Source: Christofferson Abuse Allegations Grow While LDS Church Targets Mormon Stories
Channel: Mormon Discussion Inc.
Published: April 27, 2026 | Archived: April 28, 2026
Video: Christofferson Abuse Allegations Grow While LDS Church Targets Mormon Stories
Channel: Mormon Discussion Inc.
Published: April 27, 2026
Duration: 2:01:27
Views: 12,258
Category: Comedy
Video ID: c3yWgNZ_z10
Description
This week on The Mormon Newscast, we’re covering two major developing stories. First, more alleged victims have come forward in the Wade Christofferson CSA cases, adding new layers to an already disturbing situation. As details emerge, the scope and handling of the allegations are becoming harder to ignore.
Second, we take a deeper look at the ongoing trademark dispute involving John Dehlin and the LDS Church. New information sheds light on what’s at stake, why it matters in the broader landscape of Mormon-related content and commentary.
Other stories we’re following: The Church rolls out new names for Young Women’s age groups—a shift that may seem small on the surface, but raises questions about branding, identity, and messaging. A BYU professor is at the center of a serious legal situation, prompting renewed scrutiny around institutional response and oversight at Brigham Young University. Leaders in King County suggest they may not be required to report child sexual abuse in certain circumstances—an issue that cuts to the heart of moral responsibility vs. legal obligation. In Seattle, five LDS meetinghouses have been sold even as a new temple is under construction—raising questions about growth, decline, and the Church’s shifting footprint. And lastly Parker Kingston was back in court.
We break it all down, connect the dots, and give you the context you need to make sense of what’s happening.
If you value the work we’re doing and want to support the show, you can donate here: https://donorbox.org/the-mormon-newscast https://donorbox.org/mormonish-podcast
Subscribe, like, and share to help us keep these conversations going.
Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)
0:03 Good evening everyone and welcome to the Mormon newscast. I'm Radio Free Mormon. That fellow over there, Bill Reel, that lady down there, Rebecca Bibliotecha. How are you doing? I am fantastic. It's World Tapier Day. I don't know if anybody knows that, but you know, the tapier is the symbol of the post Mormon world and World Tapier Day. Go celebrate as you see fit. When did this happen? And who has the authority to in the the whole world to say one day for one animal though it is an important animal in Mormon apologetics?
0:37 He's a great I'll bet Dan Peterson was behind that. He was probably lobbying for that. Yes, he was. Have you ever seen a a stallion set of tapers? It's you know sometimes they uh can be quite a magnificent animal. Yeah. Wow. They're known for certain things. That's for sure. Yeah. Some of them can circumn the globe without even moving. So, having said that much, how do I get out of this? Well, let's go to the story, shall we, for tonight.
1:08 Here is the uh the title for tonight's show. The two main stories, we couldn't decide on one, so we had to combine them both in one scintillating headline. Kristofferson abuse. That's Wade Kristofferson. Abuse. The child abuse allegations grow. While the LDS church focuses on John Delin H, that seems to be misplaced priorities. Let's go into this more, shall we? The very first story deals with an update on the trademark lawsuit between John Delin and the LDS church. I'll be taking that one. And at the end, I'll be taking that as well, Robert. Oh, no, no, it's um actually not at the end. It'll be in the middle. I'll just keep going. Another source for significant decline in US Mormons. Oh, another source saying that Mormons are declining.
2:03 New names for young women have LDS faithful shaking heads. New allegations of abuse against Wade Kristofferson. That's where it is. Wow. Thank you, Mormon Stories. We are I agree with you. We are the best crew ever. Thank you very much. Very much indeed. Um LDS church performs dizzying display of legal acrobatics. BYU professor arrested for enticing minor. That's BYU Idaho, isn't it Rebecca? Or I should say Bill perhaps.
2:37 No, it's my story. It's BYU BYU. That's what I said. Yeah. On both instances. So it's BYU Utah professor arrested for enticing minor sharing harmful material. That will be Rebecca's story. Words and temples in Washington. The math is not mathing. And Robert Gerr and bad bad apologetics. Robert Gerr is the unfortunate uh person who locked horns with Bill Real last Friday on a debate on the subject of whether Mormonism is true and everybody left agreeing that it was not even the faithful Mormons. That's how bad his performance was.
3:15 Yeah. So, let's go with the first story. I want to say something about this lawsuit against John Dean which the church has filed alleging trademark and copyright infringement. I went over that quite lengthy for an hour and 20 minutes. Um going over the complaint, the 30-page complaint that the church had filed against him with a few comments here and there. I have done some additional research then since then and concluded that some of my surmises in this podcast were absolutely spoton.
3:46 I'm happy to say and exactly correct. But I want to show everybody the kind of waves this story is making in terms of uh the backlash and the striand effect. We've got the eldest church is suing me and Mormon stories. That's John Delin. He put that up there. Tons of people were listening to that live and have since there was um he also appeared over here on this podcast and I'm just having a brain fart right now. Alyssa Grinfeld. Alyssa, thank you. Yeah. And so that one of course she has a huge audience so that's getting the word out. Everybody's finding out about what the church is doing and I'm not sure that there's anybody other than the most diehard Mormons who think it's cool.
4:35 And a lot of Mormons don't. This is from Nemo. This is his thumbnail. Elder Oaks versus um John Delin there. And it's also in the faithful side. We've got U Jasmine. Jasmine without an E. Rapple E. That's where the E went to the end of her last name. And she did something about this lawsuit. Church lawsuit. She's got a picture of John Delin there. There's Steve Pineer. He did something about it as well. Rapali or Rapali Delin and LDS church talking about the lawsuit.
5:11 Then there's this guy over here. This is the Paul brothers, the Paulbearer brothers, their website, the letter Daily Digest or something like that. They have this other guy in there. Uh, and I don't know what his name is. He looks like he might be, I don't know, mildly possessed by a grade B demon by the look in his eyes. But whatever's going on with him, I don't care. But he's doing a story about does this expose his real intentions because they're believing the lie the church put out in their statement that John Delin refused to put any disclaimer on his show when actually he had already put it up on all of his platforms. So that's the lie the church told which is fueling all this anger and could possibly I'm not saying it will but I'm saying it could possibly serve as a basis for a counter claim in the lawsuit once the answer is filed and I think they have about 60 days that's my information 60 days in which to file an answer to this
6:04 complaint in which they will tell their side of the story the rest of the story the story that gives the lie to the story that the church told but don't worry young men like this who are mildly possessed with grave be demons. It will not phase them a bit. They will continue on as if the church had not lied to them and made liars out of them publicly, but we'll remember. Now, there's uh murfing with the surf or um hang on. Murf, what's what is this? Mormonism with the Mormonism with the murf.
6:33 Thank you. Thank you. Um sorry about that. Uh and he's an Irish fellow, right? And he and he is in Ireland. Anyway, he had a panel on. He's been doing a couple things about this saying, is this right? The LDS church versus Mormon stories. And you know, he's got to be really, really careful because I don't know if he's affiliated enough with the church to be just using their logo up there on his thumbnail willy-nilly like that. You know, the church might take exception.
7:03 So, is this right? He had a panel about it with those individuals. Um, let me see here. I can name some of them. There's Colby, there's Steve, there's uh Jim Bennett, and then this fellow in the middle. Who is that? I don't know. And I was actually asked to be on this panel, but because I was out of the country, um I said, "You were in Rome." Oh, yes. And I said I could do it next week. And then imagine my surprise where the panel popped up. I was cut out. But I don't remember.
7:31 For a while there after you left the the country, it seemed like you couldn't miss any opportunity to tell us or remind us that you were in Rome. I did. Well, I did post a few pictures. Yes. Um, and it looks like you had a wonderful time and I hope that you did. By the way, did you have a good time? Can you just give us like a a 60-second synopsis? You know, I feel like as soon as I left the country, all hell broke news. Oh, like they did it on purpose. I'm sorry. I meant to take this down.
8:00 Can you start at the top again? I was going to say that I feel like when I left the country, all hell broke loose with the news. the lawsuit, the young women's names. I feel like they did it because we said we weren't going to do the newscast. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of speculation out there. By the way, did you want to say anything more about your trip to Rome? Nope. It was really nice. I'd never been. And it was amazing. It's good to have a worldwide perspective, right? It makes you realize that here in Utah it's like this, right? The world is like that.
8:30 Yeah. Especially if you can go to Rome while you're doing it. Exactly. So, did you go to the fountain? Is it the Trevy Fountain? The three coins in the fountain fountain. I did. I ate gelato on the Spanish steps Audrey Heppern style. I did I did every cliche. Wow. I've never been, by the way, but it sounds like a great time. And like you said, you know, these things happen and you wonder, did they wait till I was out of the country? There have been similar speculations of a kind of frivolous sort. anything you know uh because when things start happening then there are things that happen before other things or during other things and and then uh it's just this idea that we have as human beings that it means something when sometimes it does but more often than not my experience has been it really doesn't. It's just coincidental timing and you can make of it what you will. It's like when we're walking along a a sidewalk and the sun has gone down and it's getting dark and the uh the the
9:24 light the lamp in the light post right as we're coming by goes on. It's like Yeah. Did it do that because I'm here? [laughter] We're all narcissistic. That's the only way to look. I'm the only one who thinks that. I used to think that when I was younger because it's just weird. I'm just walking by and all of a sudden it goes on. What are the odds? Yeah. Well, it has to go on sometime. Okay.
9:45 So, let's continue with all this uh stuff that's been going on. Hang on a second here. This is the one I want, I think. Yeah. So, we were here with Mormonism with the Murf and uh even the the the crazies over there at the Rise Zion. Sorry, but they are they're kind of nuts. We all know that. These are the uh the last days loonies and uh the leaked court documents. There were leaked court documents. Actually, they're just court documents readily available to anybody.
10:17 But, you know, leaked court documents does sound so much more exciting. And uh and they tell the real reason according to this why it is that uh John Delin is getting sued. But the good news is is that Jesus will probably come before this goes to trial. Now, this was the friendly atheist, I believe, and he did a show or an interview with John about the subject. This is a short. Here's another short from somebody who looks familiar. I'm not exactly sure. Do you know who that is, Rebecca?
10:48 It was all I could manage. I had horrible cell service, horrible internet. I like went in a bathroom where there was some kind of light and tried to make a short. I was dying because I wanted to do an entire episode. Wait a second. You filmed this in a bathroom in Rome. I did. Holy cow. The lighting was good. [laughter] Lighting was good. and the acoustics. You are devoted to your craft, Rebecca.
11:14 Nobody can doubt that. Next time, use a vomitorium. See how that goes. And here's one here. Once again, this uh Mormonism with the Murf. He's the church is suing Mormon stories. I think that was his first one. And once again, he's really pushing it with that logo. Look out. So, I wanted to say a couple things that haven't been said yet. This has been hashed and mashed and dashed, but I do want to mention a couple things. First off, we know about President Nelson and his infatuation with the word Mormon, or the opposite of an infatuation, his repulsion about the word Mormon. We know that in January 16th, 2018, though, right, Russell Nelson announced, he was announced as the new LDS president. I'm going back in history to try and make an analogy which may be illustrative of what's going on now.
12:06 2018 Russell Nelson president August 16th 2018. So about half a year later he releases the statement on the correct name of the church and that happened in August before he gave the talk in general conference. It was already in the works and had been announced. We know this is something that had long been on Russell Nelson's mind because of his 1990 general conference talk with the same message. Mormon bad, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, good.
12:38 But he couldn't act on it because the president of the church at the time, Gordon Hinckley, did not share the same view. I think that's pretty much unassalable. But what happened here? Well, October 14th of 2025, just last year, Don Oaks was set apart as the LDS church president. The following month in November, the church signals it is moving against John Delin legally and initiates mediation.
