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Hello, my name is Jim Bennett.
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Welcome to the first episode of Inside Out.
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I want to give you a little bit of background before we begin.
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You may know me as the author of A Faithful Replied, The CES Letter.
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I've also been having many public conversations with people in and out of the church, including John Dillon, the Midnight Mormons, Stephen Murphy, Bill Reel, Radio Free Mormon, and I think there are others.
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I'm not sure who they are.
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But as I've made the rounds in the world of Mormon podcasts and online conversations, I've discovered there is a real need for improved connection and understanding between between people who are in the church and people who have felt it necessary to leave the church.
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Usually people on either side tend to stay in their echo chambers and refuse to engage with anyone who disagrees.
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And the result has been way too much demonization and not enough willingness to listen.
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So at the end of last year, I was approached by Ian Wilkes.
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He's an old friend of mine who has left the church But he feels the same way about these problems and divisions.
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And he asked me to do a podcast with him.
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I've been reluctant to do podcasts, but when Ian offered and he talked about what he wanted to do, I jumped at the chance.
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A little background, we were missionaries together in Scotland in the late 1980s.
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That tells you how old we are.
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And Ian was as faithful and devoted a missionary as you could ever want to know.
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He went on to marry in the temple and raise a beautiful family and spend decades in church service, including service as a bishop and a member of a stake presidency.
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And so his leadership experience gives him a lot of insights.
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I've never been, I've been in Bishop Bricks, but I've never been a bishop.
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I've never been in a stake presidency.
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So Ian's got some inside baseball that's really helpful in these discussions.
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He joined the church as a teenager in Yorkshire, England.
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He has a much cooler accent than I do, and he now lives in Canada and his conversion is Thank you.
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I'm still on the inside, and Ian is on the outside of the church.
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Yet both of us care about the church and its future, and both of us want to see constructive dialogue between those who stay and those who leave.
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And hopefully all of us can come to a better understanding, both of the church and of each other.
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And we can have better empathy and better understanding appreciation for one another as a result.
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So with that, I'd like to welcome officially my partner in crime, the one and only Ian Wilkes.
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Ian, how are you, sir?
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I'm very good today, sir.
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How are you?
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I am doing very well.
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So we were talking before the podcast a little bit about a couple of things that you wanted to make sure listeners understand about the nature of this podcast.
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Do you want to get into that here a little bit right as we begin?
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I will, and I'll be brief.
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I think it's really important, a little bit more like a forward statement, if you like, on what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it.
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The first thing is that these experiences that you and I discuss, share on the podcast is our own experience, our own perspective, our own opinions, our own views.
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We don't represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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And so people are entitled to challenges and questioners, and that's great.
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Again, we're going on our own experience, our own perspectives, and also we are relying on memory.
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Some of these experiences, and that was my other point that I now remember, is that we're relying on memory.
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Some of these experiences happened a long time ago, as far as back as the 80s, when you and I were serving on our missions and we had conversations and meetings And sometimes those memories are clear and sometimes those memories are vague.
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And so we want our listeners to be patient with us.
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But by all means, if you're not sure, if you have questions and you have any concerns or you want to challenge us, anything that we said, by all means, feel free to do so.
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This is a safe place to do that.
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And we'll do our best to respond to that.
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And the other thing was the importance of the reliability of information.
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The memory is limited in terms of these experiences.
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But we'll do our best to remember things accurately and our best to respond to any questions or concerns that anyone has.
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I appreciate you stating that.
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And you'd also talked about the idea that we're not approaching this as apologists for the church.
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We're also not approaching this, I think, as critics of the church.
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I think that this is an important kind of way to model discussions for people wherever they may be in terms of the spectrum of their relationship to the church.
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But I don't think we do the church any favors.
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when we tiptoe around hard questions.
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I don't think we do the church any favors when we refuse to even acknowledge the hard questions.
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A thriving, healthy church is one that is able to incorporate diverse points of view and also be able to deal with people who are outside of the church or who have left the church with a degree of respect and kindness.
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It's astonishing to me how many people think that the best way to deal with people who have doubts and who eventually leave the church is to treat them like garbage.
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And in that sense, I want to segue here into what we're going to be discussing.
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You talk about the idea that we're going to be dealing with this from memory.
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You shared with me a memory.
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There's one memory when you were serving as a leader that is sort of seared into your imagination.
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Can you give us a little more context on that?
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I'm being as vague as I can here.
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Sure.
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As you know, leaders, especially leaders who are approachable, and I think I was, who can be trusted, you know, the church encourages leaders members to confess and to go to the bishop and open up and and share often very private very personal experiences sometimes as part of the repentance process other times it relates to an individual's emotional recovery of an event sometimes an often traumatic event and so members come to leaders and share very deep personal private experiences that are very painful and very difficult to talk about and difficult to resolve.
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Bishops, state presidents, are not trained.
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Bishops often give poor advice, don't understand the issues, default to the belief that if you pray enough and if you fast enough these complex emotional and sometimes sexual abuse related issues will disappear through fasting and prayer.
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My experience as a leader is that that is not the case, that these individuals are vulnerable, they feel excluded, they're disadvantaged in some way, emotionally vulnerable, and they need much more than praying and fasting.
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So you can imagine as leaders, as a leader, that you hear all kinds of things from all kinds of individuals, all kinds of backgrounds.
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And it's quite common or not uncommon for a, an individual to meet with a leader and to share personal experiences and traumatic experiences, actually, where the individual has been subject to sexual abuse or some kind of sexual assault.
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And over the years as a leader, I've had a number of people who have come to me and in tears, very emotional, have broken down and opened up and shared disturbing and very awful experiences that they continue to struggle with in their 40s, 50s, and sometimes 60s.
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These events that happen sometimes at a younger age stay with these individuals forever.
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They wrestle with them and they struggle with them and many times they can't seem to escape the pain.
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So it's a very difficult meeting and I think the need for bishops to be trained, have some professional training is absolutely critical.
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So there was a few individuals over the years that I met with and I tried my very best without the training, and often found myself to be very inadequate, frankly, unequipped, inadequate, untrained, trying to help these individuals with very complex, historical, traumatic, emotional events, sometimes related to sexual abuse as a child, for example.
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And one individual came to me, and this happened several times, where they'd read a scripture, which is found in Moroni 99.
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Over the years, over the The generations, as you know, the church has reviewed and modified its canonized text.
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It's made changes, literal changes, to its body of Scripture over the years.
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We see this in Doctrine and Covenants and in the Book of Mormon.
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It's diluted and made changes.
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And I think those changes have been necessary.
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The church would perhaps give its own answers to why those changes have been made.
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But there still remains within the main body of Scripture, Scriptures which cause pain and suffering Can you imagine that?
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You know, we're talking about the Holy Scriptures here, and they cause pain and suffering for people.
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And it's not unique just to the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, Pilgrim of Christ.
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We see these scriptures in the Bible.
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But this individual highlighted Moroni 9.9.
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Trigger warning here is that this relates to one of several meetings I had with a member who had been tragically raped at a young age, struggling this traumatic event as a young leader, me trying to understand how can I possibly help.
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And this individual shared the scripture with me and I'm trying to, a scripture I've read a number of times, I'm sure, and didn't see it the way that this member did.
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And so if you could read that scripture for us, Jim, That would be helpful.
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Sure.
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All
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right.
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Yes, trigger warning.
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This gets very graphic.
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And notwithstanding the great abomination of the Lamanites, it does not exceed that of our people in Moriantum.
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For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners, and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue.
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And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death.
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And after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts because of the hardness of their hearts.
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And they do it for a token of their bravery.
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You know, I've read that scripture many times too.
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And I always focused, I went on to verse 10, the idea that they would rape them, they would kill them, they would eat them.
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And It never occurred to me when I was a missionary and reading that scripture, the impact that the sentence about depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue, how that would scar somebody who was a victim of sexual abuse.
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And it sounds like that's what happened with the people you were meeting with.
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Yes, that's what happened.
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So this individual had come to me.
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They had read this scripture.
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It bothered them so much that they, for the very first time in their lives, they felt that they needed to open up and share their traumatic experience.
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They'd never had discussed it with anyone else prior.
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And this scripture was a catalyst.
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And the pressure on this individual to talk to somebody about what this actually meant And this individual went into not great detail about what happened, but she felt, having read the scripture, that, you know, she had a question, was she to blame for the sexual assault that had been forced upon her?
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And she interpreted this scripture.
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You know, the church says, I think, somewhere that the scriptures are not open to private interpretation.
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So you can read stuff, you can read the scripture, arrive at an interpretation when people A large group of people arrive at an interpretation that can be defined as generally a common interpretation.
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The church may or may not agree with that or accept that and often or sometimes will say that, no, you've misinterpreted the scripture.
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This is what it really means.
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Notwithstanding, this individual, and this has happened in my leadership experience, this has happened several times where someone has read something like this and they've had this experience before.
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in their lives, this traumatic experience.
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They've read this, and now they believe that they're no longer chaste and they no longer possess virtue.
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So without getting too much into the detail, because I don't think that would be appropriate, this individual, as they shared their experience with me, tried desperately to escape the situation, physically fought the attacker, was unsuccessful, resulting in a very serious sexual assault.
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At the time and over the years did not think or believe or feel that it was their fault, but having read the Scripture, came to a couple of conclusions and interpretations.
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One was, with this happening to this individual, are they no longer seen by God, the Heavenly Father, a loving Heavenly Father?
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Are they no longer seen by the Lord as being chaste or virtuous?
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And that added significant additional pain on top of years of pain and suffering and hurt that this individual continued to struggle with.
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And the second interpretation and conclusion they came to was did they carry any responsibility for that, any personal responsibility or blame for that assault?
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Were they at fault?
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Were they wearing something that was inappropriate?
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I wish I could say that this individual was drawing a conclusion that was different from what the church taught.
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Unfortunately, there are teachings that the church has moved away from, to its credit, but there are teachings that reinforce that interpretation.
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I pulled up here, this is Elder Richard G.
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Scott in 1992.
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gave a talk called Healing the Tragic Scars of Abuse.
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And I'm just going to play a segment of that.
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Here we go.
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Most often the victim is innocent because of being disabled by fear or the power or authority of the offender.
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At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse.
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Your priesthood leader will help you assess your responsibility so that if needed, it can be addressed.
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Otherwise, the seeds of guilt will remain and sprout into bitter fruit.
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So there he is specifically saying, you may have a degree of responsibility.
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At some point, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse.
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Other statements by church leaders have gone in this direction as well.
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President Kimball talked about the fact that if you're being raped, you have to struggle and fight as much as you possibly can.
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If you just acquiesce, then yes, you have given up to some degree your virtue and your chastity.
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We no longer teach this.
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I think the church recognizes this.
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that this is a mistake, that this is not an appropriate thing to be teaching, that all this does is reinforce needless guilt, needless shame.
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But the difficulty that we have is that as a church, we are terrible at admitting error.
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President Oaks has said repeatedly, as a church, we do not look for apologies or give them.
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We do not apologize for making mistakes.
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We acknowledge in a sort of broad, vague, generic way that mistakes have happened.
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But the minute you point to one and say, well, isn't this a mistake?
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Everybody just sort of runs the other way.
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We want to just say, okay, well, we don't teach this anymore, so why does it matter that we used to teach it?
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And I think it matters significantly, particularly since you have a verse there in the Book of Mormons When you say that the church has changed its scriptures, you are correct, but those changes have been few and far between since the time of Joseph Smith.
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Joseph Smith edited his revelations.
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The doctrine and covenants as we now have it was the result of many revisions.
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The Book of Mormon did not undergo a similar amount of revisions.
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Well, it depends on who you want to talk to, because it underwent a And people will say, well, there have been hundreds of thousands of changes in the Book of Mormon.
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And that's true in that E.B.
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Grandin, the printer of the Book of Mormon, went through and punctuated the Book of Mormon.
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The manuscript that Joseph and Oliver delivered to the printer didn't have any punctuation at all.
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And so every one of those punctuation marks is a change.
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But in terms of actual doctrinal changes, In the Book of Mormon particularly, they've been few and far between, changing the phrase Mother of God to the Mother of the Son of God, which I think Joseph put in there to make it sound less Catholic or less Trinitarian.
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The most recent change of any significance that I know of was actually a change made by Joseph Smith that didn't make it into the Book of Mormon that existed from near the end of Joseph's life all the way until 1980.
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And that was the phrase, white and delightsome.
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The Lamanites will become a white and delightsome people that has since been changed to pure and delightsome.
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That is a huge change in terms of how we approach past racism and the kind of racism we still find in a lot of Book of Mormon scriptures today, particularly in 2 Nephi chapter 5.
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But we don't seem to have a mechanism or a procedure or a culture that allows for changes like this.
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And even though we also theologically accept the reality that the scriptures are not perfect, that there is human error in the scripture on the title page of the Book of Mormon, it talks about if there are errors, they'd be the mistakes of men.
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The Book of Mormon does not claim to be inerrant, but we treat it as inerrant.
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We treat scripture as inerrant.
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So when you say, okay, this scripture, obviously is doing more damage than good.
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It's not teaching a true principle.
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We ought to change it.
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We have no way to do that.
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That wouldn't cause huge consternation among a membership that have taken the false doctrine of prophetic inerrancy and prophetic infallibility to a level that is really, really disconcerting and unsettling.
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How would the church go about getting rid of this?
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First, I just want our listeners to know that when I was listening to Elder Scott, I was shaking my head.
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There's a few things that I find as disturbing and as shocking and as grotesque as those comments, those remarks.
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Notwithstanding what you said, that the church has moved away from that.
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position, and thank goodness.
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That material still exists.
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It's still out there.
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And yes, it has moved away from that position.
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But my question is, where have they done that?
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You know, where they have moved away from a position that they've said, no, this is not what we think or believe anymore.
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Where is the explicit commentary marks to say that without sounding like they're making a mistake?
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I think that's what the fine line, that kind of walk.
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Just briefly, I just want to look at the scripture again.
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The wording is really important here, but this individual, going back to this individual experience they said that how can something that was forced upon them deprive them if something that was against their free agency so this was against their agency they didn't want this they did fight they were not successful they were completely overcome physically and powered overpowered they were terrified is the word horrified terrified they froze with fear their questions are they now deprived of virtue and chastity and i said absolutely not and they said well It's in the scriptures, so it must be correct.
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And so, yes, the church has made, has diluted some of the scriptures, you know, white and delights them and pure and delights them.
