Lance B. Wickman

Transcription

(gentle guitar music) John: Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John Dehlin and as always I'm super excited to have a special guest with me today. Today we're recording this in Salt Lake City, kind of downtown. We have seven people who are here watching. You can't see them, but I'm happy to have a bit of an audience here. We're here to interview Jeremy Runnells. We're going to get into his story, but some of you may have heard of the Letter to a CES Director. cesletter.com, I think is the website. The short story just to hook you into the interview is that Jeremy was struggling with his testimony, lived a very traditional, devout LDS life until the point where he started having questions and eventually his grandfather found out about this and offered for Jeremy to write a letter to a CES director friend of his grandfather. He wrote the letter. The letter was received but was never responded to, but it was such a good letter I guess he got good feedback from it that he has kind of expounded upon it and published it to a webpage and it definitely has been a phenomenon sweeping intellectual Mormonism. It's impacted a lot of people. So, we're going to talk about it today. This is part of a multi-part series. So, after we're done with this interview I've invited Brad Kramer who I've interviewed a few sessions ago who is a faithful sort of scholar. He's going to sort of defend the believing positions, and I've invited J. Nelson-Seawright who is a professor at Northwestern University and he's a nonbeliever and they're good friends. They're going to have kind of a very gentlemanly discussion about Letter to a CES Director pros and cons and perspectives about it. So, this is a long series, but I'm loving every minute of it. So, without any further ado Jeremy Runnells welcome to Mormon Stories. Jeremy: Thank you for having me. John: So, before we begin, Jeremy, you are deaf. Why don't you talk to us about that for just a second. Jeremy: Sure. I'm actually deaf in both ears, and I hear through what is called a Cochlear Implant. It might be better to explain through a video. So, just watch this video and it will just go over how Cochlear Implants work. John: Really quick... Were you born deaf? Jeremy: I was born hearing and when I was about three or four years old I was diagnosed with hearing loss. At first it was mild hearing loss and then over the course of 20 years it just progressively got worse. In the course of 20 years I wore hearing aids, and when I was about 24 years old after I came home from my mission I got my first Cochlear Implant in my left ear, and about seven years later I got my second Cochlear Implant and it just totally changed my life. John: Excellent. Well, let's just jump in then. Tell us just briefly about your early experiences with the church. Were they positive? Tell us about the level of testimony you obtained before it started unraveling and just high level any positive experiences you've had with the church to sort of tell us to what extent you were committed and believing before things started unraveling. Jeremy: Sure. I was born into a faithful home. My parents were married in the Salt Lake City Temple. I was born in Whittier, California, and throughout my life I lived in different cities in southern California. My parents were strong-believing Mormons. I come from a pioneer heritage. I have family all the way back to Nauvoo. They traveled the plains to Utah. I always believed in the church. I just grew up Mormon. I did the whole nine yards. I was baptized when I was eight years old. John: Where were you growing up in the church? Jeremy: This is in southern California. John: Okay. In the Whittier area. Jeremy: Orange County, parts of Los Angeles. John: Okay. Jeremy: So, yeah, I went to church my entire life. I was baptized when I was eight years old by my dad. My parents were divorced when I was three or four years old. So, that had a really profound impact on my life and on the life of my brothers and my family. That's an interesting situation right there. My parents as they were going through their divorce it kind of got hairy in the courts and so somehow, I'm not sure if my dad proposed the idea or the Bishop came to them, but it was proposed that instead of the judge in the court deciding which kid goes with who, we would have the Bishop do it. John: Whoa. Jeremy: Yeah, and so it wasn't like this Bishop was a judge or a social worker or anything. He was a financial planner so...sounds qualified. (laughs) But at the time that shows you how strong my parents believed. Maybe this man has inspiration. He would know what God would want for our family. So, from what I understand, the Bishop decided me and my oldest brother would go with my dad and my other brother would go with my mom. That was pretty devastating to my mom from what I understand it created a pretty crazy situation over there. I mean, word spread around in the Ward, in the Stakes in that area. From what I understand, it was mostly negative because they just couldn't believe how a Bishop would decide this. A lot of people felt that it should have been the courts. I'm not sure of all the details. That's my understanding, but I just wanted to bring that up just to illustrate how strong my family believed in Mormonism. It started that I lived with my dad my entire childhood. I had a great childhood. Both my parents love me and it was great. After my parents divorced my dad remarried, and that was an interesting situation because my dad had four kids and the new woman that he married had four kids. So, it was a Brady Bunch situation. That marriage lasted about six years. After that we moved over to La Mirada, California and I would say that's where my testimony really took off. I went to church my entire life. I was baptized when I was eight, but I didn't really know what I was going to church for. I didn't really understand The Restoration and Joseph Smith and what the church really stood for. So, when I was about 12 