Source: 40% of Mormons Raised in the U.S. Have Left the Church - Mormon News 5.22.26 Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast Published: May 22, 2026 | Archived: May 22, 2026

Video: 40% of Mormons Raised in the U.S. Have Left the Church - Mormon News 5.22.26
Channel: Mormon Stories Podcast
Published: May 22, 2026
Duration: 2:26:07
Views: 16,524
Category: People & Blogs
Video ID: rso-20j8i1k

Description

In this episode, John and Meggan examine several major stories shaping the current state of Mormonism, including new research on LDS disaffiliation and decline, increasing institutional strain on local leadership, financial fraud tied to prominent Utah business figures, and the continuing controversy surrounding the Fairview Texas temple.

•Drawing from research and analysis by Jeff Strong and team of researchers, we discuss what current membership and retention trends may reveal about blind spots devout Latter-day Saints have, the primary reasons for disaffiliation, how LDS trends compare with other denominations, gender differences in the decline, institutional trust, and why many members appear to be quietly disengaging from traditional LDS expectations. Link: https://www.tornbyjeffstrong.com/

•We also examine a recent Salt Lake Tribune report detailing how some Utah County prosecutors notify the church’s law firm when LDS bishops submit letters on behalf of criminal defendants, raising questions about ecclesiastical influence, legal systems, and institutional boundaries. Link: https://www.sltrib.com/news/2026/05/08/utah-county-prosecutors-alerted/

Additional topics include:

•A Church News livestream acknowledging how overwhelmed many LDS bishops have become while supporting young men Link:https://www.thechurchnews.com/leaders/2026/05/14/young-men-general-presidency-livestream-discusses-bishops-support-to-youth/

•The Noah’s Event Centers fraud convictions involving active Latter-day Saints and ongoing questions surrounding discernment Link:https://www.justice.gov/usao-ut/pr/utah-jury-convicts-business-owners-fraud-after-victims-were-scammed-more-30m • The final public plea from the mayor of Fairview, Texas asking the church to reconsider the height of the proposed temple steeple in an effort to preserve community trust. Link:https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fairview-leaders-again-plead-church-110000502.html

•The church battling insurers over sex abuse settlement coverage before the 10th Circuit Court Link:https://www.courthousenews.com/mormon-church-battles-insurers-over-sex-abuse-settlement-coverage-at-10th-circuit/

•And Charlie Bird and Ryan Clifford announced via social media this week that they have already begun the process to add a child to their family. Link: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYkm-zvJxMZ/

Together, these stories paint a larger picture of a church navigating growth, decline, public scrutiny, generational change, and increasing tension between institutional authority and individual experience.

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:05 Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I’m your host John Delin. It is May 22nd, 2026 and today we are going to be covering several really important and some breaking news stories. Uh the thumbnail says nearly half of former active Latter-day Saints have disaffiliated from the church. Um, but that’s just one of the stories we’re going to be covering today. It’s a very important story. Uh, we also have several others.

0:37 And I’m excited to announce that we’re experimenting with a new format and with a new uh collaborator today. And the collaborator is uh um Megan from Generally Unquable. Hey Megan. Megan. John. Megan. Megan from Generally Unquable. It’s okay. I’m doing great. I’m happy to be here. Yeah. And we had you and your sister on Mormon Stories recently and people just loved that episode.

1:06 I think so. Yeah. It was a really good experience. So, I’m glad everyone else got to experience it as well. And tell us really quickly, remind us what Generally Generally quotable is and and what you do. I do a news show. So, I’m on YouTube and Spotify, Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and five days a week, Monday through Friday, I do a 15 to 20 minute news segment just keeping people updated on what’s going on in Mormonism.

1:32 Yeah. And I thought it’d be really fun to have, you know, if you’re if you’re if you’re swimming in Mormon news all week since I’ve been really busy with other things. Um, I I could use someone to help me get up to speed on Mormon news and I figured our audience could benefit from your expertise as well. So, what we’re gonna do today is is we asked um Megan, not Megan, we asked Megan to uh Right.

1:58 Yes. to uh distill some of the biggest news stories of the week and we’re going to talk about them and we are doing this as a live stream and so we welcome everyone who’s joining us on the live stream. Um and so we’ve got a lot of stories to cover today. Um so uh why don’t why don’t you give us an introduction of of what the stories are that we’re going to be hearing about. Megan. Yeah, we’re going to talk about uh the disaffiliation and decline that’s going on in the church from Jeff Strong’s book, Torn. We are also going to look at a lot of sexual abuse cases that are going on in the church right now. Everything from prosecutors collaborating with the Curtain Mcconi law firm to a breaking news case. We’re also going to look at how bishops are feeling overwhelmed since they don’t have young men’s presidencies anymore.

2:51 how kind of an update on what’s going on in Fair View. I I feel like that story’s been going on for so long that we all want it to wrap up, but it hasn’t yet. And uh then a couple at the end of more maybe something fun about Charlie Bird and his husband and what they’re what they’re up to in their lives. There is a legally same-sex married gay couple that has announced that they’re having a child through in vitro fertilization. And this is not the Mormonism I grew up in.

3:25 No. Super happy for Charlie and his partner, but who aren’t so happy. Yeah. Anyway, okay. So, that’s what we’ve got in store for us. Um, let I I I thought we might lead with the Jeff Strong uh study, which is kind of taking the Mormon internet by storm, but I I think we should start with the breaking news. Um, so why don’t you tell us a little bit about this first story that kind of came out in the past day or two, Megan?

3:57 Well, it yeah, it broke last night as we were really getting ready for this. It says, “Former Livermore LDS bishop charged with sexually assaulting boys for over a decade.” So, this is coming out of California and there was very limited information. If you go to the next slide, I had to go to four or five news articles to piece together what information they have now. Oh, we could watch the video clip.

4:23 Yeah, let’s let’s go ahead and watch the video clip because I think uh it kind of gives us a bit of an overview and one of the victims along with his wife kind of speaks out. So, let’s go and play it. Yeah. A former bishop for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Liverour is charged with decades old sex crimes involving four boys. The child sex abuse survivors are now adults and one of them sat down with KTVU today to share his thoughts after police finally made an arrest. Our crime reporter Henry Lee is in Dublin tonight with more on the conversation. Henry, good afternoon. The exbishop has since posted bail after appearing here at the East County Hall of Justice in Dublin and now a survivor of the alleged abuse says he’s ready to tell his story.

5:07 He’s created a lot of harm uh in my life and the lives of others. There are many victims. A survivor speaking out to KTVU after a former Mormon bishop in Liverour was arrested and accused of sex crimes involving him and three others when they were boys. The coping I think comes along with knowing that we’re now seeing some justice take place. He did not want his name used, but with his wife by his side, he says it’s time to say his peace. Now that 76-year-old Michael Delar Morris has been charged with 18 felony counts of sexual assault and lewd acts from 1991 to 2000. Court documents obtained by KTBU accuse Morris of assaulting four boys at various spots, including at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Hillrest Avenue in Liverour, as well as at his home, a car, and the childhood homes of at least two victims. At the time, Morris led the young men’s group at the church, and was a boy scout leader.

5:59 He could act one way in one situation and act a very different way in a different situation and be able to use that to to his benefit to perpetrate. An attorney for Morris declined a comment. In court, he described his client as a former engineer with Lockheed Martin, who was excommunicated from the church, but later rebaptized and reborn. It’s been frustrating to know that he’s um been able to navigate uh a system, a community um in secret and and get away with it.

6:31 He says he wants to bring this case into the light to help bring about accountability. We’re also hoping that by telling our story, this will help out for f future generations. Right? This is it’s a shot across the bow. We’re not going away. We’re here. We’re standing up. Now, reach out today to the Mormon church, but have not heard back. If convicted of all 18 felony counts, the exishop could face more than 14 years in prison, which according to the DA would amount to a life sentence. Live in Dublin, Henry Lee, KTVU Fox 2 News. the All right, Henry, thank you so much for that report.

7:08 A former bishop for the Church of Jesus, what’s interesting to you about this case in particular. What comes up for me is that a lot of times in the church, first of all, people rely on two things, I think. Discernment, you know, if someone’s a bishop, they’ve been called of God, so they’re a great person. So there’s that automatic trust there which obviously is something that people need to be more aware of that just because someone’s a bishop doesn’t mean that you can trust them. And the second thing because I’ve had conversations with people about this where can I can I just add something? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

7:42 My understanding is the prophet approves the callings as bishop and so you know Mormons believe that the prophets of all people are are inspired of God. Why is it that a Mormon prophet is not able to foresee that a prophet that he is signing off on a a bishop that he is approving that he is signing off on is going to be or already is a child molester. That’s a real problem. Okay. Sorry. So, well, no, and that’s that’s actually something that when I was after I stopped going to church and was deconstructing, I posted a picture on my Facebook and it was a grouping of news stories of men who had been bishops who’d abused children. And then in the comments, I was putting quotes from a conference talk by Henry Biring that were talking about how bishops are called of God and mistakes are not made.

8:36 He actually said in there that they don’t make mistakes. And I was trying to reconcile the two because your question exactly, how does a bishop get approved by a prophet who’s supposed to speak to God and then go on to abuse children? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Any other any other things you think are interesting about this this case in particular? Well, I mean, this case in particular, I I am just glad that the victims are speaking out. I know it can take a long time and people, you know, why didn’t they say something back then? Well, it it doesn’t matter what their reasonings were back then. They were a child.

9:12 They’re coming out now. And I’m glad these things are coming to light. You’ve said it before where the church is kind of maybe having its spotlight moment. And we’re going to see that today. We’re going to see a handful of cases. Yeah. the some of the things that come to mind for me like we’re going to be later in this show we’re going to be doing a study about how they got rid of the young men’s presidents and now bishops are in charge of the young men’s programs.

9:38 We all know that one of the problems that Sam Young, former Mormon bishop Sam Young, expressed concern about was how bishops are allowed still in the Mormon church to sit alone with 11, 12, 13 year old boys and girls and ask them about their sexual behaviors, ask them about their masturbatory behaviors. And that this has long been viewed as grooming behavior. In other words, making young children feel comfortable being alone with a grown man that isn’t a parent.

10:13 That’s what Sam Young was speaking out about. And while we know of so many child abusers in the Mormon church that have never been excommunicated or even punished because it was all kept secret so that the church’s image wouldn’t be harmed. the church chooses to excommunicate uh whistleblowers like Sam Young and others who are trying to actually advocate for children. Natasha Halper is someone else who tried to advoc advocate for children and for victims and she was excommunicated as well. So, and I think a lot of Mormons would think, oh, that you know, well, we’re eliminating a risk by eliminating the young men’s president uh because the bishops are more trustworthy. And I I just don’t think there’s evidence for that.

11:00 No. And you’re going to see in that article later that they talk specifically about they eliminated the young men’s presidencies so the bishops could have closer relationships with teenagers. Yeah. With this context, that language does feel Yeah. a little bit disturbing even. Yeah. The other just big part of this formula is that the church uh and we’ve covered this many times on Mormon stories. The church works really hard to keep these things quiet uh so that members never know that they have an abuser among them. And so even if in the rare case an abuser gets excommunicated, so often they’re readmitted like with Wade Kristofferson, the brother of Mormon First Presidency member D. Todd Christopherson, even when in the rare case that an abuser is excommunicated, they’re often quickly rebaptized, uh, it looks like their records are often deanotated, if they were ever annotated to begin with, and the members are never told that they have an abuser

12:07 among them, which and often times these abusers are allowed back into positions of power over vulnerable people and then They repeat abuse and the church just somehow wants to rely on the atonement to uh protect and forgive uh abusers and allow them to be put in positions to reabuse. This not only hurts victims, but it makes members vulnerable to repeat abuses. And I just don’t understand how the church doesn’t see this as as damaging ultimately to their own reputation to continue um covering up for and rehabilitating abusers that we know can’t be rehabilitated and then just setting themselves up for more and more and more abuse cases. I just don’t understand what they’re thinking. Do you?

