>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Why did the Mormon cross the road? To get to the other bride. Welcome to the Cross examiner podcast, the Internets courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. Here our host uses his experience as both an attorney and an atheist to put religion on trial. We solemnly swear that it is the most informative, educational, and entertaining jury duty you will ever do. And now it’s time for the cross examiner. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to this episode of the Cross examiner podcast. I am your host, the cross Examiner. I am an atheist, I’m an attorney, and I am alarmed. I’m alarmed by the rise of christian nationalism in the United States. But I’m even more alarmed by the massive amount of misinformation that is powering that rise. I started this podcast to both educate and entertain and discuss the intersection of religion and government, as well as other areas where religion and misinformation about religion can really harm people. It’s a theme of this podcast that big, powerful organizations such as governments, religions, and other entities can and do misinform people or flat out lie in order to harm them. Following along that theme today, we have a very special guest. This is the second half of my interview with Doctor John Dillin. He is the host of Mormon Stories podcast. He is an ex Mormon who has dedicated his career now for the last 20 plus years to exposing some of that misinformation and outright lies so that people can be better informed of specifically about their participation in the Mormon church. If you haven’t watched the first half of our interview, I strongly recommend you go back and do that. This episode picks up right where we left off, and we’re going to continue. And I think you’ll find that this part of the interview is even more fascinating. It gets into more of doctor, Delin’s own journey, as well as more of the information that the church is trying to hide and why it’s trying to hide, and the effect that it’s having on church membership, as well as how the church is changing its strategy as a result of the exposure of all of this information, do in no small part due, to Doctor de Lin’s, podcast. So we’re just going to take it away from here. I hope you enjoy the interview. So, for you, for your Mormon story, it sounds like your 6th generation, as you pointed out, you were raised to believe all of this stuff. What started the. I don’t know if you call it a deconversion or a crisis of faith, what started your questioning of your previously held beliefs?

>> John Dehlin: Great question. Thanks for asking. so a, common metaphor in the, Mormon and post Mormon world is the idea of a shelf that you learn things along the way that don’t quite sound right, and the church encourages you to kind of put them on a shelf, to put them on the back burner to have faith, and later you’ll figure things out. So there’s this idea of putting items on the shelf and then the idea of cracks developing in your shelf. And so, you know, some items that were on my shelf from a very early age, you m know, my parents were married in the temple, and, you know, we were taught about eternal families and that we would all be with our siblings and our parents in heaven forever. Well, my parents got divorced when I was in middle school, and then all of a sudden, both of them remarried. And eventually both of them remarried Mormons. So they needed to get a temple divorce, and then they needed to get temple marriage to their, you know, third spouses, respectively. And all of a sudden, I was left like a spiritual orphan. I’m like, what will I do with mom and my stepdad? Or will I be with my dad and my stepmom? I don’t think they want to hang out together in heaven. Who am I with? So that was a question I had from a very young age. Also in high school, I divided the number of Mormons in the world by the number of people in the world, and I got, like, less than one half of 1%. And all my friends were, like, Baptist and evangelicals. And I’m like, wow, God really plays favorites. If this is God’s one true church, he’s, he’s, he’s really, you know, providing that if the whole purpose of the life is to join the one true church and less than one half of 1% of his children get to do that, that just doesn’t seem fair. So, yeah, and then, of course, I remember in 1978 when the church gave black members, the priesthood and the ability to enter the temple. And, you know, and I play basketball in Katy, Texas, with, with black friends, and the racism stuff never made sense to me. So those were all cracks along the way.

>> John Dehlin: Or shelf items that I would put on my shelf, or as they say.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: In the musical, you know, the light switch that you just have to turn it off and.

>> John Dehlin: Exactly. Very good. Well, we should do shots every time there’s a book of Mormon musical.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: My viewers know yours probably don’t. I am a huge Broadway musical fan, so I don’t want to. It’s not my only source, but I will probably be playing some music at the end of this interview related to that, because as the, for people who don’t know, book of Mormon, huge musical hit, very funny. written by the makers of South park who are both atheists, but they describe it as an atheist’s love letter to religion. And I fully agree with that, being a fan of it, it focuses on the weirdness and then saying, despite the weirdness, it can inspire people to do good things. So, I hate to harp on it. I know that some people in the church don’t appreciate it. All my morvian friends love it, so it’s brilliant.

>> John Dehlin: And, I’m a huge Broadway musical fan too, so I’ll welcome all. So, yeah, I turned those things off. I put those items on the shelf. I had a corrupt mission experience, so I was called to serve my two year Mormon mission in Guatemala. And long story short, missionaries would go out, there were missionaries in our mission, they would go out to a soccer field on a Saturday, play soccer with like ten kids who were missing teeth and had no shoes, get them really hot, and then they’d bring them back to the chapel where there was a baptismal font and they would say, hey, you want to follow Jesus and cool off and get baptized? And they would baptize like ten kids at a time.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow.

>> John Dehlin: Never teach, their parents never even get parental consent, never even take them to church. And then they would do that four times in a month and get 40 baptisms in a month and then teach all their fellow missionaries to do it. And all of a sudden my mission became like the second highest baptizing mission in the world over, I think, 700 baptisms a month with like 150 or 200 missionaries. And I thought that was horrific. I thought that was like a huge egregious violation of the holy ordinance of baptism. My mission president, his name was Gordon Romney, he was super ambitious and he wanted to become a general authority and I think, I presume he wanted to climb the ranks of church leadership. He’s actually a cousin to Mitt Romney. And, so he yelled at me. He ended up sending me home four months early because I was expressing concern about these just grotesque baptismal practices.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, it’s like, the Enron of religions, right? Yeah, exactly. It’s all fraudulent, paperwork, basically. These people never gave consent. And if you are actually, if you are, I assume if you are a good hearted, genuine believer and you see this, you have to think, does our doctrine even say that they’re actually saved? isn’t our religion more than just a shaman shaking a stick over a baby or an unaccepting or unknowing person, because that’s all we’re doing here. They’re not knowingly consenting to believing anything or agreeing or affirming that they want to even investigate or believe in this church. They’re just literally, oh, you told me this is where the water is splash, and then you draw a. Draw a tick mark on the chalkboard.

>> John Dehlin: Yep. Yeah. And, it is fraud. However, religions thrive in paradox, beliefs that contradict each other. And while we’re all taught that baptism is sacred, we’re also taught that every soul, every soul is sacred. And, and we’re taught obedience to authority. I would say the most sacred teaching in Mormonism by far, is obedience to authority.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I was, I was wondering about that. No, that’s amazing.