years old I was ordained a Deacon and this was around the time when interesting things happened. For the first time in my life there was a death in my family. So, I as a 13/14 year old that really impacted me. It was just my Grandpa. I never really experienced death or the concept of death. I'd seen Rambo, whatever, TV shows and movies, but this was for the first time in my life somebody that I actually knew one day was there and the next day he was gone. That had a profound impact on me. This happened on September 17th, 1994. Then another powerful event in my life happened about a week later. My dad arranged with our Stake President to meet with the Area Authority at the time, Elder Lance B. Wickman, and we met with him for me to get a hearing blessing. And so, what we wanted to do is - Basically, we went to him to see if he could restore my hearing because as a teenager it was a tough situation not being able to hear very well in my circle of friends and school. It was a tough situation. I really believed all the stories I'd read and heard in church about Christ healing the deaf and the lame and the blind and I really believed in the concept that the church was restored in these latter days and the priesthood was real and if it worked then why can't it work now? So, we met with the Stake President...me, my dad, and the Stake President went over to where Elder Lance B. Wickman was at the time. When we met Lance B. Wickman something weird happened. When I went up to him I shook his hand, and I experienced this really powerful wave of emotion. Looking back I kind of compare it to kind of getting hit in the face, that sense of shock, confusion. But basically when I shook his hand I just had this surreal feeling and from then on in my life I identified that as the Spirit. Basically, I met with this, you know, special servant of the Lord, a member of the Seventy and I just felt the Spirit. He was very gracious, very kind. The entire meeting was very spiritual. He gave me a blessing that basically stated that my ears would be unstopped and my hearing would be restored. So, it was pretty bold. My dad was in tears. I was in tears. It was just a very special day, and I consider that one of the most spiritual, special days of my life. So, I had faith that my hearing was going to be restored. I mean, I was expecting next week to put my hearing aids down. I was expecting my hearing issues to be resolved. That was the kind of faith I had as a kid. I really believed that what happened that day with Elder Lance B. Wickman that my hearing would be restored. Well, that week went by and another week went by and weeks turned into months and years and my hearing just kept getting worse and worse. This kind of created a cognitive dissonance in the sense that he told me that my hearing would be restored and my ears would be unstopped and my hearing's getting worse over time. I was just wondering what was going on. Did I have enough faith? I don't know. Anyway, I did the whole thing, Deacon, Teacher, Priest. I was heavily involved in Boy Scouts. I had a great experience in Boy Scouts. I'm an Eagle Scout and I enjoyed the Troop that I was in. The Scout Masters were fantastic, just great men. The Ward that I was in was just fantastic. I had awesome Bishops. One of the Bishops was Hawaiian. Every week, "Brothers and sisters, Aloha." So, there was that sense of community and sense of Ward family. So, I had a great experience overall. I went to EFY, Especially For Youth, in Provo, Utah, and I had some spiritual experiences there. So, it was just a cummulative effect of that day when I got my hearing blessing and just the experiences that I've had in my Ward family and EFY. I read the Book of Mormon. I read all I could about Joseph Smith. I was very fascinated with Joseph Smith. Because he was also similar to me in the sense that he was about 13/14 when he started having these questions about life. In my case when my Grandpa died I just wanted to understand what was going on. Is there really a god? Is this church that I'm going to, is it really real? So, I kind of identified with Joseph Smith in that sense of having questions and wanting to know about life. So, just fast forwarding over to when I was in high school. I had a lot of good friends and a lot of them were non-members. One of them was my girlfriend. I had a girlfriend in high school. She was a non-member. Her family were Presbyterian so that kind of played into the - You know, Joseph Smith his family was Presbyterian. I didn't understand Presbyterianism, but I kept hearing about it in the history of Joseph Smith. So, I was fascinated with that. This family was just a wonderful family. They had it together. Mom and dad, the kids were well educated. They just loved each other. They also drank beer and wine and it just caused me some kind of - I was looking at this family, this non-member family, drinking alcohol. They were better in a lot of ways than a lot of Mormon families that I've met. So, I kind of wondered about that, but I just kind of let it go. I was called on a mission to New York City to teach the deaf in American Sign Language. And this was in 2000 to 2002. It was just a powerful experience. I loved my mission. It was just a mission like any other. I had my ups and downs. I had my awesome companions and I had my crazy companions. John: Did you know sign language before your mission? Jeremy: I did a little bit, but I didn't really understand how to do it. It really took off in the MTC. John: Show us real quick how you would bear your testimony in sign. And talk as you say it. Jeremy: Okay. I want to share my testimony that I know the Church is true. I know the Book of Mormon is true. I know that Joseph Smith is a true prophet. That the Church is restored in the last days. So, that was kind of the testimony that I shared with deaf people on my mission. My understanding of American Sign Language really took off on my mission. I had a great Mission President. He was a nice man and on my mission I've had