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And I think we need to look at that scripture in 2 Nephi on this podcast.
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You and I chatted about that.
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It hasn't done enough to come out and say, look, this is wrong.
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This is not our position anymore.
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It's not clear.
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I can't find anything where it's been so direct and open and transparent that it moved away from this position.
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And then to your last point, your last question, I don't know how the church can remove this scripture or dilute it because this is the most correct of any books ever written.
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It's the only book that will get an individual closer to Jesus Christ more than any other book.
00:22:58.184 --> 00:23:09.182
As the tapenter said, when he was the prophet, when you and I were serving in missions, and I think President Hinckley said this as well, the truth and divinity of the church rests on the validity and truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.
00:23:09.722 --> 00:23:11.005
It's the keystone of our religion.
00:23:11.345 --> 00:23:19.016
I think when you write on something, then you can make those statements with confidence because You write now and you'll be right in the future.
00:23:19.276 --> 00:23:21.077
You know, I love service, believe in Christ.
00:23:21.097 --> 00:23:22.960
You're always going to be right on stuff like that.
00:23:23.401 --> 00:23:38.057
But when you're talking about Book of Mormon generally and looking at these scriptures, which are very harmful and very destructive, and the church can't remove it because it would be a dilution of the most important book that's ever happened to mankind.
00:23:38.237 --> 00:23:39.939
How does it remove that?
00:23:40.680 --> 00:23:48.728
It can give its interpretation of that, but you're still going to have people read it and interpret the scripture in the way that I shared earlier.
00:23:49.048 --> 00:23:52.372
I think it would be helpful, Jim, to go to the scripture that you mentioned here.
00:23:52.413 --> 00:23:54.835
I think there were three things that we were talking about here as an example.
00:23:54.895 --> 00:23:56.217
There's lots of examples.
00:23:56.857 --> 00:24:01.002
And we identified this scripture, Verona 99, has been a difficult scripture.
00:24:01.323 --> 00:24:04.527
We identified the one that you referenced in 2 Nephi.
00:24:05.167 --> 00:24:15.943
And there's other stuff which is not quite canonized, but seen by many as being close to being canonized text, this example in the Mormon Doctrine there, second edition with Bruce Anakonke.
00:24:16.585 --> 00:24:16.965
Could you read
00:24:16.986 --> 00:24:18.527
your scripture in 2 Nephi?
00:24:18.567 --> 00:24:21.351
This is 2 Nephi chapter 5, verse 21.
00:24:22.531 --> 00:24:27.938
This is not the reference to white and delightsome, although there's something close to it here.
00:24:28.159 --> 00:24:34.246
The Nephites and the Lamanites, they've just arrived in the new world, and they've gone their separate ways.
00:24:35.170 --> 00:24:43.924
And so the Lord is cursing, according to Nephi, the Lord is cursing Lamanites because they aren't following the commandments.
00:24:44.645 --> 00:24:50.655
Verse 21 says,"...and he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing because of their iniquity.
00:24:50.675 --> 00:24:56.204
For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint.
00:24:56.925 --> 00:25:09.897
Wherefore, as they were white and exceedingly fair and delightsome..." that they may not be enticing unto my people, the Lord did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
00:25:10.638 --> 00:25:18.567
And thus saith the Lord God, I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.
00:25:19.367 --> 00:25:26.075
And curse shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed, for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing.
00:25:26.795 --> 00:26:11.020
And the Lord spake it, and it was done." Given the church's history with regard to racism, with regard to excluding people of African descent from temple blessings, from priesthood, from full participation in the church, and for that ban to have lasted for over a century, for 120-something years, it's remarkable to me that this scripture was not used as justification for that ban, because the interpretation of this scripture is that this had application to Native Americans.
00:26:11.821 --> 00:26:27.596
The assumption was that all Native Americans were Lamanites, and the darkness of their skin is the result of this curse, but that curse did not limit Native Americans from holding the priests that are going to the temple.
00:26:27.817 --> 00:26:33.895
You talked earlier about the Book of Mormon being the most correct book on earth, the keystone of our religion.
00:26:33.955 --> 00:26:36.779
That's the quote that we hear again and again and again.
00:26:36.819 --> 00:26:39.824
The President Benson, when we were on our mission, kept reemphasizing.
00:26:40.384 --> 00:26:45.291
I don't think how can the church fix this is a rhetorical question.
00:26:46.252 --> 00:26:55.705
I think the way the church can fix this is leaning into the implication of errancy in a statement that this is the most correct book.
00:26:56.642 --> 00:27:03.031
Because if it is the most correct book, it's not the same thing as saying it is a perfectly correct book.
00:27:03.732 --> 00:27:12.987
And I think that the church needs to acknowledge the reality of error in the Book of Mormon, that prophets have made mistakes.
00:27:13.827 --> 00:27:17.713
And I think we can do that in a healthy and sustainable way.
00:27:18.561 --> 00:27:25.288
I can still love and embrace the Book of Mormon as Scripture, which I continue to do.
00:27:25.449 --> 00:27:35.397
And I love the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon has brought me closer to Christ than any other book throughout my life, and still recognize that there are problems in it.
00:27:35.939 --> 00:27:40.603
Somebody is racist here in 2 Nephi chapter 5.
00:27:41.243 --> 00:27:41.984
Is it God?
00:27:42.005 --> 00:27:45.067
Is it Nephi?
00:27:45.087 --> 00:27:47.250
Or is it Joseph Smith?
00:27:48.321 --> 00:27:52.747
And from my perspective, I want to say it's either Nephi or Joseph Smith.
00:27:53.267 --> 00:28:11.906
And from the church's perspective, the church ties itself in knots trying to justify racism, trying to justify mistakes of the past, because they're far more comfortable saying that God is a racist than that Brigham Young was a racist for instituting the priesthood ban.
00:28:12.287 --> 00:28:14.288
That makes no sense to me whatsoever.
00:28:14.789 --> 00:28:15.109
None.
00:28:15.521 --> 00:28:32.540
The idea that we have to put these men on a pedestal and say they were perfect, and so we're willing to attribute all of the terrible things that have happened to God instead of to the weaknesses of men, that's getting it entirely backwards from my perspective.
00:28:32.961 --> 00:28:39.627
And also, the Book of Mormon, taken in its totality, preaches against racism.
00:28:40.469 --> 00:28:44.574
You take this one verse in isolation and you go, this is a racist document.
00:28:45.698 --> 00:29:02.715
But you look at the history of the Nephites and the Lamanites and Samuel the Lamanite being, I think, the most righteous prophet in the Book of Mormon, so much so that when Jesus arrives in America, says, you need to make sure you include Samuel the Lamanite's words.
00:29:03.477 --> 00:29:12.586
You have the injunction in 2 Nephi 33 saying, and he denieth none who come unto him, black or white, bond and free, all are alike unto God.
00:29:13.166 --> 00:29:15.309
That's a verse that sort of got buried.
00:29:15.809 --> 00:29:19.054
until 1978 when we discovered, hey, you know what?
00:29:19.074 --> 00:29:21.237
The scriptures tell us we shouldn't be racists.
00:29:22.018 --> 00:29:27.385
And then you get to the point where the Nephites and the Lamanites intermarry.
00:29:27.405 --> 00:29:31.010
I mean, here this is a verse saying you shouldn't intermarry with these people.
00:29:33.032 --> 00:29:36.878
It's just an awful, awful idea.
00:29:37.558 --> 00:29:46.411
But by the time you get to 4th Nephi, there are no manner of ites, and everybody's intermarried, and everybody is a as one people.
00:29:46.550 --> 00:29:54.682
And then Lamanite becomes a self-designation of people who are no longer following Christ.
00:29:55.303 --> 00:29:58.727
It is not a racial designation at that point anymore.
00:29:59.528 --> 00:30:10.702
By the end of the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites, we don't know if they're descended from Nephi or from Laman or who, we just know that they're calling themselves Lamanites.
00:30:11.523 --> 00:30:22.826
So the racism of in the church where we say, aha, you're a Lamanite because you had your skin cursed, the Book of Mormon actually doesn't argue that position by the end.
00:30:23.647 --> 00:30:25.611
So, I mean, there's a lot of complexity.
00:30:25.651 --> 00:30:33.664
There's a lot more, and taken as a whole, the Book of Mormon speaks out against racism far more than it encourages it.
00:30:34.487 --> 00:30:36.430
That does not excuse this scripture.
00:30:37.131 --> 00:30:46.423
That does not excuse Other errors in the Book of Mormon that is not excused, Moroni chapter 9, verse 9, which is clearly an error.
00:30:46.923 --> 00:30:48.865
And I think that error was made.
00:30:48.905 --> 00:30:54.973
That comes from a sort of Victorian sensibility where they're trying to use a euphemism.
00:30:55.714 --> 00:30:58.459
Joseph Smith, I think that that's a translator error.
00:30:58.558 --> 00:31:00.882
Joseph Smith didn't want to use the word rape.
00:31:01.382 --> 00:31:07.450
And so he used this euphemism, which to modern audiences particularly, is reprehensible.
00:31:07.713 --> 00:31:09.556
The church does that all the time.
00:31:09.596 --> 00:31:11.117
The church uses euphemism.
00:31:11.157 --> 00:31:14.801
You know, I grew up in the church.
00:31:15.422 --> 00:31:19.826
You weren't 12 years old and handed a pamphlet by Boyd K.
00:31:19.846 --> 00:31:28.636
Packer that talked about your little factory and how you need to make sure that your little factory doesn't go into production before it's time and blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:31:29.196 --> 00:31:31.859
It's an anti-masturbation pamphlet.
00:31:32.621 --> 00:31:37.306
But the church was so, and Boyd Packer was so uncomfortable using the word masturbation.
00:31:38.049 --> 00:31:42.154
that he uses this euphemism that as a 12-year-old kid, I was reading this thing.
00:31:42.194 --> 00:31:44.237
I'm like, what the hell is he talking about?
00:31:44.257 --> 00:31:46.880
I have no idea what this means.
00:31:47.800 --> 00:31:51.125
And I took it to my mother and I said, what does this mean?
00:31:52.066 --> 00:32:04.359
And she went white and she finally said, it means don't play with your penis, which was terrible advice to me because then I would pee with my hands spread eagle on the wall.
00:32:04.440 --> 00:32:08.836
So I made sure I wasn't, getting my little factory into production.
00:32:09.558 --> 00:32:11.161
We have made mistakes.
00:32:11.260 --> 00:32:15.989
Some of them are benign and some of them are silly, and some of them are very serious.
00:32:16.108 --> 00:32:18.992
And these two scriptures particularly are very serious.
00:32:19.974 --> 00:32:25.923
And the church right now, President Nelson, we've created this relationship with the NAACP.
00:32:26.785 --> 00:32:34.477
President Nelson has spoken out about racism and against racism more than any president in the history of the church.
00:32:35.362 --> 00:32:39.586
And that is commendable, and I appreciate that, and I want more of it.
00:32:40.448 --> 00:32:47.696
It rings hollow to so many people because we have not addressed the roots of where that racism came from.
00:32:48.317 --> 00:32:51.181
We now say, it's exactly like what you're saying.
00:32:51.221 --> 00:32:58.109
At no point has anybody gone back to 2 Nephi 5.21 and said, somebody's racist here and that's bad.
00:32:58.810 --> 00:32:59.550
We won't do that.
00:32:59.731 --> 00:33:01.334
We dance around it.
00:33:02.275 --> 00:33:15.708
When we studied the Book of Mormon just last year, There was a statement from Joseph Fielding Smith about Second Nephi 521 that was printed in the manual that had everybody up in arms.
00:33:15.768 --> 00:33:20.491
And then Gary Stevenson, an apostle, went out and said, oh, that was mistakenly put in there.
00:33:20.531 --> 00:33:21.993
That's an old teaching.
00:33:22.074 --> 00:33:23.375
We shouldn't have put that in there.
00:33:24.096 --> 00:33:25.557
But we didn't disavow the scripture.
00:33:26.538 --> 00:33:32.384
We just we try to move on and we try to do what's right now.
00:33:33.263 --> 00:33:34.464
And that is commendable.
00:33:35.266 --> 00:33:41.211
It doesn't have enough weight until you address what went before.
00:33:41.952 --> 00:34:15.519
Putting aside the dark underbelly of historical, doctrinal, institutional racism that does belong to the church history, notwithstanding that the church is trying to navigate itself away from those earlier entrenched doctrinal positions, which were heavily influenced, we both know, at the turn of the, you know, in the 18th century, 19th century and before, around slavery, et cetera, around going forward, you know, civil rights.
00:34:16.382 --> 00:34:27.364
Before that, the right of black African Americans, et cetera, that the leaders had a position, Brigham Young being one of them, who that was, unquestionably racist at the time.
00:34:28.045 --> 00:34:32.717
And that continued all the way up into 1978, which I find extraordinary.
00:34:33.277 --> 00:34:37.750
I think that revelation came from significant pressure upon the church.
00:34:37.789 --> 00:34:40.617
We can say it was a revelation, and that's fine.
00:34:40.657 --> 00:34:41.358
We can say that.
00:34:41.458 --> 00:35:17.782
And I don't entirely disbelieve that i think that there was a lot of prayer and fasting going on at the time but only until 1978 did black people have the right privilege to go to the temple and to hold the priesthood which is a very very long time not to have that authority uh and now that equality i think putting aside just for a moment that dark underbelly of racist history that the church will never get away from fully and will only heal, help people reconcile with those early historical positions if they address it head on.
00:35:17.822 --> 00:35:39.617
And if you were to put that aside and just to read these scriptures in and as of themselves, you would see that a lot of people read them that come to a generally a common interpretation, that the majority of people reading these scriptures would arrive at a common conclusion, interpretation like we have, without even the context of the historical racism.
00:35:39.797 --> 00:35:48.545
You add the historical racism, which you have to, and it's significant, and it's understandable that people would come to those conclusions about that scripture in 2 Nephi.
00:35:48.985 --> 00:36:03.659
And so unless the church comes out and comes clean and addresses it and disavows, as it uses that word quite a bit in the essays, disavow its position with the scriptures and states very clearly that the Book of Mormon is not perfect but significant of it should be relied on.
00:36:03.699 --> 00:36:07.367
And if there's any mistakes in the Book of Mormon, then they are mistakes of men.
00:36:07.407 --> 00:36:08.590
You mentioned that before.
00:36:09.411 --> 00:36:13.099
And if I was a general authority, I would stand up and say these things that we're saying right now.