13:10 The very month after John Delin acesed to the reasonable demands of the church, but when it comes to the unreasonable demands, he held firm and would not yield. Those two unreasonable demands are one, take Mormon out of Mormon stories, and two, put a disclaimer at the beginning of every one of their videos. And I'm understanding also not only at the beginning, but they also want it like every 15 minutes or something that would be repeating.
13:38 April 17th of 2026, this is the timeline for this, right? LDS church files lawsuit against John Delin and Open Stories. So what my question here is this. First a few more observations. Given how quickly the LDS church moved against John Delin after Don Oaks became president, the question arises whether Oaks had been sitting on this action for a long time like Nelson had on the use of the word Mormon.
14:12 If so, a second question presents itself. Why didn't Don Oaks proceed against John Delin earlier? The answer may be the same as the other situation we talked about between Nelson and Hinckley with regard to the use of the word Mormon. The reason Don Oaks did not move sooner against John Delin legally is likely, I think, because Russell Nelson did not support the move. Why would Russell Nelson not support Oak's idea of filing a lawsuit against John Delin over the use of the word Mormon? Well, when you praise it that way, the answer seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? Because Russell Nelson didn't care that John Delin used the word Mormon in Mormon stories. Why not?
15:01 Because Russell Nelson had already declared usage of the word Mormon as a major victory for Satan. Why would Russell Nelson want to expend church funds to protect that? And so Don Oaks, if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, Don Oaks had to bide his time chafing against the bit, aware that every day that passed, the church's position against John Delin was weakened by inaction.
15:32 Every day that passed, the church's position with respect to its trademark of the word Mormon was growing harder and harder to defend. And yet, Russell Nelson would not budge on the issue. Little wonder then that the month after Oaks became church president, one of the very first things he did as part of his new administration was sick curtain maki on John Delin and open stories.
16:06 Any thoughts about that, Bill? This idea, this scenario? I I think Nelson saw that it would be contradictory on one hand to be fighting against the word Mormon and then on on the other hand to be fighting for the word Mormon. And so I think I think it is quite obvious that you're right that the whether it's Oak's idea or not, it seems like the church as a whole couldn't make that move until after Nelson's death. Rebecca.
16:37 Yeah, I think we'll see a lot of uh latigious things happening now that Oaks is the prophet. And it's possible that his desire to, you know, go after people and litigate supersedes the idea of the Strand effect, right, that we've talked about before. Maybe Nelson was a little more aware of that. And that is no matter what you mention, people are going to take a look at it, right? I don't know if you know where this comes from, but it was Barbara Stryand.
17:02 somebody flew over and took a picture of her backyard and she was like, I don't want this. So, she sues and that picture was all over the the internet because the lawsuit drew attention to it far more. The image was downloaded, you know, like hundreds of thousands of time. Had she just left it alone, nobody would have seen it. So, it draws attention simply by the fact that you are drawing attention to it. So, I don't know. But but I think you know we have a prophet who is a litigator you know who's a lawyer and I think we're starting to see things like this coincidence? I don't know this one I don't think so but you know I can't prove it but yeah it seems like it might be. This was my final slide on the story. The question that remains is whether Russell Nelson's dislike for the word Mormon has weakened the church's trademark on the word Mormon to the extent that the church will not win its lawsuit against John Delin.
17:58 He could have screwed this up for everybody. President Nelson could have screwed this up for the entire church. I'm suppressing chuckles of glee. But that's the end of that story. You've already given your comments unless you want to say anything else. either of you. I was going to say that, you know, no matter what happens, it's going to be very, very expensive to fight this. I mean, they have unlimited funds, so they can go on and on and on. So, I hope everybody donates to John. His uh legal defense fund is being posted everywhere, and I hope they do because it's going to take a lot. Even if he's in the right and it makes perfect sense to the rest of us, they can still drag it out for a very long time. Very expensive.
18:42 very much so. Yes. Thank you for those words, too. The next story is about Torn by a guy named Jeff Strong. I think this is Bill's story. Is that correct, Bill? It is. And I want to preface this story. We've had so many conversations here on the newscast about all of the data points that talk about absolutely in the United States membership in decline and uh as we've argued much across the world. And yet the church wants to brag about these high numbers of convert baptisms and uh uh number of missionaries serving and and so the question maybe becomes whether it's growing or in decline outside of the United States in ways that make up for the decline inside the United States.
19:25 But tonight, I was so aruck at the data that a believing member Jeff Strong shared across multiple podcasts coming from his book in the research that he did. The book there is on the right, Torn, why people we love are leaving the church and what we can learn from them. Uh, written by Jeff Strong, Forward by Steve Young. So, I think that's interesting. By the way, I see that note. Where is the best place to donate? Soon as I get done with my story, folks, I will put those donation links in the chat uh for the uh for RFM and I and for Rebecca so that you can donate uh to both sides. But uh let me read this the story here first. A new book titled Torn by Jeff Strong is making waves in Mormon circles and for good reason. In a recent interview with Steve Pinecker and Mormon Book Reviews, Strong shared his estimate that roughly 40% of active Latter-day Saints in the United States have stepped away from the
20:23 church since the year 2000. That's that's not 40% of Latter-day Saints. That's 40% of active Latter-day Saints. These are the people who says on who say on the front end of the research that they had uh been active in the church in a significant way. These aren't folks who got baptized and were active for a couple of weeks and then went inactive. These are folks who were living dedicated, faithful, active lives in the church. And he says 40% of them have stepped away from the church since the year 2000. By the way, if you think that data point is a big deal, wait till you see the remaining slides. That's not a small dip. That's a major shift in just 25 years. And according to Strong, some outside surveys suggest the number could be even higher. What makes this more interesting is the tension between what's being discussed publicly and what isn't. Church leadership doesn't release detailed activity or retention data, but it's hard to imagine they aren't tracking it internally. Strong's
21:25 argument is essentially this. The problem isn't just real loss. It's significant decline and pretending otherwise doesn't make it go away. For longtime observers, this lines up with what many are already seeing in their own families and wards. And it also lines up with the widows might report and Jana Ree and her research with the next Mormons and Pew Research also, which is uh come out uh in recent months and years as they keep going back to religious questions to the general public. The only outlet proclaiming dynamic growth is the LDS church itself.
22:02 The book dives into why people are leaving. And it's not just one issue. It's the familiar list of historical problems. And we'll talk about a little bit of that in a minute. It's about truth claims, social issues, and a growing gap between institutional messaging and the lived experience. Strong isn't just sounding the alarm, though. He also offers suggestions on how the church might respond. Though whether those changes are even possible within the current structure is another question entirely. And I'll I'll get to what he suggests is the solution.
22:31 uh kind of an overarching solution with lots of little things that can be done. At the end of the day, torren taps into something that feels increasingly obvious. The church is facing a real retention challenge in the US and it's happening faster than many expected. The question isn't whether people are leaving, it's how many, why, and what, if anything, the institution is willing to do about it. You've seen those changes coming fast and furious. I think they're aware of the same data we're going to show here. First, uh, I I not only listened to the interview with Pineker, I also listened to a couple of, uh, conversations that he had with Kurt Frank, uh, from Leading Saints. And I've known Kurt for years. Him and I had lots of conversations early on in his time doing the Leading Saints podcast when I was still offering criticism of the church from a faithful perspective. I respect Kurt a lot, but Kurt is a faithful Latter-day Saint and Jeff Strong is a faithful Latter-day Saint.
23:28 And during their conversations, here's Frank on the right. Here's Jeff on the left. This is the podcast, one of the two that I listen to. But I'm going to share some slides that they shared in that podcast and show you the data that Jeff got. Jeff got uh he was trying to get I think somewhere in the neighborhood of like 8,000 people uh to take the survey. And I think he ended up with somewhere between like 15 and 25,000 people who took the survey. It was significant. It's not a small number. So here's the first one. What do you value most about church?
24:04 45% said testimony. 33% said community. And then it's these other things. Plan of salvation, atonement, prophets, covenants, temple, scriptures, priesthood, and sacrament. Only 5% of survey responders. Um, and I just want to see if this was active, folks. Uh, let's see here. I don't see where he says that. He didn't mention it in the conversation, but only 5% said the sacrament was the thing they valued most about church. Priesthood, only 10%.
24:41 Scripture is 12%. Again, so if we get up to the top, the top two, I'll say this. If you don't look at Mormonism as a religious system and use their insider language, what would testimony mean to the rest of us? And for me what the way I would define that is please give me certainty about my beliefs. So what is most important to the members of the church who took the survey is can you please the thing that church gives me is certainty about the church being true and second is that it gives me community. Now I think that says a lot because we'll see in the following slides lots of issues with certainty about the church. I'm guessing I'm guessing there was kind of a multiple choice thing because if I'm adding those right, that comes up to more than 100%.
25:26 Yeah, let me go back. Uh I don't know if people were allowed to mention like their top three. I don't know what his uh method was for gaining his answers. I didn't take the survey myself, so I don't know. Uh but yes, I my hunch is that he got somebody got to list their top three or at least mark more than one. Yeah. Um, but 45% of people mention the thing they value the most being testimony. 33% community. Okay. If I go to this next one. Oops. My bad. No, no, no worries. Uh, tension. So, uh, again, leading saints kind of put their thing on it, but this is what's interesting.
26:04 Conflict, belonging, and comfort. Among those who are still participating, nearly half feel significant conflict with my Lord with their belief or faithfulness in the church. More than half do not feel a strong sense of belonging in their ward or branch. More than half said they are not comfortable with the church's culture. This would not have happened in the 80s or the 90s. We live in a different world today. More essentially half or more than half of people are uncomfortable with church culture with feeling like they belong. and almost half of them feel significant conflict at church.
27:06 It has only been in the last several years that General Conference has featured talks about church culture and how it's superior to all cultures in the world. Yeah. And can can I just say that this tracks with faithful social media which I track all the time. This is exactly what they're talking about. These are the issues. They're reaching out in very candid ways with their post, expressing conflict, lack of belonging, lack of comfort, and then people in the comments try to, you know, help them be okay with it, help them stay. These are exactly the issues that people are wrestling with on the faithful side, 100%.
27:43 And it gets way worse. So the next one here, how comfortable are you in the culture? Jeff separated the survey respondents into two groups. He called one more traditional church members. And by the way, whenever he talked about this group, he mentioned they are the people who follow things like Scripture Central. and he named Scripture Central numerous times as he talked about the more traditional church members being this being a a large overlapping group with the kind of people over at Scripture Central. So if we think of like orthodox apologetic those folks 73% of them are very comfortable at church only 22% somewhat comfortable 15% not comfortable even 15% of them not comfortable but the general church population only 11% were very comfortable 29% somewhat comfortable and 60% of general church population. Again, this is Leading Saints and Jeff Strong's uh infographics designed to convey the
29:01 information in Jeff's book. Um this isn't mine. Uh 60% of people not comfortable. Says here the more traditional members are very comfortable with church culture. It is their culture and they generally feel very much at home in it. This is quite different than the general church population who are much less comfortable. Next one. How Christ centered do you think the culture is? The church culture more traditional members 67% uh very Christc centered 30% somewhat Christc centered 1% not Christ centered. Uh but when we get to the general church population, only 27% of the general church population thinks that the church culture, the the the things we do that make us Mormon are Christc centered. 68% somewhat and still pretty low, 4% not. Uh so there's that one.