some really amazing experiences in terms of just the people that I've met and the places that I've been. Most of my mission has been in the South Bronx and the whole island of Manhattan. I've done things on my mission that I can't believe I've done. Like, we would sometimes take the stairs in the projects, at 8:00 at night. We were invincible. We had the name tags. "Jesus Christ". He's going to protect us. We're on the Lord's errand, but just looking back just some of the things we've done, going in alleyways and the stairs. We were in places that we really shouldn't have been. We've had a situation where NYPD pulled over and said, "Hey guys, you shouldn't be going there." You know what I mean? But we were invincible. We're on the Lord's errand. The NYPD they don't know what they're talking about. So, it was just kind of funny, just the confidence that I had as a missionary that I was really on the Lord's errand. We taught a lot of families. I've had success as a missionary. One powerful event on my mission was 9/11. 9/11 happened on my mission, just seeing the before and after of that event...it just blows my mind even to this day. Just the kindness that people had on the subways after that. It was just very interesting the change as a whole in that city. Some of the families that I've taught they had family members that were killed on 9/11. Just seeing the impact that 9/11 had on them. It was very up close and personal. I mean I'm sure everybody else, they've seen 9/11 on the television. I've seen it, you know - John: Like you could see the smoke billowing? Jeremy: Yeah, yeah. John: From where you were as a missionary? Jeremy: Yeah, seeing the first tower collapse. I wasn't like right next to it. At the time I was in the South Bronx, but I could go on my roof and see it. Kind of an interesting story is three weeks before 9/11, my district, we went over to the World Trade Center on a P-Day. We just wanted to check things out. One of the things that we wanted to do was go up to the observation deck. This was the end of the month when our savings account was diminished because usually missionaries account their savings replenishes every first of the month. So, anyway we went in to ask how much it would cost to go up to the observation deck and we were told $13. To us that was a lot of money at the time. We were like, "We'll come back later." Three weeks later the whole thing was down. It's just unbelievable. Those buildings were massive, and it's just unbelievable that three weeks later they were just completely gone. They were just in its own footprint. That was my experience on my mission in terms of something powerful, just seeing the change in people, the change in the families that we taught. I had a great mission. I asked to stay longer in my mission. I could have gone home in June of 2002, but I asked the Mission President if I could stay another transfer. So, I ended up going back home in August. I was really a dedicated missionary. I really believed in what I was doing, teaching people about Joseph Smith and The restored Gospel. I came home and went to school. I went to BYU and I had an overall good experience in BYU. Majored in Marketing. It was pretty much uneventful. Just a normal BYU college education. I really enjoyed my roommates. I met my wife in my junior year. We met in the Wilkinson Center at BYU. Kind of funny. It was a really Mormon courtship. The Wilkinson Center at BYU and we dated for probably four, five, six months before I took her down the the Grand Canyon and just gave her the ring and asked her to marry me, and she said "yes." We got married in the San Diego Temple. That was also the Temple, kind of going back, the San Diego Temple was where I got my endowments. A lot of people - I've heard a lot of stories about people having a terrifying experience going through the Temple for the first time or a very uncomfortable experience. To me, it was a little bit weird, but it wasn't completely shocking. I think part of the reason for that is I just... you know, trusted family were there. If they're cool with it then I should be cool with it. That was pretty much my Temple experience. I was unable to go to the Temple on my mission. The New York Temple was not yet there. So, the closest Temple was the Boston Temple. So, for two years no Temple experience. My dad moved over to Las Vegas during my mission. So, when I came back home from my mission it wasn't really home. It was Las Vegas. It was kind of an adjustment there, giving a homecoming talk in a Ward that I've never been in. It was kind of a struggle at that time being in this place I was unfamiliar with, this Ward that I was unfamiliar with. John: After being in kind of the same place for so long and having so many church memories. Jeremy: Yeah. John: With your California community? Jeremy: Yeah. Absolutely. So, in some ways there was that kind of struggle with the Wards that I'd been after my mission trying to recapture that sense of family that I had in California. John: Kind of shows how much of maybe what we perceive as testimony is really socially connected. Right? Jeremy: A big part of that. Obviously, if I hate the Ward and it's causing me misery then that would be quite a big hurdle in order to keep going to church. So, the social aspect of the church, the community aspect, is a major part of it. But for me, I didn't consider myself a Social Mormon. I really did have a testimony. I really believed in the First Vision in 1820 and the Book of Mormon, a literal history of Christ's visit to the Americas. I believed that Joseph Smith was a prophet. That testimony is what grounded me especially in some of the things that have happened after my mission. Some of the Wards that I didn't like, the Singles Wards and all that. So, to me, even though sometimes I didn't like the Ward or I didn't really connect with some people, I still went every week. Because I was spiritually dedicated to the church. John: So, what led you to your starting to doubt? Jeremy: Fast forwarding