I appreciate your balanced response. I particularly liked you statement, “people should do better”. I agree this is not exclusively a mormon problem.

Which I think supports my point. When one has questions and doubts it can be a challenge to find a safe place to express them, especially to someone(s) who are so invested in their personal perspective and they are in the position of power.

I agree with you that It is hard for all of us to ascend about our own natural man.

Don’t get me wrong. I know that’s hard to do. Despite trying, I know I can’t do it consistently. I get shrill at times myself. It’s easy to lose ones cool. But then I don’t think I’d be the ideal person to do a show like that either. I just wish it was balanced not just in terms of having some believing guests but also in terms of how the interviews proceeded.

As for being supportive, I think in general Mormons should do better. But then I think in general people should do better. There’s a reason that in our broad American culture it’s generally thought one shouldn’t discuss politics or religion in mixed company. It’s hard for most people to be loving or supportive on issues they have deep emotional responses to. This is less a Mormon issue than it is a human issue. I’m not saying Mormons shouldn’t be trying to be better. We should. But it’s hard to ascend above one’s natural man.

I’m concerned about what local leaders will take from this. You can say that John’s is an extreme case; and I agree. But, as Oliver Wendell Holmes quipped, hard facts make bad law. And I think it’s naïve to say this isn’t quasi-precedential.

I find the stake president’s narrowly tailored grounds for John’s excommunication to be haunting: He publicly stated his disbelief and openly assembled with other non-believers. The Church insists (I think for political reasons) that it was nothing more than that.
(http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/church-responds-to-john-dehlins-public-comments)

Boy, if local leaders understand unashamed statements of disbelief to be sufficient grounds… Let the roulette begin.

That’s what saddens me.

My perspective is simply that. My perspective. I have been wrong on other things in the past and I am sure I will be wrong on something in the future.

And even though I agree that in John’s case, his history has put him on both sides of the fence and it is not simple, it doesn’t take away from my perspective.

I have too many examples of asking questions or pointing out facts and inconsistencies are not welcomed and sometimes shut down with force within the context of the church, leaders, and members.

I am not saying that an individual leader or member can’t be supportive. But those are not the rule in my life experience.

So, even though John’s story is complicated. It felt like one more example to demonstrate why one needs to be cautious and protect themselves when being willing to question and doubt.

Just my perspective.

Dehlin has played both sides of the fence for years. That doesn’t preclude our hearts going out to him or his family, but I say those who have doubts should NOT stay alone or quiet, but a vast crowd of people isn’t the way either. There are countless people (including leaders) who are willing to listen and lend whatever aide they can. Some people think that Dehlin was merely providing a neutral forum for those who may have been struggling. I don’t quite see it that way. Ultimately, his local leaders (with perhaps some guidance from higher up) didn’t see it his way either.

We can speculate and talk all we want, but JD’s situation shouldn’t apply to us anymore than if he had been excommunicated quietly and privately for adultery or some other sin.

We can debate the rest and not knowing his Stake President I don’t know how much inspiration was behind the decision. Although I tend to give leaders the benefit of doubt. So hopefully the SP was earnestly trying to do the will of the Lord to help John come back into belief and full fellowship.

I think the church’s message is very clear. You can doubt and have questions. But do it quietly. Do it alone. If you dare to speak out about those questions publicly and/or you have the courage to come to a conclusion as to what those answers may be, then you are at risk.

John’s voice has provided me hope over the last 5 years.

That voice still speaks today. The church cannot silence it. They can only try to build walls around it and try to deflect members from discovering it. But it still exists nonetheless.

The level of cold blooded corruption he witnessed there was probably the catalyst for the rest of his journey. In my opinion, the Church failed him. From my limited perspective, it seemed there was a time he really tried hard to comply, except when it became impossible due to the immorality of some of the church positions per his own convictions.

I am not going to say his podcasts “strengthened” my testimony. Rather, I am going to say that he was a voice of empathy in the crowd of brainwashed zombies I found myself among after I had experienced similar things with the leadership on my own mission. A kindred spirit that allowed me to know I wasn’t alone and someone else was perfectly aware of the stench of dishonesty and corruption that lie beneath the veil of deception of the LDS conversion machine. I myself am one of those converts, so I know well. And so, he went on to provide that space and support the Church has failed to provide.

I am grateful for his voice and for providing a forum to all those who have serious questions and are constantly silenced, verbally abused, isolated, discriminated against, pointed at, harassed, threatened, or grieved in any other way by the “all is well” crew of their local congregations and of LDS leadership in general.

The following is a smidge of the things he witnessed and endured; experiences he shared for which I will be forever grateful. It doesn’t even begin to give context to Dehlin’s point of view. Taken from his letter to Elder Oaks.

