult to get into a debate, a discussion on that, because it quickly spirals into a lack of civility, a lack of respectful discourse.
00:48:17.800 --> 00:48:24.295
It's difficult to have a conversation with certain people on politics for reasons that we've touched upon.
00:48:25.115 --> 00:48:37.817
And at the same time, on the other side of that coin, there's topics and issues in the world, problems in the world, with all the church power, all the money, all the influence that it's got is silent, absolute silence.
00:48:38.657 --> 00:48:50.306
And I think there's an element of hypocrisy, there's an element of self-serving, protect the institution, protect the brethren, It will come down on certain topics that it feels is not in the interest of the church.
00:48:50.646 --> 00:48:59.335
Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong, but it's silent on a lot of stuff, and a lot of stuff is happening in the world, like Ukraine and other politics.
00:48:59.576 --> 00:49:05.182
Where's the church on the humanitarian crisis that's happening outside of America and around the world?
00:49:05.922 --> 00:49:06.885
It does touch upon that.
00:49:06.965 --> 00:49:10.427
It does talk or try to get involved, but in a very small way.
00:49:11.028 --> 00:49:28.822
This recent 60-minute interview with this hedge fund manager regarding the ruling of the Securities Exchange Commission and the discovery that the church has sat on quote significant resources in the region of$150 billion.
00:49:29.782 --> 00:49:30.804
It's very powerful.
00:49:30.844 --> 00:49:36.432
It's extremely resourceful in terms of access to cash.
00:49:37.795 --> 00:49:45.541
It uses those resources to protect its position and Fight on certain topics that is of interest to it.
00:49:46.041 --> 00:49:49.407
Try to walk that political balance between the different parties.
00:49:49.867 --> 00:49:50.748
Often gets it wrong.
00:49:51.309 --> 00:49:54.353
Certainly pick the wrong horse, in my opinion, in regards to Trump.
00:49:54.373 --> 00:49:55.315
We'll see what happens there.
00:49:56.255 --> 00:49:58.639
And I think it's very sad, very tragic.
00:49:58.679 --> 00:50:01.222
People are entitled to their own views and opinions.
00:50:01.664 --> 00:50:04.907
But what is the church's position on church and state?
00:50:05.989 --> 00:50:08.853
It claims officially that there should be separation.
00:50:09.634 --> 00:50:40.338
what's the rule around that when should it get involved when it should it not you know when is can we not have a conversation at general conference or in a some material or a discussion about what the church's role is in politics you can't get away from it it's always been there it will always be there i'll never go away there's that history of politics neither should it go away i think it's that you know the republican elephant in the room is the The fact that people don't talk about politics in the church.
00:50:40.898 --> 00:50:49.951
I think the issue that people have got is that it spirals into arguments and eaten arguments and can even get worse than that.
00:50:50.692 --> 00:50:56.260
I think the time is now to have civil discourse on this, to talk about this in the church.
00:50:57.001 --> 00:51:40.213
I think priesthood lessons, discussions, Sunday school, church talks at the pulpit talks at general conference material in the ensign should make it clear what the church position is on politics i think that's got foggy i think it's been lost i think the church is lost on lots of topics but what is the church position on getting involved in politics as a church institution where does it stand on that when should it get involved when shouldn't it shouldn't it get involved what's its direction it's uh You know, 21st century message to the rank and file members about its position on politics.
00:51:40.413 --> 00:51:41.733
It claims to be apolitical.
00:51:42.355 --> 00:51:55.807
What's its message to the members about the members having the freedom to choose what they want to do, not to be influenced by church politics in regards to voting for Democrat or Republican or UK Labour, Liberal Democrat or whatever, etc.
00:51:56.389 --> 00:52:00.152
Where's that line or some guidance, some...
00:52:01.634 --> 00:52:14.157
track where we can actually use as a direction, as a benchmark to guide us so we can have these conversations with respect and respect each other's political differences.