about ten years to when I'm 30 years old. I still had my testimony. I was still going to church. Still serving in callings. What happened was online, on Facebook, I was hearing some noises about - John: What year? Jeremy: This was 2012. John: Two years ago? Jeremy: Yes. John: Up until two years ago you're total traditional believer. Jeremy: Yes. John: Without serious doubts or concerns. Jeremy: No. I mean I can't think of any - I took everything literally. I can't think of anything that - You know some people they say they put things on the shelf and then eventually the shelf cracks. I didn't really have a shelf. (laughing) John: It was all true. Jeremy: Yeah, it was all true. You know what I mean? John: Okay. So, Facebook? Jeremy: So, Facebook I was starting to hear stuff. There was a blog here and there about the church, kind of talking about...you know, Feminist Housewives I was seeing all this stuff that I considered unapproved popping up on Facebook. One night I was reading the news online and came across an article about Marlin K. Jensen giving a Q&A at Utah State University. In that Q&A meeting he specifically stated - Well, he was asked by someone in the audience what his thoughts were regarding the drove of members that are leaving the Church over Google, over history. His response was basically we're experiencing an apostasy that we haven't seen since Kirtland over history. That shocked me. It shocked me in the sense of - You know what I'm sorry. I need to go back a little bit. Just before my mission, this was when the internet was really coming out and I was on AOL and stuff. I wanted to be prepared for my mission so I went online and looked up stuff and I wanted to just kind of anticipate the different questions I would be asked by investigators. At the time the Church was true and Confirmation Bias was in fourth gear. I mean, the Church was true, what can I learn to prove that or back that up. So, I looked up stuff. I came across some of the Tanners' stuff. A lot of it was bizarre stuff. Like Brigham Young says that men that look like Quakers that live in the sun. Men live on the moon, and just really weird stuff that sounded so fake that I just didn't believe it. I looked at everything in the context of Mormons against the other Christians, evangelical. It was like, well, evangelicals say that we believe in a different Jesus. Well, no, we don't, because Book of Mormon, this and that. So, it was in that context. It wasn't in the context of - John: None of it being true. Jeremy: Yeah. It wouldn't be like secularists talking about the Church's history using the Church's own sources. It was more of those crazy Baptists that were - That was my exposure, but I didn't come across any of the polyandry stuff or the Book of Abraham stuff or any of that stuff. It was just really weird stuff. Like some of the quotes that Brigham Young made. Even that, I didn't put anything on my shelf because I just quickly discredited it. FAIR was awesome. FAIR was doing the Lord's work. (laughing) It's kind of funny now, looking back. John: We'll get to FAIR. (laughing) Jeremy: So, fast forwarding back to that article. It shocked me that people were leaving over Church history. I didn't understand why they were leaving over Church history. What is it specifically about Church history that they're leaving over. So, one of the things that popped up was Joseph Smith's polygamy. So, I pulled up Google and I typed in Joseph Smith's polygamy, and I learned looking through Wikipedia I learned that he had several - He had like 34 wives, and I was like okay that's kind of interesting. I thought Brigham Young started polygamy. Then when I got into the polyandry, you know, Joseph Smith was married to other living men's wives. That really shook me. That really shocked me. John: Do you remember where you were reading that? What website or book? Jeremy: Yeah, the first time it was through Wikipedia. Then I went back into Google and started looking some more and came across the polygamy page on MormonThink. John: MormomThink? Jeremy: Yeah. (laughing) John: Okay. Jeremy: A lot of people seem to have that same route. MormonThink has a lot of pages on the search engines. MormonThink was unapproved. I didn't know if the information was reliable, but after looking at the polyandry stuff I went over to the Book of Abraham and started seeing what Joseph Smith, what his translation was versus what Egyptologists state what it really means. That really shook me as well. So basically, the polyandry and the Book of Abraham were the two first things that really shocked me. So, I started looking on Amazon for different books that I could look at. One of them was Rough Stone Rolling. I ordered that and I also ordered Mormon Origins with Grant Palmer. Got those books. Started devouring them and looking through them. John: That's an insider's view of - Jeremy: Insider's view of Mormon origins. Those two books blew my mind in the sense of, for example, Richard Bushman is obviously a faithful scholar in the Church, and this is a book that was being sold in Deseret Book. I remember this book at the BYU bookstore. So, I knew that this was a credible book, and it is a credible book. When I came across some of the stuff in there, he goes over the polyandry. (stammers) I started having these feelings of betrayal. I wasn't the village idiot. I read books. I read a lot of the approved books. I just couldn't believe that I never heard about the polyandry stuff, for example, or that Joseph Smith was married to 14-year-old girls. You know what I mean? It just really shocked me in that sense, and knowing what I know now, that's the path that a lot of members take. It's not just being exposed to the information but the feeling of betrayal in the sense of why hasn't the Church told me this? Why haven't I learned this before? Why am I discovering this now at 30 and 31-years-old? And if I've never heard of something as crazy as Joseph Smith marrying other living men's wives...what else don't I know