13:08 No. No, not at all. Because if you cover it up the first time someone abuses and then like Wade Christopherson and actually the gentleman in this last video mentioned it too how he was watching this guy be readmitted and flying under the radar. They have to understand that it’s going to happen again. Statistically speaking someone who abuses children never has one victim. Like I just haven’t seen that and the statistics don’t bear that out and I don’t understand with all of the manpower will you know people power that they have in their upper echelons how they don’t see that.

13:48 Yeah. I mean you could say they just sincerely believe in the atonement. Um but you could also say they’re trying to protect a scandal from harming the church’s reputation or costing the church’s money. But whatever the motive is, what what the effect is is that they’re endangering the membership with this behavior. Yes. Absolutely. And something that I’ve talked to a couple of people about when someone is put in as a leader in the church, say a bishop and or a stake president, and they learn of someone abusing, that’s not something that I think male leaders, bishops and stake presidents have a really good grasp on before they agree to do that position. Does that make sense? So, they’re taking on this liability that they don’t even understand because they’re focused likely on I’m going to be guiding people through the atonement. What they’re not foreseeing when they get into those positions is that I’m going to be dealing with people who have committed grievous crimes. Yeah.

14:56 It’s just another aspect of someone brought up and I thought, wow, I’ve never even thought of that. that when a bishop, he gets this calling and we all look up to them, we’re like, “Oh, you know, congratulations. You’re the bishop now.” Well, they’re also taking on a huge liability of something that they’re likely not trained to deal with. Yeah. All right. Well, uh, it it seems like every week there’s another Mormon bishop or Mormon leader, uh, you know, caught up in an abuse scandal. And I I do want to make a shout out to the Floodlit uh website and organization. They’re just meticulously chronicling uh all these abuse cases. So check out Floodlit. Maybe maybe Julia can put a link to Floodlit in our uh in our comments and in the show notes uh because Floodlet deserves our support because you can read up the details on all these cases on Floodlet.

15:52 Yeah. They go through the background to pay for court records and they put it all out there. And I mentioned once I do a show five days a week and I could report on one case from Floodlet every day for years and not get through all of them, just the ones that they have on Floodlet. Yeah. And and if a case like this, let’s just let’s really think about this. If a case like this is 20 or 30 years old, an apologist could go, “Oh, see that’s old.” But no, what that tells us is the church can keep an abuse story secret for 30 years. So that doesn’t mean that all is well in Zion now. It just shows us how good the church is at keeping today’s abuse cases secret and private.

16:37 Yep. Absolutely. All right, Megan. So, what’s uh what’s the next story we got? Well, let’s see it. Uh let me put it up there. Let me uh sorry somehow my uh um somehow the Okay, here we go. Here we go. Here is the next story. Can you see it? Yes. Yes. So, this is along the same lines. This says, “When Latter-day Saint bishops write letters for criminal defendants, some Utah County prosecutors alert the church’s law firm.” And so the background on this, I think that might be in the next slide or were we gonna watch that video? It stemmed from Yeah.

17:22 that actually came out last October where a professor at BYU wrote a letter defending a man who’d been accused of uh possessing child sex abuse material. And that guy was looking for bail. So a professor at BYU wrote a letter saying, “He’s a great guy. He pays his tithing. I I always saw him at church. he treats his wife well. And because of that case, the Salt Lake Tribune became aware that Curtain McConi had a little agreement with the prosecutor’s office. So if the prosecutors saw someone write a letter similar to that, they would alert Curtain McConi and then Curtain Mcconkey could go to that, you know, BYU professor or a bishop or a stake president and say, “You need to retract your letter because we don’t get involved in these cases in that way.

18:14 Let’s play the clip and then we can we can break it down and discuss it. How does that sound? Absolutely. All right. A Utah County man who is facing 41 felony charges tied to allegedly having child sex abuse materials submitted letters of support when he asked for bail last summer. And one of those letters came from a dean at Brigham Y Young University. The dean wrote that they were both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and that the defendant had been faithful to his wife and was honest and trustworthy.

18:41 The dean wrote, “For as long as I’ve known him, he’s attended church nearly every Sunday. As far as I could tell, he followed all the teachings of the church, avoiding all alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, smoking, drugs, etc. I believe he contributed generously, a full tithe during this man’s bail here.” Okay, I I’m going to pause. So why is the dean of what what does it mean that a dean of of the church’s most important and prestigious university a dean is is writing a letter on behalf of a a child porn consumer slashperveyor?

19:22 What why would this be happening? I don’t I’ve tried to think about that. Is he just really naive? I mean, has he gotten has he grown up in the church and he doesn’t understand the implications of what this guy did? I I know there’s a tie because one of the dean’s uh lab assistants, I believe it was, was the man’s uh wife, the guy who was accused, his wife worked for the dean. So, they had that connection.

19:50 But that’s another I was going to say this in the last one and that was my number two thing that I was going to say at the very beginning was people think that someone who abuses children will look like someone who abuses children almost like they’ll come with this sign that says I’m a child abuser but they don’t. That’s why they get away with it because they blend in. Because they go to church because they pay tithing.

20:14 Because they treat their wives well. So, I don’t understand how you get to the level of a dean at BYU without the knowledge that child sex abusers look like everybody else and they do a lot of the same things everybody else does and that’s why they get away with it. And that was my next question is like who gives a flying flip if this child abuser or porn purveyor child porn purveyor pays his tithing and doesn’t drink alcohol and like attends his meetings every week and but but also what is that so there’s a Utah county judge that’s reading the statement. What do you think it does to the mind of a Utah County judge when the dean of the church’s university is saying, “Hey, this is a good guy.”

21:04 What is the intent there? And how is is that possibly influencing the judge? Right? Well, because the judge is likely Mormon, so then he’s getting all of that cultural context, something that he’s very familiar with, something that makes him feel safe, and something that he’s been taught likely from his childhood to trust in. Yeah. And what’s the result of that going to be? That he’s going to look at this guy differently. He’s going to say, you know, maybe he just made a mistake.

21:34 Maybe he’s going to rely on the atonement. in the Mormon brain. I like to go back to that, you know, in my head. What would I have thought when I was an active Mormon if someone had abused or was looking at child sex abuse material, but then ah, but they’re a really good guy, you know, how do you how do there would be cognitive distance? How do you put those two together? And doesn’t it mean the judge is going to give him a a lighter sentence? It could. Absolutely.

22:02 Isn’t that the intent? It’s basically saying, “Hey, this is a good guy. He’s one of us. He made a mistake. Give him a lighter sentence.” And do we want pedophiles or or potential pedophiles or purveyors of child pornography in Utah to have lighter sentences because they pay money to the church? No. and you know are active in the church, which means like is that a is this a feature or a bug that that this possible pedophile is active in church and constantly interacting with children and possibly constantly having access to children at church? Why is this being viewed as a feature, not a bug?

22:51 Yeah, I don’t know. Because yes, this guy has children. So likely his children also had their friends over and whatever material he had. We don’t know who that involved. But what likely happened was when he got arrested, his wife said, “I know a guy, right? I can go to this professor. He has a relationship with us hopefully.” Yeah. Yes. A dean. He’s he’s gone beyond just being the department head. Department head.

23:19 There’s like professors which is prestigious. Yes. Department heads which is really prestigious and then deans are over entire colleges. Yeah. Multiple departments. So I mean a very prestigious position and he’s basically saying let’s let this ch let’s have minimal punishment for this child abuser so that he can continue having broad access to our children and let’s sort of brag about how much access he’s had. I mean he didn’t know that’s what he was doing but like you said that’s what he was doing. He he was at church every week you guys with our children. But but the bigger story is that this is a systemic problem. So we’ve got this slide, you know, Grant Jensen defends Richard Mard.

24:06 So Grant Jensen’s the dean. Is there anything else you want to say about this slide? This was just the um information that came out. I believe it was last October, October 2025 was this story about Grant Jensen and Richard Mard. Okay. But the but the bigger story is the systemic problem with the judicial system in Utah. So what is that? What? Give us the overview and then we’ll play more video.

24:27 Yeah. So this one says, “For more than a decade, some Utah County prosecutors have quietly informed lawyers for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at Curtain McConi after area bishops submitted letters supporting defendants in criminal cases, a practice the county’s top prosecutor says he didn’t know about and may move to stop.” Okay. Hey, and I’m a little bit confused about this part, whether it’s a good or a bad thing, but let’s play a little bit more of the clip and then we’ll talk about it. Is that all right? Mhm. Okay.

24:56 Defense attorney John Een emphasized this letter in particular. Again, I look to some of these letters uh particularly again a dean of a significant program at BYU College that’s here willing to support him. Scout masters that have watched him interact with children. Again, very appropriate. But prosecutor Adam Pomemeroy pushed back with reference to these character letters. What I’m most struck by, judge, is that not a single one shows any acknowledgement of what the actual allegations here are. And you’re talking about deeply religious people, people involved in our community, people involved with youth, and there’s no actual indication that they truly understand what the defendant is charged with here. Latter-day Saint bishops and church connected leaders have written similar letters of support for defendants even though the church says leaders shouldn’t get involved in members criminal cases. In another

25:49 recent letter we found a bishop wrote in support of a man who was convicted of sexually abusing his daughters. That church leader wrote, “I believe he’s a good man at his core.” Experts warned these letter Okay, so really quickly so I’m confused here. So, let me let me tell you what I understand, Megan, and then you help me understand what’s going on. So it sounds like the church has set up this system through Kurt Mcconi lawyers that whenever police or prosecutors find out that faithful Mormon leaders are writing letters on behalf of victims that the what the church’s lawyers get notified so that they can what? tell the members to stop sending these letters.

26:41 Is that right? So, in the news article, they didn’t mention that the letters were be being written on behalf of victims. They were being written on behalf of those who had been accused, right? Sorry, did I say victims? I mean perpetrators. Yes. Okay, let me restate it. Okay. So, the church it it’s sounding like the church doesn’t want bishops and church leaders writing letters on behalf of perpetrators. And so they’ve set up a deal where the judicial system or the law enforcement system in Utah is notifying Mormon church attorneys whenever they find out that church leaders are writing letters on behalf of perpetrators.

27:26 Right. Yes. Okay. So on the one hand, does the church get credit for discouraging bishops from writing letters on behalf of perpetrators? Is that a good thing that the church doesn’t want them doing this? Why are they doing this if the church doesn’t want them doing this? That’s I guess that’s my first question. Well, so writing letters on behalf of someone is a super common practice. I’ve actually done it before on behalf of someone who was accused not of child sex abuse, something very different. But it’s common for people to get character witnesses in that way with letters written. Right? So if Richard Mard needed a character witness, he is allowed to glean that from his social circles in any way that he wants.

28:16 What the church is doing then is not really allowing that to happen if it’s somebody who is either volunteering for them in a certain position or their or is in their employee. This letter from the BYU dean made the church look bad. And I don’t like that it presented Richard Malard in a way where where it was almost like forgive and move on. However, that is Richard Mard’s right as a citizen who is going to, you know, go through a trial or do whatever he ever he’s going to do to have character witnesses.

28:49 So, the church knowing about it and trying to stop it to me doesn’t really seem ethical even if I don’t agree with what was said in the letter. Okay. So, let me I’m just help. Yeah. Yes or no? Is it a good thing that the church is trying to stop these letters? I don’t think it’s ethical because I think everyone deserves a character witness even if we don’t like the way that character witness presented their argument.

29:18 Interesting. And do you think these bishops or whoever these church leaders who are writing these letters don’t know that the church is opposed to these types of letters getting written? Well, if they haven’t read the handbook, but as the article also states, if when Curtain McConi gets notified that someone’s written a letter, they make a call and they say, “By the way, the handbook says don’t do this.” Okay. And then you and you have a slide about that. Um or or the information was just in my brain, but Oh, yeah. Yes.