30:04 What do you think? Why do you think the church I'm sorry, why do you think the culture is the way it is? 42% said tradition, 31% said community, 25% said leadership, 23% said misunderstanding, 20% judgment, 19% generational influence, 13% fear, 13% isolation, 12% complacency, and 12% arrogance. I would have thought I would have saw more positive things up here. Essentially, once you move beyond tradition and community, and those don't necessarily have to be good either.
30:50 Leadership, you know, maybe that's maybe that's neutral, maybe that's positive, maybe that's good, but everything underneath those top three are all things that are obviously negative. Um, that to me was telling. There is a great tension. This was one of the ones they spent a lot of time on. There's a great tension between what most members personally believe is important and what they feel the church culture focuses on or thinks is important, what it expects them to prioritize. And so he put this into three categories. And I'll just show this. The very top one are the uh are the ones where Let me see if I can make sure I say this right.
31:33 So on the the blue, the blue is going to be what I personally believe. So what each respondent in the survey felt was uh most important in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the gray is what those respondents think the church culture prioritizes. And there's almost always an inverse. So on the ones that the the respondents when the respondents replied to this question, they said the things that they prioritize in the gospel are love and care for the poor and needy, love and serve others, strive to be Christlike, believe and follow, believe in and follow Jesus Christ and his teachings.
32:23 the things that they felt like they prioritized and they also thought the church to some extent prioritized was keeping the commandments, living the doctrine of Christ and attend meetings and activities. Now when you get to the bottom segment, these are the things that the member the respondents did not see as a high priority but which they felt like the culture did prioritize.
32:50 Stay on the covenant path. Follow church leaders. Be sealed in the temple. Attend the temple. Keep the word of wisdom. Serve a full-time mission. Dress and groom appropriately. The respondent said, "These things aren't as important to us, but it seems like the culture makes these the most important things." And you can see that the gray there again what they perceive as the church prioritizing and they could care less or at least little about.
33:26 I think that one's an interesting one. And those are like the main markers of being a Mormon or at least that's how I've always understood it. What do you have if you don't have, you know, covered shoulders and no coffee? Yeah. Any thoughts from you, Rebecca, before I go to the next show? Yeah, that's a very telling slide. And I wouldn't even say that's culture. Those things that the church prioritizes, that's what the church is. That's the doctrine. Those are the steps. That's it. And the church is beating to the beat of the wrong drum because you can see that they're completely out of step, completely out of line with what the general membership wants to do, which is care for people. You know, people are important, not these other things, this covenant path. So, there's a huge conflict there. And I don't know if the church sees that, but I think more and more people are seeing it. And that's
34:13 why we're seeing these stats of people walking away. Yeah. So, to what you both just said, the members just want us to do the the little things that are symbolic of what Christ stands for, like you say, being kind to others, being supportive, uh having empathy, holding space for people, uh being accepting, and then you've got this church culture which draws all these lines in the sand. And the people don't want it and but they recognize as you point out RFM the church demands it. The church this is what the church is. This is what it means to be a Mormon. So when you see all the changes the church is making the last few years be aware that they're also seeing this same data. They're aware of it too. So I don't forget. Can I ask you this question right now please?
35:00 Was there any discussion in the interview with this fellow Jeff Strong? Is that his name? Was there any discussion or any attempt to harmonize these findings of his with the now numerous times that church leaders have said the opposite that the church is growing? Yeah. I'll get to this at the end, but the the what he said we need to do with all this data is he said, you know, it's not that the people are demanding that the doctrine change. What the people are demanding is that we be forthright and honest about our history.
35:34 that uh that we not draw uh lines of us and them based on whether pe whether people keep these uh grooming standards or the word of wisdom. Uh the other things that were on the list again I can put it back up. We can go back one and just talk about those for a second. Um, you know, when we look at this one here, uh, they don't want people to feel shame and be, uh, isolated and and marginalized because they don't dress and groom appropriately, because they don't serve a full-time mission, because they don't keep the word of wisdom, because they don't attend the temple, because they don't follow church leaders, because they don't stay on the covenant path. What they want is like, let's just focus on you be as Christlike as you can be. Love and care for the poor and needy.
36:28 Believe and follow Jesus Christ's teachings. Those are much more general, maybe a little more fluff and uh less pointing fingers and telling people they're not cutting it. Um, you know, in my conference review this past conference, just earlier this month, over and over again, I called out general authorities for trying to pretend to talk Christian, but if you just thought about it or knew what the terms actually mean, they were still actually holding Mormonism in their hand.
36:58 Yeah. And so they're trying right now to have it both ways. And one of the things Jeff said is this really is up to the leaders. The members can't do anything about this. The members are indicating what they want. It's up to the leaders to let go of the uh fer, you know, the Pharisee type mentality. Um, it really is up to the leaders to create a church that's much more open and less focused on worthiness. Uh, again, you walk into any other church, I mean, more the average believing Mormon goes, "Well, what would we have if we didn't have worthiness?" Well, walk into any other church and worthiness just isn't a thing. uh the most churches out there acknowledge that we're all broken and and that you know we talk about in Mormonism that uh you know we need the hospital the sick need the hospital but Mormonism doesn't act like a hospital it acts like a courtroom uh that make passes judgment and and issues sentences
37:56 and people want the hospital they don't want to have to check their worthiness or their uh or or all the commandments that they're keeping and and and try to gauge whether one is being really good at being Mormon or not. Just let people show up and let them feel loved and let's speak of Christ, teach of Christ, uh admonish people to be more like Christ but without all the judgment and resist burden.
38:21 Yeah. Yeah. And this is going to be a difficult move for me for for leadership to make to allow members to show up that way. I don't think they can and especially worthiness for children. I mean, let me say it again. worthiness for a child. A child does not need to be judged on whether they're worthy or not. Show me another church that has a handbook like the LDS handbook. That is where you see what they value. That is where you see their rules. That is where you see they're going to hold the members to these certain things to be accountable.
38:51 No other church has a handbook like that. Sections and subsections and subsections of subsections. That's not what people want. Most major municipalities don't have a handbook like that. Yeah. And I thought, okay, that's Kurt Frank. That's on the believing side. He's going to be a little more reserved with Steve. And he wasn't. Uh, so here's some of the things he shared on Steve's podcast. So here's the first one. Uh, this was the graphic that I shared. We talked about at the beginning. Uh, this was what you shared with me this week, Rebecca. US disaffiliation estimate.
39:23 This was Jeff uh Strong's data. Based on our research and corroborating findings in the Pew Research Center religious landscape studies and the Harvard Cooperative Election Study, we estimate that 40% of formerly active and faithful Latter-day Saints have stepped away from the church since 2000. Wow. So, there's that here. I think I think these are worse. Four primary reasons people have stepped away.
39:55 The the wave one lifestyle. I couldn't keep living this way. This is the they wanted to sin. They were lazy. Only 6% of people would fit into that category of those who left. 42% said the problem is church history. The problem is our truth claims are based on historical events. The ethics and morality of our leaders can be discovered in documented history and it doesn't go well. 42% essentially saying that they felt deceived by the actions and events of our leaders in history.
40:42 Uh wave three social issues. So this would be you don't like the way they treated people of color, you don't like how they treat women, you don't like how they treat doubters, you don't like how they treat the LGBT community. 33% stepped away because of that issue. If the church thinks like ah we're just going to maintain a rigid position on being dishonest about our history and lying ourselves about it and continuing to treat people uh who have been marginalized and continue to marginalize them. LDS church. Of those 40% who have stepped away, of those 40%, 75% of them left over church history and how you treat people on the margins because they're different than the white male leadership. Um, and then the final wave, church experience. The church isn't led by Christ. It's not lifegiving.
41:38 almost 20% of people left for that reason. And again, we've all talked about it. We went into church Sunday after Sunday and outside of the sacrament, Jesus hardly gets mentioned. And even when he is, he's a way to lift up and prop up the leaders and to prop up the the Mormon commandments and to prop up doing your genealogy and prop up doing your food storage and all the other things that Mormonism asks you to do. Uh, so to me, this was crazy. Here's another one.
42:05 Faith transition is a serious issue. It's a sustained process. You know, people go, "Oh, that person was lazy. They just made a decision one day and stepped away and they just didn't read their scriptures enough." This is how much time people who leave the church spend wrestling with it. 1% a few hours or weeks. 4% 10 plus hours to several months. 10% 40 plus hours many months. Okay, that's 15% of people. Where are the other 85?
42:41 Well, they're the ones who spent hundreds of hours and several years or limitless hours and five plus years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh the people who leave do so after wrestling with this for a long time. They wanted nothing more than Mormonism to be true. And as they kept looking, they kept feeling disappointed and deceived. This is a problem. This is the what the faithful research is telling the church.
43:14 And by the way, how many Mormons uh I think it already answers that question what you've talked about before, Bill. How many Mormons are in the chamber ready on their way out? how many Mormons are already, you know, on their way up those number of years and hours on the two right-hand columns. Yeah, he's going to tell you here in just a second. And this to me was the slide that uh meant was the most overwhelming to me.
43:40 Uh let me get to that one here. So, this one here is a snapshot where active Latter-day Saints end up. Which statement best describes your current beliefs? This this is among respondents who self-identified as being completely or mostly active. So previously in the survey they said I am completely or mostly active. This is not you. This is not us. This is the folks who go to church on Sunday.
44:11 25% of them said they're true literal believers. They're all in. This is the people who show up on Sunday. 13% said they're active and they believe most things and they're mostly content. So that is 38% of the people who show up on Sunday who believe for the most part and are content for the most part. 18% active no longer believe in the church is what it claims to be. 25% are literal believers allin and just a little less than that 18% still go but they don't believe it. This church is not what it claims to be. And then you've got again they they had I'm sorry I'm saying this wrong. They had described being active uh at one time in their life very active. So 7% are now in another Christian faith. 13% worship a higher power in their own way not with any church helping them. and 23% are agnostic or atheist. So when you look at just those first three, 25, 38, 48, 58, 56. So he's that's what he's got at the bottom there. 56%
45:27 participate in our church, but with very wide ranging beliefs. 25% are all in. 13% are like, "Yeah, some things are true, some things aren't. I'm mostly happy here." 18% of the attenders don't believe it. It's not what it claims to be. Those folks, like you say, RFM, are already in their uh they're already in their hours and hours of research heading down the direction of exiting the church.
45:58 And how many of them used to be in the 25%? I wonder because I look at that chart and I see me me sequentially my career in the church. Yeah. the church has a disbelief problem. Uh just to note that. Okay, that was the last slide. I'll just take this off. Uh he said this is up to the leaders. The the members don't need the doctrine to change. We want families together forever and and we want there to be ordinances and to get baptized and we we want things to work in the church in a similar way to what they do. We just want all the rigidity about what people need to look like, what they need to show up as. I don't know. I don't know what this church does to fix this problem. This looks like something that for them to fix it, they'd have to become Unitarian, right? Universalist. They could always give the truth a try.
46:54 Yeah. Well, I mean, before totally fold and collapse and have to skull away into the darkness, why don't they give the truth a try? Yeah, that's tough. It seems to me that sort of on a grassroots level, you hear people being happy and content in their ward. We have a wonderful bishop. He's very relaxed. We have, you know, that kind of a thing. It's happening in a roulette kind of a way. But as you know, wards shrink, wards are combined, stakes are disbanded, people are all over the place and they're losing that community, which is the thing that they say is most important. And it's just a roulette scenario. So as soon as that goes away, I think people then start marching down that chain that you just saw of saying, "Okay, I don't believe so much. I don't have community." And finally, you just say, "What's it all for?" And maybe what's on the other side, right? There's a place and a time when your brain just kind of breaks open. It happens. And you explore or consider the other side of Mormonism.