about? So, that question really took me on this crazy path of research. I became absolutely obsessed with Joseph Smith, Church history and the origins of the Church over the next year or two. John: What were your main sources of study or learning? Jeremy: It was Rough Stone Rolling. I've looked at FAIR. I've looked at MormonThink. I relied a lot on FAIR because they were in the front trenches of this. I mean, Richard Bushman, it was more of a scholarly, it wasn't really in the trenches in terms of apologetics. So, FAIR just made things worse in the sense that I read about this, then I learn something new and then that leads to something else and it just created this thing just kept going on. I was learning this and this and that and this. I don't know. I mentioned in my Debunking FAIR's Debunking that I really looked to FAIR as a lifeline during my faith crisis and it ended up being weights that drowned whatever left I had of a testimony. So, yeah...that year, it was a struggle. John: So, that's 2012 to 2013? Jeremy: Yeah, so my faith crisis started in February 2012 and then just to give you an idea, I published the CES Letter in April 2013. John: Real quick. Did you listen to Mormon Stories during that time? Jeremy: I did, actually. Mormon Stories was really something that made the landing softer. It gave me hope that things would be okay, that there was light at the end of the tunnel, that this was a process. It really explained or put into perspective that what I was going through was normal in the sense that there's cycles of grief. There's a process of learning about the things I've never knew about in Church. But all the different podcasts that I've listen to, I actually went to the Salt Lake Mormon Stories meeting. I think it was June or July of 2012. In, I think it was, a Presbyterian church. So, that was a pretty powerful event just listening to the different stories. Listening to Andrew Ainsworth. Just listening to his story, it was very powerful, listening to the different "testimonies," the different experiences of people. Just seeing the people in that church. They weren't these boogeymen, scary anti-Mormons, ex-Mormons. They were just people. They looked like me. They were just people that had different stories. So, thank you for your work in Mormon Stories. It really had a profound impact on me during my faith transition. John: But we're not to blame? Jeremy: No. (laughing) You probably get a lot of flack that you're taking people out of the Church, but in my case it wasn't that. It was the opposite. You actually helped me become a better person. I wasn't as angry, if that makes sense. The alternative was going to exmormon.org or whatever it is and getting riled up, but with you, you try to show both faithful and ex-Mormon perspectives so it just really gave me a 180 view of things. John: So, tell us about what led to the CES Letter. I guess my first question is did you attempt to do anything online or publish anything prior to the CES Letter? I saw this letter that's attributed to you to Elder Wickman. Jeremy: No. It's actually an open letter to Elder Cook. John: Elder Cook, that's what I meant. Sorry. Jeremy: Yeah. So, that's interesting. John: Was that your first time to publish something public? Jeremy: Yeah, I mean it was more of I just put it on Reddit. I didn't think too much about it. I actually put it on Facebook for an hour before my wife asked me to put it down. John: When would that have been about? What month and year? Jeremy: That was in October of 2012. You have to remember my faith crisis happened in February 2012 and then by that summer of 2012 I was like, "I don't believe in this anymore." So, this happened in October of 2012 so I no longer had a testimony at that time. Somebody put an original version of this and I thought it was so cool that I kind of borrowed it and revised a paragraph here and there and then I just put it on Reddit. But basically it relates to Elder Cook's General Conference Address in October 2012 where he was basically talking about if you go and look at sources online. I can't remember exactly what the quote is exactly, but it was basically to the effect that if you look into unapproved sources you're going to risk your testimony and if that's the case to repent. So, I wanted to illustrate that you don't have to go to the Tanners' website or some other anti-Mormon web site. A lot of this stuff is in LDS sources. So, the rock in the hat Book of Mormon translation, you know, Elder Nelson talks about it in his 1993 July Ensign. It's right there. The general discourses with Adam-God and all that. So, I wanted to illustrate how even looking at the Church's own sources can put a wrench into your testimony because when you see this stuff you see how it's not correlating or aligning with the correlative version that you're getting from the Church. John: It's almost all Church - It's either Church published materials or like Joseph's diary or diaries of people that we revere today. I mean, what are the other sources? It's not like people are looking at the Hurlbut affidavits and that's like where they're basing their disaffection on. It's always like general discourses, the Book of Mormon text itself. Comparing Book of Commandments to the early versions of the Doctrine of the Covenants. Like, what's anti-Mormon about that? Jeremy: Yeah, exactly. John: Joseph's own accounts of the First Vision. Jeremy: Yeah, exactly and that was pretty much the point that I was trying to make in this satire. I was kinda being...um, I was being sarcastic in that letter. John: It reads a little bit angry, to be honest with you. Jeremy: Well, of course. I was pissed off. You know? And anybody that tells you that when you leave the Church that you should just leave it alone and don't be angry, don't be the angry apostate. They don't understand the trauma and the process of leaving. There's no such thing as a graceful exit from the Church. There's no, you know, "Thank you for your time and (laughs) your two years, we appreciate