00:36:13.139 --> 00:36:14.702
The book is not perfect.
00:36:14.762 --> 00:36:16.266
It was translated by men.
00:36:16.706 --> 00:36:19.088
It was translated through the gift and power of God.
00:36:19.748 --> 00:36:21.510
It was written at the time of the day.
00:36:21.610 --> 00:36:27.554
There was things that were happening in America at that time that was influencing Joseph Smith, influencing Brigham Young, etc.
00:36:27.715 --> 00:36:28.255
We know that.
00:36:28.795 --> 00:36:31.438
And all this came into the translation process.
00:36:31.938 --> 00:36:34.981
And now, through further knowledge, our position has changed.
00:36:35.422 --> 00:36:37.764
We disavow these common interpretations.
00:36:38.065 --> 00:36:38.925
This is our position.
00:36:39.186 --> 00:36:40.146
This is where we stand.
00:36:40.726 --> 00:36:49.295
We completely condemn any behavior or action that supports or sanctions a you know, this kind of behavior, this is our position, etc.
00:36:49.856 --> 00:36:51.900
And to actually remove those scriptures.
00:36:52.340 --> 00:37:04.059
What I would do, I'd write a note in the topical notes at the bottom with a special reference to a quote from the prophet to disavow this and to give a more inclusive or a different interpretation, or at least to disavow it.
00:37:04.581 --> 00:37:05.621
The church hasn't done that.
00:37:06.063 --> 00:37:07.806
I think the church needs to be...
00:37:08.065 --> 00:37:12.195
much more active in disavowing scripture beyond just saying they disavow something.
00:37:12.717 --> 00:37:19.271
I don't know how they're going to get around this, but until they address it head on, you're going to have people in a very vulnerable state.
00:37:19.291 --> 00:37:31.365
They're going to read this stuff and they're going to arrive at this common interpretation They're going to research into Elder Scott's talk, and they might not know that the church has moved away from its position.
00:37:31.385 --> 00:37:34.250
They might not know what you know, Jim, that you just shared with me earlier.
00:37:34.831 --> 00:37:38.135
And they will arrive at this conclusion, and it will cause more pain and suffering.
00:37:38.878 --> 00:37:42.402
And so the church, it does tie itself in knots.
00:37:42.724 --> 00:37:57.041
But if it's more open, transparent, and acknowledges mistakes and problems, it will be seen and behave much more inclusively and in a more compassionate, in a more kind of way, because this is canonized scripture.
00:37:57.083 --> 00:37:58.945
This is not the ensign material.
00:37:58.985 --> 00:38:02.411
This is actual scripture that is the bedrock of the church.
00:38:02.931 --> 00:38:05.635
The other thing that we talked about as an example, there's many examples.
00:38:05.697 --> 00:38:09.943
The third one was an experience that I shared with you when we were preparing this podcast.
00:38:10.023 --> 00:38:16.981
And I shared with you at the time of, I think I was 16 or 17, and had just joined the church through the missionaries.
00:38:17.842 --> 00:38:19.463
Oh yeah, let me pull that up.
00:38:19.985 --> 00:38:26.271
Yeah, living with a wonderful family who were very devoted, very committed to the church.
00:38:26.452 --> 00:38:27.592
You know, I was a new convert.
00:38:27.994 --> 00:38:29.514
I had to leave home for joining the church.
00:38:29.574 --> 00:38:32.318
This family took me in, very kind.
00:38:33.179 --> 00:38:38.646
And they were, I wouldn't say they were scholars, but they had quite a good lineup of excellent reading material.
00:38:39.025 --> 00:38:41.148
Jesus of Christ, Articles of Faith, James E.
00:38:41.188 --> 00:38:42.590
Talmadge, other books.
00:38:42.690 --> 00:38:43.612
scholarly books.
00:38:43.751 --> 00:38:45.454
I cannot recall all of them right now.
00:38:45.474 --> 00:38:48.159
And one of them was a book that caught my eye.
00:38:48.199 --> 00:38:54.570
It was a book with a black hardback, and it was Mormon Doctrine, second edition, Bruce L.
00:38:54.590 --> 00:38:54.952
McConkie.
00:38:55.733 --> 00:38:59.420
And as a new convert, I was on a mission.
00:38:59.599 --> 00:39:03.286
People who knew me back then, I was on a mission to learn as much as I could about the church.
00:39:03.306 --> 00:39:04.309
I was like a sponge.
00:39:04.329 --> 00:39:06.463
I was reading I was attending seminary.
00:39:06.483 --> 00:39:10.771
I was a committed student, reading the stuff, doing the assignments.
00:39:11.371 --> 00:39:12.934
I was the full-in convert.
00:39:13.454 --> 00:39:17.742
I think I probably annoyed some people because I was asking so many questions.
00:39:18.362 --> 00:39:19.885
I wanted to learn everything about the church.
00:39:19.925 --> 00:39:22.889
It was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I read as much as I could.
00:39:23.362 --> 00:39:26.750
And one of the books I got my hands on was Mormon Doctrine, and I read that.
00:39:26.769 --> 00:39:28.313
And as you know, it's written in alphabetical order.
00:39:28.673 --> 00:39:30.619
There's a first edition, which I've seen once.
00:39:30.699 --> 00:39:31.661
I don't own a copy.
00:39:32.081 --> 00:39:34.347
I'd love to get my hands on a copy of the first edition.
00:39:34.668 --> 00:39:43.367
But I read the second one, and I came across, when I got to the B section, I came across a piece there about, well, bastards.
00:39:44.126 --> 00:39:45.527
And if you could read that for us.
00:39:46.009 --> 00:39:48.550
Bastards, see, sons of God.
00:39:48.590 --> 00:40:03.764
Since a bastard is an illegitimate child, one born out of wedlock, Paul aptly and pointedly uses the term to describe those who are not sons of God, who have not been adopted into the family of God as joint heirs with Christ.
00:40:04.545 --> 00:40:08.909
According to his terminology, there are sons on the one hand and bastards on the other.
00:40:09.528 --> 00:40:11.951
The sons inherit the fullness of the Father's kingdom.
00:40:12.010 --> 00:40:19.478
The bastards never having been born of God, are cast out of the eternal family as though they were illegitimate.
00:40:19.958 --> 00:40:27.264
They become servants to minister for those who are worthy of a far more and an exceeding and an eternal weight of glory.
00:40:28.146 --> 00:40:31.108
Well, I read that two or three times.
00:40:31.407 --> 00:40:41.777
I was 17 years old and I was deeply shocked and hurt and offended actually by that.
00:40:42.818 --> 00:40:47.784
And the reason why I felt that was because I was born out of wedlock.
00:40:47.983 --> 00:40:51.128
My mother and father were not married legally.
00:40:51.148 --> 00:40:53.670
They were common law, husband and wife.
00:40:53.690 --> 00:40:59.237
And I was born out of wedlock and technically was a bastard in that context.
00:41:00.259 --> 00:41:05.885
So when I read this, I was devastated is the word I would describe and upset.
00:41:05.905 --> 00:41:08.568
I read it again to make sure I understood it.
00:41:09.090 --> 00:41:13.273
And the interpretation I came to, we talked about coming to a common interpretation.
00:41:14.014 --> 00:41:20.701
Again, what I mean by that is that if 100 people read it and 80% come to this interpretation, then that's a common interpretation.
00:41:20.721 --> 00:41:43.960
And my interpretation was that because I was born out of wedlock, that I was not entitled to the fullness of the gospel, that I was not entitled to the fullness of the gospel here on this earth or in the next earth, that I wouldn't be in this special kingdom with my family and my Heavenly Father, and I wouldn't have the same type or level of blessings that would be afforded to other members who were not born out of wedlock.
00:41:44.581 --> 00:41:47.164
And it really bothered me, the scripture, really bothered me.
00:41:47.505 --> 00:41:51.550
And I took it to the bishop, who was just an extraordinary man.
00:41:51.630 --> 00:41:56.356
And I took the book to him and opened it up and read it and was quite emotional, quite upset.
00:41:56.436 --> 00:41:58.498
I took the church extremely seriously.
00:41:58.559 --> 00:42:01.021
I was a budding scholar and it was the most...
00:42:01.634 --> 00:42:04.356
Amazing experience I've ever had is joining the church.
00:42:04.617 --> 00:42:06.719
And so this was a blow to the stomach.
00:42:07.340 --> 00:42:08.161
I felt quite sick.
00:42:08.663 --> 00:42:15.210
The bishop opened it, read it, and said, Ian, you know, this is not the interpretation that he means by this.
00:42:15.431 --> 00:42:16.413
And if he does, he's wrong.
00:42:16.452 --> 00:42:17.393
This is not.
00:42:17.514 --> 00:42:18.315
And this is Bruce L.
00:42:18.335 --> 00:42:18.715
McConkie.
00:42:18.775 --> 00:42:19.496
It's his opinion.
00:42:19.536 --> 00:42:21.960
He's speaking as a man, right?
00:42:22.460 --> 00:42:29.548
So we've heard that before, you know, is the scripture that we, two scriptures that were read earlier, are they written as a man?
00:42:30.242 --> 00:42:31.423
I think that's an important question.
00:42:31.804 --> 00:42:32.907
Are they written as a prophet?
00:42:33.266 --> 00:42:34.369
I think that's an important question.
00:42:34.710 --> 00:42:41.121
How do you differentiate between someone as an apostle or prophet writing or speaking as a man versus being a prophet?
00:42:41.742 --> 00:42:50.157
We've seen policies implemented, very hurtful, destructive policies, and then we've seen a reversal of those policies, quite dramatic ones.
00:42:50.717 --> 00:42:51.500
Was that of man?
00:42:51.539 --> 00:42:52.240
Was that of God?
00:42:52.865 --> 00:42:53.365
Bruce M.
00:42:53.385 --> 00:42:58.831
McConkie, was he writing as an apostle, which is also a prophet, as you know, or was he writing as a man?
00:42:58.951 --> 00:43:02.193
And so how do you, you know, this is Mormon doctrine.
00:43:02.213 --> 00:43:19.088
I think at one time it was not a, I don't know if it was accepted as a canonized text, but it was close to, you know, when we were serving our missions, I remember going to the MTC, it's the same in the London MTC, I was given, I had my scriptures, and I had Jesus Christ, and I had Articles of Faith by James E.
00:43:19.128 --> 00:43:19.568
Talmadge.
00:43:20.170 --> 00:43:22.831
They were the books that I was encouraged to buy.
00:43:22.831 --> 00:43:45.398
I think earlier, I think people were encouraged to, in the 70s and 60s, from people that I know, they were encouraged to take a copy of Mormon doctrine with them, because that was a very important collective group of doctrines, alphabetical order, that the church had, I think at one time, had formally acknowledged or accepted, notwithstanding some specific sections there that I think they were uncomfortable with.
00:43:45.657 --> 00:43:55.313
But my understanding, and others like me at that time in the 80s there, believed that Mormon doctrine was a albeit not scripture, but was a serious book.
00:43:55.793 --> 00:44:03.943
I have some inside baseball on that, because it was never officially acknowledged as anything.
00:44:04.983 --> 00:44:11.150
And in fact, the behind-the-scenes story on Mormon doctrine as a book is really fascinating.
00:44:11.231 --> 00:44:14.153
I would recommend to anybody to read the book David O.
00:44:14.193 --> 00:44:24.001
McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, which chronicles the publication of Mormon doctrine as It was written at a time when Bruce R.
00:44:24.021 --> 00:44:25.643
McConkie was not an apostle.
00:44:25.744 --> 00:44:26.105
Bruce R.
00:44:26.125 --> 00:44:29.771
McConkie, I think he was an assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve.
00:44:29.851 --> 00:44:31.152
I don't even think he was a Seventy.
00:44:31.413 --> 00:44:33.436
He was a low-level general authority.
00:44:34.376 --> 00:44:46.275
And he wrote this book without telling anybody that he was writing it, without any authorization from anybody, published it, and there was a huge uproar.
00:44:47.016 --> 00:44:50.561
Not over this, you know, the thing about bastards.
00:44:51.010 --> 00:44:59.221
The most explosive thing in there was that he identified the Roman Catholic Church as the great and abominable church that's mentioned in the Book of Mormon.
00:44:59.981 --> 00:45:03.686
And he said that's very clearly the Church of Rome and got very specific.
00:45:04.266 --> 00:45:04.608
David O.
00:45:04.628 --> 00:45:16.143
McKay is my great-grandfather, and my family would always tell the story of the bishop at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in downtown Salt Lake showing up at David O.
00:45:16.163 --> 00:45:21.831
McKay's office, plopping a copy of Mormon doctrine on his desk and said, this is what you think of us?
00:45:22.632 --> 00:45:23.293
Is this true?
00:45:23.333 --> 00:45:25.217
And David O.
00:45:25.257 --> 00:45:26.838
McKay said, I'll take care of it.
00:45:28.121 --> 00:45:35.293
And he did in a very quiet, non-public and difficult to verify way.
00:45:36.394 --> 00:45:37.135
So David O.
00:45:37.175 --> 00:45:39.940
McKay was furious when the book was published.
00:45:40.621 --> 00:45:54.119
And he had apostles review the book and They came back and identified some, I think the number was like 1,729 specific doctrinal errors that Bruce R.
00:45:54.139 --> 00:45:56.081
McConkie had made in the book.
00:45:57.262 --> 00:45:58.143
And David O.
00:45:58.182 --> 00:46:11.476
McKay was not willing to let the church publish it, but the huge but is that he didn't want to do anything that would make it look like there was any problem behind the scenes.
00:46:11.556 --> 00:46:13.259
He didn't want to embarrass Bruce R.
00:46:13.278 --> 00:46:13.900
McConkie.
00:46:14.541 --> 00:46:20.028
He requested, and I'm saying that in quotation marks, essentially ordered Bruce R.
00:46:20.048 --> 00:46:28.282
McConkie to revise it, take out the stuff about the great and abominable church, if he was going to republish it, which he did.
00:46:28.302 --> 00:46:30.545
I don't think that went near enough.
00:46:30.746 --> 00:46:35.753
I mean, it should have been disavowed specifically by the church, and it wasn't.
00:46:36.161 --> 00:46:36.641
David O.
00:46:36.661 --> 00:46:38.304
McKay had done a similar thing.
00:46:38.864 --> 00:46:50.115
Joseph Fielding Smith wrote a book called Man, His Origin, and Destiny, which was a book that is an anti-evolution screed.