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. In fact, we’re taught obedience is the first law of heaven. obey with exactness, exact obedience. As a missionary, you’re literally taught exact obedience. And so, yes, baptism sacred, but every soul is sacred. You can’t make it into the celestial kingdom without a baptism. And then your mission president is pressuring you. So you baptize the little kid and you think, well, jesus must like it because baptism is good, and Jesus got baptized, and my leaders pressuring me to do it. So it happens. There’s cheeseburger baptisms and Mormonism. There’s swimming pool or beach party baptisms, there’s baseball baptisms. But most Mormons either block out that part of their mission or they just never learned it. but our history definitely all the way back to the 1960s, a huge chunk, a third of the 17 million m people that were baptized in the Mormon church that the Mormon church claims are these type of super low quality baptisms that came out of Mexico, Central America, Latin America, the Philippines, and now Africa. And interestingly, the Mormon church is actually dying in England and in Scotland and in France and in Japan and in Korea, and even in the United States and Canada, kind of the developed western world, the Mormon church is, is declining in growth and or declining in absolute membership. And what it’s doing to offset its decline is by baptizing like crazy in Africa, because the Philippines and Latin America are kind of burned over, like we’ve been baptizing there like crazy forever, and they’re kind of onto us. And so the church is literally expanding, going bananas in sub saharan Africa as a way to offset statistically its own hemorrhaging. Even in Utah, like in Utah, in Salt Lake City, Utah, every month, a new Mormon chapel is shut down. Closes. They close wards, they close stakes.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow.

>> John Dehlin: They’re closing down missions throughout, the world, except in Africa. And, you know, the church would say, we love everyone and isn’t a blessing. We’re bringing these beautiful african children. We’re not racist. We’re baptizing all these Africans into the church. Isn’t the church progressive and loves black people, when in reality a huge motivation for that is there the last super large population of less educated, more socioeconomically compromised people, and it’s kind of just fresh meat. And that’s literally, a core internal motivation for our expansion in Africa, which to me is kind of gross, especially if you realize that they’re not being taught that the church was systemically doctrinally racist for over 150 years. It’s a real, and nobody talks about this type of stuff, but it’s absolutely a fact.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. And, in my sort of cultural zeitgeist, I’ve absorbed the fact that as of, I don’t know, ten years ago, the Mormon church, and you can correct me on this, would claim in their marketing, we are the quote, unquote, fastest growing religion in the world. At some point in my life, that was a marketing pitch I saw. Is that something that they still claim? Am I remembering right that they used.

>> John Dehlin: To claim that, in the eighties and nineties, the church believed that by now there would be hundreds of millions of Mormons throughout the world, and it was growing bananas statistically in the sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. And then once these baptism techniques started to backfire, once they started to become a PR disaster for the church, once the church was not able to care for all those people who were baptized without real conversions or testimonies, and then once America started fading in popularity worldwide, the growth started to slow. And then definitely once the Internet, around 2004, 2005, with blogs and then podcasts and then Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and YouTube channels, the church has just gotten its. Its rear end handed to it as the members started to learn all the things that the church had been hiding from them for generations. And that’s why, you know, and it’s not just a mormon thing. Religion overall in the developed world is on the ropes. We’ve got this whole phenomenon called the rise of the nuns. N o n e s. Yep. Every christian religion, almost every christian denomination is in decline. And you could argue that the mormon church is declining slightly. It’s slightly less of a pace. But, you know, the past 1020. 20 years have been terrible, not just for the mormon church, but for Christians, Christianity across the United States and elsewhere. Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So when you are faced with this, right, you have your experience on a mission. you learn this information, you see what’s going on with your own family, and you’re struggling to deal with all of these, the books on your shelf getting heavier and heavier. how do you deal with that? What’s your reaction? Do you sort of turtle up and try to defend your brain from being inquisitive, or do you dig in and say, at some point you obviously say, well, I want to know the truth. When did that happen, I guess, is my question.

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. So I started digging in, while after my mission, I came home traumatized by the spiritual and psychological violence that my mission president sort of wrought on me. But I needed to get really good grades to be able to have a good career. So I started asking questions, and I found some progressive or liberal professors at BYU that I could kind of, you know, ask my more difficult questions to, and they would give me some progressive, liberal answers that kind of pacified me, by the m time I graduated from college.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Go ahead, clarify for, for our listeners. When, you say liberal, I think you’re meaning in a, in a liberal arts sort of, progressive type of thing. Not necessarily. I’m voting for Biden type of thing.

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. Yeah. So we’re talking early nineties here. and some of those professors were Democrats. But that’s not what I mean. What I mean is, you don’t have to believe everything that the church teaches. The church leaders make mistakes. These are things you would never learn growing up in the church. You would obey. Follow the prophet. The prophet speaks with God. The book of Mormon is the word of God. It’s the true scripture. Joseph Smith was God’s prophet. You know, obey what you’re told. Don’t drink coffee, don’t drink alcohol, don’t have premarital sex. Give 10% of your income to the church and get married in the temple. Have lots of kids, and, you know, rinse and repeat. So that’s what you grow up with. But then I met these professors at BYU that are like, well, yeah, Joseph Smith made some mistakes, and, well, you know, some people pay tithing on their net and some pay on their gross, and, well, you know, the Bible. You don’t have to take the flood literally. Maybe it was a regional flood and God didn’t kill everyone and all the animals and children in the world. Maybe he just maybe that’s just how the people at the time interpreted a regional flood and it wasn’t God, you know, and, and you know, in the book of Mormon, maybe it’s history or maybe it’s like Paul Bunyan and you know, Babe and the Blue ox and maybe it’s myth and maybe scriptures don’t have to be literal. Maybe they can just have good, they can still be spiritual and even from God. But maybe they’re not historical and maybe the earth isn’t 6000 years old. And maybe God created humans through the evolutionary process and then at the right point in time sent his divine spirits into the monkeys. And that’s when humans started. But it was through evolution, you know, and the earth is actually billions of years old. These are the types of teachings that a progressive or a liberal, a spiritually doctrinally liberal professor or Mormon leader would teach someone who is doubting and questioning. And maybe it’s not God’s one true church. Maybe all churches have truth and maybe all churches are good and bad and this is our tribe. But other, you know, there’s many ways out up Mount Fuji. These were the types of things I learned at BYU that made me feel like, okay, I don’t have to leave the church. I could be like a progressive jew. I could be like a, you know, a reconstructionist or a reformed jew and, or a progressive liberal Catholic. And I could, this could be my tribe, it could be my identity, it could be how I raise my kids and give them a moral foundation. Maybe it’s true with the lowercase t, but not true with a capital t. Right? And that got me, that literally got me out of BYU and sort of ten years into my married life where I’m, you know, working at Bain, working at Arthur Andersen, working at Microsoft, having lots of kids.