29:53 of the handbook. Is there anything you want to say about this slide? Well, that’s just what they use. So when a bishop or a stake president writes the letter, if they didn’t know, Curtain McConi makes sure that they know from then on out. Okay. All right. So, as I’m trying to make sense of this, on the one hand, it could be it could be considered a good thing that the church is is trying to stop these Mormon church leader letters on behalf of child abusers and perpetrators because, you know, I don’t think any of us necessarily want leniency for child abusers or child porn purveyors. Now, the the asterk to that is is the church just trying to protect its image because it knows that it looks really bad when a BYU dean is saying, “Hey, this child abuser pays tithing, so let’s be lenient.” Well, and does it also end up going into the realm where they want a big tent over the cover up, not just for people supporting the perpetrators, but when people try to help the victims. So if a

31:03 bishop has had a confession made to him and he’s asked to testify in the handbook, it falls under the same rule of we don’t involve ourselves in court cases. Yeah. So, if they’re allowing bishops or stake presidents or a dean at BYU to write a letter for a perpetrator like the one we saw, do they also then need to allow them to testify on behalf of a victim because they heard a confession and they understand that that person is a victim? Yeah.

31:37 Yeah. I guess for me the the question it it it asks is how problematic is it for the wealthy powerful Mormon church to have these secret dealings between lawyers and law enforcement? I remember like at I remember like at BYU there was there was a real problem with like victims of rape. Uh you know policemen who were investigating BYU students who were the victims of rape reporting some of the stuff to the honor code office. Um, yeah. I I guess there’s a little bit of a problem with possibly with sleazy Mormon church lawyers having secret deals with law enforcement. I think just at a macro level that feels a little gross or disturbing or problematic to me.

32:29 Yeah, absolutely. Let’s let this uh let’s let’s finish out this story and then we’ll we’ll uh can deepen harm for victims and they can feel betrayed by these leaders they trust. It’s what researchers call institutional betrayal. when people in power appear to support Nikki’s perpetrator instead of encouraging accountability. In this case, the judge did grant him bail, but he said those letters didn’t factor into the decision.

32:54 So the so in this case, the the guy did get bail, which means he was allowed to not go to prison, but uh the judge is saying that the letters didn’t influence him. How likely is that that a BYU dean’s letter saying he’s a really good church guy didn’t influence the decision? Yeah, I don’t know. It would definitely depend on the judge. I didn’t look deeply into who the judge was and what his affiliations are. So, yeah.

33:23 Yeah, it’s hard to know. All right. Well, that’s an interesting story and I just thought it was worth sharing. So, thanks for helping us out with that. If that weren’t enough, we have a third abuse related story. Um, uh, and then we’ll we’ll go on to the main story for today. So, tell us about this story, Megan. Yeah, and this one, the Mormon church battles insurers over sex abuse settlement coverage at the 10th Circuit.

33:48 Okay. So, this is a federal this is a federal case, right? Um, you know, I don’t always understand the distinctions between all of those. I mean, if it’s in the 10th circuit, I think so. Yes. Okay. So, tell us what’s going on in this case. So, the case date back dates back to a series of abuses from a teenage church member, Michael Jensen, whose victims say the church failed to protect them throughout the 2000s. Jensen was sentenced to 35 to 75 years in prison in 2013. This is the This is the West Virginia case where the returned missionary was abusing kids before, after, and maybe even during the time he was a missionary and the church cover covered it up and allowed uh that allowed him to keep abusing people. So, keep going.

34:35 Yeah. Well, and I think some of the mothers tried to kind of commandeer a testimony meeting once upon a time. I don’t know if you remember that. Yeah, this same case. Yeah. Yeah, the church reached a settlement with the victims and their families in 2018. The National Union Fire Insurance Company and Ace Property and Casualty Company, so this is who the church is fighting with now, denied coverage for the sex abuse settlement because they argue the abuse was not one single incident, but a series of incidents with different times, places, and victims. Further, they claim the church was aware of these incidents and chose not to act. And that is their main point of contention is that the church knew and they didn’t do anything. So the insurance company doesn’t want to reimburse them for those settlements.

35:23 So what do we think? Uh so is this basically the church trying to avoid having to pay uh the settlement and trying to push as much of the payment of the settlement onto the insurance companies? Yeah. Which doesn’t I mean they have so much money. I guess I don’t understand what it’s like to have that much money because they made a mistake. They hid it. They covered it up. They let it go on for years and years. They reached the settlement and now they want someone else to pay for it. And well, the other the other thing that people have been bringing up is that that means that the church has insurance specific to pay for sexual abuse lawsuit settlements, which is something that I don’t know, as an active member, I wouldn’t have thought about. I wouldn’t have thought when I paid tithing that that money was going to go to insurance to pay for sexual abuse settlements.

36:23 I’m guessing their premiums are going up because uh I’m I’m guessing that insurance companies are seeing how pervasive child sex abuse and child sex abuse coverups are in the Mormon church and they’re going to be less and less likely to want to ensure the church uh from these types of things. But but yeah, I I could see the church basically saying, “Hey, it’s all one, you know, it’s it’s um you know, I can see the church basically wanting to take it. I I can see faithful Mormon apologists saying, “No, it’s a good thing. If the church can push these payments off on insurance companies, it saves tithing to be used for temples and for missionary work and other things that the church should be using.” So, why shouldn’t the church take advantage of insurance companies? Like anyone, I could see an apologist making that argument that this just shows the church is smart and is using the church’s

37:22 tithing money as carefully and as thoughtfully as possible by forcing insurance companies to pay out for the church’s neglect. Yeah. And a lot of people were like, “Oh, this is this is the only time I’ve ever sided with an insurance company.” Yeah. Well, anyway, that’s that’s fascinating. and thanks for uh bringing those stories to light. Uh we could do there could be an entire daily or weekly podcast as you say uh dealing with uh child abuse and child abuse cover-ups in the Mormon church. So I just this week I I’ve received several people saying, “Can I tell my child abuse story u in a Mormon context?” So anyway, uh all right. Well, here’s the here’s the main topic of today’s um news story. Uh it’s a it’s a book. I actually have actually was sent a personal copy of the book Torn um by Jeff Strong. Um this is a book that uh I believe is self-published by Jeff Strong. Uh, it’s got a forward by Steve Young. Uh, former, you know, Hall of Fame San Francisco 49ers

38:40 quarterback Steve Young. We consider Steve and Barb Young to be friends of Mormon Stories podcast. Uh, John, I have a signed Steve Young jersey in my house. Are you a big NFL football fan? I love football. Oh my goodness. I love football. and my husband grew up in the San Francisco area, so huge 49ers fans over here. Yeah. Well, we we uh you know, we I think Steve Young’s a great guy and Barb Young is also great. And um so, so that’s all true. And uh and then, you know, I want to give a little bit of background on um on this uh Jeff Strong guy. Jeff reached out to me uh a month or two or three ago and he told me he was going to be publishing this book. Um and Jeff’s background is really really interesting. Uh you you know there there have been many efforts over the past two decades to try and build empathy and support for Mormons who question their faith, lose their faith and or leave the church. I started publishing

39:57 um you know videos or episodes advocating for people who leave their church you know two decades ago. Um, and then of course I worked with uh Travis Strapford and and Greg Prince and uh Hans Matson and others to publish a study around 2011 2012 2013 to help make the church more sympathetic for people who leave the church. But never before have we had a champion like uh Jeff Strong um who who’s willing to go to bat for people like us. And just to give you a little sense for Jeff Strong, let me start by playing um by by playing a clip of a little bit about his background.

40:48 I have three children who are out and in no way do I see them as lost. I have many many friends who are out and in no way do I see them as lost. They’re certainly not lost to God. I could tell you stories about how I see God’s hand in all of this and in their lives in incredibly m inspiring ways. That’s not the sadness for me. But they’re lost to us in the church community. And if we’re doing it well, the church will be large, growing, healthy, a place of abundance where more people and different kinds of people can come in and experience the incredible blessings of being a member of the church and living the gospel of Jesus Christ in a faith community. That’s what I think our charge is as a church and as members of the church. We talk a lot about the gathering of Israel. There’s a key concept in the gathering of Israel.

41:41 Gather. And so if we have this mindset of sorting and sifting, and I’ve talked to people who just say, “Yeah, we know disaffiliation is is happening, but it’s just the wheat from the tears, the sheep from the goats, it’s sifting. It’s all good. We’re going to have a smaller, more homogeneous church.” And I have a hard time reconciling that with what I see as the teachings of Christ in the scriptures. I have.

42:05 So, really quickly, let me also give a shout out to Faith Matters podcast. That’s a clip from the Faith Matters podcast. Just that video has 129,000 views on Instagram. But to give you a sense for Jeff Strong, um lifelong faithful church member, multigenerational, uh was a marketing exec I believe at like Johnson and Johnson or Proctor and Gamble or both, you know. um just a real top-notch corporate executive marketing guy but super faithful in the church and at some point became an assistant to the quorum of the 12 andor the first presidency counseling them on on special projects and I don’t know the details on those special projects but um a and then after working directly with the first presidency of the quorum of the 12 or I should say during that time his own son um who I understand was was sort of like um you know a top student you know in the Hebrew Midway area as a high schooler I think was a Utah track star uh admitted to Stanford

43:18 um then goes uh on a mission into the MTC and loses his faith while I believe he was in the MTC and he comes home early and eventually leaves the church and as I understand it wasn’t treated very well by his local warden stake because he didn’t have a good excuse for leaving the church and that led to his son disaffiliating from the church and I guess a couple more of Jeff Strong’s children have disaffiliated. Jeff ends up with his wife becoming mission presidents uh in Arkansas. Um and they served as mission president and wife in Arkansas for three years. And then when he came back he started this study on why people are leaving and what we should do about it.

44:06 Um, and he’s maintained a very close relationship with the first presidency of the quorum of the 12 and I know for a fact is is sort of on a texting close friend level with at least a few of the quorum of the 12 apostles. Now, let me pause and say, Megan, do you have any questions about that before I jump in? No, that all makes sense because I’m seeing what he’s doing now and having that background.

44:33 Yeah. I love that he has all of that and that instead of going a really hard line, he decided to come into this empathetic space. I love that. Yeah. So, that’s kind of his background. And so, he spent years doing this study, a deep statistical, analytical dive into why people are leaving the church. And that’s, you know, basically torn, which I want to encourage everybody to buy. You can buy it on Amazon. He’s got his own website. We’ll ask Julia Brooklyn to include a link directly to his website in the comments and in the show notes, but he releases this really mindblowing and eyeopening study. So, really quickly, we’ll call out his research team. He lists Jay Barney, Sean Edwards, Jeff Dodson, Mark Dodson, Ryan Gotfredson, bunch of PhDs, James Glenn, Jeff Larson, Sam Sturgeon, Sam Hardy, and of course, Jenna Ree as part of his research team. And this is the mindblowing stat that is just taking uh Mormonism by storm. Check this out, everybody.

45:52 Multiple data sources, including Jeff Strong’s own study, the Harvard Cooperative Election Study, the Pew Religious Landscape Study, suggest that between 30 and 50% of formerly active Latter-day Saints have disaffiliated or left the church over the 25 years since 2000 with 40% % as a reasonable midpoint, which means that 40% of formerly active Mormons raised in the church in the United States have stepped away from the church in the past 25 years. Megan, what does that number say to you? 40 to 50%. Mhm. It’s when I was still an active member, I didn’t see this happening because I think part of it was that we moved around so much that we never stayed in a ward long enough to see it start withering away. But as someone who’s been out of the church now since 2018, this is what all of the anecdotal information was saying. But when I would present it, I would get a lot of push back from Faithful Mormon podcasters who would say, “Well, you know, th those people just moved to a

47:15 different state. So the ward in California might be shrinking, but it’s growing in this other place.“ And now to see this in print form and have it validated in that way, it is what I’ve been seeing. There’s a subreddit called uh Mormon the Mormon shrink or something like that where they just talk about we sold two ward buildings this week and we consolidated five stakes into three it’s called shrivel yes shrivel. Yes, that one.