…They [his fellow missionaries] would go out to a soccer field and begin to play “futbol” with the youngsters who were hanging around there. After an hour or so, these zone leaders would say to the young people, “Hey guys…want to go over to the church and cool off?” Then they would ask these children their names and birthdays, put them in white clothes, line them up, and proceed to baptize them. They would usually do so without missionary discussions, interviews, church attendance, parental permission, an opening or closing hymn or prayer, or fellowshipping by a church member. It appeared that these young people had not even expressed a true desire to be baptized.

…Some of the parents in the neighborhood, once they had found out that their children had been baptized into a foreign religion without their permission, became very upset.

…

Baptism became a method by which one progressed up the leadership ladder. Quality (the legitimacy of baptism) was seldom, if ever an issue. We were taught by the president himself to find your “golden family” in the morning, and to baptize them that afternoon.

…

The primary goal that our president established in our mission was for every companionship to baptize at least once a month. There were always four AP’s called to assist in achieving this goal. During a given month, two assistants would stay in the capital close to the mission home to assist the president, and two would travel around to the remote regions of the mission and visit the various areas in which baptisms had not yet been performed during a given month. Upon arriving in such an area, these “traveling AP’s” would ask to visit the investigators of the companionships, and literally attempt to compel these investigators to be baptized on that day, at that moment. They would use any form of pressure or persuasion available (such as presents of chocolate, gum, or ice cream) to convince these people to be baptized. I know this because I was a first-hand witness on several occasions.

During the month of March, 1990, towards the end of my mission, there were a few companionships in my zone who had not yet had a baptism. After giving me a harsh reprimand during a zone conference interview, the president told me to plan on going with the AP’s the following day to see how a good mission leader should encourage an elder to achieve success with his stewardship. The president even told me to call ahead to the missionaries in the two areas that hadn’t baptized yet, and have them fill up the font in preparation for the AP’s visit.

The following day, I was picked up by the AP’s. On the way towards our destination, I was informed that they had been instructed by the president to take me to the two “unproductive” areas in my zone (Fraijanes and Barberanas), and to find someone to baptize in each area that day. In Fraijanes, the AP’s tried to persuade and to pressure the investigators to be baptized, but their usually convincing rhetoric wasn’t successful.

In what I perceived at the time to be a state of panic, they drove up to a remote, isolated shack on a hill, found an eighty year old partially blind lady without shoes, and literally brought her in a somewhat forceful manner to the van, and placed her in it. Then, they drove to a trail, walked her down the twenty minute path towards the river (she was praying to Mary on the way down), had her strip down and change into her baptismal clothes in front of all the townspeople who were washing their clothes in the river, and baptized her. There were no discussions, no interview, no song, no talk, no members, and no church attendance.

… After the baptism these same AP’s located the nearest telephone, called the mission president, and said, “President, we have witnessed a miracle today.”

I was so troubled by this that a week later, I set up an interview with the president to confess what I had seen on that day. Instead of showing alarm or concern for what was going on, he began to literally yell at me for not supporting my leaders, for kicking against the pricks, and for having a bad attitude. Accusing me of trying to destroy the mission, he reprimanded me in a way never before done by anyone in my life, and sent me on my way.

…

I went to visit my first mission president in Salt Lake City. I was truly interested to hear how his last few months in Guatemala …it surprised me to hear that due to his overwhelming success as a mission president, he is now sitting as an advisor to the missionary board for the church.

He knows too much and is unwilling to be silent about it to remain a member.

Very good point. There is no shepherd.

Fred F.,

No, Dehlin had enough common sense not to openly advocate leaving the church. But he sure created an exit narrative for people to buy into, as attested to by many people on his sites thanking him for opening their eyes and easing their way out. As can several loved ones of mine. And having created demand, he managed to monetize that. Yay for capitalism.

As to your counterfactual that he and his family would not have gone inactive, I find that highly speculative, especially in light of his do-not-contact request to his bishop in January of last year. That request seems to have been the catalyst for the process which culminated this past week.

“When you choose to treat someone as your enemy, it often becomes self-fulfilling prophesy.”

Seems to me that Dehlin received plenty of leash for the past decade, asserting many times that his local leaders knew what he was doing and that they were fine with it. He even claimed top cover from a General Authority when he shut down a FARMS piece that was critical of him. Then he said he was returning to full activity and outraged a sizeable portion of his followers who felt betrayed and pulled their support.

Sorry, the “Church is out to silence me” martyrdom narrative that he’s packaged for his devotees and the media is hard for me to accept. The inevitable outcome of his increasingly antagonistic statements towards the Church and those who don’t share his views for several years indicate that this is where he wants to be.