>> John Dehlin: Doing all the stuff. But always that shelf just keeps getting way more and more weighed down with problems. It wasn’t until I was at Microsoft, I was in my early thirties and I was called, ironically, to teach what’s called early morning seminary to Mormon high school students. So every 06:00 a.m. mormon, high school students outside of Utah and Idaho and Arizona show up at the church and receive religious instruction for an hour each day, five days a week before they go to class. And that’s where the church really indoctrinates. It’s high schoolers so that they want to serve missions once they graduate from high school. So I was called to be a seminary teacher or the person that indoctrinates the high school students in my Issaquah, Washington, you know, Mormon Ward, or congregation, you know, while I was working at Microsoft. And it was there that I just said, you know what? Okay, all those things I put on the shelf. Now I’ve got some time. My career is doing well. Most of my kids are born. I’m going to start reading these books that I was warned not to read because I’m strong and I’m committed. And that’s when I learned about Joseph Smith’s extra wives, the book of Abraham, and the scriptural fraud that Joseph Smith was involved with. The fact that the book of Mormon, does not stand up to genetic scrutiny, linguistic scrutiny, geographic scrutiny, anthropological scrutiny, there’s no scientific evidence that supports the core book of Mormon narrative from any angle. And we’re taught that the Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion. We’re talking about Joseph Smith is next to Jesus and righteousness. And when all of a sudden, you find out that the Book of Mormon was probably fan fiction and that Joseph Smith was betting 1415 year olds and mother daughter pairs and other women married other men, that’s when it all came crashing down, as I was trying to be the best seminar teacher I could be for the church. So it was a very, very weird, dark time for me and my family.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: That, that is not an uncommon story. I have heard many people, both famous, podcasters, like Matt Dillahunty, a famous atheist debater, down to people who call in or friends who have talked to me. And there’s a common thread here, which is what we’ve discovered here, which is, I I believed for some reason, maybe because I didn’t have. Even though I didn’t have sufficient evidence. And then there came a point in my life where something called me to shore up my belief by going and getting that evidence. So I go and I study the Bible. I study the book of Mormon. I go and read the history, because surely, surely in those books will be the answers to these questions that have been piling up of my brain, and that will make me a better, mission, what do you call a mission? A missionary, a better missionary, a better, example of what it is to be a good Mormon, a better debater, or whatever it may be. And then they start reading, and there’s no there, there, right there. It’s just empty or contradictory or immoral or, all three. And that is a very common story that people get to that point and they realize, wow, to put it in christian terms, one Peter 315 tells me to always be ready to give a reasoned defense to anybody who asks me about my hope, my faith. So I want to do that, but you got to give me something. And then when you go to turn to the Bible or the history or the scrolls or the morality, there’s nothing there. And that’s got to be, just a. You have a worldview, and it’s got to, at some point, shatter that worldview and do massive psychological damage to a person.

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. And while it’s very common narrative in 2024, it was not a common narrative in, 2001, when I went through it, there was no one to talk to. My own brother worked at Microsoft, and we’re very close. We always have been, but. And he’s super smart, smarter than me, and he just wasn’t, you know, because of his personal relationship, his family relationships, et cetera. I’m like, bro, guess what I just learned? And he’s like, la la la. I want to talk about it. I can’t. I can’t talk about that. It’s going to ruin my life. And I’m like, okay, try and talk to my parents. They’re like, we don’t know anything about this. Try and talk to my bishop. He’s like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And by the way, if you start talking about this and spreading these doubts to other members, we’re going to have a conversation.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right?

>> John Dehlin: And, like, there was nowhere to go, and. And that’s when I sort of reached a, several year period of despair and depression. Just not only my worldview had fallen apart, but I couldn’t talk to anyone. And then. But I also. The silver lining is that’s where I found my purpose in life. Remember how I said I just did tech because law didn’t work out and I was trying to find my purpose? This became my purpose. By 2004, I’m like, the Internet is going to blow the doors off of this problem. Once people are able to access the information on websites, what I’ll do is I’ll get ahead of that curve, start a podcast, and then I’ll be through helping people tell stories, interviewing people. I’ll be able to provide support for people like me. And that’s how I left Microsoft and started Mormon stories podcasts in 2005 as a way to be a solution to the problem that I knew was coming.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Trey. And I’m seeing an arc here, in your career and your belief journey that you start off like me, poli sci, looking for a job just trying to stay focused on life. But then you move into, instructional technology. That’s what you get your masters in. and then now you have a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology, and you coach people on how to deal with this. So I see a constant progression from heads down worker like. We all start out to wanting to generally be in education and help people to, oh, now I’ve got the background. I’ve done my publications, I’ve done my research, I’ve done my training. I can actually help people. Dealing with what presumably you were dealing with when you went through this. Is that what you do now with your. I don’t know if you want to call it a practice or what, but is that what, you strive to do with your podcast and your coaching?

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. So originally, yeah, the idea was get a PhD in instructional technology because I knew tech and education would be the way that I helped people. And that’s where I learned about podcasts. I stopped with my masters because I realized that a PhD in instructional technology wasn’t really going to help me. I did Mormon stories as my master’s thesis for my instructional technology masters. And then as soon as the podcast was launched, it was like I had popped a huge balloon in the sky of pain and suffering. And it started growing exponentially right from the start because there were tens of thousands of Mormons around the world who were having, they were a closeted gay man or woman in a mixed, in a mixed orientation marriage, somebody who was, quote, in a sex addiction, meaning that occasionally they would masturbate and look at porn, but they thought they were broken.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: My goodness.

>> John Dehlin: Pretty perverted, evil person because their wife got the masturbating or whatever. Or maybe they harbored doubts about polygamy or Joseph Smith, but they couldn’t talk to anyone, whatever it was. they found out about my podcast and then they would ask to meet me. They would call me, they would come to Logan, Utah to meet me. I would meet them whenever I would travel for my jobs with MIT, or whatever, the Carnegie foundation. And I just realized that there was an endless need. And people would come to me telling me, I’m addicted to alcohol, I’m addicted to drugs, I’m self harming, I’m suicidal. I’ve gone 510 years with anxiety or OCD or religious scrupulosity or depression. And I’m like, I don’t know how to help you guys. And that’s when I realized I needed to get a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology so that I could at least point people in the right direction, because it turns out there’s this term, comorbidity with a psychological diagnosis. Sometimes people have more than one diagnosis. Well, several, mental illnesses, diagnosable mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, suicidality, scrupulosity, trauma, PTSD. They’re comorbid with a religious faith crisis coming out of a cult or a high demand religion. And so I needed to become educated about mental health so that, at a minimum, I could counsel people or refer them to someone else who could help them, because they were not just coming to me with a faith crisis. It’s like, I’m gay, how do I ungay myself? Or I’m gay, how do I come out to my wife? Because we have four kids, and I’m a bishop in the Mormon church, you know, whatever. And so the psychology became a natural way for me to get a, degree, credentials, education, a research base, just to be able to help the people that came to me from, my podcast. And I also thought, maybe I can make a living, because back in 2005, nobody was monetizing podcasts. Even in 2015, almost no one was monetizing podcasts, because most people had never heard of podcasts, even by 2014, 2015. It’s just been in the past eight to ten years that podcasts have really taken off. So I started a nonprofit in 2010, finished my PhD in clinical and counseling psychology in 2015. and that’s when I just said, I’ll just try and do this full time, see how it goes. And the truth is, the nonprofit is just. It’s grown every single year since we started it. And now I have a big staff, and we grew. We had over a million new subscribers to YouTube just in the previous year, and the previous year before that, we had a million new subscribers. So we’ve basically gone from 50 to 250,000 YouTube subscribers in two years.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow, that’s.