47:48 Yeah. So LDS church, that's the data. I'm I'm trying to figure out how uh how high baptism or how Yeah. high high how how high convert baptisms and high missionary numbers fit into that. It it looks like about half the people who attend church have uh things that they recognize don't add up to be true and uh a chunk of them think that essentially altogether it's not true. They just keep going. Um, it'll be interesting to see that, you know, again, last 10 years have been interesting. I think we'll have more change than we've had the last 10 years in the next 10 years. It'll be interesting to see how much Mormonism and its leadership is willing to change this religion so that it is essentially entirely unrecognizable as Mormonism.
48:40 I think I know the two things they will never give up. First is priesthood power and the second is tithing. Yeah. Yeah. authority and tithing, huh? Yeah, I think they're never going to give those up. Everything else is negotiable. So, Rebecca, thank you for that story, Bill. That's really interesting. And I wonder what is going on through these people's heads, these Mormon apologist heads, just since the year began. We're only we're not even out of April yet.
49:07 And they've been doing podcasts about how the church is growing and how all the people out there saying it's not growing. They're wrong. And now they have someone on there saying people are leaving like crazy and they're going, "Wow, this is a real problem." Yeah. Schnell, Dave, is it David Schnell? Is it Mock Schnell? What's his name? The guy on Keystone. I don't know. But it is growing in Africa. That's the thing. And if you look at everything that they promote, it's those mass baptisms. But talk about the church changing Africa and the African saints are shaping the church.
49:41 They are reaching in and shaping it in ways that we can't even predict. And this is not just the LDS church. I think I'll maybe cover this next week. It's shaping all religions as they try to cater to, you know, the last golden expanse, right, of where you can get converts. And it's changing everything. Yeah. I mean, until we can get to Mars, Africa is it, I think, right? You're right. Until we reach the moon or Mars, it's the last frontier for converts.
50:07 It is. Um, but by the way, just to be clarifying the record, Rebecca, I know you're in there pitching for Yeah, it's growing overall, which it's not. That's BS, too. Africa is not making up for the losses everywhere else. But in the latest round of lies that the church told about its membership growth, it specifically said everywhere it's growing. It's growing in America. Yeah, it's growing in Europe. It's growing everywhere more than it's ever grown before. And that's on the record. And that seems to be not true. Okay. or having I just want to say one more thing which is if you picture somebody coming into the church putting on their white jumpsuit getting in the font and getting baptized changing back into their street clothes and heading right out the back door and never coming back. That's the kind of growth that the church is experiencing. People are getting baptized in Africa, maybe a few other countries, but they're not hanging
50:59 around. They're not they're not membership members who are living lifelong uh uh time in the church, serving in callings, serving at the temple. These are folks who get baptized and then disappear. And you, Rebecca, what did you want to say? I was just going to say, you know what else is growing? Pinocchio's nose, right? As they're telling us this, but like I said, I track faithful social media and a lot of people over there are like, "Hey, I just joined." And do you know what kind of people are joining?
51:26 Vulnerable young adults. All of them say, "I'm in college and I was going through a rough time and I met the missionary." That is who's joining. And I think like you say, Bill, very quickly realizing might not be what I thought it was and leaving. But I've never seen a post saying, "Hey, I'm a dad with a family of four and we just joined." Nope. It's vulnerable young adults that are joining.
51:48 All right. Very good. Thank you so much for those comments. There's that story from Bill. We're going to go to the next story from Rebecca and I'm going to ask her as a leadin. Are you planning on denying your father and refusing your name? That's exactly what I'm going to do right here on this podcast. [laughter] Yeah. No, like I said, the biggest news happened while we, you know, took 420 off, right, for different reasons. And the biggest stories came out. Um, and of course, this is for you RFM. What's in a name that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. And of course, we are talking about a name change for the young women, right? This is a huge deal. So, I thought I'd go into a little bit briefly of the history of it. Now, this is my era. Since 1972, this is how the girls age groups have been categorized. We had the beehives 12 to 13, a symbol of um harmony, cooperation, working hard,
52:43 age 14 to 15. Um they were Oh, the mutual improvement association not missing an action. [laughter] Although it was always it was always strange to me when I was joining the church and going to the church dances and they had the MIA they had the regular MIA flags the MIA P the black flags that would be on um flag poles but then it's MIA at church and that's what they called what they went to on Wednesday evenings. It was MIA and I called it MIA. I was one of those, right? And I was also MIA a lot because I would tend to hide in the bathroom so I didn't have to go to my class. I was one of those. So, boy, my dad used to like actually go in the women's bathroom and say, "Rebecca, get to Sunday school." So, yeah, he was really cute trying to get me in there.
53:26 He said that every time he went into the women's bathroom. Yeah. Well, you know, um, so that was age 14 to 15. And then Laurels, age 16 to 17, you know, and and there were very distinct identities. You graduated when you turned that age. Each group had a presidency. It was very organized. Each group had a leader, advisors, and you know, they were big groups. Back in my day, like each class might have 10 to 12 girls in it. Not anymore. So, I thought I'd do a little brief history. From 1870 to 1920, it was the Young Ladies Department of the Ladies Cooperative Retrenchment Association, the Y LO TLC.
54:05 Anyway, you can see what it was. Yeah, exactly. And it was organized in 1870 under the direction of Brigham Young, of course. And the name is later shortened to the young lady's mutual improvement association. And that's where MIA comes from, right? And that stretched, you know, forward into the century. And in this one, um, they were kind of all met together. I have a picture here, AI, of course, of pioneer girls meeting together. The Beehive Girls were a summer group for some of the younger girls. I thought that was interesting.
54:33 That's where that name started. So 1920 to 1970 and I don't know if anyone in the chat is old enough to remember this era but I have some you know 1920s looking girls sitting there. The name was the young ladies mutual improvement association and it becomes the young woman's mutual improve uh yeah the mutual improvement association in 1934. And now there are two classes the beehive girls for the younger and the gleaners. Do you guys remember the golden gleaners? I'm old enough to remember people in my ward talking about that. I never knew exactly what it was, but that was the older girls group. So, they were definitely organized in that way. Now, we move forward to my era. I entered young women in 1978 and the 70s all the way up to 2019, the name was the young woman's um young women's organization. They changed it.
55:27 They got rid of MIA, although we still called it that. There was a little transition there. And at that point, you've got the beehives, the Miami, and the laurels. And that's how it was all the way up until 2019. I mean, talk about no change. It was pretty set in stone. It been that long that it has been that long. Look at that. 1970. Yeah. To 2019. And it's been seven years since they dropped the names entirely. I didn't know it was that long ago. No, this is what I'm going to show you.
55:54 It's very interesting. So, in 2019, we all remember this. The new 2-hour block was announced to great rejoicing and the young women now met every other Sunday. Now that's very different. They used to meet every single Sunday in their classes with their leaders every Sunday. But now, great rejoicing. I have a picture of a girl sleeping in every other Sunday, right? They're only meeting and getting in touch with their leaders every other Sunday, although they do still have activities during the week. Okay. What else happened in 2019?
56:28 I had not put this together. After much pondering and praying, as it says in these articles from 2019, they got rid of the names and they went to simply young women, right? And they talk in these articles about how it's going to unify everyone. This is under the direction of the leadership. This is so important that they don't have any separate names, but they're all together in unity. This is what the Lord wants.
56:52 They're just going to call them young women, right? That's and they've dropped the other names. Okay. So, I I have to say it's very interesting. Um I said, "Where does that leave the young women?" No age-based names. Instead, referring to children as women. I have a whole soapbox I could do, but I won't right now about how inappropriate it is to call children young women. And also, they're only meeting twice a month. But all the articles I read said, "This is inspired.
57:21 This is an incredible program. They're all meeting together." Now, I think it's because they didn't have enough young women. This is what I think. They didn't have enough anymore to divide them into groups. They had to have the meeting all together. And I've seen this anecdotally everywhere. They had maybe one beehive, two mameades, and you know, three laurels. They had to put them together in a group. What's interesting is that just a few days before the announcement of the new names came out, there was an article in the Tribune. What a coincidence talking about, you know, what are our names? Who are we? What's our identity? I guess they forgot how in 2019 it was revealed and under the direction of leadership that they were young women that was important to show their unity. So I made this meme says, you know, but what's our name? And we don't really have a name. So how's Desra at Book and Etsy going to know how to make cute merch? That's important when it comes to these young women's name,
58:09 right? So some of the names that were thrown out in this article just a week ago, Wayfinder, Truthfinder, Lightfinder, um priestess, prophetists, right? disciples, believers, doers, they're trying so hard to find something that's going to match um the boy's names, right? Because a boy, a deacon, right? In other churches, that's a position of importance. A priest, another position of importance, and a teacher, also somebody, you know, that has some importance. Um, so they were trying to throw out things that they thought maybe the girls could be. This picture is interesting to me. This was in the article. I don't know if you guys have noticed, but every time they show the African saints, they're all wearing the same fabric dresses. I'm talking in Relief Society and Young Women's. And I don't know if anybody knows, are they literally purchasing clothing and and dressing them all alike? It's been I've noticed this a couple times. It's kind of a little tangent there. So, all
59:06 right. Um Daisy's, Lily's, Dalia, um what is her name? Oh, artist Cap suggested daughters of God. Do you see anything wrong with that? for all of them. Yes. Daughters of God. Oh, I see. Yes. The anacronism. Yeah. The Yeah. Sorry. The acronym. Yeah. Dog. We definitely don't want that. So, they've been trying and the girls have been saying, "We really want to go back to something that, you know, that sets us apart." So, all of a sudden, all of a sudden, dialing it back. What is old is new again. March 2026, the LDS church announces that young women's meetings are going back to every single Sunday.
59:46 Right? Remember how I showed you the articles in 2019 where they said it's ordained the two-hour block? And no, now they're taking it back to exactly how it was pre209. The young women will meet for 25 minutes each Sunday, every Sunday with their leaders, right? And they say that's really important. And again, they prayed and this is under the direction of the leadership. just flipping it back to how it was pre209, but it's inspired. God has a lot of time on his hands as he just kind of flips things back and forth. I don't know. He must be sort of bored. Um, and then what happens next? The new names come out. I have a litmus test for information that the church puts out. If I think it's a joke or somebody's posting it and it's not real, that's my litmus test. And this is what I thought when I first read these names. I'm going to ask you, Bill, first and then RFM. What did you think when you first read the names?
1:00:43 I thought they were kidding. I thought it had to be a joke. Um, I don't know that I have a strong opinion. Um, I'd love to know, RFM, what do you think about these builders of faith, messengers of hope, and gatherers of light? They're awful. These are not names. These are commandments. Yes, these are directives. These are instructions. Yep. Tasks too long. Yep. Priest. So, you get priest, deacon, and um teacher, right?
1:01:13 And over there, you've got, you know, uh go forth and conquer gatherers of light. Why? Why the why not? If you have to do this, just do light gatherers. Okay. Yeah. And I think they'll start calling them gatherers, messengers, and builders. But as people pointed out, these are all tasks that the girls have to do, right? Like you said, they're not they're not an authoritative title like a priestess. They are tasks and they're super affected. And we're not the only ones that have noticed this. Something here. Yeah, go ahead.
1:01:44 Sorry. They had to do that because under the old scheme, there was too much resting on their laurels. And I just want to say this to I'm just gonna take this down for a second, okay? About that idea, daughters of God. Hang on a second here. Let me take that off there. That too. Okay. I don't know if you remember a little movie from 1984 called Ghostbusters. Okay. So, she's a dog.