it. We wish you the best." John: 30 years, 40 years. Jeremy: Yeah. "Thank you for the two years in the mission field. We love you, we wish you the best" or whatever. There's no such thing. You left because you want to sin or you were lazy or you never had a testimony. I've been told I never had a testimony. I had a testimony. I loved this Church. It was my worldview. It was the way I looked at life. It was my heritage. I loved the people. So, this nonsense of I "never had a testimony" is ridiculous. So, anyway, so I wrote that satire and looking back at it now...it was just - I don't see anything wrong with it, to be honest, other than it's sarcastic and maybe has a little angry tone, but what I was trying to illustrate in that was I disagree with Elder Cook's perception of the situation. John: So, any false starts or attempts at doing something public other than that letter before the CES Letter? Jeremy: No. I mean I was becoming more and more active on Reddit. John: In the ex-Mormon sub Reddit? Jeremy: Yeah. John: Okay. Jeremy: It was just a comment here and there. Maybe a post. John: Okay. Let's talk about how the letter came about. Jeremy: So, I couldn't bring myself to tell my grandpa, my 85-year-old ... or 83 at the time grandpa that I no longer believed in the church. I love that man. I just love that man. He lived Mormonism his whole life. He and my grandma just wonderful people. They lived Mormonism for a long time and they lived in Hawaii for 40 years. People have asked what would it take for me to go back to the church. If I moved to Hawaii I would go to church. The people there, I mean the aloha spirit there just unbelievable. The community is just unbelievable. To me, it's a different church over there. I couldn't tell my grandpa about my disaffection and what happened. A few other family members knew. My dad knew and I guess it got to a point where the rumors were going around so my dad told my grandpa that I no longer believed in the church or I lost my testimony. I think it was maybe just before Christmas he found out, somewhere around there. In 2013, he actually drove up to my place about a 600 mile roundtrip just to come up and talk to me and see what's up and how he can help. We just had a conversation and to me it was a tough conversation. How do you tell somebody, okay I don't believe because of this and that and this without - You don't want to put that on them. I didn't want to put it on my grandpa at his age. Anyway, but we had a good visit. He went back home and a few weeks later I received a phone call from him asking if I would be willing to meet with his friend who was a CES Director just to see if I could get my concerns resolved and whatever questions I had. I said sure, even though I lost my testimony at the time I still wasn't 100% sure that the church was false. I still accepted the possibility that my understanding of history and Joseph Smith and origins was incomplete or inaccurate and that perhaps there was a perception or answers that the CES Director could provide. Also this was at the time before the church released its essays. This was before I ever heard of the Swedish Fireside Rescue. So, there was really not very much official answers from the church. So, to me, this was an opportunity to get as close to official answers from the church that I could. Because this is somebody that works for the church. He's in the Church Education System. So I said, "Sure, Grandpa, I'll talk to him." So, my grandpa forwarded him my information and I was surprised the CES Director actually e-mailed me. A very nice guy. He's just trying to help my grandpa and I. I have no beef with him. I honestly don't blame him for not responding back to me. He was probably expecting five questions in an e-mail and I throw him close to a 77-80 pages document. John: Okay, okay, so let's talk about that for a second. So, a lot of the criticisms that you've received come from two angles. One is that they weren't sincere. That you really had already made your mind up before you wrote the letter. That's one. Is that true? Jeremy: Well, I mean, obviously I didn't lose my testimony or leave the church. You know what I mean? I did my research and I trusted the research enough to where I stopped believing in the church, but I was sincere in that I accepted a possibility that my research could be wrong. My sources could be wrong and that he might have a perspective or a view of the situation that I would never have heard about. In that sense I am sincere. I'm up front in the letter that I didn't believe at the time. If you read page five of the letter you can clearly see I'm a disaffected member, I'm just going to lay it out. So, I set it up. I said I'm just going to lay it out, where I'm at with things. So, in that sense that's kind of where I lay it out. So, some of the stuff in my CES Letter obviously look like conclusions rather than all questions. John: Yeah. Jeremy: So, that's where it comes from. And I was up front with the CES Director about that. John: The other one is that you wrote that with the internet in mind. That it was just kind of premeditated, kind of theater. Like I'm writing this for the internet, but I'll go ahead and send it to the guy anyway. Jeremy: No. John: Just to have a good story to support what you end up publishing. Jeremy: At the time the only people that I had in mind was the CES Director, my family, because obviously my family was involved, and a few people on Reddit that I was going to get their feedback, make sure that my sources are okay and just general editing on my paper. In my mind, it was just the CES Director and my family for the most part because I saw this as an opportunity to not only get official answers but also to explain my train of thought and what happened, explaining why I left the church or stopped believing in the church. John: Isn't there a strong desire to tell people and explain? You referred to it earlier, "Everybody judges you. Everybody looks down on you." I had a member of a very