00:46:50.956 --> 00:47:03.007
It was, you know, the world was created in, you know, six 24-hour periods, and the earth is only 6,000 years old, and evolution is a tool of the devil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:47:03.748 --> 00:47:11.215
And he wrote that with the assumption that he as an apostle would be able to get the church to publish it.
00:47:12.175 --> 00:47:12.717
And David O.
00:47:12.737 --> 00:47:14.940
McKay refused to allow the church to publish it.
00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:15.380
David O.
00:47:15.420 --> 00:47:19.547
McKay was a believer in evolution and refused to do that.
00:47:19.666 --> 00:47:22.110
And that book sort of fell by the wayside now.
00:47:22.190 --> 00:47:27.918
We don't talk about it anymore, but Mormon doctrine endured, I think, because it was so easy.
00:47:27.940 --> 00:47:29.961
It was just so simple.
00:47:30.643 --> 00:47:37.101
You know, you had these nice little bite-sized sections and you could go to it to get an authoritative reading.
00:47:37.141 --> 00:47:42.809
You know, I was very interested in a girl at one point who was an evangelical Christian.
00:47:43.411 --> 00:47:47.077
She went and decided, okay, I'm going to learn more about Jim's church.
00:47:47.858 --> 00:47:49.981
She went and bought a copy of Mormon Doctrine.
00:47:50.782 --> 00:47:53.385
And I went, okay, well, we're done.
00:47:53.405 --> 00:48:02.981
If that's the impression you're going to get of the church, there's no possible way you're going to have a positive impression of the church.
00:48:03.938 --> 00:48:09.003
And the church, again, has quietly allowed Mormon doctrine to go out of print.
00:48:09.764 --> 00:48:11.086
It is no longer printed.
00:48:11.126 --> 00:48:13.530
It is no longer sold at Deseret Book.
00:48:14.371 --> 00:48:28.827
But it did that without any fanfare, without any acknowledgement of the damage that this book had done to you, or the attack on the Catholic Church had done, or any of the embarrassment.
00:48:29.369 --> 00:48:33.574
I mean, there are so many things in Mormon doctrine that are really weird and embarrassing.
00:48:33.922 --> 00:48:39.891
I used to read it with my kids just for a laugh, the section on card playing and the wickedness.
00:48:39.911 --> 00:48:42.675
We were only allowed to play when I was growing up.
00:48:43.338 --> 00:48:45.400
We couldn't play go fish with face cards.
00:48:46.121 --> 00:48:50.088
We played go fish with rook cards, which only have numbers on them.
00:48:50.128 --> 00:48:51.070
They don't have faces.
00:48:51.791 --> 00:48:52.271
And Bruce R.
00:48:52.291 --> 00:48:58.141
McConkie, there's a whole section in Mormon Doctrine about face cards and how they're of the devil and blah, blah, blah.
00:48:58.657 --> 00:49:05.748
And I just looked back at that and said, what's the difference between playing go fish with face cards and playing go fish with rook cards?
00:49:05.809 --> 00:49:06.871
It's the same game.
00:49:07.612 --> 00:49:12.398
Does Satan somehow get into the picture of the jack or the queen?
00:49:12.518 --> 00:49:13.541
It doesn't make any sense.
00:49:14.041 --> 00:49:27.161
I mean, there's so much in Mormon doctrine, the book, that we have moved away from and that even at the time it was published was considered largely nonsense by most members of the church.
00:49:27.905 --> 00:49:31.550
But we do not have any, again, I'm coming back to this idea.
00:49:31.610 --> 00:49:33.351
We don't have any kind of mechanism.
00:49:33.411 --> 00:49:42.360
We don't have any kind of way to confront errors in our history, confront errors, let alone confront errors in our scripture.
00:49:42.659 --> 00:49:44.362
Mormon doctrine was never scripture.
00:49:45.163 --> 00:49:47.204
And yet it was treated as such.
00:49:47.465 --> 00:49:49.347
We haven't been able to disavow it.
00:49:50.487 --> 00:49:51.909
We use that word, right?
00:49:52.048 --> 00:49:56.673
That word disavow appears in the gospel topics essays.
00:49:57.538 --> 00:50:05.327
that for many people have been their ticket out of the church because they've been told their entire lives that these are all anti-Mormon lies.
00:50:05.427 --> 00:50:10.693
And then they read them in a church sponsored essay and go, wait, the church wasn't honest with me.
00:50:10.833 --> 00:50:13.376
And then that's enough for them to say, I've got to leave.
00:50:14.137 --> 00:50:22.347
We disavow racism in that essay, but we don't identify and acknowledge previous mistakes.
00:50:23.007 --> 00:50:26.652
And we don't even say, that the priesthood ban was a mistake.
00:50:26.733 --> 00:50:31.880
We walk right up to the line of saying it was a mistake, and then we refuse to cross that line.
00:50:32.740 --> 00:50:35.204
That's a Rubicon that we're not willing to cross.
00:50:36.126 --> 00:50:53.789
And we can only go so far as a church in condemning racism, in condemning bigotry, in condemning all of these things, if we're not willing to take responsibility for and accountability for the huge errors that we have made.
00:50:54.498 --> 00:51:02.367
And, you know, we're taught as individuals that when we repent, we have to recognize our sin.
00:51:02.427 --> 00:51:04.570
We have to take responsibility.
00:51:04.630 --> 00:51:06.652
We have to, you know, the R's of repentance.
00:51:06.793 --> 00:51:08.094
We have to make restitution.
00:51:09.036 --> 00:51:12.701
We do that or we encourage people to do that on an individual level.
00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:16.105
And we refuse to do that on an institutional level.
00:51:16.184 --> 00:51:17.405
And it's holding us back.
00:51:18.186 --> 00:51:18.407
It is.
00:51:19.048 --> 00:51:23.434
You said something earlier that you don't believe most of the men of the church took the book.
00:51:23.554 --> 00:51:24.655
the Mormon Doctrine book.
00:51:25.054 --> 00:51:27.157
Seriously, I can't speak to...
00:51:27.777 --> 00:51:28.518
No, that's not what I meant.
00:51:28.639 --> 00:51:34.744
I meant that there were things in Mormon Doctrine that were nonsensical at the time they were published.
00:51:35.164 --> 00:51:36.445
Okay, just wanted to clarify that.
00:51:36.465 --> 00:51:52.041
Again, in my experience, and the people, the leaders in the UK at that time spoke fondly and favourably, mostly positively, about Mormon Doctrine, that it was a book that you should have on your shelf, Ian, that most of it's reliable.
00:51:52.081 --> 00:52:01.224
Yes, I heard some concerns over some of the passages, but it was, again, not canonized text, not scripture, but it was alongside Jesus Christ, James E.
00:52:01.264 --> 00:52:02.527
Talmadge, articles of faith.
00:52:03.327 --> 00:52:06.853
And there were quite a few things in there that I took issue with.
00:52:07.253 --> 00:52:09.016
One of them was the position on gambling.
00:52:09.476 --> 00:52:11.719
My bishop just recently won the lottery.
00:52:12.081 --> 00:52:14.384
So we have an active bishop who's won the lottery.
00:52:14.563 --> 00:52:15.144
He's a good man.
00:52:15.184 --> 00:52:16.768
He's won the lottery.
00:52:17.128 --> 00:52:21.148
And I suppose if he paid tithing on it, it might be okay.
00:52:21.228 --> 00:52:28.239
But I don't know if the church has changed its position on gambling, but Bruce Hamilton is very clear on the relationship between the devil and gambling.
00:52:28.300 --> 00:52:31.425
So just kind of bringing this to a circle here.
00:52:31.465 --> 00:52:42.523
So things are written about the church, whether it's scriptures or Deseret publishing approved literature, et cetera, talks, ensigns, talks are given about how to interpret something.
00:52:43.184 --> 00:52:52.152
And there's a lot of hurtful and harmful information in the scriptures and elsewhere and in talks, which cause a lot of pain and suffering for people.
00:52:53.094 --> 00:53:06.492
And unless the church acknowledges that and apologizes, or at least provides more transparency and discloses to, you know, why these things were written and accepts responsibility for this, then I think it's going to be hard for people to move forward.
00:53:06.833 --> 00:53:13.474
The problem they've got, Jim, is that if they go too far they will be seen as throwing prophets and apostles under the bus.
00:53:14.076 --> 00:53:14.998
And to your David O.
00:53:15.018 --> 00:53:18.824
McKay experience there, they prefer to keep that quiet and in-house.
00:53:19.224 --> 00:53:24.211
I think most people don't know about the details behind Mormon doctrine to the extent that you do.
00:53:24.713 --> 00:53:31.364
I mean, the title, Mormon Doctrine, itself speaks to a canonized group of doctrines collected in that fashion.
00:53:31.403 --> 00:53:37.981
And interpretation that's generally been approved or sanctioned by the church because it's deseret published.
00:53:38.061 --> 00:53:42.005
So there's a whole bunch of questions here and a lot of issues that need to be addressed.
00:53:42.626 --> 00:53:59.740
And the church will continue to wrestle and struggle with how does it reposition itself on these doctrines, these issues, without alienating the traditional right and file, conventional orthodox member, and then how do they bring the new rising generations with them with the more modernized progressive thinking.
00:54:00.021 --> 00:54:01.523
We've identified just a few examples.
00:54:01.563 --> 00:54:07.311
There are many more examples with which cause people a lot of concern and question and doubt and pain and suffering.
00:54:07.713 --> 00:54:08.855
We've just identified a few.
00:54:08.914 --> 00:54:18.251
But if it was me, I'd be going through these things and acknowledging them head on and apologizing where they cause pain, making some kind of restitution and addressing them.
00:54:18.271 --> 00:54:21.778
Because that's the only way to full reconciliation and truth and transparency.
00:54:22.639 --> 00:54:24.003
No, you're absolutely right.
00:54:24.043 --> 00:54:25.505
There's a hymn we would sing...
00:54:25.826 --> 00:54:30.001
And the chorus says, do what is right, let the consequence follow.
00:54:30.583 --> 00:54:33.373
And the thing is, you say, well, it's going to be really hard for the church.
00:54:33.393 --> 00:54:34.237
It really isn't.
00:54:35.106 --> 00:54:42.155
The church continues to pretend it has a choice as to whether or not it can confront all of these issues head on.
00:54:42.615 --> 00:54:43.916
And it doesn't have a choice.
00:54:44.498 --> 00:54:48.603
The only choice it has is to do what is right and let the consequence follow.
00:54:48.702 --> 00:54:56.112
And if the consequence that follows is that some people are going to be unsettled and some people are going to leave, you still have to do what is right.
00:54:56.452 --> 00:55:03.081
And the church is trying very, very hard to walk a line that is ultimately unwalkable.
00:55:03.617 --> 00:55:21.088
It's an untenable position to try to completely ignore the reality of mistakes, ignore the reality of pain and suffering that the church has caused in the past, and the only way the church can survive into the future.
00:55:21.307 --> 00:55:25.210
It has no other choice but to do what is right and let the consequence follow.
00:55:25.952 --> 00:55:28.934
We're out of time here, but I think this has been a good discussion.
00:55:29.335 --> 00:55:35.800
For those of you listening, please be sure to like us and subscribe to us wherever your podcasts are found.
00:55:36.460 --> 00:55:42.398
And until next time, thank you for listening, and we'll see you Thank you very much, Ian.
00:55:43.222 --> 00:55:44.007
Thank you very much, Jim.
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music music
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Hello, my name is Jim Bennett.
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Welcome to the first episode of Inside Out.
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I want to give you a little bit of background before we begin.
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You may know me as the author of A Faithful Replied, The CES Letter.
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I've also been having many public conversations with people in and out of the church, including John Dillon, the Midnight Mormons, Stephen Murphy, Bill Reel, Radio Free Mormon, and I think there are others.
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I'm not sure who they are.
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But as I've made the rounds in the world of Mormon podcasts and online conversations, I've discovered there is a real need for improved connection and understanding between between people who are in the church and people who have felt it necessary to leave the church.
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Usually people on either side tend to stay in their echo chambers and refuse to engage with anyone who disagrees.
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And the result has been way too much demonization and not enough willingness to listen.
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So at the end of last year, I was approached by Ian Wilkes.
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He's an old friend of mine who has left the church But he feels the same way about these problems and divisions.
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And he asked me to do a podcast with him.
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I've been reluctant to do podcasts, but when Ian offered and he talked about what he wanted to do, I jumped at the chance.
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A little background, we were missionaries together in Scotland in the late 1980s.
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That tells you how old we are.
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And Ian was as faithful and devoted a missionary as you could ever want to know.
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He went on to marry in the temple and raise a beautiful family and spend decades in church service, including service as a bishop and a member of a stake presidency.
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And so his leadership experience gives him a lot of insights.
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I've never been, I've been in Bishop Bricks, but I've never been a bishop.
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I've never been in a stake presidency.
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So Ian's got some inside baseball that's really helpful in these discussions.
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He joined the church as a teenager in Yorkshire, England.
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He has a much cooler accent than I do, and he now lives in Canada and his conversion is Thank you.
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I'm still on the inside, and Ian is on the outside of the church.
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Yet both of us care about the church and its future, and both of us want to see constructive dialogue between those who stay and those who leave.
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And hopefully all of us can come to a better understanding, both of the church and of each other.
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And we can have better empathy and better understanding appreciation for one another as a result.
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So with that, I'd like to welcome officially my partner in crime, the one and only Ian Wilkes.
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Ian, how are you, sir?
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I'm very good today, sir.
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How are you?
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I am doing very well.
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So we were talking before the podcast a little bit about a couple of things that you wanted to make sure listeners understand about the nature of this podcast.
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Do you want to get into that here a little bit right as we begin?
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I will, and I'll be brief.
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I think it's really important, a little bit more like a forward statement, if you like, on what we're trying to do and why we're trying to do it.
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The first thing is that these experiences that you and I discuss, share on the podcast is our own experience, our own perspective, our own opinions, our own views.
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We don't represent the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
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And so people are entitled to challenges and questioners, and that's great.
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Again, we're going on our own experience, our own perspectives, and also we are relying on memory.
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Some of these experiences, and that was my other point that I now remember, is that we're relying on memory.
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Some of these experiences happened a long time ago, as far as back as the 80s, when you and I were serving on our missions and we had conversations and meetings And sometimes those memories are clear and sometimes those memories are vague.