1:02:10 She's a dog. That's what it reminded me of. Continue with your story, please. Continue with my story. All right. We'll breeze through this. I have a lot of pictures because it's kind of funny. Um Yeah. And I made that picture over on the side because yeah, the the the names are just so whimsical, fanciful, you know, like a fairy tale. Of course, they're for the girls, right? Um, but again, their focus is to prepare them for Relief Society. Everybody says that in all the articles. This is what the focus is. Um, so let's talk about the aftermath of what I like to call bof maf, right?
1:02:43 I'm sorry. I've gotta ask you this because you're the lady here. Okay. I am. And you've been through this whole system. Oh, yeah. But there's this emphasis like we are preparing the young women to go to relief society and that's where you're going to I mean you're going to die there because you're never getting out of relief society. No relief society means marriage and children. That's what relief society means. You're on that.
1:03:03 That's what I want to ask you. Are the young women so as they're called okay in the church to your understanding are they as excited about going into relief society as the church seems to think they are? Yeah. I don't think so. I do not think so. Of course, I never had daughters, but yeah, I don't think so. So, of course, I had to make the picture that now the young women look like elves and fairies and fairy tale princesses. The Both Mogaf. That's exactly. So, let's talk about what has happened since this has been announced. Um, the young women's president has come out and said these are not ornamental names. I push back and say these are exactly what an ornamental name is. Gatherer of light.
1:03:46 This is Yeah, this is absurd. And you'll see that the faithful members are also cringing at all of these. So, I designed these little t-shirts. Of course, maybe I should open an Etsy shop. I don't know. And everybody wondered, how do these names who came up with these names? Well, the young women's president is ensuring us, assuring us that it was the presidency, that committee, the advisory council, and five 20 year olds.
1:04:11 Five 20 year olds who were recently in young women. and they came up with the the names and they're tearful about it. The leadership approved it. It's what God wants the women in the church to be called. So, let's talk about the merch. Hours, literally hours after the announcement came out, the merch started rolling in. There's even a song. This lovely young woman here has written a song, Gathers of Light. Um, I'm just going to scroll through these. I'm not making this up hours later. We've got keychains. We've got plaques. We've got wall hangings. We've got t-shirts. We've got necklaces. We've got bracelets.
1:04:46 We've got earrings. I'm waiting for bath mats and doormats. This kind of thing pissed Jesus off in the New Testament. Exactly. It reminds me of ponderized. Do you guys remember that? Ponderize where the general authority gave the talk where he coined the phrase ponderize and within seconds a website popped up. You know, it's kind of like think celestial, everything's merch. So, I have not seen it on Desireette Book yet. This is all Etsy, but it is everywhere. Now, what's the reaction from the faithful? The reaction is the face here. Uh, you can read these. Uh, did they not run this past the correlation? I hate it. They're actually using the word hate. This is embarrassing. This is cringy. And I mean, these are just there are pages of these kind of comments from faithful social media. I'm sure a lot of you guys have seen this where they're like, "What were they thinking? I don't want my daughter I will not make her be called a gatherer of light. That's embarrassing.
1:05:41 I don't want her called that." So, they are not buying it. No matter how much the names were inspired, they're not buying it. Some of them are like, "Okay, we'll just make do. It's what they want us to be." They are not buying it at all. Are you guys, either of you, surprised at this reaction to these names? No, they're awful. Yeah, they are awful. That's another word that's used a lot. These are awful.
1:06:02 Cringy. I hate them. I mean, very strong. They're not even trying to gaslight themselves. That's pretty incredible. Um, one person pointed out, um, I have seen the German and Portuguese translations they use for gather of light, bearer of light, which is another name for Lucifer. So there you go, in another language. One of the reasons they said they chose these names is because they easily translate into other languages. I don't know if that's so true. If the older girls have to be known as Lucifer, I thought that Well, I guess it is true after all that Satan is abroad in the land.
1:06:34 I guess that's it. And then the memes. Oh my goodness. So we could go on for hours about the memes. People started thinking up new names for the young men, the collector of the tithing slips, the bringers of the bread, the blessers of the bread. This whole of thing these whole prepositional phrases as names here are I think this might be some D&D or magic the gathering cards builders of faith. I mean, this is exactly this whimsical, magical, imaginary, right? A myth, mythological, which maybe that's kind of accurate for the religion.
1:07:07 Somebody said, "Let's get Stephanie Meyer, the author of Twilight, on this. Let's have her put out some books, Builders of Faith, Messengers of Hope, Gathers of Light." I mean, people are just having a heyday with this. Um, uh, are you sure that's better than not having a name? Says one of the memes. There are just so many out there. And one post I thought was really interesting and I'll end on this.
1:07:28 Brandon Sanderson is a very popular fantasy novelist. LDS, a lot of people read what he writes. Some people on the faithful side said, "Oh, this is just like Brandon Sanderson, you know, this alternate reality. This is one of his books, Oathbringer." So, it's just this whimsical fantasy mythological. It's a disservice to the young women. It certainly does not give them any kind of weight or importance. It's just fluff and that's my opinion. Anyway, he should have named his book bringinger of oaths. Bringer of the oaths.
1:08:01 He's got oathbrer one word that could have been cool. Light gatherer one word. They're saying that they may sort of refer to it, you know, in the wards like that. Hope messenger any of that though. I mean, and maybe this will appeal to the kids that are into fantasy, which a lot of them are. Um, but one of my a person that I know who is um a copywriter in charge of a whole copywriter department said, "You know what? This is branding. These phrases are going to attract people on social media. They sound really cool. They sound really exciting. Do you want to be a gatherer of lights?" So, she thinks that maybe they're doing it all for the branding because it sounds exciting. So, I don't know. Final thoughts on this story. It was big big news last week. What do you think, Bill?
1:08:46 Yeah. What what I'll add is with the male side of this, the boys, you get these things that sound like church offices, right? You get deacon, teacher, priest. So, if you're an outsider looking in and you hear those words, you think like adult male leader in the church, a deacon, a teacher, priest. You don't think 12-year-old boys. Yeah. 16-y old boys. You just don't. it it it's going to be impossible for the church to give women ch uh girls the same kinds of titles because they don't have the priesthood and they don't have these kinds of offices. So, you have to get creative. And I I'll say like Laurel and Beehives and Mayades, I thought that was bad.
1:09:33 And I don't I don't think this is any better, but I didn't have much to compare it to. I mean, my beehives and laurels uh was sort of silly names. They're not anything in comparison to deacon, teacher, and priest. I will say this last thing. Uh it still is sort of degrading to uh the female side of the church because oh, you get to be a messenger. Oh, you get to be a gatherer. Remember back 10,000 years ago when the men were the hunters and the women were the gatherers. So here's the gatherers and here's the messengers. And you only have one of these three that actually has some degree of uh actually being in charge and building something. Um, and that happens to be the youngest age group, the builders of faith. So, by the time you get to 16 or older, you're just a gatherer again. You gather, you can be a messenger.
1:10:22 You're going to need female priesthood at some point if you're going to have things that are equal. I think it'd be very difficult for Mormonism to come up with anything that people would generally like. I like the early idea of doughnut makers of hope. [laughter] Makers of the donut. Makers of the donuts. You have makers of donuts. That's that's the new Relief Society name. [laughter] They're working on that.
1:10:50 Okay. So, thank you so much for that story. You know, there's a new accuser who emerges in the Wade Kristofferson case and the LDS church addresses what his apostle brother knew. This ended up being a little bit more complicated than I had anticipated when I first started researching for this, which is my way of saying we are 1 hour and 11 minutes into this. And you know, Wade is not going anywhere. He's on ice. He was denied bail. And I want to just try and skip this story for now and see what it is that we have left on the other side. And I can revisit this next week easily enough. It's not like it's time sensitive or well, you know, you got Well, it is kind of. You got this uh this lady coming forward and saying that Wade molested her when she was in 8th grade back in the early 1990s. That's a big deal.
1:11:46 So, it is a bit um that part's timesensitive, but let's go ahead. I'm going to remove this from the stage here, and I'm going to advance it to the next story. It ends up being a lot of slides. I'm doing a lot of advancing. Oh my gosh, there's more. Yeah, you'll thank me for this. But let's try this. This is the next story. I hope it's not Rebecca's. Is it Rebecca's? No, it's me. So, this is uh this was in the Olympic Herald. LDS church claims no legal duty in interstate child sex abuse cover up lawsuit. By the way, notice the tone in this uh journalistic Olympic Herald.
1:12:30 This isn't Mormons. This isn't ex Mormons. This is the general public and just the local media uh if they are the Olympic Herald. And you can just sense they're frowning upon and having a little bit of uh I guess in the Mormon parliament a stuper of thought as they try to figure out what the Mormon church is trying to do here. But a newly filed legal brief in a child sex abuse lawsuit is drawing sharp attention to the to the LDS church's legal strategy. In this case, the church argues it had no legal duty to intervene or protect the victim.
1:13:12 That's that's the opposite, by the way, of what the church says about what it does in terms of child abuse. It says it's it it goes out of its way to protect the victims. Nobody does it better. It's the gold standard. Um, it says, "No legal duty to intervene or protect the victim even after leaders were allegedly made aware of ongoing abuse. The lawsuit centers on claims that local leadership failed to report abuse and in some instances may have discouraged reporting altogether." Of course, they did. The brief states plainly, quote, "The absence of a duty to prevent intrafamily abuse," unquote, is a deficiency that could not possibly be cured by the plaintiff's lawsuit. In other words, according to the church's own legal framing, local bishops and stake presidents can be explicitly informed that a child or a teenager in their congregation is being repeatedly raped by her parent or someone else, an uncle, a neighbor, and they are legally free to do absolutely nothing. That's their legal argument.
1:14:29 The amended lawsuit alleges that Washington State President Wde Picket not only failed to report the abuse, but actively discouraged the victim's mother from going to civil authorities. I wonder where he got that advice. I wonder if he called the hotline cuz that's what they tell you. How does the LDS church justify a religious leader allegedly advising a mother to keep quiet about child sex abuse?
1:15:00 The LDS church's brief characterizes Pickicket's alleged actions as just bad advice, arguing that quote, "Bad advice is not actionable and does not create a new risk of harm," unquote other than the next time that child is molested or raped. Uh the attorneys go a step further arguing that evaluating a clergyman's advice advice would violate the first amendment because other courts have rejected clergy malpractice claims. The LDS church essentially argues that its clergy has a constitutionally has a constitutionally protected right to tell a parent not to report the rape of their child.
1:15:50 The case becomes more complicated because the alleged abuse crossed state lines. That's always a big deal. Plaintiffs argue that the church leaders in Oregon were informed of ongoing abuse but failed to report it despite stricter mandatory reporting laws in that state. If proven, that could undermine the church's defense and raise serious questions about institutional responsibility when abuse is known but not acted upon.
1:16:20 At its core, the lawsuit isn't just about one case. It's about where responsibility begins and ends for a religious institution. The church maintains it encourages reporting and compliance with the law, but this legal stance suggests a narrower view of obligation. In other words, they're talking out both sides of their mouth. But what's new? The outcome of this case could have broader implications, especially in similar cases, especially as similar cases continue to test how far religious protections extend when they collide with child safety and mandatory reporting expectations. Now, I just want to note here on this last slide, this is just a cutout of the article itself. And I just want you to notice the tone. I'm going to read this. I want you to notice the tone of this uh of this herald. uh news article um the policy paradox. This was the last section of their article.
1:17:20 Perhaps the most logically twisted argument in the brief concerns the LDS church's own internal abuse policies. The plaintiff points out that the LDS church has explicit written policies directing leaders to report the abuse to civil authorities. By the way, that's not true. The bishop has one set of rules. He's to call the phone number. If the average today, not in the past, by in the past, everyone was supposed to tell the bishop. He calls the phone number. He talks to Curtain and McConi.