prestigious LDS family come visit me the other day. You would all know the name. He's no longer a believer and what he said to me was, and I hate to use the word "cult". I'll just say that now. I hate to use the word "cult". I know it's kind of really disrespectful, but the quote really stuck with me. He said, "A cult is any organization that will not let you leave it with your dignity intact." So, a cult is an organization that won't let you leave it with your dignity intact. That goes back to what you were saying about are you sinning, are you looking at porn, are you cheating on somebody? You never had a testimony to begin with. You're never like, "Oh he left and he's happy." It's more like, "Oh, he's dark and sinning and oh, he drinks coffee." I'm just - I shouldn't be speaking but really you just want to be able to explain to people. You want to say, "No, no, no. There are credible reasons that people leave, and I've actually done a lot of thinking and I've put a lot of time into this." Jeremy: Yeah. John: Is that what you were thinking? Jeremy: There are very few people on this planet that I respect and love more than my grandpa and my dad. To have them be disappointed in me, it just it bothered me a lot. So, I wanted to be understood. I wanted to make sure that they understood that I didn't leave because I want to go to the strip club. I left because I came across very disturbing information about the church I never heard before. And I don't think a lot of true believing Mormons understand that. They don't understand that desire to be understood. I hate that saying, "They can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone." John Larson talked about it in Mormon Expression, one of his podcasts. I can't remember which one, but basically it was to the effect that you live this religion for 30-35 years, you put all this time into it, all this money into it, you really believe it, it's your worldview and then poof it's gone. And what kind of weird psycho would - John: Just move on. Jeremy: Just, "Oh, okay. What's next?" (laughing) You know what I mean? John: Yeah. Jeremy: What kind of weird psycho would do that? It doesn't make - You know what I mean? We're still human beings after we leave. We want to be understood. We still have family that are in and here's the other thing that a lot of true believing Mormons don't understand is that the family members within are most often seeing the people that leave as the broken ones, the ones that need help, the ones that need to be rescued. The ones that need to be pulled back into the church, the ones whose testimonies need to be restored, the broken ones. They don't understand that the disaffected one, they feel like they can't have a true relationship. There's always that 800-pound gorilla in the room. In an attempt to bring that relationship back to where it was before they left the church they're trying to educate their family members on the reason why they left. So, at the core of it is to be understood and to restore or repair their relationships with their family members and they see it as the church is getting in the way of that with its fundamentalist, black and white worldview. You know what I mean? John: Okay. So, you write, and why make it so comprehensive? So long? I mean, for the CES Director? Jeremy: Well, because to me, it wasn't just "Okay, the Book of Abraham has got some problems." To me, I look at each individual issue and then I take a step back and say "Look..." I don't just look at a tree here and there. I look at the trees individually and I take a step back and I look at the forest and I say, "Is this really the forest? The one and only true forest on the face of the earth?" It doesn't look like it's God's work. It looks like one clumsy hoax. So, what I wanted to illustrate, for example, the Kinderhook Plates. Joseph Smith might have made a mistake or whatever. Before that I wanted to illustrate Joseph Smith's character. So, when I went over the polygamy and the polyandry stuff I went over how Joseph Smith had this pattern of behavior over the course of 10 years of his life where he was hiding and denying polygamy and polyandry. Not just from Emma, not just from the Saints, but from the world. He's giving interviews to newspapers. The Doctrine and Covenants has officially banned polygamy and put, you know, "We believe in monogamy." In the affidavit he put out in the Times and Seasons. He was so concerned about the rumors circulating in Nauvoo about his polygamy and polyandry that he set up this affidavit with 31 people, and the signers of the affidavit included his plural wife and several other of his buddies that knew about his polygamy. I mean, Eliza Snow was one of his plural wives that he married three months earlier. She signed it. Bishop Whitney and his wife were witnesses to one of the ceremonies. I think it was Sarah Whitney, a couple of months earlier. So, you look at that and you say, "Well, his pattern of behavior, his modus operandi for 10 years of his life was to hide stuff, to be a deceptive, to be dishonest." So, when you get that snapshot of his character and you start looking into the Book of Abraham and the Priesthood Restoration and the backdating of it into the scriptures. John: Yeah, we'll get to that. I hear you. With the PhD I've been working on I admittedly have not had time to study a lot of these things as closely as I would like. So, obviously through the podcast I've heard about the First Vision stuff. I've heard about the translation stuff. It's very, very different when you start lining up the timelines. It's one thing to know that the First Vision story changed. It's another thing then to realize that what Joseph believed about God, his trinitarian view about God when the Book of Mormon was published is different than what he ends up with in Nauvoo, and then when you line up The Book of Mormon with his beliefs in 1830 and it supports the trinitarian view, and then you learn that they may change it to the Book of Mormon to reflect the