>> John Dehlin: And so, I don’t practice psychology, but occasionally I will coach people if they just want some tips on how to navigate the complexities of a faith crisis.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> John Dehlin: you can go to Johnny Lynn.com and, slash coaching, but I most. I’ll have one or two clients a week. I’m. I don’t do it for the money. They. I do ask people to pay, but I just do it to help people. I have more work than I could ever accomplish with, with my podcast with the nonprofit.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah, I did go to your website, when I was getting to know what you were doing, and I. And I did read, your publication section and all of that. And you seem to be focused in, at least correct me if I’m wrong, when you were publishing things on that gay, lesbian, bisexual experiences as it relates to mormonism or high demand religions. is my reading of your publication history correct? Is that what you were focused on?

>> John Dehlin: Sort of. So, the first for my, I actually met the criteria for a master’s in psychology on my way to my PhD. So for my master’s thesis, I developed, with my advisor, a treatment for religious obsessive compulsive disorder. So my first real focus clinically was on scrupulosity or religious OCD. And so, ah, we ran a clinical trial and published our results on how to treat scrupulosity or religious OCD. So that was the first clinical focus. And then I needed another focus for my PhD. And so for my PhD. You have to remember, back in 2010, the Mormon church and most evangelical churches, Orthodox Jews, they were encouraging conversion therapy for their gay, lesbian, or bisexual or transgender, members.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right.

>> John Dehlin: It wasn’t. It wasn’t anything more than, like, people. I found out, you know, once the church. The Mormon church got into, you know, promoting proposition eight in California to take same sex marriage away from gay, same sex married Californians. And then I started noticing this rising suicide epidemic amongst gay and lesbian mormon youth and young adults. I kept looking in the obituary and seeing another drama student from Sandy, Utah, has taken his life after he served a mormon mission, but without ever getting married. I wonder. And I’m stereotyping, but, like, no, absolutely. After I saw enough and had enough, podcast listeners come to me and tell me they were. They were suicidal, or they got into a mixed faith marriage, or they were trying to live a life of celibacy, or they had engaged in conversion therapy or electric shock therapy, which was a thing at Brigham Young University in the seventies. They literally ran tests to shock, you know, to. To deliver an electric shock to gay BYU students. there’s even reports that they administered shock to their genitals or to use chemical castration or other types of aversive stimuli to un gay, you know, BYU students who were Mormon. Like, it’s a whole thing anyway.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right. The stereotypical phrase is the light version of it is pray the gay away. But it’s much more insidious than that. It sounds like, you know, I know from a legal perspective, there were a lot of cases of, issues with kidnapping, consent. If my son’s 18, I can’t force him to go, but I hire somebody to take him to this camp anyway, to try to do this conversion therapy stuff. So it’s not unique to mormonism, but it sounds like you were seeing a huge rise during this period.

>> John Dehlin: Yeah, it was. I mean, just honestly, it was still. That. That was what the church. The church would say. If you’re gay, if you’re gay and male, marry a woman and it’ll go away. If you’re gay, if you’re a lesbian and Mormon, marry a man and have kids and it’ll go away. And if you need any help, do conversion therapy. That’s how things were in 2010. Wow. That’ll be. Now that I’ve done scrupulosity, that’ll be my PhD dissertation. And so I did a. I think. I don’t say this to brag, but I think it was a groundbreaking study at the time. We surveyed one, thousand, 612 either current or former Mormons who identified as somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum. It, was the largest. It’s probably one of the largest studies of its kind in the history of the mental health field. And what we showed was that conversion, therapy and specifically religious attempts to change your sexual orientation, like prayer or fasting or hyper religiosity or confessing to your bishop, were the most common and the most damaging ways that a gay Mormon would try and change their sexual orientation. We were able to, show incredible harm. And, you know, that led to a TED talk in 2013 where I, released a TEDx talk where I released the results of my study to the public. We published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology, which is the premier flagship research, publication for counseling psychology. we published twelve or 13 other peer reviewed academic journal articles from that one study of 1612, students. And eventually, two things happened. The, Mormon church slowly started to discourage conversion therapy and discourage mixed orientation marriage and move away from its barbaric, deadly teachings. And they excommunicated me, because I was openly promoting same sex marriage, and that was against the church’s doctrine, theology. Plus, by that time, by 2015, my podcast had become very, very popular. I had been asked to be on Good Morning America vh one nightline, like I with Mitt Romney running for president, sure, starting to reach out to me and have me be kind of the talking head mormon guy, right? And for all those reasons and the podcast popularity, the church said, stop advocating for same sex marriage and shut down that podcast, or we’re going to excommunicate you. And I said, excommunicate me because I cannot, you know, in good conscience, shut down the podcast and stop advocating for people that are killing themselves. And so the church excommunicated me in 2015.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wow. Wow. So, so you are. I’m going to sort of abstract this out a little bit, because I think this is a pattern you see everywhere. You are coming at the situation with observations, experiments and evidence and pointing out a real problem. And the church is saying, we don’t care about that part. We want you to shut up and stop saying it’s okay to be gay and you refuse. And for that they kick you out of the church. Is that a fair summary?

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s fair. Yep. And they didn’t just, they didn’t just, you know, kick me out. Right? And then in 1992, 93, 94, there was a wave of excommunications of scholars while I was at BYU. They’re generally known as the September 6 after me. there was a wave of excommunications of other Internet activists who were either encouraging, you know, women’s rights in the church. There were women excommunicated for that. There were, others advocating for truthful history. They were excommunicated. And there were some, one courageous man, Sam Young. He was simply advocating for the, for children, you know, against child abuse within the church, and against one on one meetings with church leaders and children, where it often happens, and boy scouts and the church excommunicated him. A, ah, former bishop, literally just for trying to prevent child abuse in the church, because they, they decided it was embarrassing. So, for a good five to ten years, and a mental health professional named Natasha Helfer, she was simply teaching the masturbation is healthy, that, that Mormon therapists should follow ethical guidelines and not preach religion and things like conversion therapy to their clients. They excommunicated her. So, it’s come back to bite the church. But I wasn’t the only one that. Eventually, I was one of the first, but I certainly wasn’t the only person.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So, all of this reminds me to mention at this point, for people who may be having these issues, of course, you can read up on Doctor Dillon’s work, you can visit his website, you can look at the Mormon Story podcast. But more generally, there are other organizations that I would recommend. You may have heard of these or worked with them, but there’s recovering from. Religion is an organization that helps people who have been raised in religious environments that they are trying to leave and are having problems with, either very hard problems. Like, if I come out to my evangelical parents, they’re literally going to kick me out of the house, and I will. I may die all the way to. I’ve been out of m my religion for 20 years, and I’m still having dreams about hell. Like, that’s. They do a lot there. And then there’s the secular, therapy project. these are a, group of therapists who promise not to bring religion into their counseling, as a proposed solution. that’s a high level summary, but basically, there’s a real problem in America where you go to see a therapist, and after a few weeks of getting to know you, they might surprise you and say, I think you need to pray more, or something like that. And you’re like, what? That’s not what I’m looking for. So secular therapy project is out there. And then another one that’s sort of related that I wanted to ask you about is, have you heard of the clergy project?