47:46 Yeah. And all of that information has now been validated by this study. And it’s it’s really wild because I’ve seen it, but now to really see it in hard numbers. Yeah. Is Yeah. It’s fascinating. If I was an active member, I would be devastated. Yeah. Like, you know, people consider Salt Lake City to be the Mormon Vatican, right? Vatican City. Uh I live here in Salt Lake County. and they’re constantly closing chapels, uh, selling chapels, closing wards, closing stakes, consolidating wards and stakes. And if that’s happening in Salt Lake City, if that’s happening in California, in Orange County, and in traditional strongholds of the Mormon church, what’s happening in Arkansas and and in you know, New York and in, you know, uh, you know, the South and in and in Europe, etc. But it’s worse. Like, it’s even worse. Um, so you know, Jeff reports, and I’ll just read a bunch of the findings from his party. 75% of active members of the church are wrong

48:57 about why people are leaving and why they’re leaving. Um, they, you know, the the stereotype or the trope about why people are leaving is because they they lost their testimony because they sinned or they stopped praying and they stopped reading the scriptures or they lost the spirit. they didn’t want the responsibility or the constraints of membership or that they were led away by the things of the world. But that’s not why people are leaving according to Jeff Strong.

49:27 According to Jeff Strong, they feel like they don’t belong. They don’t believe in the restoration or have concerns about the church’s teachings and they are not experiencing the fruits of the gospel in their church experience or the great plan of happiness is not providing them happiness. And so Jeff lays out primary reasons for disaffiliation. 42% are leaving because of problematic church history. They say that the church isn’t what it claims to be. This is what took me out in terms of my Orthodox faith. They’re finding out that Joseph Smith married 14-year-olds. They’re and they were never taught that by the church. They’re finding out that he married women over 12 women who already married other men. They’re finding out that the Book of Abraham uh was was is fanfiction, is fraud, was not a translation of the papyrie. They’re finding out that Joseph Smith was a treasure digger who illegal treasure digger who was actually found guilty of

50:34 breaking the law for scrying or peeping or looking into a Sears stone and uh you know making money off of fooling people that he could find buried treasure and when they discover all things all these things it’s causing them to lose their faith. The the second most common reason are social issues. Um, people are saying even if the church were true, they couldn’t support it. And what they mean by that is anything from these child abuse coverups that the church is guilty of for decades, if not, you know, centuries. Uh, it’s it’s LGBT bigotry, which we’re going to talk about at the end of this episode. It’s the discrimination against women with women as secondclass citizens. Um, it’s the racism in the church and even even the overwhelming support of conservative politics in the church that make liberal or progressive Mormons politically not feel welcome. And then the third uh most common root reason is just again feeling

51:40 like the church isn’t led by Christ and that it’s not making them happy. And then finally they’re just like why shouldn’t I drink coffee? Why why should I uh you know serve in these callings when I feel like they’re soul sucking? Um anyway any reactions to you Megan for those primary reasons for disabiliation? Well what I was thinking when you were first talking about it is that not only people not only are people leaving but they’re being misunderstood and they’re leaving. And I think that was one of Jeff’s big Jeff big Jeff’s big motivators for writing the book in the first place is that people are leaving.

52:19 And if we can be more understanding of why they’re leaving because there’s a huge disconnect. People who are sitting in the pew every week and listening to the prophets and going to general conference, they have all these misconceptions about what it is that we’re doing when we leave. And if people can start understanding that more, maybe there will be more space in the church for those people to stay, which is what I don’t know exactly what Jeff’s motivations are, but I would think after watching his own children get so dist from the church that he would want there to be more space, and to do that, he’s trying to educate people. He’s trying to get more understanding. But it’s not surprising when I was an active member, I thought those same things. My brother left the church before I did. And you know, rumors flew around, well, he must be gay. That’s why he left the church.

53:05 And he just wanted to sin, and the light is gone from his eyes. We’ve we’ve all said those things. And the church set such a specific standard for everything for so many years. You know, the Bruce Rakoni church and the Ezart Tapbenson church. And that same church doesn’t work anymore. But the people who are the most devout are still living in that church. Absolutely. Um let’s let’s let’s uh share a couple more of these stats and then maybe play a clip or two more. So the the news is even worse because the disaffiliation appears to be accelerating.

53:44 So uh you know he he shows disaffiliation as as as sort of a baseline in 2000 to 2009. He sees it 3xing between the 2010 and the 2014 time period. This is sort of Prop 8 in my view. This is Prop 8. This is um uh you know the Mitt Romney campaign. This is the Gospel Topics essays. This is the Book of Mormon musical. This is the church uh fumbling. It’s um it’s getting, you know, as the internet uh sort of comes online, the Mormon internet and the ex Mormon internet between 2005 and 2015, the church is kind of caught with its pants down. And so that that are those are some of the reasons why it three X’s. Also, by the way, I don’t think it’s any accident that in 2014 I received my excommunication letter. Kate Kelly received her excommunication letter. the church bungled the ordained women thing.

54:46 Uh the church bungled again Prop 8. Um that those were two things I was going to mention. I thought of um in 2006 the me too movement came out with Toronto Burke. So that was in that early time frame if we’re looking at it from the maybe more feminist perspective. And yes, and then in 2013 ordained women. Those were two things where I was like those are also in that timeline there.

55:08 Yeah. But it’s also the rise of the Mormon blogger knackle and the rise of Mormon podcasts. I I do think that those were heavily influential between 2005 and 2015, which is why they excommunicated me and and Kate Kelly uh by 2015. So anyway, all that is true and then it’s 6x’s between 2015 and 2019. And again, that’s that’s the aftermath of not just my excommunication and K. Kelly’s. But at the end of 2015, what I think is one of the most catastrophic things ever to happen in the Mormon church, it’s the exclusion policy, the November 2015 exclusion policy. But this is also the CES letters coming out by 2015. The gospel topics essays are coming out by 2015.

55:57 And um and then of course by 2019, the church is having to roll back its gospel topics essays, which was the right thing. I’m sorry, roll back its November exclusion policy, which on the one hand was the right thing to do, but on the other hand, it adds insult to injury because all those LGBT suicides, all those people that left the church are like, “Wait a minute. President Nelson or or or Prophet Nelson said that it was revelation that brought on the November 2015 policy. And now you’re gonna just say never mind and and undo it and retract it, right? It was the mind and will of the Lord. Those were his words.

56:39 Yeah. So all of that leads to a 6xing by the end of 2019. But what’s even more mind-blowing is that it 11x’s by 2020 to 2023. And I think certainly there there is a there is um there’s a network effect. In other words, the more people that leave, the more people that leave. So the more gay and lesbian and queer members there are, they leave and then the more their family members leave.

57:10 more people that are in faith crisis, the more other family members learn about faith crises start studying the issues and they start leaving. So there is a network effect happening where the more people leave, the more people leave, the more people find out about the problems. But I also think another huge blow to the church was COVID because as several as as as large numbers of members um stop attending church and then realizing that they their lives are actually happier and they they actually find more joy and better family experiences by not attending. I do think CO was devastating uh to the Mormon church. And then also I just say millennials and genzers uh younger people are just coming home from their missions and leaving in droves. I think I’ve seen that statistic that 40% of returned missionaries in the United States are leaving the church within six months of coming home from their mission. What what’s your reaction uh to to this acceleration of growth slow?

58:17 I think yeah I think you’re right. I think um when COVID happened, there were anyone who was maybe on the fence. That was their ticket out. So, it just made it easy. Nobody’s looking for me. I’m not getting a call from my visiting teacher or my uh ministering sister saying, “I didn’t see you at church.” Because nobody’s at church. So, and then everyone had a lot of free time. So, everybody went online even more than they were before. And it did accelerate that.

58:46 Yeah. Absolutely. Well, and people used to be sequestered in the church, right? In the 70s and 80s, you sat in your living room with your kids and you read your Book of Mormon. And now, if you have an issue, you put it online and everybody sees it. You don’t have to walk to your neighbor’s house or, you know, what Sandra Tanner was doing back in the day, printing pamphlets and publishing books. You put it all online.

59:06 Yeah. Let me just take a second to um welcome all of the people on our live stream. Our live stream is pretty big. We’ve got almost 700 people on our live stream now. Um, if y’all could do us a favor, please like and subscribe to this uh channel, Mormon Stories Podcast. Uh, that would really help with the algorithm. That would really help our growth. Also, while you’re at it, check out Generally Uncquotable on YouTube and Instagram and Tik Tok. Subscribe and like her channel as well. Um, she does Megan does great work. She’s reporting on Daily News. Um, and we want to see her grow just like we want to grow. I want to also remind people that the Mormon Church is suing Mormon Stories podcast and me personally.

59:50 Um I believe because they want to silence and smear and defame us. And uh so if you want to, you know, we’ve been able to raise uh some money uh not nearly enough to defend ourselves. If anybody wants to support that uh lawsuit in our defense against the church trying to silence and smear us, uh you can do so at mormstories.orgleal. Um I also should say I’m super excited to announce that uh Holy Kool-Aid, have you ever heard of the Holy Kool-Aid YouTube channel? Yeah, Holy K Holy Kool-Aid YouTube channel should be releasing an interview today of me. That is one of the funniest, most welldone videos on Mormonism I’ve ever seen. So, uh, everybody needs to check that out. Uh, he interviews me about the lawsuit. He’s got almost 500,000 YouTube subscribers, so it was a real honor to appear on that show.

1:00:48 That’s huge, John. Why didn’t we put a slide about that? Yeah. Well, maybe. Hello. Maybe we’ll show some some highlights next week if we do this next week. But awesome. I’m excited about that. Anyway, please like and subscribe and uh thanks to everyone for supporting us. Really quickly, if if this weren’t enough amazing information from Jeff Strong, it gets even more interesting. So, this is a slide of what current LDS belief looks like. So as I understand it, these are people who are uh attending church still and it’s showing a breakdown of how they describe their beliefs and it shows that only about 25% um of uh if I’m reading this slide right um 25% of those who are uh let’s see previously uh identifying as being completely or most active. So, okay, I’m going to correct myself there. Of those who at one point were either um completely or most active, only 25% now identify um as literal true believers. Um and then

1:02:06 another 13% identify as active. They believe in most things. um and they’re mostly consent content. Another 18 say they no longer believe the church is what it claims to be. So there’s a huge percentage of people who are currently active Mormons who no longer believe that the church is what it claims to be, but they’re still attending. Sometimes we call them pimos, physically in, mentally out. Um, and basically what this shows is if you just take that block of 56%.

1:02:42 Uh, it looks like 31%, so over half, if I’m reading this right, over half of those currently attending the Mormon church in the US are no longer literal believers in all things. Uh, only a thirdish of those are true literal believers. and and and over almost twothirds are are either semi-believers or nonliteral believers in the church’s truth claims. So that’s fascinating. And and the way that I understand that is just the costs of disaection are so high you could lose your job. You could lose your income.

1:03:25 You could uh get divorced. Your family could disown you. um you could lose status or you are in this trap of believing you can’t raise happy healthy kids outside of the church. But regardless um you don’t feel like you can fall inactive or lesser active or you don’t think that it would benefit you to do so. But whatever that is that it’s it’s becoming a minority in the inactive faithful Mormon pews in the United States to identify as a true believing literal Mormon. Is that surprising to you, Megan? Or is that what you understand generally as well?

1:04:03 If I look at when I was active, that blows my mind because when I was sitting in the pews, I thought everybody pretty much believed the same way I did. And maybe more of them did at that point. I mean, I’ve been out since 2018. It doesn’t feel like that long ago. But yes, this is very surprising to me because I never would have been sitting there thinking that the person in the pew in front of me maybe didn’t believe.