00:52:14.697 --> 00:52:25.757
It seems to be extremely complex and politically complex.
00:52:25.985 --> 00:52:52.795
motivated depending on on who you speak to in terms of church leaders and as i say you know my experience of church politics i i experienced that quite early on and people in the church have tried to influence me towards voting locally uh in uh in on certain positions on certain uh political positions and certain people and i find that um reprehensible.
00:52:52.994 --> 00:52:56.460
You know, church politics is very private, it's very personal.
00:52:57.240 --> 00:52:59.163
You know, I don't want to tell people where I voted.
00:52:59.222 --> 00:53:06.713
I could talk about policies and principles and values and you can get where I am on politics by having those conversations.
00:53:07.494 --> 00:53:15.864
But these are very private, personal things in terms of trying to, you know, it's wrong to influence somebody to vote in a certain way and to apply pressure.
00:53:16.025 --> 00:53:18.987
And I've seen that in the church, unfortunately.
00:53:19.789 --> 00:53:25.108
So, It's a very complex, foggy picture in church politics.
00:53:25.268 --> 00:53:39.144
I think there's an opportunity for church leaders to step up, to address these issues, and to deliver some very clear, defined messages on what the church position on politics, and to remind the members that they're free to vote.
00:53:39.865 --> 00:54:02.003
In fact, the scriptures are very clear, the doctrine is very clear, that we vote with our conscience for the best governments, the best people are going to lead us, and I think that needs to be retaught and we need to be reminded that we have our agency to vote according to our conscience and according to who we believe is the best people who believe us.
00:54:02.583 --> 00:54:06.831
So this conversation was always going to be interesting.
00:54:06.931 --> 00:54:08.873
Again, it was my idea to talk about it.
00:54:09.054 --> 00:54:10.074
We could talk about it forever.
00:54:10.094 --> 00:54:13.000
There's so many other things that we've not had a chance to talk about.
00:54:14.061 --> 00:54:22.440
And again, it's important for our listeners to understand and know that your background in particular is rooted in politics, rooted in the church.
00:54:23.222 --> 00:54:31.313
And it shouldn't be a surprise that you feel so strongly, so passionately about certain topics, certain things on the subject of politics.
00:54:32.074 --> 00:54:33.815
I think we need to have more of these conversations.
00:54:34.456 --> 00:55:03.831
And again, I think there's an opportunity for the church to provide some direction, very constructive direction on how we go forward together in civil unity, positive civil discourse to talk about these things, respect each other's differences, vote according to our conscience, etc., and still have that respect and relationship with each other, that we can still continue to remain friends and still continue to have good relationships.
00:55:04.751 --> 00:55:09.960
Opinions vary from person to person, and that's what makes life very interesting.
00:55:11.382 --> 00:55:21.771
Well, that's why I want to use this occasion to announce my campaign to run for president of the church, and I'd like you to be my running mate, Ian, if you will.
00:55:23.737 --> 00:55:24.157
Are you in?
00:55:24.197 --> 00:55:28.829
Our campaign begins in earnest after the apostolic midterms.
00:55:29.510 --> 00:55:29.710
Okay.
00:55:30.833 --> 00:55:32.356
Anyway.
00:55:32.878 --> 00:55:34.181
I'm in.
00:55:34.402 --> 00:55:34.621
I'll do
00:55:34.641 --> 00:55:34.682
it.
00:55:34.742 --> 00:55:35.143
All right.
00:55:35.184 --> 00:55:35.925
Sounds good.
00:55:36.289 --> 00:55:40.318
With that, we will leave you until the next time.
00:55:40.438 --> 00:55:47.293
Please be sure to like and subscribe to us wherever you find your podcasts.
00:55:47.494 --> 00:55:49.739
And until next time, we'll see you on Inside Out.
00:55:49.760 --> 00:55:50.521
Thank you, Ian.
00:55:50.561 --> 00:55:51.543
Thank you, Jim.
00:55:51.563 --> 00:55:54.429
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