non-trinitarian view later and you see the changes in the Book of Commandments versus the Doctrines and Covenants and then he develops his high Nauvoo theology. Those timelines across multiple issues all start lining up and it becomes - So, that's why you wrote a 70+ page - Jeremy: Yeah, because if I didn't write a comprehensive overview it would just be like "Oh, that's just one issue and the church is true, mistakes were made." But when you start to look at it all, the modus operandi, the deception. Then you look at the Book of Abraham, then you look at the Kinderhook Plates, you just see this pattern, the Book of Mormon. You see this pattern of...I'll just say it, deliberate fraud. John: Yes. So, you write this letter, you send it to the CES Director through email? Jeremy: Through e-mail, yeah. John: Okay. Jeremy: I attached the PDF. John: Did you ever meet the guy in person? Jeremy: No. John: Okay, and what response did you get? Jeremy: Well, he didn't respond to me directly in email, but he told my grandpa that he read the "very well written letter" and that he would provide a response. He also said a few other things that the Brethren are aware of some of these problems. Whatever that means. (laughing) John: I hope they are. Jeremy: I hope they are, yeah. John: They are now. Jeremy: They better be by now. And...(chuckles) and they were aware of this and my understanding is that he forwarded the letter to some of his colleagues that knew more about history. So, I was anticipating to hearing back from him. John: You sent the letter what month of what year? About. Jeremy: So, that was in April of 2013. John: Okay. Jeremy: So, I sent it - John: So, about a year ago. Jeremy: Yeah, a year ago. John: Did you send it on April 6th just to be funny? (laughing) Jeremy: No. April 23rd or whatever it was. John: Okay. All right. Okay, so about a year ago. And then you waited. Jeremy: I waited. A month passed, two months passed and then three months passed and I started, "Mmm, I'm probably not going to hear back." At that time as I mentioned I had put my letter on Reddit for feedback and for people to - John: You put this letter? Jeremy: This letter. In early April before I sent it out. So, a couple of people really ate it up, I guess. They liked it. John: Did you crowdsource the original version where other people were giving you information and studying with you? Was it a team effort? Jeremy: No, I just wrote it up and I just put it up and said, "What do you guys think?" John: So, the original version is all you? Jeremy: Yeah. John: All your study and writing? Jeremy: Yeah. John: Okay. Jeremy: I didn't get a lot of criticism. I just got, "Wow, this is kind of cool that you made it all comprehensive." So, it kinda just spread it around, got viral a little bit and it ended up getting into the hands of MormonThink, Tom Phillips and he really liked it. He emailed me. He said, "This is great. Let's put this up." I said, "Cool." So, we put it up and then it really blew up from there. John: Okay, so when did it get put up, about? Jeremy: I don't know. Around that time in late April. Somewhere around there. John: Okay. Well, that's not a long. You didn't wait three months to publish it online. Jeremy: No, remember I didn't - It went viral. Some of the people on Reddit that were checking it, they spread it around. Then it got into the hands of MormonThink. John: Okay. So, how much time did you spend thinking about, "Do I really want to be a named dissident across the world regarding Mormonism?" Jeremy: I didn't think like that. I didn't realize this was going to blow up. I just thought it was just a letter and it would just eventually fade, but when it started getting on MormonThink and I started getting emails and then more emails and then more emails. I'm like, "Um, okay, this is starting to - What did I do?" (laughing) For a while I was kind of concerned. I don't want to be this guy that's tearing down the church or anything like that. But when I started getting the emails from people... Just hearing from people like, "I really struggled with this and then I came across the CES Letter and then things just snapped for me. It just made sense. I got it because I kept looking at these individual issues." I think what appeals to a lot of people with the CES Letter is I don't focus on the different issues on its own I take a step back and then I tie them up to show how they're all connected and the big picture of things and I think that's something that was missing for - John: Yeah, why do we need a Letter to a CES director? Why not just MormonThink? How did you think of the letter as being different than MormonThink? Or the FAIR website? Jeremy: I don't know. MormonThink did a great job going over all the individual issues. I used it during my faith crisis. John: Did it help you write the letter? Jeremy: Well, yeah, I mean, there were some things I got from there. But, it wasn't just MormonThink. It was Rough Stone Rolling. It was the Insider's View of Mormon Origins. Some of Leonard Arrington's stuff. It was different sources. It wasn't just like I copied MormonThink. It was Rough Stone Rolling and different things here and there. John: So, were you worried about putting up your own website? When did your own website go up? Jeremy: Well, what happened was I kept getting people asking me on Reddit, "Where can I download this letter I've heard about? Where can I download it?" So, I just put up this really simple one- page website that had a PDF icon. A Letter to a CES Director. Why I Lost My Testimony. That was just my web site for seven months or so. And then what happened, what really changed things was when FAIR started getting into the picture and started doing their analysis of the letter. This happened in the summer of 2013. John: Let's save that. Jeremy: Okay. John: Is that all right? Jeremy: Yeah. John: Okay. So, I'm going to transition just a tiny bit and we're going to dig into some of the main issues that are covered in the letter. (gentle guitar music)