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And so we want our listeners to be patient with us.
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But by all means, if you're not sure, if you have questions and you have any concerns or you want to challenge us, anything that we said, by all means, feel free to do so.
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This is a safe place to do that.
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And we'll do our best to respond to that.
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And the other thing was the importance of the reliability of information.
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The memory is limited in terms of these experiences.
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But we'll do our best to remember things accurately and our best to respond to any questions or concerns that anyone has.
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I appreciate you stating that.
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And you'd also talked about the idea that we're not approaching this as apologists for the church.
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We're also not approaching this, I think, as critics of the church.
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I think that this is an important kind of way to model discussions for people wherever they may be in terms of the spectrum of their relationship to the church.
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But I don't think we do the church any favors.
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when we tiptoe around hard questions.
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I don't think we do the church any favors when we refuse to even acknowledge the hard questions.
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A thriving, healthy church is one that is able to incorporate diverse points of view and also be able to deal with people who are outside of the church or who have left the church with a degree of respect and kindness.
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It's astonishing to me how many people think that the best way to deal with people who have doubts and who eventually leave the church is to treat them like garbage.
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And in that sense, I want to segue here into what we're going to be discussing.
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You talk about the idea that we're going to be dealing with this from memory.
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You shared with me a memory.
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There's one memory when you were serving as a leader that is sort of seared into your imagination.
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Can you give us a little more context on that?
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I'm being as vague as I can here.
00:06:32.997 --> 00:06:34.158
Sure.
00:06:34.420 --> 00:07:17.531
As you know, leaders, especially leaders who are approachable, and I think I was, who can be trusted, you know, the church encourages leaders members to confess and to go to the bishop and open up and and share often very private very personal experiences sometimes as part of the repentance process other times it relates to an individual's emotional recovery of an event sometimes an often traumatic event and so members come to leaders and share very deep personal private experiences that are very painful and very difficult to talk about and difficult to resolve.
00:07:17.971 --> 00:07:20.334
Bishops, state presidents, are not trained.
00:07:20.735 --> 00:07:35.391
Bishops often give poor advice, don't understand the issues, default to the belief that if you pray enough and if you fast enough these complex emotional and sometimes sexual abuse related issues will disappear through fasting and prayer.
00:07:35.911 --> 00:07:50.685
My experience as a leader is that that is not the case, that these individuals are vulnerable, they feel excluded, they're disadvantaged in some way, emotionally vulnerable, and they need much more than praying and fasting.
00:07:51.305 --> 00:07:58.752
So you can imagine as leaders, as a leader, that you hear all kinds of things from all kinds of individuals, all kinds of backgrounds.
00:07:59.533 --> 00:08:15.827
And it's quite common or not uncommon for a, an individual to meet with a leader and to share personal experiences and traumatic experiences, actually, where the individual has been subject to sexual abuse or some kind of sexual assault.
00:08:16.327 --> 00:08:36.634
And over the years as a leader, I've had a number of people who have come to me and in tears, very emotional, have broken down and opened up and shared disturbing and very awful experiences that they continue to struggle with in their 40s, 50s, and sometimes 60s.
00:08:36.653 --> 00:08:43.451
These events that happen sometimes at a younger age stay with these individuals forever.
00:08:43.471 --> 00:08:50.000
They wrestle with them and they struggle with them and many times they can't seem to escape the pain.
00:08:50.620 --> 00:08:58.272
So it's a very difficult meeting and I think the need for bishops to be trained, have some professional training is absolutely critical.
00:08:58.852 --> 00:09:24.113
So there was a few individuals over the years that I met with and I tried my very best without the training, and often found myself to be very inadequate, frankly, unequipped, inadequate, untrained, trying to help these individuals with very complex, historical, traumatic, emotional events, sometimes related to sexual abuse as a child, for example.
00:09:24.933 --> 00:09:31.962
And one individual came to me, and this happened several times, where they'd read a scripture, which is found in Moroni 99.
00:09:32.464 --> 00:09:38.893
Over the years, over the The generations, as you know, the church has reviewed and modified its canonized text.
00:09:38.972 --> 00:09:43.159
It's made changes, literal changes, to its body of Scripture over the years.
00:09:43.200 --> 00:09:45.783
We see this in Doctrine and Covenants and in the Book of Mormon.
00:09:45.803 --> 00:09:47.225
It's diluted and made changes.
00:09:47.745 --> 00:09:49.830
And I think those changes have been necessary.
00:09:49.870 --> 00:09:54.436
The church would perhaps give its own answers to why those changes have been made.
00:09:54.956 --> 00:10:01.990
But there still remains within the main body of Scripture, Scriptures which cause pain and suffering Can you imagine that?
00:10:02.230 --> 00:10:06.977
You know, we're talking about the Holy Scriptures here, and they cause pain and suffering for people.
00:10:07.217 --> 00:10:10.422
And it's not unique just to the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, Pilgrim of Christ.
00:10:10.903 --> 00:10:12.905
We see these scriptures in the Bible.
00:10:13.206 --> 00:10:16.691
But this individual highlighted Moroni 9.9.
00:10:17.672 --> 00:10:35.756
Trigger warning here is that this relates to one of several meetings I had with a member who had been tragically raped at a young age, struggling this traumatic event as a young leader, me trying to understand how can I possibly help.
00:10:37.339 --> 00:10:46.730
And this individual shared the scripture with me and I'm trying to, a scripture I've read a number of times, I'm sure, and didn't see it the way that this member did.
00:10:46.769 --> 00:10:52.099
And so if you could read that scripture for us, Jim, That would be helpful.
00:10:52.198 --> 00:10:52.480
Sure.
00:10:52.500 --> 00:10:52.559
All
00:10:54.042 --> 00:10:54.341
right.
00:10:54.402 --> 00:10:55.383
Yes, trigger warning.
00:10:55.442 --> 00:10:56.764
This gets very graphic.
00:10:57.885 --> 00:11:03.754
And notwithstanding the great abomination of the Lamanites, it does not exceed that of our people in Moriantum.
00:11:04.354 --> 00:11:16.669
For behold, many of the daughters of the Lamanites have they taken prisoners, and after depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue.
00:11:17.634 --> 00:11:23.821
And after they had done this thing, they did murder them in a most cruel manner, torturing their bodies even unto death.
00:11:23.921 --> 00:11:30.048
And after they have done this, they devour their flesh like unto wild beasts because of the hardness of their hearts.
00:11:30.148 --> 00:11:32.549
And they do it for a token of their bravery.
00:11:33.270 --> 00:11:35.693
You know, I've read that scripture many times too.
00:11:36.575 --> 00:11:44.143
And I always focused, I went on to verse 10, the idea that they would rape them, they would kill them, they would eat them.
00:11:45.445 --> 00:12:07.279
And It never occurred to me when I was a missionary and reading that scripture, the impact that the sentence about depriving them of that which was most dear and precious above all things, which is chastity and virtue, how that would scar somebody who was a victim of sexual abuse.
00:12:08.022 --> 00:12:10.785
And it sounds like that's what happened with the people you were meeting with.
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Yes, that's what happened.
00:12:13.043 --> 00:12:15.106
So this individual had come to me.
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They had read this scripture.
00:12:17.389 --> 00:12:29.769
It bothered them so much that they, for the very first time in their lives, they felt that they needed to open up and share their traumatic experience.
00:12:29.808 --> 00:12:32.393
They'd never had discussed it with anyone else prior.
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And this scripture was a catalyst.
00:12:35.817 --> 00:12:53.307
And the pressure on this individual to talk to somebody about what this actually meant And this individual went into not great detail about what happened, but she felt, having read the scripture, that, you know, she had a question, was she to blame for the sexual assault that had been forced upon her?
00:12:53.347 --> 00:12:56.133
And she interpreted this scripture.
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You know, the church says, I think, somewhere that the scriptures are not open to private interpretation.
00:13:01.620 --> 00:13:15.684
So you can read stuff, you can read the scripture, arrive at an interpretation when people A large group of people arrive at an interpretation that can be defined as generally a common interpretation.
00:13:15.725 --> 00:13:23.312
The church may or may not agree with that or accept that and often or sometimes will say that, no, you've misinterpreted the scripture.
00:13:23.352 --> 00:13:24.394
This is what it really means.
00:13:25.014 --> 00:13:36.605
Notwithstanding, this individual, and this has happened in my leadership experience, this has happened several times where someone has read something like this and they've had this experience before.
00:13:36.738 --> 00:13:38.500
in their lives, this traumatic experience.
00:13:38.539 --> 00:13:44.926
They've read this, and now they believe that they're no longer chaste and they no longer possess virtue.
00:13:44.966 --> 00:14:03.482
So without getting too much into the detail, because I don't think that would be appropriate, this individual, as they shared their experience with me, tried desperately to escape the situation, physically fought the attacker, was unsuccessful, resulting in a very serious sexual assault.
00:14:04.264 --> 00:14:17.168
At the time and over the years did not think or believe or feel that it was their fault, but having read the Scripture, came to a couple of conclusions and interpretations.
00:14:17.347 --> 00:14:25.999
One was, with this happening to this individual, are they no longer seen by God, the Heavenly Father, a loving Heavenly Father?
00:14:26.580 --> 00:14:31.667
Are they no longer seen by the Lord as being chaste or virtuous?
00:14:32.508 --> 00:14:46.581
And that added significant additional pain on top of years of pain and suffering and hurt that this individual continued to struggle with.
00:14:47.261 --> 00:14:59.999
And the second interpretation and conclusion they came to was did they carry any responsibility for that, any personal responsibility or blame for that assault?
00:15:00.519 --> 00:15:01.321
Were they at fault?
00:15:02.341 --> 00:15:04.865
Were they wearing something that was inappropriate?
00:15:05.090 --> 00:15:14.341
I wish I could say that this individual was drawing a conclusion that was different from what the church taught.
00:15:15.203 --> 00:15:29.022
Unfortunately, there are teachings that the church has moved away from, to its credit, but there are teachings that reinforce that interpretation.
00:15:29.042 --> 00:15:31.666
I pulled up here, this is Elder Richard G.
00:15:31.785 --> 00:15:33.788
Scott in 1992.
00:15:35.745 --> 00:15:39.291
gave a talk called Healing the Tragic Scars of Abuse.
00:15:39.431 --> 00:15:42.054
And I'm just going to play a segment of that.
00:15:42.075 --> 00:15:43.456
Here we go.
00:15:44.018 --> 00:15:51.708
Most often the victim is innocent because of being disabled by fear or the power or authority of the offender.
00:15:52.910 --> 00:16:00.140
At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse.
00:16:01.186 --> 00:16:07.436
Your priesthood leader will help you assess your responsibility so that if needed, it can be addressed.
00:16:09.019 --> 00:16:12.924
Otherwise, the seeds of guilt will remain and sprout into bitter fruit.
00:16:14.927 --> 00:16:20.517
So there he is specifically saying, you may have a degree of responsibility.
00:16:20.537 --> 00:16:25.785
At some point, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse.
00:16:26.241 --> 00:16:31.307
Other statements by church leaders have gone in this direction as well.
00:16:31.668 --> 00:16:41.017
President Kimball talked about the fact that if you're being raped, you have to struggle and fight as much as you possibly can.
00:16:41.037 --> 00:16:49.446
If you just acquiesce, then yes, you have given up to some degree your virtue and your chastity.
00:16:49.785 --> 00:16:51.648
We no longer teach this.
00:16:51.927 --> 00:16:53.629
I think the church recognizes this.
00:16:53.985 --> 00:17:04.240
that this is a mistake, that this is not an appropriate thing to be teaching, that all this does is reinforce needless guilt, needless shame.
00:17:04.279 --> 00:17:12.871
But the difficulty that we have is that as a church, we are terrible at admitting error.
00:17:13.511 --> 00:17:20.761
President Oaks has said repeatedly, as a church, we do not look for apologies or give them.
00:17:21.665 --> 00:17:23.928
We do not apologize for making mistakes.
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We acknowledge in a sort of broad, vague, generic way that mistakes have happened.
00:17:32.718 --> 00:17:36.162
But the minute you point to one and say, well, isn't this a mistake?
00:17:36.903 --> 00:17:38.683
Everybody just sort of runs the other way.
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We want to just say, okay, well, we don't teach this anymore, so why does it matter that we used to teach it?
00:17:45.432 --> 00:18:00.763
And I think it matters significantly, particularly since you have a verse there in the Book of Mormons When you say that the church has changed its scriptures, you are correct, but those changes have been few and far between since the time of Joseph Smith.
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Joseph Smith edited his revelations.
00:18:05.050 --> 00:18:09.778
The doctrine and covenants as we now have it was the result of many revisions.
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The Book of Mormon did not undergo a similar amount of revisions.
00:18:14.948 --> 00:18:22.701
Well, it depends on who you want to talk to, because it underwent a And people will say, well, there have been hundreds of thousands of changes in the Book of Mormon.
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And that's true in that E.B.
00:18:25.924 --> 00:18:31.590
Grandin, the printer of the Book of Mormon, went through and punctuated the Book of Mormon.
00:18:31.991 --> 00:18:36.916
The manuscript that Joseph and Oliver delivered to the printer didn't have any punctuation at all.
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And so every one of those punctuation marks is a change.
00:18:42.863 --> 00:18:59.780
But in terms of actual doctrinal changes, In the Book of Mormon particularly, they've been few and far between, changing the phrase Mother of God to the Mother of the Son of God, which I think Joseph put in there to make it sound less Catholic or less Trinitarian.
00:19:00.862 --> 00:19:17.829
The most recent change of any significance that I know of was actually a change made by Joseph Smith that didn't make it into the Book of Mormon that existed from near the end of Joseph's life all the way until 1980.
00:19:17.869 --> 00:19:22.517
And that was the phrase, white and delightsome.
00:19:22.837 --> 00:19:30.430
The Lamanites will become a white and delightsome people that has since been changed to pure and delightsome.
00:19:30.594 --> 00:19:44.452
That is a huge change in terms of how we approach past racism and the kind of racism we still find in a lot of Book of Mormon scriptures today, particularly in 2 Nephi chapter 5.
00:19:45.634 --> 00:19:57.069
But we don't seem to have a mechanism or a procedure or a culture that allows for changes like this.
00:19:57.826 --> 00:20:14.144
And even though we also theologically accept the reality that the scriptures are not perfect, that there is human error in the scripture on the title page of the Book of Mormon, it talks about if there are errors, they'd be the mistakes of men.