1:04:27 I wouldn’t that would not have crossed my mind. And I I’m wondering if this means there’s more space in the church for people who don’t believe. But I I don’t really see that because I think that they’re not talking about it openly. If you go into Sunday school and you voice some of those non-beliefs, I I still don’t think you’d be looked at favorably. So, they’re there, but are they vocal? Do people know or did they only say it in this survey because they felt safe to say, “Yeah, I attend church, but I don’t believe.” Yeah. And that’s another thing that I really love about what Jeff Strong is advocating for. Let’s play another clip of Jeff Strong’s again with a shout out to the Faith Matters uh podcast. We’re going to be sharing a clip uh again from their show.

1:05:13 There has to be more than one way to be a Latter-day Saint because if there isn’t, we’re going to lose a lot of people over this issue. If you feel overwhelming pressure to conform to something that you’re not, then you have a choice. You can pretend, that’s called pretense, or you can leave. Maybe there’s a third alternative. We could actually respect, value, embrace how people are different, including the way they come to belief and live their beliefs without sacrificing the unity that we have in the church community.

1:05:46 But unity around what? unity around a love for God, being disciples of Jesus Christ, living the gospel of Jesus Christ with enthusiasm and deep commitment and all of those things, or unity around dress and grooming standards. Now, look at me. I I’m that guy. I wear my shirt tie to church. I cut my hair short. I can’t grow a beard. So, I get that. But when we start to mandate those as conditions of acceptability, we have a problem. There has to be more than one way to be a latter day. Okay, so Megan, like I just can’t. First of all, I just want to give a shout out again, Jeff Strong. Buy this book. Don’t just buy tor for yourself.

1:06:29 Buy it for your believing family and friends. Buy it for your bishop. Buy it for your stake president. Buy it for your young men’s leader, your young women’s leader. buy it for the members of your state high council, your relief society president, your young women’s leaders, and and share with them Jeff’s interview on faith matters. Because don’t you want to scream a hallelujah to Jeff Strong for preaching this idea that there has to be more than one way to be a Mormon and that if we’re going to be an active Latter-day Saint we should be gathering number one we should be focusing less on less on the sifting less on separating the wheat from the tears less on celebrating those who leave as as chief and that we should be more looking together to be more inclusive and to rally more around the a belief in God, a shared belief in God, a shared belief in Jesus and the atonement and less around grooming standard standards and behavioral guidelines. What do you think? H how do

1:07:36 you feel about the gospel that Jeff Strong is teaching? I love it. I love it. He is taking all of the good things that I actually appreciated and enjoyed when I was at church. the the um shared ritual, the connection, and leaving out all the stuff that doesn’t matter and really inviting people in in this very loving the one of my main values is connection. And if that’s what the church focused on, I would be a lot more likely to show up.

1:08:10 But in my experience, that didn’t happen because people were so busy trying to do this huge list of things that the brethren are still getting up over the pulpit in general conference and saying that they didn’t have time to form meaningful relationships with people. And Jeff, I mean, look at him. He does look so Mormon. Like he said, no beard, cleancut. Yeah. But man, he has a big heart. And that’s the most important thing. That’s the most important thing. If paying a certain amount of tithing or wearing a white shirt is getting in the way of love, that’s a problem. And I think it’s a problem because it’s coming from the very top right now. But this grassroots movement, we know, I mean, you know, John, you push and the church does eventually pay attention because they have to, but they’re they’re not there yet. But someone like him in his position where he has his connections, I love that he is able to do this. And actually, I’ve seen him on a lot of very faithful

1:09:12 podcasts. And I’m so glad I like I give him all the praise because he is in that middle ground and he just is exuding this love and empathy and connection and we as people our connection is bigger than what the church is trying to give us. Yeah. My big two questions uh around tor. First is is Jeff going to get in trouble? In In other words, whenever somebody It’s kind of like the the king who has no clothes whenever I’ve seen I mean it’s it’s hard to call Jeff a whistleblower because he’s buddies with with a few apostles and he’s a former mission president and you know has been a special assistant counselor consultant to the 12 in the first presidency. So it’s it’s hard to call him a whistleblower, but on the other hand, he’s speaking truth to power. Like what he’s saying is that the church is hemorrhaging. That’s how I’m interpreting what he’s saying. And that the church active membership is in freef

1:10:26 fall. And the problem is that’s that’s different than the spin that Apostle Quinton Cook and other church leaders are giving. Have you heard what Quinton Cook, the head of the missionary department for the church, is telling the world about the church’s missionary program? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Record. He keeps using the the term record. Record converts, record baptisms, record missionaries, record number of missions, everything is roses and rainbows when he opens his mouth about church.

1:10:57 Is he just lying? Is Quinton Cook just lying to the world? And and I know the answer to that. He’s not right. Because what what they’re doing is this is my belief and I I want to do an episode about this is what the church is doing I believe with their missionary program. Number one is they reduced again the age of missionary service. Now women are able to serve at age 18. I believe that’s a move towards desperation to just try and number one get more missionaries serving earlier for that temporary bump increase in missionaries. Also, don’t you think, Megan, they’re trying to lock in uh you know, young young people, in this case, young women before they have a chance to leave the church or you know, make choices that would keep them from serving missions or even leaving the church?

1:11:49 Well, yeah. Don Oaks came out and said, “You need to look for your spouse on your mission.” So, women, don’t wait anymore. Go at 18. And when you’re on your mission, if you see someone you like, well, I mean, obviously meant a boy. If you see a guy you like, you go for it. And so, then they’ve gone on a mission, which pushes them even further into the rhetoric. Then they get married and they’re supposed to have kids right away. They’re really concerned about the birth rate. And once you’re in the church, married to a returned missionary, and you have a child, makes it a lot harder to leave.

1:12:21 Yeah. So, some of that is going on. But but I think also the bigger thing going on, anybody who was a missionary in the 80s and 90s knows that the crazy baptismal numbers that happened in the 80s or 90s or in the British Isles in the early 60s, the baseball baptisms in the in the early 60s uh or the the Latin America Philippines baptisms of the 80s and 90s was, you know, was basically largely corrupt.

1:12:54 It’s very easy to go to Latin America, the Philippines, or Africa, or to immigrant populations in Western Europe or the United States. And the these white hot or cute or handsome, relatively wealthy, clean-looking, blue-eyed Mormon missionaries going into impoverished areas and and projecting wealth, projecting prosperity and convincing immigrants or poor people to or children, 8, nine, 10 year olds to get baptized in droves. We all know that the church can play with the numbers by lowering the standards of who they baptize. And it happened in the 80s and the 90s. And what happened? Jeffrey R.

1:13:47 Holland was called to Chile for 3 years to close over 30 stakes in Chile alone because of lowquality fraudulent baptisms in Chile and in Latin America that were really just a numbers game to inflate the church’s growth statistics. Elder Oaks of all people, President Oaks was called to the Philippines for multiple years to clean up the shoddy, fraudulent baptismal practices that were going on in the Philippines. and I would be willing to bet $10,000 of my own personal money if I had it. Um, that what we’re going to see is is that in Africa, in the United States, in the Philippines, and in Latin America, what Quinton Cook did is he’s starting to ramp up these lowquality, fraudulent baptisms to inflate the numbers. Mhm.

1:14:45 So that we could then with from a PR perspective and from a statistics perspective brag to the world that that the missionary program has never been more successful when what we’re going to see from these baptisms domestic and overseas is extremely high attrition rates and extremely low retention rates uh in the in the number of 10%. % and it’s it’s all done to inflate the numbers and they’re going to pay for it in 5 10 15 20 years when we see that that the church is going to continue to decline in everywhere but Africa. In everywhere but Africa the church is going to go flat or decline. And what the biggest most ironic rub of all is guess in what mission Quinton Cook served.

1:15:43 No, in Africa. He served in the baseball baptism British Isles in the early60s. He himself was a missionary during the baseball baptism fraud scandal of the early 1960s along with Jeffrey R. Holland. He knows better and yet he’s now leading in my opinion baseball baptism like missionary fraud worldwide to inflate the numbers. Yeah. Well, you had uh Dr. Gatia from Kenya on your show last year, and he said when a white missionary comes to Africa and goes into an impoverished area, they’ll do whatever they have to do to have a relationship with that person because they look at them and they see wealth and they see maybe some upward mobility. So, maybe it’s not baseball they’re offering now, but it’s BYU pathway.

1:16:38 Yeah. And and to be honest, there’s a degree to which I as as as Joseph Gatia, Dr. Gatia said, there’s a degree to which some African people, some Latin American people, some Filipinos, some immigrants here in the US and in Europe, there’s a degree to which some are going to benefit from BYU Pathways and from LDS church affiliation. That’s great. I I wish them well. The problem isn’t that per se. It’s in what’s very obviously going on, which is a statistical numbers game where the church is using these inflated baptisms as a way to signal or to create the impression of overall growth when we know that in the United States over the past 12 months, for the first time ever, it’s been reported that the Mormon church shrank in the United States over the past 12 months. and it and it’s going to likely continue shrinking. And so from from people who are insiders who I’ve spoken with, they believe that that Quinton Cook is being deceptive and

1:17:52 trying to project Mormon church growth when really what they’re doing is they’re inflating statistics in Latin America and in other developing countries and they’re trying to hide and mask the decline of the Mormon church, not just in the United States, but in Utah and in and in the surrounding areas. Not overall in Utah, but um in many parts of Utah as well. Yes. And I see that because every time they say they’re going to build a temple somewhere, I’ll go to the church stats and I will take the members that they claim and divide it by the number of congregations, half of which are usually branches. And the numbers say that there are branches all over the world that need to have anywhere between 500 and a thousand people showing up every week for those numbers to be accurate. That’s what you say. They went down and Jillian closed a bunch of things. But if you look at the numbers in South America,

1:18:52 there is no way that those congregations have that many people showing up every week. The numbers do not make sense. Now, in Latin America, my understanding is it’s like 10% activity rates. Yeah. Um, and huge percentages of those countries, Brazil and Chile and Argentina, when they’ve done census, a fraction of those that the church claims as members self-identify as members today. Yeah.

1:19:16 Um, let’s go ahead and show a couple more slides from Jeff Strong’s study. This one is particularly um, shocking. What it shows is that um since 2009, the percentage of US citizens who claim membership in the church, the LDS church, has declined more than any other denomination or group. And so it’s showing large religions, uh small religions, and non-religious s such as the rise of the nuns, the seculars, the atheists, and agnostics.

1:19:53 They are all experiencing some some form of overall decline. But but look at that. The the yellow line, the LDS is experiencing the most severe decline. And again, this goes in the face of apologetics I’ve heard many Mormon apologists claim, which is that the they’re claiming that in the US the church is losing people. They’re they’re basically saying, “Yeah, all religions are in decline, but the Mormon church is losing people at a slower rate than other religious traditions.” And what this slide tells me is that those people are flatout deceiving or lying people.

1:20:36 Maybe they don’t know any better, but hopefully this puts them on notice. any Mormon church leader or apologist that’s claiming that the Mormon church is losing people at a lesser rate than other religious traditions. Uh I think they’re just wrong. Yeah. This doesn’t mirror that. Deceiving people. Yeah. Because the numbers don’t numbers don’t show that. Uh yeah. So this shows um you know a percent change from 2009 uh to 2025. And what it shows is is that in the United States um you know Hindus are growing, Muslims are growing, Orthodox Christians are growing, Buddhists are growing, atheists are growing, the nuns are growing, agnostics are growing. Interestingly Jews are growing. other some other you know nondescript general religions are growing Pentecostals are growing so all those all those uh church churches are growing as a percentage of overall um you know affiliation in the United States who’s shrinking um the Catholics are shrinking non-denominational

1:21:53 Christians are shrinking Baptists are and this is in this is in order of increased shrinkage so The Catholics are shrinking the least, but non-denominational Christians are shrinking more. Baptists are shrinking even more. Presbyterians are shrinking even more. Other Protestants even more. Methodists even more than them. Lutherans even more than them. Episcopalians even more than them. And who, Megan, who is shrinking the most of all religious or non-religious groups in the United States since 2009? who that that giant yellow bar at the bottom next to it says Latter Day Saint, why do you think Mormons are shrinking more than evangelical Christians, more than than Protestants?