>> John Dehlin: Yeah, I’ve actually heard of all those programs, for sure. Yeah.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: So the clergy project for our listeners is, an anonymous organization of people who are preachers or otherwise church leaders who have lost their faith but haven’t yet left their role in the church. So I’m a preacher in a small town. I’ve don’t. I no longer believe in whatever religion I believe in. And, I know that if I announce this to my flock, I will lose my job. I will be shunned. No one will. I can’t hire a babysitter. I can’t hire anybody to cut my yard. nobody’s going to sit with me at the high school football game, like, my life is over. And from a very young age, maybe all I’ve done is be a preacher. I don’t have marketable skills. So if I leave my job, it’s going to be maybe go work as a janitor, if there’s any jobs in town. So a group formed to sort of talk about these issues without being out so they could get support and strategies on how to modify and, make their, make their sermons. I’d say, more moderated, not as extreme, not as literal in the Bible. Did you see that in, when you were starting Mormon stories and people were coming to you? I’m assuming initially they’re off the record before you could get anybody to be on the show and talk. But did you see a similar sort of culture, of an underground sort of confederacy of people who had their doubts and wanted to work within the church to try to change it? Or did you feel totally alone, for a long time, even after you started your podcast.

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. So something that’s different about Mormons and Scientologists and Jehovah’s Witnesses and orthodox Jews is that you’re taught, it’s such an insular culture, and you’re taught so much suspicion of outsiders that like a mormon bishop, in a million years, if he were struggling with his faith, or even a doubting Mormon, would never go to a never Mormon or even an ex Mormon to get help, because you risk your spouse divorcing you, your children disowning you, your parents cutting you out of their will. You risk, if you’re a dentist, if you live in Idaho or Arizona or Utah, there’s a good chance that your clients, whether you’re a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer or an executive, there’s a good chance your, business partners or your coworkers or your customers are Mormon. And you risk marital ruin, familial ruin, social. You risk losing all your friends, you risk losing your community, because your friends are your church coworkers for the most part, and you risk losing your job and your income. And so that’s why for me, it was really important when I started Mormon stories to have it feel safe, to have it feel inviting, to have it feel very Mormon, not angry, not even super directly confrontational or critical. And many tell me Mormon stories remains relatively positive and affirming and safe feeling for a questioning Mormon. Because, no, in a million years, those organizations you mentioned are not going to be attractive to someone coming out, or questioning Mormonism. But they are great organizations. Sure thing I’ll say is that because we started blogging in 2004 as Mormons and ex Mormons, and then we started podcasting with Mormon stories in 2005, and then other podcasts started emerging. Ex Mormons kind of dominate. Of all the ex religious groups, you just go to go to Reddit and look up ex Scientologists, ex Jehovahs witnesses, ex Orthodox Jews, ex evangelicals. Nobody compares to the number of ex Mormons. The ex Mormon subreddit has like 300,000 members. Again, Mormon Stories podcast has like 250,000 just YouTube subscribers. We’ve got over 100,000 Facebook subscribers, like 270,000 TikTok followers. Like, in some ways, because we had to serve ourselves and because we got at it early and developed a culture of doing and of serving. In some ways, I think that’s why Mormon stories is 60% never Mormon, because we’re actually leading. I’m, not saying other organizations aren’t doing great things, but in many ways, whether it’s ex Mormon Reddit blogs, YouTube channels, TikTok. If you want to have a wild time, just go to TikTok and type in ex Mormon. There are billions and billions and billions of views of hundreds, if not thousands, of ex Mormon TikTok content creators that are creating amazing, creative, TikTok videos every single day. So I’m really proud of the ex Mormon, the progressive, and the post Mormon, and the ex Mormon communities for the way that we’ve not only helped each other as kind of pioneers in the tech world, but as we’ve kind of, in some ways, shown leadership to the rest of the world and certainly to ex members of other cults or high demand religions. And, you know, I’ve had Jehovah’s Witnesses on Mormon stories. You, know, Leah Remini and Mike Rinder came on, you know, Sarah Edmund Edmondson of NXIVM. Like, I’m very proud of my collaborations. You know, Stephen Hassan. We brought Steven Hassan, the world cult expert, to Utah. Ah, had him, do, you know, a retreat here. Brought him on the podcast. I’m super happy that we’ve collaborated with so many amazing, with so many members of other cults or high demand religions.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Yeah. And, I said at the beginning that I would get back to that, we would eventually work ourselves back to this concept that there’s 60% never Mormons listen to your podcast. And I was one of them. And I think in talking to you today, I have explored. I’ve been thinking all along, where is it? Where’s the hook? What is it? That fascinates me? And I think it’s. I mean, I want to make it sound mundane, but I think it is. The same reason that I like reading novels or watching movies is every story is different, and every story addresses a very core human condition that is then possibly exploited by a religious organization. And that condition is a desire to feel like you are mean something. this psychological state of, I am the center of things, and so I want to mean something, and I want to be part of something bigger. And religions have developed to take advantage of that instinct, and it’s so powerful. That instinct is so powerful that it can cause people to go through, changes in belief that seem very fascinating to somebody who’s never been through that. And it makes one worry about yourself. Like, if I had been born in, in the middle of, a different nation, you know, if I was born, let’s say, in Rome, I might be Roman Catholic instead of an atheist right now. Or if I was born in Utah. I might be a Mormon right now. And the realization of that, that what religion you are really depends almost entirely on where you were born and who your parents were, can be very scary to people. Like, are we really that malleable in our beliefs? And hearing your stories of person after person coming on and telling a similar story to yours with important differences paints a very broad brush to say, everybody goes through this. Everybody. It’s not just a Mormon thing. It’s not just a cult thing. There are Catholics struggling with mass amount of guilt. There are, as you said, orthodox Jews who are trying to figure out what to do with, their children because they know that they’re not supposed to get vaccinated. There’s christian scientists who don’t want to let their kids die, but they wish that the church would just change their policy, but they feel stuck, like they have to not treat their kids because of this community, because of all of these instincts. So hearing you talk about this, I think for non Mormons, it’s both educational, but also fascinatingly scary and interesting. study of the human condition, like a very core piece of the human condition that it makes. Listening to your show makes me feel like we’re all in the same boat. It may about to be about different things or different religions or whatever, but everybody is just trying to figure out life, be a good person, enjoy, themselves while they have time on this earth and try to help other people. And that’s what I hear time and time again on your show. Is that where that. That tends to be where people end up? and that seems to be where you have ended up, that you have gone through this transition from being a 6th, generation lds that was kept in the dark to getting involved in education, getting involved in information dissemination, to being now, running, this podcast that is changing lives left and right. how does that feel looking back on that?