1:17:56 Today, the church tells its general membership to report abuse to civil authorities, but that's not what they tell the bishop to do. So they so they're claiming here that the LDS church has explicit written policies directing leaders and I would argue with that to report abuse to civil authorities and stating that abuse cannot be tolerated in any form. Well, I will say their approach in this legal case seems to be that abuse can be tolerated in some forms. U the LDS church's attorneys dismiss these internal rules entirely. They argue that having a policy against abuse does not mean that the LDS church has undertaken a legal duty to actually enforce it.
1:18:43 In a dizzying display of legal acrobatics, that's why I titled the story that in a dizzying display of legal acrobatics, the LDS church warns the court that holding them accountable for failing to follow their own anti-abuse policies would quote punish those organizations for trying to stop abuse that they have no legal duty to stop unquote. I can't make sense of that by you can please please please step in and explain to me why on one hand they say even though we say we're there to prevent abuse we're not obligated to prevent abuse and if you force us to prevent abuse like we promised to prevent abuse then we won't be able to prevent abuse.
1:19:34 Here's what the whole distinction that's being made here is legally liable. Are they legally liable in this case? Okay. Everything else is morality. And I agree with um all of that that the church has now put itself in this position of saying over and over again because they keep getting caught, you know, not protecting kids and protecting the predators and it hits the headlines.
1:19:57 Over and over again, they've had to reissue this dumbass statement of theirs, and it's only dumbass because they don't mean it, about how their number one priority and the golden standard and protect the kids and we're disgusted and these are so important and we do everything that we can, which is all nonsense, of course, which this case demonstrates in spades. I want to underline all of that. But all they're arguing is that we didn't have a duty to protect. Okay. Tort law, which I studied under Professor Wellbourne back. It was a a fullear class my first year, 8687 at UT. There are four elements to a tort or an injury case like this, personal injury, whatever you want to call it, this kind of case. Four elements. The first is to succeed, you have to have a duty. In other words, you have to show that the defendant has a duty not to hurt you or damage you, right? They got a duty. Second is a breach of that duty.
1:20:52 They have a duty but they breached it in some way through negligence. Uh proximate cause between the breach and the damages. And damages are the fourth element. If you've got duty breach of that duty, proximate cause that causes the damages. In other words, it's the breach of the duty that directly caused the damage that you're complaining of. That's the proximate cause part. Then you've got a lawsuit. If you don't have any one of those four, you're out. So, what they're attacking, which is what you would expect a law firm to do for a client, is attack any of these that you possibly can. And the one they're attacking is number one on the list and saying the church never had a duty to protect in the first place. Okay? They don't have a legal duty to. Are they hypocritical? Are they showing how little they care about their children by this happening over and over and they're not doing anything about it? Yes. But the argument is different than that. The argument is they have no legal duty to do it. Therefore, they can't be held
1:21:44 legally liable in the suit. It should be dismissed. And that's why it says in that very strange paragraph in a dizzying display that one of legal acrobatics, the LDS church want warns the court that holding them accountable for failing to follow their own anti-abuse policies. In other words, these are the policies. They don't make us legally liable, but we want to try and do this to protect the kids. This is what the church is saying. would quote punish those organizations like the church for trying to stop abuse even though they have no legal duty to stop it. All right? In those cases in which they have no legal duty to stop abuse, holding them to their policies would punish them for trying to stop legal abuse for which excuse me, sexual abuse for which they are not legally responsible. So regardless of whether you agree with that, that's the church's position. Does that make it clear what they're at least trying to say?
1:22:36 Yes. But I don't understand in real terms how if you punish someone for not doing what they said they were going to do that that will lead to them not doing what they said they were going to do more often. Well, we're not going to have these policies anymore. Yeah, you're right. You're right. And you put that very well. They don't they don't follow their policies. It's all ridiculous really. And I understand what you're saying.
1:23:01 You're saying that they again, if I hear you right, if you guys keep making us liable, we'll just remove the policies. Well, then you're not the gold standard. If, by the way, I'll just note this last two sentences because I think these guys hit it on the head. The message appears to be clear. The LDS church's policies exist as public relations ideals, not actionable commitments to the safety of its most vulnerable members. Granted, yeah, they're not the gold standard. The court will soon decide whether to grant the plaintiff's motion to amend the complaint or if the LDS church's defense that it owes no duty to children abused by their own parents will shield it from accountability once again. Right.
1:23:48 Yeah. So, this must be a situation where the parents are abusing the kids in the home. It's not at church. It's not under any kind of church activity or anything like that. It's simply they knew they didn't report. Are they responsible for what the parent is doing outside their role as a member of the church? Yeah. What do you think, Rebecca? [clears throat] Yeah, I'm not surprised, but I'm glad that this article tried to untwist that knot of what they're trying to say. And I think that's why so many people are talking about this because they kind of say, are they really saying what I think they're trying to say? Kind of what we just said. So either way, the children are falling through the cracks. There are too many loopholes and as almost every one of our stories is about children are being hurt.
1:24:32 I don't think there's a story although this reporter certainly leaves reporting kind of behind and goes into opinion and editorializing. Um I think I agree with everything that this reporter said with the clarification which I offered. But yeah, I cannot imagine a case that more highlights the church's hypocrisy in saying how much they care about kids than the gold standard. Yeah, you're not the gold standard.
1:25:00 Well, maybe if we had more gatherers of light, these things would go well. We need gatherers of gold. Gatherers of gold. I like that. Kind of goes back to Joseph Smith and everything. It's nice. Gigi. Uh oh, this is Rebecca's story now. Uh, you know, I am really glad that I don't have to take all these stories. It's because if I did, I'd be talking from the beginning to the end. There's another sexual abuse case involving a Mormon as the suspect and a Mormon who's a professor and a professor at BYU. Idaho, right? This one is Idaho. No, this is not Idaho.
1:25:39 It's just the Idaho news. Yeah. I didn't I didn't I thought this was BYU proper. Yeah. But now, so I had to get up and let Angry Alice out for a minute. Did you skip Wade Kristofferson? I did it so fast that you you missed it completely. It was like that. It was really quick. Boy, we move at light speed here. Yes, this is a BYU professor arrested on suspicion of various child sex crimes.
1:26:04 And you're right, RFM usually covers this. Uh a BYU professor and Sunday school teacher. And I did confirm that yes, he is a Sunday school teacher, although I wasn't able to confirm if he was a youth Sunday school teacher. So I I don't know that for sure. He was arrested for various child sex crimes after engaging with an officer in an undercover operation. So this is he thought he was talking to a minor, but he was actually talking to an agent.
1:26:27 This is Stephen Henry McKeen, 32, of Springville. He is a mathematics professor at BYU. and somebody alerted the police uh to a message that he had left on a message board where he says, "Hey, I'm 34 in Utah here. Um, seems like you might be fun." The officer posing as a 17-year-old girl went through, you know, how they kind of do these and kind of made sure that he knew that the person he was talking to was 17 and and the guy asked for pictures and they were able to provide something.
1:26:57 Anyway, back and forth, back and forth um until finally they were able to get a warrant, go get his phone, go to his house, and um went to his address. That's right. And so he uh has been arrested and he's in the Utah County jail because of his inappropriate um things that he did thinking that this was a minor. And I was able to find out that he was a deacons adviser for two years prior to this. He was just barely made a Sunday school teacher on March 8th and he was ar he was released on April 22nd which I believe is the day right after all this information came out.
1:27:37 You know typically Rebecca these go down with an invite and the person comes over and usually the uh the mark the person who's not right ask them to bring something from you know the sex store like lubricant or condoms or something like that. Pardon if the kids are in the room. Uh, and then he is uh grabbed when he pulls into the neighborhood and parks and you have him with all that stuff in the car as showing his intent. Yeah, I wondered about that because this was just online with the officer and then they went right to his home.
1:28:11 Well, whatever the charges are are going to be I mean you can get a charge of attempted uh rape of a child in Washington based on the facts that are not present that I talked about which usually are. But here, what do you have? Communication with a minor for immoral purposes, which is a misdemeanor in Washington. I don't know what it would be in Utah, but it's not quite as nowhere near as serious offense, I think, as if they had caught him trying to complete the deal.
1:28:38 Right. And they could have manipulated that scenario. They could have said, "Let's meet purchase this." I don't Why does there have to be a house? I don't understand. Yeah. I don't know why they had to do that either. But the bottom, the thing that uh says, he might have terminated it himself, by the way. And that's true, too. um he's been on placed on administrative leave effective immediately. And then they go into their statement. This is BYU. We condemn abuse in any form. You know, they say this every single time, you know, but I thought this was interesting. This next slide, there was something circulating.
1:29:07 I don't know if any of you saw this. It was sort of a pseudo letter written by an HR person supposedly from BYU. Um but to get across the point that BYU has, you know, you have to have a temple recommend, you have to sign that oath in order to work there. But what have they really done? What they've done is they've gotten rid of people that are LGBTQ allies, people like that. And who have they maintained? And there's a whole list of people at BYU that have been arrested for similar things. So really, what are they doing at BYU?
1:29:39 Wait a second. Can you go back to that that slide? Yeah. What are you talking about? Stephen McCain. That's the guy we were just talking about. He just got arrested, right? We've covered all of these guys. Yeah, we've covered all James Clay. Uhu. What about him? He was a professor. Uhhuh. Yeah. These are all professors that have been arrested for various, you know, crimes against, you know, minors, students. And the point that the these letters are trying to make is just that who are they keeping and who are they getting rid of? They're getting rid of people that, you know, are allies um with the temple recommend questions and everything. So, I think they need to maybe look at what they're overlooking, right? So the bottom line here is over the same five-year window, the university has retained until external law enforcement intervened professors who sexually abuse their student interns, possess child sexual abuse material, solicited minors online, and weaponized the Sunday school calling for
1:30:34 active access to underage women. So again, the BYU policies, who do they keep and who do they let go? It just doesn't seem to make any sense. Wow. I know that's a shocking story. Yeah, it's really upsetting. Of course, it's uh we have so many and here we got a professor at BYU doing this kind of stuff and he's in mathematics. You look at the guy. Let this be a lesson to everybody. I say this all the time.
1:31:01 Yeah. Can I say it again? Look at this guy. He looks so innocent and sweet, doesn't he? Yes, absolutely he does. Look at Yep. So, if you would trust this guy to babysit your kids, then you'd probably be like almost anybody else if you didn't know about his arrest and what you know his proclivities are. You can't trust anybody out there. Your kids are your most priceless possessions and you just can't trust anybody. Sorry.
1:31:34 All right. Thank you for that story. Was that the end of it, Rebecca? Uh-huh. That's it. Okay. We'll keep you updated as we learn more. Oh, here's a story by Bill Real talking about my neck of the woods, Seattle. It's a weird story. The wards are getting sold like crazy, but the temple's getting built as those wards are being sold off. Um, yeah. Anyway, I'll just note here this I got the there twice. Sorry about that. The Seattle Times is reporting that the LDS church plans to sell several meeting houses in the Seattle area even as it continues moving forward with a new temple uh being constructed nearby. The plan includes selling roughly half a dozen chapels across western Washington. A move officials say is part of an effort to better align buildings with current attendance patterns and geographic needs. Whatever the hell that means.
1:32:24 I think it means there's nobody going to the church anymore, so you may as well get some money off of it. Sounds like declining membership. Uh but nope, it's growing everywhere, everyone. Everywhere. Uh all right. So while framed as a routine real estate framed as routine real estate management, the timing raises eyebrows given the simultaneous push to build additional temples in the region. As we know, chapels and temples serve completely different purposes. Chapels are for weekly worship and reflect local participation levels. Temples on the other hand are symbolic and regional.