1:22:41 Uh, you know, why are why is the church taking on the chin so hard? I have been thinking about this, but Catholic was also in there, but the LDS church is more and there were so many reasons, but one of them that I hadn’t really thought of before was that the church is so the Mormon church is so young, right? So, a lot of other religions have been around for a long time and they’ve had a long time to deal with their messy histories.

1:23:03 I feel like we’ve just started doing that because we’re so young. We’re just a little baby church. And so we are in the midst of all of this turmoil as Mormons culturally and as a church where a lot of other religions have dealt with that and eased up. You know, in the Jewish community, you can have a range of belief and have a Jewish community to be part of. And in Mormonism, we haven’t gotten to that point yet. And so, I know there are a lot of reasons, but that was one that I hadn’t considered maybe until, you know, just this week when I was looking at these slides.

1:23:35 Yeah. Yeah. It’s really shocking. And I, you know, the the the king doesn’t like to be told he has no clothes. No. And so, again, I’m a little bit concerned for Jeff’s I don’t think Jeff is concerned about his status in the church. And I think there’s a lot of reason to believe that he’s kind of untouchable, but in my experience, I you know, John Oh, go ahead. Ukdorf got demoted. That’s right. I mean, Jeff’s not Ukdorf.

1:24:04 Yeah. Well, that’s what I’m saying is, yeah, in my experience, when you tell the king they have no clothes, when when you tell the king that he has no clothes, you get punished. You either get silenced or marginalized or threatened um or alienated or shut out. And so I just I’m hoping that that doesn’t happen to Jeff. Yeah. Same. Same. because he’s doing a very good work. But but history shows that that um that he he’s going to suffer some consequences for this. Really quickly, we’ve covered this in Mormon stories before. recent data is showing that that even though historically women tend to be more religious than men, Jeff is also reporting that that that data show a sharper decline in retention among younger Latter-day Saint women than men. In other words, Latterday Saint women in 2026 are more likely to disaffiliate than our men. Can you explain that, Megan? you’re a you’re a Latter-day Saint or a former Latter-day Saint woman.

1:25:08 Why do you think these younger women are less willing to stay in the church than younger men? Well, and this this is something I mentioned before. In 2006 was the Me Too movement. In 2013 was ordained women. Women and fe you know young women, girls, females are coming to this point where they are finally ready to say something about this doesn’t feel right. It’s taken all of these years of progress to get to the point where women are finding their voice. And so they’re not willing to sit back and watch a 12-year-old pass the sacrament when they don’t have that ability because they can’t have the priesthood. They’re not, you know, they now they can witness baptisms along with eight-year-olds. It it just the inequality is so blatant now. You can’t unsee it anymore. And women, they don’t want anything to do with it anymore. They don’t want to be second class. They don’t want to be second class anymore. Yeah. And this number has to be disturbing to the church that

1:26:08 the at age 18 retention is 60% for men, 40% for women. How How are all these young Mormon faithful young Mormon men? I shouldn’t say so many because a ton of them are leaving the church too. But if a if if there are 20 percentage point difference between faithful young Mormon men staying in the church and young women staying in the church or leaving, who are all these young Mormon faithful men, returned missionaries going to marry if all these women are leaving the church in droves?

1:26:46 Yeah, that when I went to Rick’s and BYUI, that was opposite, right? If you got a guy, you were the lucky one because there were twice as many females as males. And now with that change, yeah, the guys are starting to understand what that feels like. I don’t want to say maybe it’s their turn, but maybe it’s their turn. But also the guys, the men at the top, right? They have to be struggling with this because women have provided invisible labor in the church since its inception.

1:27:25 I mean, at first they had more power, but the church has been built on the power of men and the work of women. And now the women are saying, “I wanted to be even or I’m not going to be here anymore.” And the men are like, “But we were comfortable.” So yeah, it’s it’s a bit of a reckoning. And I I think that it was coming and if they don’t deal with it, this is going to continue.

1:27:56 Yeah, absolutely. It’s going to continue. Um All right. Yeah. And it’s just mind-blowing to me that I mean just in society in general like oh this idea of Rosa Parks and sit at the back of the bus well that’s just outrageous or separate drinking fountains. How in the world could a high school have ever had a drinking drinking fountains for blacks and drinking fountains for whites? That’s outrageous.

1:28:23 And yet in 2026, some religions like Catholicism and Mormonism still have a majority of their members, the women, as secondclass citizens, unable to wield power, make make uh the the most influential decisions. The fact that in 2026 an entire gender is is consigned to secondass citizen status, it really just blows the mind. It’s a truly mindblowing reality and I just I don’t know what humans are thinking sometimes.

1:29:00 Yeah. I don’t know. And there in Mormonism we have this wonderful doctrine, right, that there is a literal heavenly father and he has a wife or wives as Oaks slipped up in a little meeting recently and said, “But we can’t even acknowledge the heavenly mother.” The men in the church get to identify with someone who they can see themselves in. And the women, it’s too sacred to talk about. What it really is is leaving half of your members without the same type of role model. And society is catching on, right? We see commercials nowadays with people of people of color and women and people of every size. And the church as always is lagging so far behind. The very least they could do is let women have a role model and a heavenly mother. And they won’t do that.

1:29:58 Yeah. And I and I and you bring up a really good point, Megan, because I think that has to do with polygamy. I think the church realizes that Joseph Smith believed in polygamy. Uh all the prophets until today still believe in polygamy. Don H. Oaks is a celestial polygamist. Russell. Nelson is a celestial polygamist DNC scripture um in the Doctrine and Covenants. The Mormon Church is a polygamist church full stop.

1:30:24 Which means that heavenly father has multiple wives in heaven. So there’s multiple heavenly mothers. And that is why we have to continue as a church deemphasizing heavenly mother because it really is heavenly mothers and that’s embarrassing. But then the other thing is I think I bet a huge chunk of these young women who are leaving the church are leaving the church not just because of the fact that they’re prohibited from from holding the priesthood and and leading in the church. I think they’re also learning about polygamy from CES letter, from podcasts, from YouTube, from Tik Tok, from Instagram, and they’re saying this church is a polygamous church and I want nothing to do with a polygamous church. Don’t you think that makes sense?

1:31:08 Absolutely. Yes. Because it wasn’t something I even considered as a kid. It was just a given, right? Oh, there was polygamy way back then. Yeah. And it was never discussed. I had no context for what it would actually mean in my life. As I got older, there were jokes. Oh, you know, when I got married, my husband would say some signs and it was supposed to be funny, like, oh, you know, she’ll be my second wife. But it wasn’t something we actually wrestled with. It wasn’t something that we pictured being part of our own lives.

1:31:37 And now that’s changed. It’s changed. People can listen to the Year of Polygamy podcast. And they can, you know, read through the books, Carolyn Pearson’s book that has been written and actually conceptualize what that would look like and think, “Yeah, no way. I’m not doing that.” I also have to refer people to the Joseph Smith podcast I did with John Turner because um John Turner goes into depth.

1:32:05 He’s an ever Mormon historian. He goes into depth on Joseph Smith’s polygamy and it’s shocking. Also the LDS discussion series that we did on Mormon stories. We do multiple episode deep dives into polygamy and um you know there’s just so much to learn there and so much of it that’s that’s troubling. A couple other slides really quick. This is a slide that’s attempting to show how conversion how the church was declining in its convert baptisms reaching a a historic low. By the way, this this chart’s a bit deceptive because the x the y ais doesn’t start at zero. So these differences are exaggerated which isn’t necessarily a big problem but it is something to always note is that uh is that this this the the differences or the trend is a little bit exaggerated because the the y scale is uh is is cut off here and doesn’t go the all the way to zero. What this shows is the church’s convert baptism rate was in decline

1:33:10 reaching a nadar in COVID and then all of a sudden it spiked up and again we’ve already addressed this. I believe that that this is two things. this is um lowquality fraudulent uh immigrant or or third world or developing world baptisms that are going to almost immediately fall inactive um with super low retention rates. And then also the shell game that the church is engaging in, which is lowering and lowering and lowering the mission age to try and have these temporary spikes of additional missionaries in the field um that that ultimately is going to catch up with the church. But also this chart shows that despite recent improvement, converts per missionary remain half of what they once were. And so uh even in spite of these fraudulent um you know lowquality baptisms and an increase in in total number of missionaries where our our our rate of baptisms per missionary is still in decline. So it’s showing that that’s kind of a shell game. And then this again is reinforcing

1:34:20 a point we’ve already made which is that now this is just stunning Megan 56% of Latterday Saint youth ages 18 to 29 who were raised in the church 56% remain active. So basically half of all those youth who are between 18 and 30 who are raised in the church have already left the church. And that doesn’t even talk about how they’re going to leave. How many of those 50% are on track to leave the church in their 30s and 40s and 50s when life starts unraveling.

1:35:03 Um, and again, I I love this slide because it talks about what resources were helpful versus not helpful for people who did lose their faith and leave the church. And it shows uh, you know, that official Latter-day Saint sources were overwhelmingly either neutral or not helpful. Um, and that what was helpful, what was most helpful were nonofficial LDS sources, nonLDDS religious sources and even social media or ex Mormon sources of information were overwhelmingly by factors of two, three, four, five were were more useful to people who were questioning or leaving the church. So the church is just not the gospel topics essays, the saints book, all the apologists, fair farms, uh you know, Jasmine Rapoli, Ward Radio, Jacob Hansen, none of those resources are being found to be useful for people really questioning. And then you know the question asks, will these people ever return? Overwhelmingly, people who have left, the church knows they’re never coming back. But for those

1:36:24 who say that they could come back, what they’re asking for is a less rigid and legalistic church culture, more love and compassion. And by the way, is that what Ward Radio is preaching? Is that what Jacob Hansen is preaching? Is that what Mattie Packer is preaching? so many of these um prominent or or even quick, you know, um with with Greg Matson, it’s so bizarre that that for those who are even showing a potential willingness to return, what they’re asking for is a less rigid, less legalistic culture, more love, and more compassion. And then you have YouTubers like Greg Maxon, Greg Matson and Quick mocking Teddy Bear Jesus. You’ve got Mattie Packer, who we’re going to show in a minute, mocking Charlie Bird or condemning Charlie Bird as a same-sex married Latter-day Saint uh couple, he and his partner who want to have a child and stay faithful in the church. and you know you know uh you know Mormon

1:37:32 influencers becoming more and more legalistic. Um what are your thoughts on that tension between Jeff Strong calling for a less legalistic, less strict, more loving, more accepting culture and how the Mormon church seems to be funding and supporting influencers that are calling for the exact opposite. Right. Well, you’ve talked about this before where they’re stuck in this place where if they become more compassionate, people like Greg Madson don’t like it.

1:38:05 He had this whole podcast he did about a shadow faith in the LDS, which what he was referencing is active, faithful LDS people who honestly believe that someday there will be same-sex marriage in the temple. and he was calling this like an uprising like a you know a Trojan horse almost that it’s sneaking up on us and so if you have more people like Jeff Strong which I think would be amazing then the people who are the most devout the ones who have followed all the rules the me from 10 years ago are like well why am I working so hard if I could just sit back and love everyone and I didn’t have to do all of these things. But that’s really what the church needs. But if the church does that, if every time they lean a little bit less rigid and a little bit less conservative, they get kickback from all of the people who have followed the doctrine to a tea. All of the ones who still remember what Kimble

1:39:11 and Benson and Hingley said. And all of those people get in an uproar when things get loosened. even just a little bit. So, do they want to lose those that really faithful contingent to please the other side? That’s the struggle that they’re stuck in. And I wouldn’t want to make those choices. I would just want to be Jeff Strong going around saying, “Can we just can we just be more loving?” Yeah. Oh, and by the way, this is super great. Um Jeff Strong um is sending me a few clarifications that he wants me to make. It looks like I overstated a bit or misstated a couple things.