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for that acknowledgement. And I’ll just say, like, I remember when I saw the village for the first time, or Pleasantville or the Truman show.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right?

>> John Dehlin: Like, wait. Or tangled. I’m like, wait, that’s. They’re describing. Wait. Were those guys Mormon that made those movies? Because, like. Yeah, of like, a fake reality that was created for you. No spoilers intended, right. You’re part of this contrived reality, and then at some point, you discover there’s something not right, and then you start questioning it, and maybe you break out of it, and then you realize that people don’t like it when you break the mold. And then your world kind of falls apart, but you also experience freedom. That’s the matrix, tangled Truman show, Pleasantville history, the invention of lying Smallfoot. Like, there’s so many movies that tell that same story. And after I realized that none of those filmmakers were Mormon, I’m like, wait a minute. Maybe other people are experiencing this, too. And then I watch going clear about Scientology, right, right. And then I watched the Keith Ranieri stuff about NXIVM, and I watched the Warren Jeff stuff about the FLDS church and Jim Jones. And you start learning about cults and other high demand religions, and then you watch just the stuff about evangelicals and, like, God forbid, about. About, Jerry Falwell junior and Liberty University, and you’re just like, whoa, there’s cults everywhere. And it’s not just religions. Mlms and businesses can be cults. The military can be. Can have cult characteristics. Corporations and family systems can have cult dynamics. And then they just realize. What I realized was, and this has been my personal mantra for Mormon stories for many years now. It’s the Mormon stories, the human story, and vice versa. And people just, like, I learned more about Mormonism from going clear the documentary on Scientology than I ever did, you know, listening to a Mormon podcast or watching a Mormon YouTube channel or reading a book about Mormonism, because I felt that on a spiritual or a, I should say emotional level, because I saw it. I felt safe enough to see it in another tradition and then to tie it back to myself emotionally. And then I realized, whoa, that’s what. That’s what Mormon stories can do to other people. It feels, oh, it’s those weird, peculiar Mormons. They’ve got the Osmonds and Steve Young, and, they’re kind of fun and they’re clean, you know, smiley, happy families. But then there’s this weird, dark side what’s going on here? And we’re just interesting and entertaining enough for people to pay attention. And then they realize that they’re not just seeing a quirky Mormon story. So many people are seeing their own stories within Mormon stories. And it’s been very gratifying to grow our influence and to help contribute just to the broader world, because at the end of the day, we’re all humans, right? It’s not, the Mormon family. It’s the human family. And I’m proud to. When I let. When I was kicked out of the Mormon church, I felt sad that I was kicked out of the Mormon church, but I realized that I kind of joined the human race when I was kicked out of the Mormon church. And that was, that was a trade up as far as I was concerned.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Wonderful. So if, if the Mormon story is the human story, where are you? What chapter are you in now for your Mormon story? For your human story? If you’re not a Mormon now, what would you call yourself? What are your beliefs at this point in a religious sense, if you don’t mind me asking?

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. So, this is probably an answer you’ll hear a lot. I’ve never been comfortable assuming the identity of atheist or agnostic. Sure, for several reasons. And believe me, I get that there’s a courageous element to facing the negative stereotypes and owning that title to make it more acceptable to bear those arrows so that others can come along later and feel comfortable if they want to identifying as well. Because obviously, I’m sure it’s still true that atheists have lower approval ratings than, like, child molesters.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: it’s still bad.

>> John Dehlin: Never been elected to office, almost never in the United States. So I respect people who take that on. What I decided very early on, when I lost my Mormon faith. Number one, no other church in the world, every single church reminded me of the Mormon church. Once I scratched underneath the surface, I thought about Episcopalians. They’re progressive, yeah, but they still have problems. And evangelicals and Presbyterians and Lutherans and Jews and Muslims, they’ve all got problems. And they all have the same formula of, like, God, talk to that other guy, and then we’re supposed to believe the experiences some other guy had. And by the way, almost all of those other guys wanted their money or wanted their wives or wanted sex or, you know, or, like, taught genocide or bigotry or racism or sexism or homophobia, or the scriptures that they believed in were racist, sexist, homophobic, and often genocidal. So, like, there was not a church. We had. We investigated. We spent a couple years attending every church we could.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Sure.

>> John Dehlin: And finally we realized that the Bible has as many problems, if not more problems, than the book of Mormon. And I don’t want to offend my christian listeners, but just learn about historical criticism and biblical criticism and science and you’ll realize that the Bible’s got major problems. So. But at the same time, I was committed to effectiveness, to reaching the most amount of people that I could. And you may as well tell a Mormon you’re a child molester. If you’re going to tell them you’re an atheist or an agnostic, they will immediately shut you off. So I just decided for that reason I was never going to identify as an atheist or agnostic. Also, I realized for me, and I know this won’t sound clever to you, I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times, I don’t identify as someone who’s an a Easter Bunnyist or an a Santa ist. Sure. My identity, what I call myself, that has anything to do with all the things I don’t believe. And while I get the terms, I thought, is religion credible enough and, worthy enough of taking up space in my identity? And to be honest, part of why I don’t identify as an atheist or agnostic is because I find the propositions so preposterous and so absurd and so unworthy in a scientific, modern, sort of era of sensibility that it’s not worth any part of my identity.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right, right.

>> John Dehlin: So for those reasons, and mostly just because I want to be super effective, I’ve literally never called myself an atheist or diagnostic. I do believe that nobody knows. So I think that literally meets the criteria of agnostic. If you don’t believe that anyone knows anything about metaphysical, supernatural stuff. So everybody’s an agnostic. If you look at now, there are people that don’t know they’re agnostic, but most smart, thoughtful people will acknowledge that. Like, well, they think their beliefs are true, but they could be wrong. You know what I mean?

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> John Dehlin: And that they don’t know for sure. Those zealots who say they know, they’re the scary, in my mind, they’re the most dangerous people of all.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right.