00:20:14.184 --> 00:20:20.011
The Book of Mormon does not claim to be inerrant, but we treat it as inerrant.
00:20:20.732 --> 00:20:22.413
We treat scripture as inerrant.
00:20:23.095 --> 00:20:28.269
So when you say, okay, this scripture, obviously is doing more damage than good.
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It's not teaching a true principle.
00:20:30.391 --> 00:20:31.551
We ought to change it.
00:20:32.472 --> 00:20:33.934
We have no way to do that.
00:20:34.214 --> 00:20:51.834
That wouldn't cause huge consternation among a membership that have taken the false doctrine of prophetic inerrancy and prophetic infallibility to a level that is really, really disconcerting and unsettling.
00:20:52.595 --> 00:20:54.798
How would the church go about getting rid of this?
00:20:55.137 --> 00:21:00.609
First, I just want our listeners to know that when I was listening to Elder Scott, I was shaking my head.
00:21:00.650 --> 00:21:07.724
There's a few things that I find as disturbing and as shocking and as grotesque as those comments, those remarks.
00:21:08.547 --> 00:21:11.854
Notwithstanding what you said, that the church has moved away from that.
00:21:12.034 --> 00:21:13.434
position, and thank goodness.
00:21:13.836 --> 00:21:15.317
That material still exists.
00:21:15.457 --> 00:21:16.117
It's still out there.
00:21:16.317 --> 00:21:18.380
And yes, it has moved away from that position.
00:21:18.460 --> 00:21:20.621
But my question is, where have they done that?
00:21:20.682 --> 00:21:27.346
You know, where they have moved away from a position that they've said, no, this is not what we think or believe anymore.
00:21:27.366 --> 00:21:33.573
Where is the explicit commentary marks to say that without sounding like they're making a mistake?
00:21:33.633 --> 00:21:35.994
I think that's what the fine line, that kind of walk.
00:21:36.335 --> 00:21:38.416
Just briefly, I just want to look at the scripture again.
00:21:38.457 --> 00:22:14.426
The wording is really important here, but this individual, going back to this individual experience they said that how can something that was forced upon them deprive them if something that was against their free agency so this was against their agency they didn't want this they did fight they were not successful they were completely overcome physically and powered overpowered they were terrified is the word horrified terrified they froze with fear their questions are they now deprived of virtue and chastity and i said absolutely not and they said well It's in the scriptures, so it must be correct.
00:22:15.048 --> 00:22:21.482
And so, yes, the church has made, has diluted some of the scriptures, you know, white and delights them and pure and delights them.
00:22:22.265 --> 00:22:26.493
And I think we need to look at that scripture in 2 Nephi on this podcast.
00:22:26.513 --> 00:22:27.476
You and I chatted about that.
00:22:28.558 --> 00:22:33.375
It hasn't done enough to come out and say, look, this is wrong.
00:22:33.415 --> 00:22:34.920
This is not our position anymore.
00:22:34.980 --> 00:22:35.641
It's not clear.
00:22:35.701 --> 00:22:41.232
I can't find anything where it's been so direct and open and transparent that it moved away from this position.
00:22:41.753 --> 00:22:53.017
And then to your last point, your last question, I don't know how the church can remove this scripture or dilute it because this is the most correct of any books ever written.
00:22:53.037 --> 00:22:57.644
It's the only book that will get an individual closer to Jesus Christ more than any other book.
00:22:58.184 --> 00:23:09.182
As the tapenter said, when he was the prophet, when you and I were serving in missions, and I think President Hinckley said this as well, the truth and divinity of the church rests on the validity and truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.
00:23:09.722 --> 00:23:11.005
It's the keystone of our religion.
00:23:11.345 --> 00:23:19.016
I think when you write on something, then you can make those statements with confidence because You write now and you'll be right in the future.
00:23:19.276 --> 00:23:21.077
You know, I love service, believe in Christ.
00:23:21.097 --> 00:23:22.960
You're always going to be right on stuff like that.
00:23:23.401 --> 00:23:38.057
But when you're talking about Book of Mormon generally and looking at these scriptures, which are very harmful and very destructive, and the church can't remove it because it would be a dilution of the most important book that's ever happened to mankind.
00:23:38.237 --> 00:23:39.939
How does it remove that?
00:23:40.680 --> 00:23:48.728
It can give its interpretation of that, but you're still going to have people read it and interpret the scripture in the way that I shared earlier.
00:23:49.048 --> 00:23:52.372
I think it would be helpful, Jim, to go to the scripture that you mentioned here.
00:23:52.413 --> 00:23:54.835
I think there were three things that we were talking about here as an example.
00:23:54.895 --> 00:23:56.217
There's lots of examples.
00:23:56.857 --> 00:24:01.002
And we identified this scripture, Verona 99, has been a difficult scripture.
00:24:01.323 --> 00:24:04.527
We identified the one that you referenced in 2 Nephi.
00:24:05.167 --> 00:24:15.943
And there's other stuff which is not quite canonized, but seen by many as being close to being canonized text, this example in the Mormon Doctrine there, second edition with Bruce Anakonke.
00:24:16.585 --> 00:24:16.965
Could you read
00:24:16.986 --> 00:24:18.527
your scripture in 2 Nephi?
00:24:18.567 --> 00:24:21.351
This is 2 Nephi chapter 5, verse 21.
00:24:22.531 --> 00:24:27.938
This is not the reference to white and delightsome, although there's something close to it here.
00:24:28.159 --> 00:24:34.246
The Nephites and the Lamanites, they've just arrived in the new world, and they've gone their separate ways.
00:24:35.170 --> 00:24:43.924
And so the Lord is cursing, according to Nephi, the Lord is cursing Lamanites because they aren't following the commandments.
00:24:44.645 --> 00:24:50.655
Verse 21 says,"...and he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing because of their iniquity.
00:24:50.675 --> 00:24:56.204
For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint.
00:24:56.925 --> 00:25:09.897
Wherefore, as they were white and exceedingly fair and delightsome..." that they may not be enticing unto my people, the Lord did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.
00:25:10.638 --> 00:25:18.567
And thus saith the Lord God, I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.
00:25:19.367 --> 00:25:26.075
And curse shall be the seed of him that mixeth with their seed, for they shall be cursed even with the same cursing.
00:25:26.795 --> 00:26:11.020
And the Lord spake it, and it was done." Given the church's history with regard to racism, with regard to excluding people of African descent from temple blessings, from priesthood, from full participation in the church, and for that ban to have lasted for over a century, for 120-something years, it's remarkable to me that this scripture was not used as justification for that ban, because the interpretation of this scripture is that this had application to Native Americans.
00:26:11.821 --> 00:26:27.596
The assumption was that all Native Americans were Lamanites, and the darkness of their skin is the result of this curse, but that curse did not limit Native Americans from holding the priests that are going to the temple.
00:26:27.817 --> 00:26:33.895
You talked earlier about the Book of Mormon being the most correct book on earth, the keystone of our religion.
00:26:33.955 --> 00:26:36.779
That's the quote that we hear again and again and again.
00:26:36.819 --> 00:26:39.824
The President Benson, when we were on our mission, kept reemphasizing.
00:26:40.384 --> 00:26:45.291
I don't think how can the church fix this is a rhetorical question.
00:26:46.252 --> 00:26:55.705
I think the way the church can fix this is leaning into the implication of errancy in a statement that this is the most correct book.
00:26:56.642 --> 00:27:03.031
Because if it is the most correct book, it's not the same thing as saying it is a perfectly correct book.
00:27:03.732 --> 00:27:12.987
And I think that the church needs to acknowledge the reality of error in the Book of Mormon, that prophets have made mistakes.
00:27:13.827 --> 00:27:17.713
And I think we can do that in a healthy and sustainable way.
00:27:18.561 --> 00:27:25.288
I can still love and embrace the Book of Mormon as Scripture, which I continue to do.
00:27:25.449 --> 00:27:35.397
And I love the Book of Mormon, and the Book of Mormon has brought me closer to Christ than any other book throughout my life, and still recognize that there are problems in it.
00:27:35.939 --> 00:27:40.603
Somebody is racist here in 2 Nephi chapter 5.
00:27:41.243 --> 00:27:41.984
Is it God?
00:27:42.005 --> 00:27:45.067
Is it Nephi?
00:27:45.087 --> 00:27:47.250
Or is it Joseph Smith?
00:27:48.321 --> 00:27:52.747
And from my perspective, I want to say it's either Nephi or Joseph Smith.
00:27:53.267 --> 00:28:11.906
And from the church's perspective, the church ties itself in knots trying to justify racism, trying to justify mistakes of the past, because they're far more comfortable saying that God is a racist than that Brigham Young was a racist for instituting the priesthood ban.
00:28:12.287 --> 00:28:14.288
That makes no sense to me whatsoever.
00:28:14.789 --> 00:28:15.109
None.
00:28:15.521 --> 00:28:32.540
The idea that we have to put these men on a pedestal and say they were perfect, and so we're willing to attribute all of the terrible things that have happened to God instead of to the weaknesses of men, that's getting it entirely backwards from my perspective.
00:28:32.961 --> 00:28:39.627
And also, the Book of Mormon, taken in its totality, preaches against racism.
00:28:40.469 --> 00:28:44.574
You take this one verse in isolation and you go, this is a racist document.
00:28:45.698 --> 00:29:02.715
But you look at the history of the Nephites and the Lamanites and Samuel the Lamanite being, I think, the most righteous prophet in the Book of Mormon, so much so that when Jesus arrives in America, says, you need to make sure you include Samuel the Lamanite's words.
00:29:03.477 --> 00:29:12.586
You have the injunction in 2 Nephi 33 saying, and he denieth none who come unto him, black or white, bond and free, all are alike unto God.
00:29:13.166 --> 00:29:15.309
That's a verse that sort of got buried.
00:29:15.809 --> 00:29:19.054
until 1978 when we discovered, hey, you know what?
00:29:19.074 --> 00:29:21.237
The scriptures tell us we shouldn't be racists.
00:29:22.018 --> 00:29:27.385
And then you get to the point where the Nephites and the Lamanites intermarry.
00:29:27.405 --> 00:29:31.010
I mean, here this is a verse saying you shouldn't intermarry with these people.
00:29:33.032 --> 00:29:36.878
It's just an awful, awful idea.
00:29:37.558 --> 00:29:46.411
But by the time you get to 4th Nephi, there are no manner of ites, and everybody's intermarried, and everybody is a as one people.
00:29:46.550 --> 00:29:54.682
And then Lamanite becomes a self-designation of people who are no longer following Christ.
00:29:55.303 --> 00:29:58.727
It is not a racial designation at that point anymore.
00:29:59.528 --> 00:30:10.702
By the end of the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites, we don't know if they're descended from Nephi or from Laman or who, we just know that they're calling themselves Lamanites.
00:30:11.523 --> 00:30:22.826
So the racism of in the church where we say, aha, you're a Lamanite because you had your skin cursed, the Book of Mormon actually doesn't argue that position by the end.
00:30:23.647 --> 00:30:25.611
So, I mean, there's a lot of complexity.
00:30:25.651 --> 00:30:33.664
There's a lot more, and taken as a whole, the Book of Mormon speaks out against racism far more than it encourages it.
00:30:34.487 --> 00:30:36.430
That does not excuse this scripture.
00:30:37.131 --> 00:30:46.423
That does not excuse Other errors in the Book of Mormon that is not excused, Moroni chapter 9, verse 9, which is clearly an error.
00:30:46.923 --> 00:30:48.865
And I think that error was made.
00:30:48.905 --> 00:30:54.973
That comes from a sort of Victorian sensibility where they're trying to use a euphemism.
00:30:55.714 --> 00:30:58.459
Joseph Smith, I think that that's a translator error.
00:30:58.558 --> 00:31:00.882
Joseph Smith didn't want to use the word rape.
00:31:01.382 --> 00:31:07.450
And so he used this euphemism, which to modern audiences particularly, is reprehensible.
00:31:07.713 --> 00:31:09.556
The church does that all the time.
00:31:09.596 --> 00:31:11.117
The church uses euphemism.
00:31:11.157 --> 00:31:14.801
You know, I grew up in the church.
00:31:15.422 --> 00:31:19.826
You weren't 12 years old and handed a pamphlet by Boyd K.
00:31:19.846 --> 00:31:28.636
Packer that talked about your little factory and how you need to make sure that your little factory doesn't go into production before it's time and blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:31:29.196 --> 00:31:31.859
It's an anti-masturbation pamphlet.
00:31:32.621 --> 00:31:37.306
But the church was so, and Boyd Packer was so uncomfortable using the word masturbation.
00:31:38.049 --> 00:31:42.154
that he uses this euphemism that as a 12-year-old kid, I was reading this thing.
00:31:42.194 --> 00:31:44.237
I'm like, what the hell is he talking about?
00:31:44.257 --> 00:31:46.880
I have no idea what this means.
00:31:47.800 --> 00:31:51.125
And I took it to my mother and I said, what does this mean?
00:31:52.066 --> 00:32:04.359
And she went white and she finally said, it means don't play with your penis, which was terrible advice to me because then I would pee with my hands spread eagle on the wall.
00:32:04.440 --> 00:32:08.836
So I made sure I wasn't, getting my little factory into production.
00:32:09.558 --> 00:32:11.161
We have made mistakes.
00:32:11.260 --> 00:32:15.989
Some of them are benign and some of them are silly, and some of them are very serious.
00:32:16.108 --> 00:32:18.992
And these two scriptures particularly are very serious.
00:32:19.974 --> 00:32:25.923
And the church right now, President Nelson, we've created this relationship with the NAACP.
00:32:26.785 --> 00:32:34.477
President Nelson has spoken out about racism and against racism more than any president in the history of the church.
00:32:35.362 --> 00:32:39.586
And that is commendable, and I appreciate that, and I want more of it.
00:32:40.448 --> 00:32:47.696
It rings hollow to so many people because we have not addressed the roots of where that racism came from.
00:32:48.317 --> 00:32:51.181
We now say, it's exactly like what you're saying.
00:32:51.221 --> 00:32:58.109
At no point has anybody gone back to 2 Nephi 5.21 and said, somebody's racist here and that's bad.
00:32:58.810 --> 00:32:59.550
We won't do that.
00:32:59.731 --> 00:33:01.334
We dance around it.
00:33:02.275 --> 00:33:15.708
When we studied the Book of Mormon just last year, There was a statement from Joseph Fielding Smith about Second Nephi 521 that was printed in the manual that had everybody up in arms.