1:39:50 He wants me to clarify that um you know when I said like an adviser or a consultant to the first presidency and the quorum of the 12. Sure. He’s saying quorum of the 12 not first presidency. So let me just make that clarification. whatever work Jeff Strong has or hasn’t done with the with the top level leaders of the church think quorum of the 12 members not first presidency so that’s an important correction the second is that um he the work that he done was supervised by uh a quorum of the 12 member um so my my sense is he did projects for one or more members of the quorum of the 12 um but not for uh necessarily the entire quorum of the 12 and definitely not for the first presidency. So I apologize. I I misspoke. Um let me clarify that. Uh I don’t want to um misstate. Honestly to me though, the point still stands. Jeff Strong ha has been working closely with the top level leadership in the church and to some degree it’s the it’s the

1:41:03 quorum of the 12 who lead departments of the church and so um I don’t think that changes significantly the point I was trying to make which is never before have we seen someone so wellconnected who has so much connection and influence being willing to um say such important important and helpful things but but thank you Jeff for the clarification everyone please uh hear that clarification the third thing that he wants to say is that the slide we showed that shows people’s current belief those that are active are the 50% on the left okay so just to be clear I think I corrected this um you know later on but in this slide right here yeah this does not represent a just believing members and I think I corrected myself um but but it’s just the 50% represents people who are still attending and of those 25% of the 56% or a little under half are still literal believers but that means that over half which I think I tried to say by the end of that analysis the 13 plus the 18% that represents 31%

1:42:23 % which is over half of those still attending are not literal believers or orthodox but I I think initially when I was discussing that um I I may have misstated. So I’m just super glad that Jeff is in the comments um uh you know helping me be completely accurate. So, so happy to make corrections. And by the way, if I’ve made any other misstatements, I’m sure that Jeff is going to um hopefully watch this and correct me. And I’m hoping to come on later episodes or when Jeff feels ready to come on Mormon Stories, I’m happy uh uh to make um you know, more corrections. I’ll just end this segment but with with uh at least one or two other really interesting slides. Um uh but the the one slide that I do want to show is that um most respondents believe that literal belief is more valued than character in the church. In other words, um the the question is is uh is is high character so being a moral ethical

1:43:40 person um more valued than than uh you know being being a literal believer. And my understanding is is that, you know, 53% of faithful or attending Latter-day Saints believe that uh literal belief is more important than being someone of high character. And ironically, that seems relevant to that first story that we covered today on Mormon Stories podcast. We’ve got bishops and state presidents and deans of BYU law school saying, “Hey, you know, don’t worry about the the fact that this child abuser or child porn connoisseur, you know, broke the law and uh, you know, is into child porn. He attends church. He attends his meetings. He serves in his calling. He pays his tithing.”

1:44:40 Um, you know, that just shows how much Mormons value faithfulness over over anything else. Um, and and even over character. Am I misunderstanding that that slide, Megan? No, I don’t think so. Because you I mean we’ve seen this in the excommunications yours Bill Real Nemo when uh Landon you know one of the most recent ones when people are excommunicated it’s not because their character has they they’ve had a slip in their character from what we’ve seen in these high-profile ex Mormon excommunications.

1:45:21 It’s they’re leaving because they’re following their integrity out of the church and they’re no longer willing to say I I don’t you know I think the brethren are doing everything right. They they want to tell the truth. So it’s this high level of character that’s pulling people out of the church and the church doesn’t value that because what they what they want is correlation. They want obedience.

1:45:49 So I think that graph is showing that again in a in a numbers situation where that’s the feeling we’ve been having and now we can see it in the numbers. Okay. Um I’m I’m getting real time uh feedback from Jeff. So give a general disclaimer that I there’s it’s likely that I have misstated or um that there’s nuance to some of these findings that I’m sharing. I I wanted to have Jeff on immediately. He doesn’t feel ready to come on Mormon Stories yet. So, that’s why I’m having to interpret these data instead of him. I I’m looking forward to him, you know, and Jeeoff, if you want to change and decide to come on earlier, uh I’d love to have you on sooner to clarify my misstatements. He’s also urging me to say that this this slide that we discussed of 3x and then 6x and then xx 11x disaffiliation.

1:46:47 He’s saying that um the data has to be very cautiously interpreted because there could be a response by us that overstates the numbers. So, I’ll just I’ll just also clarify what Jeff is saying is that don’t take these numbers as gospel. They’re they’re suggesting possible findings or possible trends that may be overstated that could have other explanations. And again, we will just warmly welcome Jeff to come on Mormon Stories to clarify or correct anything that we’ve said wrong. um because we really we really really really want to do that. Anyway, I’m Jeff may have a couple other corrections before um the end of this episode. But I think we’ve covered enough of of uh of Torrren for today. Please buy the book. Buy it for bishops. Buy it for relief society presidents. Buy it for general authorities, area authorities, buy it for your faithful parents, your faithful siblings, your um ward members. buy it

1:47:55 for everyone. Tell them that a returned mission president uh you know special projects leader for at least one if not multiple members of the quorum of the 12 has published this book. Share with him this or other episode. Share with him the faith matters episode. Share with him the ward radio episode. Share with him any of the faithful episodes. We don’t care. The more Jeff Strong the better. More cowbell. More Jeff Strong, more Torn, buy it for everyone, share it with everyone. Uh, let’s make this book an international Mormon bestseller. Agreed, Megan? Absolutely. Yes.

1:48:35 All right. All right. So, we’ve got a couple kind of stories to close on. Maybe we can cover them relatively quickly. What’s the first one, Megan? Yeah. Bishops and Youth. One-on-one ministering supports better relationships. So the general young men presidency came out with interesting because there’s a general young men’s presidency but they don’t have young men’s presidencies in wards anymore.

1:48:57 So the the upper guys they get to have that extra help but if you’re a bishop sorry. So anyway the young the general young men’s president came out with a video because bishops are struggling. They young young men in presidencies were done away with and all of that responsibility was put on the bishop to foster these relationships with the youth and basically run the entire young men’s program with him and his counselors. Mostly him though they really were focusing on the bishop. And so what bishops started doing was getting around that by calling adviserss to be in the young men’s. So they technically didn’t have a young men’s president, but they knew they couldn’t do it all. So they put in these adviserss and a lot of complaints went up to the church. And so you can go to that next slide, John. And then um I think I put one of the complaints there that went up because it wasn’t just this wasn’t just affecting the men. This is from a young women president. She said,

1:49:58 “I’m just curious if anyone else feels the struggle of not having a young men’s presidency. The bishop Rick is just so busy and have good intentions, but balls constantly get dropped when it comes to giving time to the young women, communication, activity planning, etc. We have had young men advisers, but they’re literally warm bodies. How is this working for your wards? I feel like this was such a misstep by the church to do away with the young men presidency.

1:50:20 So, when the young men presidencies went away, it was a fiasco. And now the general young men presidency has heard all of these complaints and they’re coming out trying to fix the problem. And so what they did was said, “You can call advisors,” which is what the church has already been doing kind of on the side, and I don’t think it’s going to fix the problem. Can I just say one thing that I’m starting to notice? Whether it’s the Mormon church suing me for usage of the word Mormon in my title, uh, you know, or whether it’s, um, you know, this sort of apparently, you know, backststepping a little bit or showing concern with Nelson, President former, you know, the late president Nelson’s decision to get rid of the ward young men’s presidents and have the bishops take that on. Do you ever get the sense that Oaks, President Oaks and his administration are kind of uncomfortable with some of the changes that President Nelson made and that we’re going to see the church slowly walk back some of

1:51:33 those changes that Nelson made in a way that tries to not undermine prophetic authority, to not claim that Nelson got things wrong, to not admit that Nelson probably made some pretty big mistakes. Um but you know, but to but to still try to correct the damage that that maybe Nelson did a little bit. Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to be the Nelson Hinckley war where it’s so open and we’re seeing it happening. But I do see a lot of that. Even when Oaks at the very first conference, Russell Nelson had only been gone just a very short amount of time and Oaks says, “We’re not going to be announcing temples in conference anymore.” And he tries to make it kind of lighthearted, but I do think that he thought that was a pretty big mistake to get up in every conference and announce 15 temples or 20 temples. And he’d seen it, he’d seen it play out in the news with what was going on in Fairview and all those different

1:52:29 things. and he absolutely has his own ideas about how things should be run and he’s being a little bit uh gentler about it maybe than Nelson was when it came to Hinckley and the word Mormon, but yeah, I I think he’s trying to rein it in a little bit. Yeah, we’ll call it the great undoing. I mean, the weird thing is is that it was Oaks and Nelson, even though it happened under under uh Thomas S. Monson, the November 2015 policy and its reversal, they both happened under Nelson and Oaks. And so these guys have to be careful because they’re messing with the church’s um, you know, they’re messing with the church’s history. They’re messing with the church’s traditions. They’re messing with the church’s long-standing policies. And they’re getting a lot wrong, and they’re causing a lot of damage. You could argue that Oaks and Nelson’s November 2015 policy along with its reversal is one are two of the most

1:53:35 damaging things that have ever happened in the church in the past hundred years in terms of driving people away. And it’s so weird that apologists like to blame me or you or Alyssa Grunfeld or Radio Free Mormon or Julie Hanks or whoever for causing people to leave the church. I can guarantee Russell and Nelson and Down Oaks have caused more people to leave the church than me or you or Alyssa Grenfell just with the November 2015 policy and its reversal alone. And that’s that’s the irony here.

1:54:08 Yes. Because people don’t come to us first. They come to us when the policy comes out and they’re struggling. I mean, that’s what I’ve seen when people come to my channel and they’re still all in. They make insensitive comments. They don’t stay there and get enticed out. They come to me when they’re willing and more open to listen to something that’s not church correlated. And it’s because the church has done something that has caused them enough cognitive dissonance that they’re willing to listen. They don’t I’m not the first place they come.

1:54:39 Yeah. No, absolutely not. They they come to us after by by like 90% or more. They come to us after they’ve already lost their faith. Yes. That’s been my that’s been my experience. Mhm. Um, okay. So, uh, we’ve got a couple a couple stories left. The next one is another example of fraud happening in Utah and across the country. Tell us about this story. Yeah, Utah is the capital of affinity fraud. So, this one says, Utah jury convicts business owners of fraud after victims were scammed more than $30 million. They set up a well they had a couple of these Noah’s event centers and they were promising people that they were going to be more and that they were very successful but they were only getting more money into the company by getting more investors. The event centers weren’t actually successful. So if you go to the next slide it will show you here. Here they are. Christopher J.

1:55:35 Ashby 52 current LDS calling in the Sunday school previous bishop Rick first counselor and estake presidency second counselor. Jordan S. Nelson, 45, current LDS calling in the young men’s, previous high counselor, a bishop and assistant ward clerk. Scott W. Bayon, 49, current LDS calling in the young men, each found guilty on all charged counts, 17 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. So I whenever I read stories like this on my channel, I always just say, can we please agree that the way the LDS church teaches discernment isn’t real? And the last time I said I’m probably beating a dead taper at this point, but can we please agree? That’s my line. I know. I thought of you when I said it.

1:56:20 Can we please agree that the way that I was taught discernment in the church is not real? Look at these people’s callings and what they were doing. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, uh, all right. And I think we’ve still got at least uh let’s see. So did did we cover the slide? Uh I mean this is just a plot of land that they were going to um build one of the event centers on. And in the trial they showed there’s no event center there. So yeah, it was just more of that same story.