>> John Dehlin: So anyway, you can see where I stand with agnosticism. Sure. And I guess I’ve already told you my approach to not labeling myself as an atheist.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: No. That is, a very, practical approach. And I find the labels are used lots of different ways, just to know where I’m coming from. I do call myself an atheist, but it’s because the way that I find as we’re moving through a, maturing society, that understands that there’s subtlety, to these sorts of questions. The way that I find it’s most commonly defined is, are you convinced that there’s a God? Do you believe that there’s a God? And if you don’t say yes to that, then you lack a belief in God. And that’s, that’s the, a part of the theist. So that’s, it’s not anything other than that. Am I convinced there’s not a God? No. It’s sort of like, from the legal perspective, we find people not guilty, we don’t find them innocent. I find God not guilty of existing. I don’t find him innocent of existing. I, can’t prove or say that there is no God. I can just say that of the, of the versions of God that people have presented to me so far, I have not been presented with sufficient evidence. Therefore, I don’t believe. And I totally agree with you regarding the a Easter Bunnyist and the a Loch ness monsterist. Right. That’s another issue. I think the reason some people choose to go ahead and take on the label, though, is we don’t have Easter, bunnyists in Congress saying we don’t have to investigate climate change because God promised he would never flood the earth again. It’s sort of a, common trope that you get in the atheist community, as, oh, why do you care so much? If you don’t believe, why do you care? Well, we care, and we take on the name because there are people not just often in their corner and saying, I believe this personally. Right. I have, I have many, many religious friends. They have their own faiths. We have lots of interesting discussions. But the minute that somebody says, not only do I have these beliefs, but that in belief includes the fact that there is a God and that I understand what that God wants and he wants me to do something, that’s when we start running into danger, and then those people get elected and we see what we’re seeing in the world today. So I totally am, on board with your way of thinking that. Yes, 100%. If you, especially in this country, if you come out and say, I’m an a anythingist regarding religion, people, are going to shut down needlessly because they’ve been taught, that they are. That atheism or agnosticism or any sort of disbelief or skepticism even, is a bad word. I even heard people call in and tell me that, heard, I had people call in and tell me that I was a atheist, Muslim. They don’t even understand what the word means. It’s like communists. Now that in the political circles, like, if I disagree with you, I’m going to call you a communist. If I think you’re a bad person, I’m going to call you an atheist. The word is almost lost meaning other than to mean I’m on the wrong team. So I agree. I don’t bring it up except for M, for example, when I do a podcast, and if you’re in the in, you’re in the mission of helping people who are struggling with religion bringing any sort of label to a belief system, if the question even comes up when they’re talking to you, can really shut people down. I’ve seen it happen. As soon as you say, like, when I was early, early sort of realizing I was an atheist. Most atheists will go through a angry atheist phase. There’s probably an angry Mormon, ex Mormon phase, too, where my anger came from. I really didn’t care until I saw people doing things in the world, like telling me that I couldn’t play dungeons and dragons because it was demonic, or passing, laws or, you know, saying that we don’t need to research aids because gay people are bringing this on, on God’s wrath. And that’s when I’m like, okay, I must be missing something. Like, in all my little schoolings and Sunday school tales, I didn’t hear that part of the Bible, so let me go research it. And then once you go research it and you realize it’s all b’s, as far as, like, what the politicians are saying is not scriptural or not historical, you get very angry. You’re like, you’re being fooled. We’re all being fooled. I would have sworn that there was some. There’s got to be something more that has convinced all these people are right. Nope. It turns out that a lot of people haven’t even read their bibles. They listen to their preachers, they listen to their politicians, and they just do whatever they say. So that’s where I come from. That’s sort of what really inspired me, to start being sort of a vocal activist, because I went through that angry phase for a couple of years, and then I came into where I am now, which is, I just want to talk to people. I find the stories fascinating, and I want to understand how religion is being used to create political violence, try to take over governments, things like that, when all the evidence is that if people actually go and read their scriptures, if people really dive into the claims of their religion, they moderate their views. They at least moderate their views, if not, abandon them. And that’s sort of the goal.

>> John Dehlin: And I really respect that approach. Secular humanism, all those types of movements, I really respect. I will add one last final thing, just as a little bone for my christians and leaders out there. I love the idea of mystery. I love the idea of wonder, and I love the idea of epistemic humility, which is like, I don’t know for sure. Anything for sure. And I know that there are plenty of atheists and agnostics that are humble. In fact, atheism and agnosticism is a move for many towards humility. But we all know the insufferable atheists out there, they’re more zealous as missionaries than they were as believers, and they want to convert in there. They’re absolutely certain that there’s no God, even though I know that’s a bit of a canard. And I just like the idea of saying maybe there’s some power out there, maybe there’s some force, maybe there’s some organizing thing, or maybe, maybe, who knows? Small chance there’s life after. But, like, right. Would I like to keep living on? Sure. So if, if I die and find out there’s an afterlife, am I gonna, like, be bummed? I’m gonna be like, no. So, I mean, I do like the idea. One of the reasons I also don’t identify as atheist or agnostic is because, like, I like staying open. And who knows? Maybe some of this stuff, small chance, but maybe some of the stuff true or it’s true in a way that we don’t fully understand.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right?

>> John Dehlin: And, so I’m just going to remain open. And honestly, I think a lot of Jesus’s teachings, golden rule stuff, legit, valid. And I think religions often do a good job of creating meaning, identity, purpose, community, friends, and, so, like, I’m at least a secular Christian. M in many ways, not all the ways, but in many ways, I think, I think if more of us did a better job of listening to Jesus and following some of his core teachings, the world would be better off. That’s what I think.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I agree, I agree. The New Testament is written almost as a band aid over the character of God in the Old Testament, right? Wrath and vengeance and genocide in the Old Testament. And then, I told you before, I’m doing a long series on faith healing. If Jesus is portrayed as anything in the New Testament, he is a healer, he is a doctor, he is about medicine. He is the one, the first time in the Bible that he says, don’t treat children as property. Suffer the young children, right? Put up with them. Because before then, kids were property. You could kill them. Girls were a hassle. Let’s bury them in the pit. Jesus is the one who comes along in the character of Jesus at least, and says, suffer the young children. Put up with them. he heals left and right. He makes people have better lives. And that’s, I think there’s many, many, many christians that hear that message and say, I can get behind that and I’m going to support it. And that leads to a very rewarding community, a very rewarding sort of spiritual journey for them. Although I don’t, you know, spiritual is a very wishy washy word, but it does something for them in maybe a, finding, their place in the universe or finding a purpose. Right. Again, just to reference the book of Mormon, you know, it’s a love letter to religion from somebody who doesn’t believe. Like, there are a lot of good things out there. So, I totally agree with you. You need to find out what you’re comfortable. And to me, I don’t care about the labels as much as having conversations where we sort of define terms on our own. Because no two atheists are alike. I’m sure no two Mormons are alike. No two agnostics are alike. you have to find out where people stand and meet them on their own ground in order to have a conversation. And then decide if you guys can identify politely where you agree and where you disagree, and then where you disagree, decide, well, how do we figure this out? What method do we have as humans to figure out? Am I right? Are you right? Or neither of us right? And we can do that in a loving way, a polite way, an investigatory way. and we don’t need labels to do that.