00:33:15.768 --> 00:33:20.491
And then Gary Stevenson, an apostle, went out and said, oh, that was mistakenly put in there.
00:33:20.531 --> 00:33:21.993
That's an old teaching.
00:33:22.074 --> 00:33:23.375
We shouldn't have put that in there.
00:33:24.096 --> 00:33:25.557
But we didn't disavow the scripture.
00:33:26.538 --> 00:33:32.384
We just we try to move on and we try to do what's right now.
00:33:33.263 --> 00:33:34.464
And that is commendable.
00:33:35.266 --> 00:33:41.211
It doesn't have enough weight until you address what went before.
00:33:41.952 --> 00:34:15.519
Putting aside the dark underbelly of historical, doctrinal, institutional racism that does belong to the church history, notwithstanding that the church is trying to navigate itself away from those earlier entrenched doctrinal positions, which were heavily influenced, we both know, at the turn of the, you know, in the 18th century, 19th century and before, around slavery, et cetera, around going forward, you know, civil rights.
00:34:16.382 --> 00:34:27.364
Before that, the right of black African Americans, et cetera, that the leaders had a position, Brigham Young being one of them, who that was, unquestionably racist at the time.
00:34:28.045 --> 00:34:32.717
And that continued all the way up into 1978, which I find extraordinary.
00:34:33.277 --> 00:34:37.750
I think that revelation came from significant pressure upon the church.
00:34:37.789 --> 00:34:40.617
We can say it was a revelation, and that's fine.
00:34:40.657 --> 00:34:41.358
We can say that.
00:34:41.458 --> 00:35:17.782
And I don't entirely disbelieve that i think that there was a lot of prayer and fasting going on at the time but only until 1978 did black people have the right privilege to go to the temple and to hold the priesthood which is a very very long time not to have that authority uh and now that equality i think putting aside just for a moment that dark underbelly of racist history that the church will never get away from fully and will only heal, help people reconcile with those early historical positions if they address it head on.
00:35:17.822 --> 00:35:39.617
And if you were to put that aside and just to read these scriptures in and as of themselves, you would see that a lot of people read them that come to a generally a common interpretation, that the majority of people reading these scriptures would arrive at a common conclusion, interpretation like we have, without even the context of the historical racism.
00:35:39.797 --> 00:35:48.545
You add the historical racism, which you have to, and it's significant, and it's understandable that people would come to those conclusions about that scripture in 2 Nephi.
00:35:48.985 --> 00:36:03.659
And so unless the church comes out and comes clean and addresses it and disavows, as it uses that word quite a bit in the essays, disavow its position with the scriptures and states very clearly that the Book of Mormon is not perfect but significant of it should be relied on.
00:36:03.699 --> 00:36:07.367
And if there's any mistakes in the Book of Mormon, then they are mistakes of men.
00:36:07.407 --> 00:36:08.590
You mentioned that before.
00:36:09.411 --> 00:36:13.099
And if I was a general authority, I would stand up and say these things that we're saying right now.
00:36:13.139 --> 00:36:14.702
The book is not perfect.
00:36:14.762 --> 00:36:16.266
It was translated by men.
00:36:16.706 --> 00:36:19.088
It was translated through the gift and power of God.
00:36:19.748 --> 00:36:21.510
It was written at the time of the day.
00:36:21.610 --> 00:36:27.554
There was things that were happening in America at that time that was influencing Joseph Smith, influencing Brigham Young, etc.
00:36:27.715 --> 00:36:28.255
We know that.
00:36:28.795 --> 00:36:31.438
And all this came into the translation process.
00:36:31.938 --> 00:36:34.981
And now, through further knowledge, our position has changed.
00:36:35.422 --> 00:36:37.764
We disavow these common interpretations.
00:36:38.065 --> 00:36:38.925
This is our position.
00:36:39.186 --> 00:36:40.146
This is where we stand.
00:36:40.726 --> 00:36:49.295
We completely condemn any behavior or action that supports or sanctions a you know, this kind of behavior, this is our position, etc.
00:36:49.856 --> 00:36:51.900
And to actually remove those scriptures.
00:36:52.340 --> 00:37:04.059
What I would do, I'd write a note in the topical notes at the bottom with a special reference to a quote from the prophet to disavow this and to give a more inclusive or a different interpretation, or at least to disavow it.
00:37:04.581 --> 00:37:05.621
The church hasn't done that.
00:37:06.063 --> 00:37:07.806
I think the church needs to be...
00:37:08.065 --> 00:37:12.195
much more active in disavowing scripture beyond just saying they disavow something.
00:37:12.717 --> 00:37:19.271
I don't know how they're going to get around this, but until they address it head on, you're going to have people in a very vulnerable state.
00:37:19.291 --> 00:37:31.365
They're going to read this stuff and they're going to arrive at this common interpretation They're going to research into Elder Scott's talk, and they might not know that the church has moved away from its position.
00:37:31.385 --> 00:37:34.250
They might not know what you know, Jim, that you just shared with me earlier.
00:37:34.831 --> 00:37:38.135
And they will arrive at this conclusion, and it will cause more pain and suffering.
00:37:38.878 --> 00:37:42.402
And so the church, it does tie itself in knots.
00:37:42.724 --> 00:37:57.041
But if it's more open, transparent, and acknowledges mistakes and problems, it will be seen and behave much more inclusively and in a more compassionate, in a more kind of way, because this is canonized scripture.
00:37:57.083 --> 00:37:58.945
This is not the ensign material.
00:37:58.985 --> 00:38:02.411
This is actual scripture that is the bedrock of the church.
00:38:02.931 --> 00:38:05.635
The other thing that we talked about as an example, there's many examples.
00:38:05.697 --> 00:38:09.943
The third one was an experience that I shared with you when we were preparing this podcast.
00:38:10.023 --> 00:38:16.981
And I shared with you at the time of, I think I was 16 or 17, and had just joined the church through the missionaries.
00:38:17.842 --> 00:38:19.463
Oh yeah, let me pull that up.
00:38:19.985 --> 00:38:26.271
Yeah, living with a wonderful family who were very devoted, very committed to the church.
00:38:26.452 --> 00:38:27.592
You know, I was a new convert.
00:38:27.994 --> 00:38:29.514
I had to leave home for joining the church.
00:38:29.574 --> 00:38:32.318
This family took me in, very kind.
00:38:33.179 --> 00:38:38.646
And they were, I wouldn't say they were scholars, but they had quite a good lineup of excellent reading material.
00:38:39.025 --> 00:38:41.148
Jesus of Christ, Articles of Faith, James E.
00:38:41.188 --> 00:38:42.590
Talmadge, other books.
00:38:42.690 --> 00:38:43.612
scholarly books.
00:38:43.751 --> 00:38:45.454
I cannot recall all of them right now.
00:38:45.474 --> 00:38:48.159
And one of them was a book that caught my eye.
00:38:48.199 --> 00:38:54.570
It was a book with a black hardback, and it was Mormon Doctrine, second edition, Bruce L.
00:38:54.590 --> 00:38:54.952
McConkie.
00:38:55.733 --> 00:38:59.420
And as a new convert, I was on a mission.
00:38:59.599 --> 00:39:03.286
People who knew me back then, I was on a mission to learn as much as I could about the church.
00:39:03.306 --> 00:39:04.309
I was like a sponge.
00:39:04.329 --> 00:39:06.463
I was reading I was attending seminary.
00:39:06.483 --> 00:39:10.771
I was a committed student, reading the stuff, doing the assignments.
00:39:11.371 --> 00:39:12.934
I was the full-in convert.
00:39:13.454 --> 00:39:17.742
I think I probably annoyed some people because I was asking so many questions.
00:39:18.362 --> 00:39:19.885
I wanted to learn everything about the church.
00:39:19.925 --> 00:39:22.889
It was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I read as much as I could.
00:39:23.362 --> 00:39:26.750
And one of the books I got my hands on was Mormon Doctrine, and I read that.
00:39:26.769 --> 00:39:28.313
And as you know, it's written in alphabetical order.
00:39:28.673 --> 00:39:30.619
There's a first edition, which I've seen once.
00:39:30.699 --> 00:39:31.661
I don't own a copy.
00:39:32.081 --> 00:39:34.347
I'd love to get my hands on a copy of the first edition.
00:39:34.668 --> 00:39:43.367
But I read the second one, and I came across, when I got to the B section, I came across a piece there about, well, bastards.
00:39:44.126 --> 00:39:45.527
And if you could read that for us.
00:39:46.009 --> 00:39:48.550
Bastards, see, sons of God.
00:39:48.590 --> 00:40:03.764
Since a bastard is an illegitimate child, one born out of wedlock, Paul aptly and pointedly uses the term to describe those who are not sons of God, who have not been adopted into the family of God as joint heirs with Christ.
00:40:04.545 --> 00:40:08.909
According to his terminology, there are sons on the one hand and bastards on the other.
00:40:09.528 --> 00:40:11.951
The sons inherit the fullness of the Father's kingdom.
00:40:12.010 --> 00:40:19.478
The bastards never having been born of God, are cast out of the eternal family as though they were illegitimate.
00:40:19.958 --> 00:40:27.264
They become servants to minister for those who are worthy of a far more and an exceeding and an eternal weight of glory.
00:40:28.146 --> 00:40:31.108
Well, I read that two or three times.
00:40:31.407 --> 00:40:41.777
I was 17 years old and I was deeply shocked and hurt and offended actually by that.
00:40:42.818 --> 00:40:47.784
And the reason why I felt that was because I was born out of wedlock.
00:40:47.983 --> 00:40:51.128
My mother and father were not married legally.
00:40:51.148 --> 00:40:53.670
They were common law, husband and wife.
00:40:53.690 --> 00:40:59.237
And I was born out of wedlock and technically was a bastard in that context.
00:41:00.259 --> 00:41:05.885
So when I read this, I was devastated is the word I would describe and upset.
00:41:05.905 --> 00:41:08.568
I read it again to make sure I understood it.
00:41:09.090 --> 00:41:13.273
And the interpretation I came to, we talked about coming to a common interpretation.
00:41:14.014 --> 00:41:20.701
Again, what I mean by that is that if 100 people read it and 80% come to this interpretation, then that's a common interpretation.
00:41:20.721 --> 00:41:43.960
And my interpretation was that because I was born out of wedlock, that I was not entitled to the fullness of the gospel, that I was not entitled to the fullness of the gospel here on this earth or in the next earth, that I wouldn't be in this special kingdom with my family and my Heavenly Father, and I wouldn't have the same type or level of blessings that would be afforded to other members who were not born out of wedlock.
00:41:44.581 --> 00:41:47.164
And it really bothered me, the scripture, really bothered me.
00:41:47.505 --> 00:41:51.550
And I took it to the bishop, who was just an extraordinary man.
00:41:51.630 --> 00:41:56.356
And I took the book to him and opened it up and read it and was quite emotional, quite upset.
00:41:56.436 --> 00:41:58.498
I took the church extremely seriously.
00:41:58.559 --> 00:42:01.021
I was a budding scholar and it was the most...
00:42:01.634 --> 00:42:04.356
Amazing experience I've ever had is joining the church.
00:42:04.617 --> 00:42:06.719
And so this was a blow to the stomach.
00:42:07.340 --> 00:42:08.161
I felt quite sick.
00:42:08.663 --> 00:42:15.210
The bishop opened it, read it, and said, Ian, you know, this is not the interpretation that he means by this.
00:42:15.431 --> 00:42:16.413
And if he does, he's wrong.
00:42:16.452 --> 00:42:17.393
This is not.
00:42:17.514 --> 00:42:18.315
And this is Bruce L.
00:42:18.335 --> 00:42:18.715
McConkie.
00:42:18.775 --> 00:42:19.496
It's his opinion.
00:42:19.536 --> 00:42:21.960
He's speaking as a man, right?
00:42:22.460 --> 00:42:29.548
So we've heard that before, you know, is the scripture that we, two scriptures that were read earlier, are they written as a man?
00:42:30.242 --> 00:42:31.423
I think that's an important question.
00:42:31.804 --> 00:42:32.907
Are they written as a prophet?
00:42:33.266 --> 00:42:34.369
I think that's an important question.
00:42:34.710 --> 00:42:41.121
How do you differentiate between someone as an apostle or prophet writing or speaking as a man versus being a prophet?
00:42:41.742 --> 00:42:50.157
We've seen policies implemented, very hurtful, destructive policies, and then we've seen a reversal of those policies, quite dramatic ones.
00:42:50.717 --> 00:42:51.500
Was that of man?
00:42:51.539 --> 00:42:52.240
Was that of God?
00:42:52.865 --> 00:42:53.365
Bruce M.
00:42:53.385 --> 00:42:58.831
McConkie, was he writing as an apostle, which is also a prophet, as you know, or was he writing as a man?
00:42:58.951 --> 00:43:02.193
And so how do you, you know, this is Mormon doctrine.
00:43:02.213 --> 00:43:19.088
I think at one time it was not a, I don't know if it was accepted as a canonized text, but it was close to, you know, when we were serving our missions, I remember going to the MTC, it's the same in the London MTC, I was given, I had my scriptures, and I had Jesus Christ, and I had Articles of Faith by James E.
00:43:19.128 --> 00:43:19.568
Talmadge.
00:43:20.170 --> 00:43:22.831
They were the books that I was encouraged to buy.
00:43:22.831 --> 00:43:45.398
I think earlier, I think people were encouraged to, in the 70s and 60s, from people that I know, they were encouraged to take a copy of Mormon doctrine with them, because that was a very important collective group of doctrines, alphabetical order, that the church had, I think at one time, had formally acknowledged or accepted, notwithstanding some specific sections there that I think they were uncomfortable with.
00:43:45.657 --> 00:43:55.313
But my understanding, and others like me at that time in the 80s there, believed that Mormon doctrine was a albeit not scripture, but was a serious book.
00:43:55.793 --> 00:44:03.943
I have some inside baseball on that, because it was never officially acknowledged as anything.
00:44:04.983 --> 00:44:11.150
And in fact, the behind-the-scenes story on Mormon doctrine as a book is really fascinating.
00:44:11.231 --> 00:44:14.153
I would recommend to anybody to read the book David O.
00:44:14.193 --> 00:44:24.001
McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism, which chronicles the publication of Mormon doctrine as It was written at a time when Bruce R.
00:44:24.021 --> 00:44:25.643
McConkie was not an apostle.