1:33:01 Again, many here in this audience understand that you can have fewer congregations meeting each week while the church still expands temple infrastructure. And uh I'll just note here, this is where the title came from. This was an image that Rebecca sent. Not sure where you got this, Rebecca, but the math the math is not mathing. Temple coming soon. Ward buildings being sold. So I just note here still the optics are hard to ignore. Selling off chapels suggests decline and consolidation.
1:33:34 That lines up with the story we shared earlier. Uh the broader trends seen in parts of the United States where Mormons in religious growth generally have slowed or plateaued. At the same time, the church continues announcing new temples with this one in Washington state. This one is planned in Mary'sville, adding several already operating or adding to several already operating or under construction. Put together, it indicates membership decline with more emphasis on public image and symbolic presence. Now, whether that's strategic adaptation or quiet contraction, I guess depends on how you read it. But I will say this, it seems like a contradiction. You build temples to be able to provide ordinances in areas where there's not a temple yet, but where the membership can support that. At the same time, you're selling ward buildings left and right, indicating that all of the good, faithful, believing, active Mormons are in steep decline in that great state of Washington. Your thoughts are of them in your backyard there? Well, you know, the
1:34:39 Mormon doctrine never had anything to do with reality and still doesn't, but at least what they did on the ground had something to do with reality. You know, the buildings and everything. Uh, but this makes absolutely no sense. Just to explain for anybody who does not know or needs a refresher on this, the chapels, these word buildings that the church just sold six of in the Seattle area, these are feeders into temples. You're not going to have anybody in a temple who's not every week at the ward building. This is going to church. You have to go to church regularly in order to qualify to go to the temple among many other things. These are feeders. So losing six of your feeders to the temple and building another temple anyway.
1:35:26 That's why the math is not mapping here. Your thoughts, Rebecca? Yeah, I'll tell you the backstory on that meme I made. So my friend, my good high school friend who lives right there where they're going to build the new temple, uh, recently stepped away from the church with her recently released bishop husband. So they're an exact example of what's happening there. She's the one that texted me and said the math is not mapping. She was kind of mad about this, you know, and she lives in the area and she knows it's shrinking. She's one of the ones that shrunk, right? And she was a temple worker just six months ago and she said the math is not mapping and and this is a huge example. There are not enough people there to support a temple. I wonder if they've done an algorithm of how many people it takes to support a temple because you're right, RM stakes are shrinking, wards are shrinking. Utah is an example of, you know, Rob Peter to pay Paul, right? The Lynen temple and the Mount Temponogus temple. They had to
1:36:18 take so many people from Mount Temponogus here in Utah to staff Lynen. They're just shellgaming it, right? They're just moving people around. I would think that'd be even more difficult out in the mission field as it's called. But it's absolutely ridiculous to build a temple in an area where they're selling six buildings. Although I did see in the article or one of the articles about this, somebody said there is tremendous growth, but there's also migration and that's what why they're having to sell some buildings. So what does that mean?
1:36:45 People are joining and moving out of state instantly. It just seems liation is the great lie that the Mormon church has decided to land upon to explain why it is that numbers are shrinking everywhere. See, the numbers are shrinking in Washington because they're moving to Utah. And the numbers are shrink shrinking in Utah because they're moving to Washington. Y everybody's moving. All the Mormons are moving to some place and we've sort of lost track of them, but that explains it. They're in transit. They're on migrating people.
1:37:21 Yes. All going to Africa. [laughter] [snorts] Oh, right. So, this is uh we're getting to the end here. By the way, Rebecca, I was just joshing with you. I said I was not going to cover that story because it's too long and complex. I just touched on the main part of it and I'll revisit it on a future episode perhaps next week. Good. I hope you will because there was a lot of good stuff in there. I thought was I gone that long to take Angry Alice out.
1:37:46 Yeah, I was just kidding. You weren't gone that long. I hope um is Oh, this is the debate that Bill had with Robert Gurr. He's great about is LDS theology true. This was last You missed me, didn't you, Rebecca? I did actually. I miss both of you. He's great. Robert Gurr in the debate with Bill Reel. Is LDS theology true? It ran uh last Friday night. It's almost 3 hours and I think Robert Gur is probably still walking funny after the reaming he took from Bill Real. It was an astonishing tour to force of ineptitude by Robert Gurr in defending the church and uh all you have to do is watch it.
1:38:30 And I would suggest that if you watch it, it's very entertaining. Well, you know, some parts are more entertaining than others. If you can get past the first part where it's kind of all structured and Robert Gurr is like reading out of his copy of the Americas before Columbus by doing Barnsworth. Oh my gosh. But there are some parts that are really really crazy in this debate. And follow the live chat that occurred while it was going on. I was part of it.
1:38:52 Lots of people were part of it. Um I think most people were on Bill's side. It was on Mormon discussions, but most people are on Bill's side. Robert Ger's mom may have shown up for a little bit to, you know, cheer her son on. to defeat. So, there was like one voice for him. Um, but my favorite part of it Oh my gosh. Hey, Bill, we're at the very end. We're at the very last slide on this. So, if I take that off, thank you so much. My favorite part of the debate, there's lots of things that are fun, but my favorite part of the debate was how it was that Robert Gurr addressed the absence of any evidence for horses in the Americas during the Book of Mormon time period while acknowledging of course that they had lived or at least a species of horse had lived like 10,000 years before um and having to do with the great the last great ice age, right?
1:39:42 Well, he had a few things to talk about the ice age, but his his um solution to why it is that we have no no remains of horses was really novel when he said that actually the Nephites ate the horses. That's why there were no uh horses because the Nephites ate them. All of them. Yes. All of them. Uh and obviously that would include the the bones. I put in the live chat when he said it, I was laughing hysterically because I've never actually heard someone say anything quite that crazy. And even in Mormon apologetics, I think.
1:40:16 And he said, I said, uh, the Nephites ate the horses. Brilliant. Because now I think this is a great theory because here horses can actually eat the gold plates. This is why there are no gold plates. The horses ate the gold plates. And someone had mentioned, I thought it was very funny when someone mentioned about the bison. And he says, "Well, so why are they eating horses when the planes are overrun with millions of bison? They didn't seem to have an appetite for them." However, I thought, okay, here's the deal. The maybe the bison I think I have it up here. Maybe the bison Oh, can you advance the slide? I can't advance this slide, Bill. Oh, this is a little cartoon that I found. Uh, eating some horse meat. These are obviously Nephites at dinner. And one of the horses that's remaining is looking and crying because he's remembering, you know, his girlfriend who's now for dinner.
1:41:11 So that's a eating a horse kind of thing. Maybe the bison Maybe the bison ate the Nephites after the Nephites ate the horses. This theory can account for a lot of problems that the Book of Mormon has. Oh, and then there's this one. So that was what I was going to talk about also. A week from Wednesday, it is planned at least at this point that on Mormonism Live, a week from Wednesday, we're going to do a breakdown of this with video and audio and everything. And um it's going to be a lot of fun because man, that guy was crazy. He's nuts. He came in there to defend Joseph Smith's child briding it. Um he was a champion of it. It's not that he thought it was kind of bad or weird or uncomfortable. No, he was fully in favor. Tell us what did you think while that was going on, Bill.
1:42:06 Uh, so he knew ahead of time what three topics I was going to utilize to demonstrate that Mormonism had problems with his truth claims. Uh, one of them was Joseph Smith's polygamy. And so I laid out Joseph Smith's predatory behaviors and used the Lucy Walker story, which I always go to, as an example of all of those, but pointed out all of the young girls who were brought into the Smith home and manipulated. I expected something other than I got. I was not What did you get? What did you get?
1:42:36 I got Robert Gurr saying, "I don't see the problem with 14y olds and grown men." and uh he pointed to other points in history where such things might happen from time to time and he used that to justify it. And I'm just going to look here at the camera for a moment and just say if anybody's in Robert Gur's ward or stake, if he is ever uh in charge of children, I would do anything I could uh to not let him be in charge of children. He is perfectly comfortable. He does not see the problem with 14-year-old girls sleeping with 35year-old men. In fact, he kind of likes it. He kind of wishes that's the way the gospel was. It sounds like who who is he exactly? I wasn't familiar with him. Is he a fair Mormon guy? Is he sorry, fair Latter-day Saint guy? What's his credential as an apologist? And how did you even hook up with this debate?
1:43:37 I didn't hook up with him, just FYI. Yes. I should not say hook up. No. No. I've got better standards than that. Uh I'll just say I've run into him once before. He reached out to me or I reached out to him somehow. He was in opposition to Chris Namela, the guy who translated the sealed portion. He was putting out content trying to show people expose that that Chris is not uh not the truth. and uh he Robert Gurr was participating in this podcast uh channel. Again, I don't have the the name of it in front of me, but the gentleman is a Christian outside of Mormonism, some other religion uh within Christianity. And uh he reached out, he's had Robert Gur on several times to debate things about Mormonism versus Christianity. and he reached out to me and yeah, he reached out to me and asked if I would come on and talk to him about Mormonism from a critical perspective.
1:44:34 And when I got done having that conversation, uh, he asked if I'd be willing to sit down with Robert Gurr and debate on some level LDS theology. And I said, I really don't want to debate it, but I'm happy to point out some issues and we and Robert and I can have some conversation around it. And so, as you pointed out, RFM, that took place last Sunday, three hours long. I went into Book of Mormon anacronisms, Sunday or Friday.
1:44:59 Oh, Friday. Sorry, Friday. Book of Mormon anacronisms. Uh, uh, Book of Abraham translation and Joseph Smith polygamy. Uh, Robert expressed that he was an advocate for the catalyst theory, but he still believed there were some missing scrolls, too. So, [clears throat] interesting stuff. No, if this had been a baseball game, when he got to defending Joseph Smith, I mean, it's not just defending, it's actually championing what Joseph Smith was doing. He went so far that if this had been a baseball game, the live chat would have flooded the field and there would have been bats being thrown and punches. It would have been a huge brawl.
1:45:39 But don't you think it's kind of all that the faithful are left left with? I find this on our Mormonish podcast Facebook page. I'm really shocked at sometimes what some of the faithful that come in there will say in defense. Oh, that was righteous polygamy, so it's okay. It's not the same as Warren Jeff's, right? Or even our friend Jackson. Yes, I would let my daughter, you know, work in Joseph Smith's house.
1:46:01 It's like all they can go to. They can't admit it's wrong, so they have to come up with some way to say it seems like it's okay. I haven't said this publicly, so I want to say it now. Okay. I was astonished at how bad Jackson looked when he equivocated on that issue for a full six minutes in the video clip that has become famous now. Okay. When he called into MAD, but actually watching Robert Gurr champion what Joseph Smith did was much worse. I didn't think it could be worse until I saw it and I said, "Yeah, that's worse."
1:46:37 I probably need to make a short out of that one, too. Oh, yeah. Except it's kind of a long Yeah, it is. He went on and on. It was amazing. Yeah. Somebody in the live chat was saying, "I think Robert is making himself unhirable." [laughter] Okay, so let's go ahead. We're going to be talking, I think, about what's coming up. No, wait. There's another story. Rebecca, little one quick something about um our quick little update and I'll just kind of go through this. Parker Kingston, remember the BYU top wide receiver, and he was charged um in trouble in Washington uh county for let's see, I can't move these, so you'll have to move them for me, Bill. Um and like I said, we'll just um he's pleading not guilty.