>> John Dehlin: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. All right, well, so I’m really glad to learn that you’re out there. I’ve just started to watch Matt Dillahunty, and I think he’s smart. I need to check out the atheist experience as well. And there’s just we, as ex Mormons, need to get out of our little, you know, bubbles and, bubbles inside bubbles and learn more about the big. The big, beautiful, secular world out there, honestly.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Right. Yeah. And I will say, I’m sure the atheist experience would love to have you on a guest, if you’d like. The athe experience show is a call in show. People will call in and we ask them, what do you believe and why? And then we talk about the whys. And typically it will be a discussion of, well, what reasoning are you using to get there? And we typically. Our main goal, of course, is to spread, the positive image of atheism that, hey, we aren’t the bad guys you’ve been told about. We’re just people that haven’t been convinced yet, you know, I’ll put the yet on there. I’ve been convinced yet. Right. I may be presented with evidence. but we don’t want people to become extremists, right. You know, if we can have conversations where we point out flaws in their logic and ask them to go back and do more reading or whatever, they will moderate their views again. And that’s sort of my theme. If we all moderate our views a little bit, we’re less likely to have, you know, the handmaid’s tale become a reality. That’s what we’re worried about. So, I, know we’re way over time. I really appreciate all the time that you’ve given me. Is there anything else that you’d like to bring up? For example, where can people find you online? What’s the best place to go and see your work and start participating in your Mormon Stories podcast?

>> John Dehlin: Yeah, I think, the best place to probably have the Mormon stories experience is on YouTube. we do, make some money off of the ads. Of course, if you have YouTube premium, you get to skip the ads. So that’s what I recommend is, $10 a month, get YouTube premium and then watch us there. And if you have YouTube premium and you just want to listen, let’s say you watch for an hour and then you want to just take it on your jog. YouTube Premium allows you to listen even while your, your ipod is in, you know, lock screen mode or whatever.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Sure.

>> John Dehlin: So I would say number one way for us, is through YouTube. We’re also available on Spotify. We’re also available on Apple Podcasts. that’s where we started, is on iTunes. That became Apple podcasts. And then we have, a Facebook page that has over 100,000 followers. We do release our interviews on Facebook. We have to break them up into chunks. we also have a TikTok channel where we release shorts for, Mormon Stories. You can watch little one to two minute clips. we’ve got like 270 or 260,000 subscribers on TikTok at this point. It’s probably our largest platform in terms of subscribers. It might be going away. 50,000 followers on Instagram. We also release our shorts as reels on Instagram. we don’t do much on TikTok. So those are the different ways you can check us out. And then we are donor supported. So if any of you like what we do and want to see it continue, we’re a 501 c three nonprofit. We’re transparent in our finances. We feel like we run the organization transparently and ethically. And if you go to mormonstories.org and click on the donate button, you could become a monthly donor, and that’s the way to financially support what we do.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. I will give a shout out. It’s not my organization. I merely am one of their hosts. But the atheist community of Austin does is a similar situation. They too are a 501 organization with a board of directors that is managing them, and they are, they produce lots of different shows. The atheist experience, talk heathen, truth wanted, the nonprofits, there’s a bunch of, call in shows and some just, hot topic discussion shows that have this mission of trying to get people talking about what they believe and why, and then try to enforce a separation of church and state. And then, of course, there’s my podcast. You can find me on as the Cross examiner podcast on any podcasting platform, or you can just go to my website at, thecrossexaminer.net is my, my podcast, because apparently crossexaminer.com was taken for, I don’t know, they wanted $50,000 for it. I’m not going to do that. So, exactly. John, it’s been an absolute thrill talking to you. You’ve really educated me, and you’ve given me a lot of things to think about, and more than anything, I think you’ve given me hope. I got to admit that looking at the rise of things like QAnon and radical, political organizations that are trying to take over the government and do really bad things in the name of religion or by exploiting people’s religious beliefs, really is stressing and depressing. But hearing your story and hearing how you help other people and showing that the Internet, in fact, can be a tool for good, it’s not all just misleading memes. It’s actually deep dive conversations that get into the nitty gritty. And that has helped people sort of moderate their views, come out of a religion that they weren’t happy in, that’s really encouraging. So thank you for what you’re doing, and thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

>> John Dehlin: Thank you. Graham, it’s so nice to meet you. It’s so nice to learn about your podcast and all of your efforts as well. You’re a professional interviewer. you ask great questions, and, I’m honored that you would spend the time to learn about my story, to share it with your audience. And I really do encourage my audience to check out both your podcast and the atheist experience if you’re looking for that type of stuff. But let’s keep collaborating. We need more cross culture collaborations. And so let’s do a little bit more.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: I agree 100%. I, look forward to chatting with you anytime, you want. And, in the future, I will make sure to send people over. I will say for my audience, I know that a lot of you like my sort of lengthy deep dive stories. John’s stories on Mormon, stories is, ten times what I do. He really gets into the nitty gritty. He really takes the time to let you get to know the person he’s interviewing or the topic he’s doing. So I know my audience would love to go over and listen to your content as well, because it’s drawn me and it’s all I listened to for the last several weeks since I discovered what you do.

>> John Dehlin: Well, thank you. All right.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: All right.

>> John Dehlin: Thanks so much and you all take care.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Bye bye.

>> John Dehlin: And, we’ll hope to see you again soon. Thanks, Graham.

>> The Cross Examiner/Graham: Thanks. And there you have it. That’s my interview with Doctor John Delin. If you haven’t heard the first part, I do recommend you go back and watch it. It’s very compelling. It contains a lot of context setting that you might not have picked up in this first part. I’ll put a link to that in the description of this podcast and in the description of the YouTube video. I also recommend, strongly recommend you go and listen to Mormon stories podcast. his podcast is compelling. It has humans telling their own experience in a very deep and detailed way. It’s very relatable and really helps you understand what it’s like to walk in somebody else’s shoes who has been grappling with these concepts. If you are grappling, it will be very relatable. If you’ve never had to deal with this, it will help you be more compassionate and more understanding to people who are brought up in these high demand cult like religions. So I’ll put a link to that in the description below. And finally, if you haven’t done so, I am starting to find some success with this podcast. It’s starting to grow and the way that that is happening is through just people liking and subscribing to my YouTube channel or to, any one of the many podcast platforms out there. You may notice I do not get any revenue for doing this is a totally volunteer operation. I do this as both a hobby and as my activism. So I don’t run any ads or anything like that. So if you could take a second to like and subscribe, I’d really appreciate it. It will really help the channel grow, and it will help me reach more people with my message, which is, hey, before you accept unsceptically what any large organization is telling you, do a little bit of research, learn what the law is, learn what the rules are, learn what the facts are, and you can avoid being tricked into acting against your own self interest. So with that, I really look forward to seeing you again in my next episode. Bye bye for now. This has been the cross examiner podcast, the Internet’s courtroom in the case of rationality versus religion. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing. See you soon.