00:44:25.744 --> 00:44:26.105
Bruce R.
00:44:26.125 --> 00:44:29.771
McConkie, I think he was an assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve.
00:44:29.851 --> 00:44:31.152
I don't even think he was a Seventy.
00:44:31.413 --> 00:44:33.436
He was a low-level general authority.
00:44:34.376 --> 00:44:46.275
And he wrote this book without telling anybody that he was writing it, without any authorization from anybody, published it, and there was a huge uproar.
00:44:47.016 --> 00:44:50.561
Not over this, you know, the thing about bastards.
00:44:51.010 --> 00:44:59.221
The most explosive thing in there was that he identified the Roman Catholic Church as the great and abominable church that's mentioned in the Book of Mormon.
00:44:59.981 --> 00:45:03.686
And he said that's very clearly the Church of Rome and got very specific.
00:45:04.266 --> 00:45:04.608
David O.
00:45:04.628 --> 00:45:16.143
McKay is my great-grandfather, and my family would always tell the story of the bishop at the Cathedral of the Madeleine in downtown Salt Lake showing up at David O.
00:45:16.163 --> 00:45:21.831
McKay's office, plopping a copy of Mormon doctrine on his desk and said, this is what you think of us?
00:45:22.632 --> 00:45:23.293
Is this true?
00:45:23.333 --> 00:45:25.217
And David O.
00:45:25.257 --> 00:45:26.838
McKay said, I'll take care of it.
00:45:28.121 --> 00:45:35.293
And he did in a very quiet, non-public and difficult to verify way.
00:45:36.394 --> 00:45:37.135
So David O.
00:45:37.175 --> 00:45:39.940
McKay was furious when the book was published.
00:45:40.621 --> 00:45:54.119
And he had apostles review the book and They came back and identified some, I think the number was like 1,729 specific doctrinal errors that Bruce R.
00:45:54.139 --> 00:45:56.081
McConkie had made in the book.
00:45:57.262 --> 00:45:58.143
And David O.
00:45:58.182 --> 00:46:11.476
McKay was not willing to let the church publish it, but the huge but is that he didn't want to do anything that would make it look like there was any problem behind the scenes.
00:46:11.556 --> 00:46:13.259
He didn't want to embarrass Bruce R.
00:46:13.278 --> 00:46:13.900
McConkie.
00:46:14.541 --> 00:46:20.028
He requested, and I'm saying that in quotation marks, essentially ordered Bruce R.
00:46:20.048 --> 00:46:28.282
McConkie to revise it, take out the stuff about the great and abominable church, if he was going to republish it, which he did.
00:46:28.302 --> 00:46:30.545
I don't think that went near enough.
00:46:30.746 --> 00:46:35.753
I mean, it should have been disavowed specifically by the church, and it wasn't.
00:46:36.161 --> 00:46:36.641
David O.
00:46:36.661 --> 00:46:38.304
McKay had done a similar thing.
00:46:38.864 --> 00:46:50.115
Joseph Fielding Smith wrote a book called Man, His Origin, and Destiny, which was a book that is an anti-evolution screed.
00:46:50.956 --> 00:47:03.007
It was, you know, the world was created in, you know, six 24-hour periods, and the earth is only 6,000 years old, and evolution is a tool of the devil, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:47:03.748 --> 00:47:11.215
And he wrote that with the assumption that he as an apostle would be able to get the church to publish it.
00:47:12.175 --> 00:47:12.717
And David O.
00:47:12.737 --> 00:47:14.940
McKay refused to allow the church to publish it.
00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:15.380
David O.
00:47:15.420 --> 00:47:19.547
McKay was a believer in evolution and refused to do that.
00:47:19.666 --> 00:47:22.110
And that book sort of fell by the wayside now.
00:47:22.190 --> 00:47:27.918
We don't talk about it anymore, but Mormon doctrine endured, I think, because it was so easy.
00:47:27.940 --> 00:47:29.961
It was just so simple.
00:47:30.643 --> 00:47:37.101
You know, you had these nice little bite-sized sections and you could go to it to get an authoritative reading.
00:47:37.141 --> 00:47:42.809
You know, I was very interested in a girl at one point who was an evangelical Christian.
00:47:43.411 --> 00:47:47.077
She went and decided, okay, I'm going to learn more about Jim's church.
00:47:47.858 --> 00:47:49.981
She went and bought a copy of Mormon Doctrine.
00:47:50.782 --> 00:47:53.385
And I went, okay, well, we're done.
00:47:53.405 --> 00:48:02.981
If that's the impression you're going to get of the church, there's no possible way you're going to have a positive impression of the church.
00:48:03.938 --> 00:48:09.003
And the church, again, has quietly allowed Mormon doctrine to go out of print.
00:48:09.764 --> 00:48:11.086
It is no longer printed.
00:48:11.126 --> 00:48:13.530
It is no longer sold at Deseret Book.
00:48:14.371 --> 00:48:28.827
But it did that without any fanfare, without any acknowledgement of the damage that this book had done to you, or the attack on the Catholic Church had done, or any of the embarrassment.
00:48:29.369 --> 00:48:33.574
I mean, there are so many things in Mormon doctrine that are really weird and embarrassing.
00:48:33.922 --> 00:48:39.891
I used to read it with my kids just for a laugh, the section on card playing and the wickedness.
00:48:39.911 --> 00:48:42.675
We were only allowed to play when I was growing up.
00:48:43.338 --> 00:48:45.400
We couldn't play go fish with face cards.
00:48:46.121 --> 00:48:50.088
We played go fish with rook cards, which only have numbers on them.
00:48:50.128 --> 00:48:51.070
They don't have faces.
00:48:51.791 --> 00:48:52.271
And Bruce R.
00:48:52.291 --> 00:48:58.141
McConkie, there's a whole section in Mormon Doctrine about face cards and how they're of the devil and blah, blah, blah.
00:48:58.657 --> 00:49:05.748
And I just looked back at that and said, what's the difference between playing go fish with face cards and playing go fish with rook cards?
00:49:05.809 --> 00:49:06.871
It's the same game.
00:49:07.612 --> 00:49:12.398
Does Satan somehow get into the picture of the jack or the queen?
00:49:12.518 --> 00:49:13.541
It doesn't make any sense.
00:49:14.041 --> 00:49:27.161
I mean, there's so much in Mormon doctrine, the book, that we have moved away from and that even at the time it was published was considered largely nonsense by most members of the church.
00:49:27.905 --> 00:49:31.550
But we do not have any, again, I'm coming back to this idea.
00:49:31.610 --> 00:49:33.351
We don't have any kind of mechanism.
00:49:33.411 --> 00:49:42.360
We don't have any kind of way to confront errors in our history, confront errors, let alone confront errors in our scripture.
00:49:42.659 --> 00:49:44.362
Mormon doctrine was never scripture.
00:49:45.163 --> 00:49:47.204
And yet it was treated as such.
00:49:47.465 --> 00:49:49.347
We haven't been able to disavow it.
00:49:50.487 --> 00:49:51.909
We use that word, right?
00:49:52.048 --> 00:49:56.673
That word disavow appears in the gospel topics essays.
00:49:57.538 --> 00:50:05.327
that for many people have been their ticket out of the church because they've been told their entire lives that these are all anti-Mormon lies.
00:50:05.427 --> 00:50:10.693
And then they read them in a church sponsored essay and go, wait, the church wasn't honest with me.
00:50:10.833 --> 00:50:13.376
And then that's enough for them to say, I've got to leave.
00:50:14.137 --> 00:50:22.347
We disavow racism in that essay, but we don't identify and acknowledge previous mistakes.
00:50:23.007 --> 00:50:26.652
And we don't even say, that the priesthood ban was a mistake.
00:50:26.733 --> 00:50:31.880
We walk right up to the line of saying it was a mistake, and then we refuse to cross that line.
00:50:32.740 --> 00:50:35.204
That's a Rubicon that we're not willing to cross.
00:50:36.126 --> 00:50:53.789
And we can only go so far as a church in condemning racism, in condemning bigotry, in condemning all of these things, if we're not willing to take responsibility for and accountability for the huge errors that we have made.
00:50:54.498 --> 00:51:02.367
And, you know, we're taught as individuals that when we repent, we have to recognize our sin.
00:51:02.427 --> 00:51:04.570
We have to take responsibility.
00:51:04.630 --> 00:51:06.652
We have to, you know, the R's of repentance.
00:51:06.793 --> 00:51:08.094
We have to make restitution.
00:51:09.036 --> 00:51:12.701
We do that or we encourage people to do that on an individual level.
00:51:13.320 --> 00:51:16.105
And we refuse to do that on an institutional level.
00:51:16.184 --> 00:51:17.405
And it's holding us back.
00:51:18.186 --> 00:51:18.407
It is.
00:51:19.048 --> 00:51:23.434
You said something earlier that you don't believe most of the men of the church took the book.
00:51:23.554 --> 00:51:24.655
the Mormon Doctrine book.
00:51:25.054 --> 00:51:27.157
Seriously, I can't speak to...
00:51:27.777 --> 00:51:28.518
No, that's not what I meant.
00:51:28.639 --> 00:51:34.744
I meant that there were things in Mormon Doctrine that were nonsensical at the time they were published.
00:51:35.164 --> 00:51:36.445
Okay, just wanted to clarify that.
00:51:36.465 --> 00:51:52.041
Again, in my experience, and the people, the leaders in the UK at that time spoke fondly and favourably, mostly positively, about Mormon Doctrine, that it was a book that you should have on your shelf, Ian, that most of it's reliable.
00:51:52.081 --> 00:52:01.224
Yes, I heard some concerns over some of the passages, but it was, again, not canonized text, not scripture, but it was alongside Jesus Christ, James E.
00:52:01.264 --> 00:52:02.527
Talmadge, articles of faith.
00:52:03.327 --> 00:52:06.853
And there were quite a few things in there that I took issue with.
00:52:07.253 --> 00:52:09.016
One of them was the position on gambling.
00:52:09.476 --> 00:52:11.719
My bishop just recently won the lottery.
00:52:12.081 --> 00:52:14.384
So we have an active bishop who's won the lottery.
00:52:14.563 --> 00:52:15.144
He's a good man.
00:52:15.184 --> 00:52:16.768
He's won the lottery.
00:52:17.128 --> 00:52:21.148
And I suppose if he paid tithing on it, it might be okay.
00:52:21.228 --> 00:52:28.239
But I don't know if the church has changed its position on gambling, but Bruce Hamilton is very clear on the relationship between the devil and gambling.
00:52:28.300 --> 00:52:31.425
So just kind of bringing this to a circle here.
00:52:31.465 --> 00:52:42.523
So things are written about the church, whether it's scriptures or Deseret publishing approved literature, et cetera, talks, ensigns, talks are given about how to interpret something.
00:52:43.184 --> 00:52:52.152
And there's a lot of hurtful and harmful information in the scriptures and elsewhere and in talks, which cause a lot of pain and suffering for people.
00:52:53.094 --> 00:53:06.492
And unless the church acknowledges that and apologizes, or at least provides more transparency and discloses to, you know, why these things were written and accepts responsibility for this, then I think it's going to be hard for people to move forward.
00:53:06.833 --> 00:53:13.474
The problem they've got, Jim, is that if they go too far they will be seen as throwing prophets and apostles under the bus.
00:53:14.076 --> 00:53:14.998
And to your David O.
00:53:15.018 --> 00:53:18.824
McKay experience there, they prefer to keep that quiet and in-house.
00:53:19.224 --> 00:53:24.211
I think most people don't know about the details behind Mormon doctrine to the extent that you do.
00:53:24.713 --> 00:53:31.364
I mean, the title, Mormon Doctrine, itself speaks to a canonized group of doctrines collected in that fashion.
00:53:31.403 --> 00:53:37.981
And interpretation that's generally been approved or sanctioned by the church because it's deseret published.
00:53:38.061 --> 00:53:42.005
So there's a whole bunch of questions here and a lot of issues that need to be addressed.
00:53:42.626 --> 00:53:59.740
And the church will continue to wrestle and struggle with how does it reposition itself on these doctrines, these issues, without alienating the traditional right and file, conventional orthodox member, and then how do they bring the new rising generations with them with the more modernized progressive thinking.
00:54:00.021 --> 00:54:01.523
We've identified just a few examples.
00:54:01.563 --> 00:54:07.311
There are many more examples with which cause people a lot of concern and question and doubt and pain and suffering.
00:54:07.713 --> 00:54:08.855
We've just identified a few.
00:54:08.914 --> 00:54:18.251
But if it was me, I'd be going through these things and acknowledging them head on and apologizing where they cause pain, making some kind of restitution and addressing them.
00:54:18.271 --> 00:54:21.778
Because that's the only way to full reconciliation and truth and transparency.
00:54:22.639 --> 00:54:24.003
No, you're absolutely right.
00:54:24.043 --> 00:54:25.505
There's a hymn we would sing...
00:54:25.826 --> 00:54:30.001
And the chorus says, do what is right, let the consequence follow.
00:54:30.583 --> 00:54:33.373
And the thing is, you say, well, it's going to be really hard for the church.
00:54:33.393 --> 00:54:34.237
It really isn't.
00:54:35.106 --> 00:54:42.155
The church continues to pretend it has a choice as to whether or not it can confront all of these issues head on.
00:54:42.615 --> 00:54:43.916
And it doesn't have a choice.
00:54:44.498 --> 00:54:48.603
The only choice it has is to do what is right and let the consequence follow.
00:54:48.702 --> 00:54:56.112
And if the consequence that follows is that some people are going to be unsettled and some people are going to leave, you still have to do what is right.
00:54:56.452 --> 00:55:03.081
And the church is trying very, very hard to walk a line that is ultimately unwalkable.
00:55:03.617 --> 00:55:21.088
It's an untenable position to try to completely ignore the reality of mistakes, ignore the reality of pain and suffering that the church has caused in the past, and the only way the church can survive into the future.
00:55:21.307 --> 00:55:25.210
It has no other choice but to do what is right and let the consequence follow.
00:55:25.952 --> 00:55:28.934
We're out of time here, but I think this has been a good discussion.
00:55:29.335 --> 00:55:35.800
For those of you listening, please be sure to like us and subscribe to us wherever your podcasts are found.
00:55:36.460 --> 00:55:42.398
And until next time, thank you for listening, and we'll see you Thank you very much, Ian.
00:55:43.222 --> 00:55:44.007
Thank you very much, Jim.