1:47:24 We were wondering how he would plead and he is not going to testify at his trial, as is his right to not testify. and his defense attorney. We we've been very curious. They had asked for extra time. What is his defense attorney? What line are they going to take? What are they going to say? And they pointed out in this article several things that were inconsistent in what the girl was was saying. The girl who, you know, she had she went for a, you know, a rape kit and she but it took seven months to process it. And then there were some questions in her what she was saying her timeline.
1:48:00 Did she call and say she didn't want to pursue it? Did she say that she never made that call? Uh, did she brag to somebody as someone came forward and said that she had slept with the BYU football player? So anyway, there's all kinds of questions around the other side of this story, but the judge still felt, and you can just move to the next slide, the judge still felt there was enough to, you know, hold, I guess, a jury trial. And they they did state that they had offered him a plea deal.
1:48:27 Um, of them. What RFM? I'm sorry. That was the defense attorney and me coming out. Oh, that's so gracious of him. They give him some kind of crappy plea deal, which I imagine he was rejected and said, "No, I think I'll go to trial on this. I like my odds." Yes. Reading some of these things and you can go to the next slide. I'm kind of like, "Wow, there's more to this story, I think, than any of us thought."
1:48:50 So, and you can go to the next slide. I have one more. So, anyway, we'll see. We'll keep you updated. But Parker Kingston, and remember, I had showed that picture a couple weeks ago of him at the Lynden Temple openhouse. looked like he was still kind of there with his fiance, you know. So that's kind of interesting. You can just go to the next one. I kind of by the way the reason I have that attitude is because I have looked at the the facts behind this article and in the article and it looks like there's a lot of problems that the state has with its case mainly involving its complaining witness and different statements she has made over time which would indicate her being of two minds about the issue.
1:49:27 Yeah. And even there was one maybe go back one slide. There was one comment that they or a text that they found off his phone where he said I probably can't find it now. I know you said no but then you said yes otherwise I never would have done it. I mean to me you know and so they read that as oh she said no but I kind of focused on the part where he said in his text but then you said yes.
1:49:52 So I don't know what that would mean. I would think a defense attorney would be all over that statement you know. So like white on rice, I would think so. Okay, so go forward. I think too I have one more really. Okay, so isn't this interesting just along the lines of they talked about how it took seven months to process, you know, her sexual assault kit. I just came across this that the church has donated 2,000 sexual assault investigation kits um in the Philippines. I thought that was kind of interesting. Maybe they need to donate them in Provo.
1:50:23 Uh, I don't know. But they're trying to make it easier for people to get justice and to use science to get justice. I just thought that was I know they always talk about the different things they donate humanitarian wise, but I thought that was fascinating. Sexual assault kits in Philip in the Philippines. I'm glad that it's being announced. Is this the church? It's the newsroom. Yeah, it's being announced with a huge uh press release and that paragraph strikes me as kind of funny in that context where it says that goal is now a reality and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints played a quiet in the news announcement, a quiet but pivotal role in making it happen. They are so humble.
1:51:07 Yeah. Okay. It's a good So, was that the end of this story? That's it. Yeah. We'll just again keep you updated on Parker Kingston, but it looks like it is going to trial and he's saying not guilty and doesn't look like he's taken that plea deal. No, but you know, there's many many uh negotiations ongoing all the time up to trial, sometimes even into trial. You never know what's going to happen and if it gets sweet enough, he might take it.
1:51:32 There's always the risk that you have to balance it with of going to trial and getting convicted because pretty much any jury could convict you or could acquit you. Maybe not the same jury, but you know, um it's like on any given day, one football team, one major league football team can beat another unless they're the Browns, I guess. Is that true? Yeah, unless they're the Browns, but other than that, I think it's I think the analogy is about baseball teams. Anyway, um and it's like any jury. It's weird.
1:52:01 This is justice in these United States. Okay, so on the radar, can we talk about what you're doing tomorrow night, Rebecca? We can. First, I want to bring up an episode that I did last week that is getting a lot of play. This was Landon's idea, comparing two excommunications. Lavina Fielding Smith, which I mispronounced as Lava the entire time. I apologize. I did not mean it. She was a member of the September 6th. Um, she wrote different articles about ecclesiastical abuses. And although she continued to faithfully attend for 30 years after her excommunication, she was never let back in. even when her bishop and state president petitioned the first presidency, they were not going to let her back in, you know, and and so we tell her story. Then we juxtapose that with Wade Kristofferson who was let in quite quickly and his annotation removed and he was able to go about whatever it was he was doing in those wards and different bishop Ricks. So, it's um it's very revealing to show what the church
1:52:57 cares about, who they will keep out somebody that's wounding the church and the church's pride and who they will let back in. So, that aired last Tuesday, but it's out there still playing and I've seen it reposted a couple times. It was a really good one. And what we're showing even though I didn't get to the story, I think the first presidency is trying to say they didn't know about Wade getting excommunicated. Yes.
1:53:18 Or reinstated. They probably didn't know about Levina being excommunicated either. Yep. And what we were going to air tomorrow night was something different, but something happened today. Um, if you go to the next slide that we have a special episode tomorrow night. This happened about two hours ago. So, we're gonna talk about it. Oh, yeah. Registered mail. Oh, yeah. Are you kidding me? I am not kidding you.
1:53:39 Registered mail. There's got to be personal service. This is not due process. No, we we had something else planned, but I slipped this slide in at the last minute because we are going to talk about this. So, this will be at 6 PM tomorrow night, Tuesday. Uh, for those of you that are listening, the headline is excommunicated Mormonishes Landon Broofphy. Okay. So, hang on a second. Do you mean that this letter says he's excommunicated or it's summoning him somewhere? Oh, no. He's excommunicated.
1:54:08 Did he get withdrawal of membership? Yeah, it's it's kind of an interesting process here. But I will say that Landon has not actively attended church for almost a decade. And I people that are excommunicated are the ones that are still associating with the church, right? We've got a Natasha, a Nemo. When we talk about oaks and we talk about going after people and we talk about a new day, I think this is completely related.
1:54:35 So, expect me to be really spicy on the podcast tomorrow night. Okay. So, he got a letter registered mail saying he's excommunicated. Well, we're going to go through the whole process. He had been receiving some texts and phone calls that nobody said who they were or what they wanted. There was another registered letter letter that arrived about three weeks ago that he didn't pick up because he was out of town.
1:54:58 Oh, that was the one summoning him to his I think so. And so this letter did say, "We've tried everything in our power. His bishop lives next door. [laughter] I think it's the bishop." Anyway, yeah. But I just thought this was very interesting and it made me think about you RFM because you're kind of a Landonlike person. uh still, you know, on the rolling, but having not attended for a long time.
1:55:22 And I will say that Landon has not even been on the podcast for about the last year and a half. You guys know this. His work has gotten really intense and he's maybe on, I don't know, once every month or so or every couple months. So, this is really surprising and interesting, but you guys are going to want to tune in tomorrow night at 6 and we'll go through the letters, we'll go through all the details, but yeah, that's Yep. Breaking news right there.
1:55:47 Holy Toledo. Holy Toledo. Even Elder Oaks is not Dallas is not coming after me because we are both members of the Order of the Guarder. Oh, on Malipones. Okay. That's the secret token and sign of the members of the Order of the Guarder. Oh, this is Mormonism Live on Wednesday night. Yeah, we'll be uh we'll be sitting down with a gentleman by the name of Sam Clemens uh whose education is in psychology and around children and trauma. He's a clinical licensed social worker, I believe. and uh he's just completed a ton of research on uh how children within Mormonism are affected by the programming and uh the theology. And so we'll have a great conversation Wednesday night with him. This will be titled Conditioned from Childhood. So this will be Mormonism Live 6 PM on Wednesday.
1:56:48 Well, I guess the ones that they're that aren't leaving voluntarily, they're excommunicating anyway. I'm sorry. I'm still thinking about I apologize. Conditioned from childhood. Yeah. I don't know about that because I wasn't conditioned from childhood in the LDS church, right? Uh you joined as a 18year-old. Yes. And you 19? 17. So the same. Uh so that'll be Wednesday night. I think it'll be a great episode. we've got uh a lot of ground to cover and and he's got research on this and uh I think he you'll find him very insightful about the effects on children uh in Mormonism.
1:57:28 Uh so look forward to that. And then Thursday morning, this will be the latest in the series. This is King James Bible in the Book of Mormon. I love how it's got steel there under the uh under the magnifying glass. That's from thou shalt not steal probably. Yes, I'm sure that's what it is. uh from the Gospel of Matthew there, which you know, strangely enough, parts of Matthew make their way into the mouths, the penmanship of Book of Mormon authors.
1:57:52 So, Matthew was popular amongst the Nephites. He was He was very, very almost up there with Isaiah. Matthew and Paul was a big one. Paul was Paul's writings were really big among the Nephites, too. Paul had a lot of good things to say. All right, there's that. And then we turn to Friday. Yeah. So, last night we had Wendy on as a special co-host, not Tim, not permanent. Uh, Mormonism after dark with Radio Free Mormon. By the way, I thought she she just conducted herself so well and she looked so comfortable. So, afterward, I found out Yeah, she was terrified the entire time she told me.
1:58:29 And then we had issues with the audio which didn't make it any better. But everybody was great. Made her feel really welcome and I appreciate that. So, we'll see what happens this Friday. Hey, we're going to have a lot of fun there and hang out. It'll be Friday this this week, uh 8:00 p.m. Mountain time. It's where all the cool cats hang out on a Friday night and sort through their deconstruction and have a few laughs and some good times.
1:58:54 And then the last one is um you have radio free there. I thought I had put the other one over it, but anyway, you're talking about what I'm going to be doing next. Heck, if I know at this point, but hopefully it'll drop on Saturday night like it's scheduled to. It'll be great. actually have several ideas in uh rough draft form. So, if nothing else happens and things just seem to be popping at this time of year, uh I'll grab something and I'll have a fantastic episode for you there. This was the one that went up last Saturday.
1:59:21 You know, people cannot get enough of this lawsuit. I showed all those things. I mean, people are eating this up. It's like popcorn. You know, the views on all this stuff. People are fascinated. And I think a lot of people are thinking this kind of looks like I don't know Walmart beating up on a little mom and pop store because Walmart thinks this little mom and pop store is competing too much with its multi-billion dollar greatness. So they're going to crush it like a bug and they're going to bring a lawsuit to try and drive it out of business.
1:59:58 Not good optics and people are responding to that. Okay. So, I think that's it until next Monday night when we're back here for another episode of Mormonism, uh, the Mormon newscast. Does anybody have anything to say before we go? Well, I do because please subscribe, please hit like, and if you're watching this on the Mormon Discussions platform, please go over to Mormonish. That's where Rebecca hangs out with Landon, sometimes with Landon, and like and subscribe over there, would you? And if you're watching this on the Mormonish platform, would you go over to Mormon Discussions? Uh it's the same thing.
2:00:35 We're streaming on both of those platforms simultaneously. We do that every Monday. And hit like and subscribe there, too. All right. So, and if you can make a donation, please do so if you haven't done before. I'll let you decide who you're going to make it to. Okay. All right. We only ask that you give us a little bit more than you give more. I think that's fair. Fair. Sure. Don't you? Yeah. I think Thank you. All right, everybody. Thank you so much for watching. Good night. We'll see you next Monday for another episode of the Mormon Newscast.
2:01:05 That's a wrap for this week's edition of the Mormon Newscast. We appreciate you tuning in and sharing this time with us. Keep the conversation going and stay informed on all things Mormonism. Until next week, wishing you peace and joy. See you next Monday at 6 p.m. on the Mormon Newscast.
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