1:56:52 Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We we really are from what I understand one of the fraud capitals of of the country. And part of it is because we have, you know, close closeknit networks and um we just have a history of that of that sort of thing. But I also think it’s because historically the church teaches skepticism to evidence and skepticism to truth and uh an affinity towards magical thinking and even conspiracy thinking. And I just think if you teach members to to value evidence and to be opening to questioning and doubt and skepticism, they’re going to be less um less vulnerable to fraud. But if you have a founder who was legally incarcerated for fraud and then you continually teach members to be skeptical of those who doubt or question and that science is in and of itself problematic, then I think you you you culture you you create a you foster a culture that doesn’t do due diligence, that doesn’t value due diligence, and that that doesn’t ask

1:58:06 questions and that just believes and trusts their leaders and their influencers. So I think the church bears a lot of cultural responsibility for what’s going on here. Absolutely. Because the elders corn president talked to them about this event center and then the person got a good feeling. So they invested and there went their money. Yeah. What’s going on in Fairview? Fairview, Texas.

1:58:31 Oh man, this is the longest story because it’s been going on for so long. So, the church went in to Fair View, which is a small town. I think it’s about 6 hours north of me. And they wanted to build 174t temple. And the town said, “We’re a small town. There’s nothing in this town minus the water tower that is that height.” And so, and it goes against the city code for that plot of land. And eventually the church came back and said,“Well, because of the religious land use and institutionalized persons act, we can sue you if you don’t allow us to build the temple the way that we want.” And the town mediated at that point, conceded to 120 ft tower.

1:59:16 But now the mayor, who was not mayor when all of that was happening, he’s the new mayor, John Hubard. He’s wrote a letter to the top church leaders saying this has created so a so much animosity in this town. Can you please just lower the steeple a little bit because relationships of the people in this town are more important than the building? And I doubt he will get a response and I don’t think the church will change it.

1:59:45 But I think that if they would were doing what Jesus would do that they would look at the people in that town and do whatever they had to do to heal those relationships. So it at this point it just kind of breaks my heart. Yeah. Yeah. Especially as a as a fellow Texan. I’m also a Texan. So yeah, it’s a little bit sad to see uh you know Texans feeling disrespected. So all right. Well, the final story is kind of one I don’t know. Is it a cause for celebration or is it a cause for concern?

2:00:21 Well, I mean, from my point of view, I think this is fantastic. I am so like, okay, the other day I made a video where I told everyone I was going to be a grandma because one of my plants is having a little baby, right? And everyone was like, I thought you’re going to be an actual grandma. I get so excited about things like this where we can share in collective joy. I think collective joy is so important. And so Charlie Bird, I mean, you can tell us who Charlie Bird is.

2:00:50 Oh, Charlie Bird was Cosmo, the mascot at BYU and was phenomenal. Did back flips in the I’ve been in costumes like that before. And I tell you what, they are not easy to move around in. So anyway, he became really well known because of that. And he is a gay Latter- Day Saint. He’s faithful. He attends church with his husband and his husband has a big had a big social media following before and then when the two of them came together they’ve been online a lot like they’re very wellknown.

2:01:21 Yeah. Yeah. And and of course, just we’ve covered this multiple times in the past, but like number one, the church has a long history of excommunicating gay members, uh decades and decades and decades and demonizing um you know, same-sex love as perverse and like beastiality and evil. And the church has a long history of supporting conversion therapy, uh, which tortures and even can kill, you know, gay people.

2:01:54 So, a horrific history of carnage, literal carnage with with gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender Latter-day Saints. So, that’s the history. And then we already talked about the November 2015 exclusion policy and its reversal. that was in reaction to the legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide. Um, but weirdly, even though today the church in some places of the United States is still excommunicating gay Mormons for being same-sex married.

2:02:30 certain same-sex married Mormons are not only not being excommunicated, they’re being allowed to participate as faithful ward members in good standing, and this includes Charlie Bird and his husband who have been legally same-sex married and as far as we know are active and serving in their wards. So, that’s the history which we applaud. Good job, Mormon Church, for showing more love and support to gay Latter-day Saints. I think we all want that. That the church just let gay Latter-day Saints love and marry who they want without having to choose between the church and their their love. So, what’s the new news with with Charlie and his husband?

2:03:19 Well, do you want me to say it or should we watch their little video because the way they announce it is Let’s watch it. Let’s watch it. Here we go. All right. Okay. Can I tell everyone what we just did? We’re pregnant. We just had an appointment with the fertility clinic. It’s actually a local clinic that is super like highly rated. So, we got in with a doctor and we just had an hour talking to her about like the process, what it’s going to look like. So, the next steps, they’re going to call us and give us access to the egg donor database, talk about like financial things. We have to get scheduled for some blood work. Just make sure that everything is good to go with us. You want to have a baby? Yep, I do. I’m so crazy.

2:03:57 Okay. So, let me be clear. Is somebody pregnant or are they just saying they’re going to start the process? Well, I I think that that was just kind of a little um joke, just some fun they were having. We’re pregnant, but no, they’re just starting the process. So, yeah, they’re still going through the initial phases of blood work and egg donors and all of that. And they didn’t specify I I tried to read as much as I could about it, but they didn’t specify how exactly all of that was going to work. But, they will obviously need a surrogate. So, yeah, I I think it’s amazing. I I would hope that every single gay couple in the church could go and publicly announce that they were going to have a child and and still just be accepted in their congregation.

2:04:44 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I you know, I too think it’s amazing. Congratulations, Charlie and uh you know, partner. I celebrate you and congratulations to Mormon Church to at least allowing their gay celebrities uh to to be members in in decent standing with the church. And you know, because if Charlie and his husband are public and vocal as faithful attending Latter-day Saints, that’s going to make less bishops and state presidents want to excommunicate same-sex married gay couples, lesbian couples, and it’s going to build tolerance within the church for gay couples. So, all of that seems really, really good. And again, I think we are all happy for them that they are going to attempt to have a child. So all of that is amazing. It does bend your brain a little bit. Can you imagine 10 or 20 or 30 years ago a a faithful same-sex Mormon couple celebrating that they’re going to have a a surrogate child and this somehow not causing a problem in the church?

2:05:59 Absolutely not. No. Well, and I think there are still a lot of gay couples in the church now who still who aren’t afforded that privilege and who still don’t believe that it’s happening. I would think they’re probably happy for them and they’re trying to hold both things like I’m so happy for you. Why don’t I get to do that, too? Yeah. It would be a hard if I can imagine if I was in that position, it would be a hard thing for me to hold both of those truths at the same time.

2:06:30 Yeah. Yeah. And again, I interviewed David Archeletta, you know, uh, national pop star, international pop star David Archeletta recently. Even though he’s left the church and has said he doesn’t believe in it, doesn’t believe in his truth claims, he has bizarrely never been excommunicated. Many, many, many, many, many people on Mormon stories have been excommunicated for far, far less, including like Leah and Cody Young. All they did is create a support group.

2:06:56 Yeah. for their local uh you know Ohio church members and they were communicated. David Archeletta is publicly discussing having gay you know openly gay relationships with men and is an apostate but he has celebrity privilege just like Charlie Bird just like you know Tyler Glenn was never excommunicated as far as I know. So Oh I didn’t know that. Yeah. a weird weird celebrity privilege where the church sort of weighs its costbenefit analysis and says, “We’ll excommunicate people who are quiet or less known, but if they’re a celebrity, we won’t excommunicate them. We’ll excommunicate Sam Young for advocating for, you know, protecting uh child victims of sexual abuse. We’ll excommunicate Natasha Heler for advocating for healthy mental health practices. We’ll excommunicate Jeremy Young or Bill Real or John Dyn for talking too much about problematic church history. K. Kelly for supporting women’s ordination, but we’re not going to excommunicate Charlie Bird because he’s a celebrity and that all causes

2:08:05 problems. So, we’re double standard. Um, and then the final thing is of course the Mormon apologists brains are breaking and you know neoonservative uh triedwife extraordinaire Mattie Packer um you know one of the leading female faithful apologists for the church wrote this comment in response to Charlie Bird’s celebratory um video. Do you want to share what Mattie Packer say? We can say so. The name of her channel is the Sure Foundation. That gives you an idea of what she’s about.

2:08:44 And she says, “I applaud your desire for parenthood. However, I think it’s extremely problematic within the bounds of the restored gospel. And I don’t believe that trying to use said gospel to justify it is helpful or accurate in this conversation.” Just rain raining on their parade. So hate and bigotry is helpful in this conversation. Uh and and again I I get Okay, let me pull back because that wasn’t nice. Let me pull back. Can we empathize with why Maddie feels confused or why Greg Matson of Quick feels confused or why Jacob Hansen goes on homophobic rants on on his YouTube channel? It’s because he’s taking the Mormon church’s policies and doctrine literally and seriously. So, I’m going to switch. I was going to I’m going to take it back. I take back calling Maddie a bigot and a homophobe.

2:09:45 I I I’m even going to take back calling Jacob Hansen a bigot and a homophobe. What they are is they’re confused by the mixed messages Mormon church leadership is sending. On the on the one hand, it’s an excommunicable offense to be same-sex married. On the one hand, children, the family proclamation says all ch all children have the should have the benefit of a mother and a father in the home. On the one hand, homosexuality has been for 200 years denounced by the Mormon church as evil, perverse be like beastiality, as a sin next to murder and severity. And that’s what Jacob Hansen and Greg Matson and Mattie Packer are all sitting with in their very orthodox Mormon brains. And then we’ve got Charlie Bird as a faithful Mormon, not only same-sex married and not excommunicated, but celebrating the fact that he’s going to raise a child literally in contradiction with or from the the Mormon church’s uh proclamation on the family. Can you

2:10:57 blame Maddie or Jacob or or Greg uh for being or or Ralph Hancock for being confused? No. No, because even in the last conference, they doubled down on the proclamation to the family. They’re they’re still really pariting that and at the same time allowing Charlie and Ryan to remain members in good standing. they they don’t want to make up their mind on it because then they would likely, like I said before, alienate Maddie or George or Greg or Jacob Hansen or these people who for so many years have had these views because they knew, not just thought or believed, they knew they had God on their side.

2:11:49 Yeah. Yeah. And when you when you have God on your side, if you say something that society finds hurtful, then you’re taking one for the team. You know, you’re doing what God told you to do. And how do you not do that if it’s really what you believe? Yeah. Well, what does the church do with a Jeff Strong and a Charlie Bird on the one hand and a Matty Packer and a Jacob Hansen and a a Greg Matson on the other?

2:12:26 How does the church straddle liberal Mormons promoting same-sex marriage and gay adoption and empathy for ex Mormons? How does the church have them in the tent and then have the the faithful neoconservative uh you know tradife ultra-conservative almost MAGA faithful Mormons um expressing concern and outrage at uh liberal and progressive ideology taking over BYU and the church? How does the church does is this just a sign? Is this a positive sign that the Mormon church is just allowing now a big tent in 2026 and we should just celebrate that the church is supporting a big tent and lots of ideologies and is promoting diversity? I mean, that’s one way to spin this because they’re not excommunicating everyone who’s a gay couple. I It’s hard. Like I I would sometimes imagine if the brethren got up and said, “We’re we’re sorry.” If they simply just said that, right? We we were wrong and we’re sorry.

2:13:46 And came at it from an emp an empathetic place. Cuz that’s what I that would be my first inclination. But I still don’t think that the people who are so entrenched in the very conservative black and white thinking would think that was a good thing. And that is hard for me to understand because when I meet people who don’t believe the same way I do, I mean, John, you did that whole episode with Greg Matson, right? And when you sit across from somebody, it’s so hard to have those strong visceral feelings of hate or dislike when you’re in the same room with someone just realizing they’re a human doing the best that they can do. And it’s hard for me to think that that same group of people wouldn’t jump on board if the brethren got up and apologized and just said, “We were wrong and we’re going to do something differently.”

2:14:43 So I think at this moment, as much as I would hate to admit it, they are doing the best that they can as, you know, the brethren as a church leaving space for all of these people by just saying nothing. They’re like doing the sin of omission we were always um counseledled not to do by just we’re just not going to say anything because then we won’t upset one faction or the other. And I don’t know what else they can do with so many people with so many different views.

2:15:15 Well, I’ll just uh I’ll just conclude with my thoughts about all of this and kind of about today’s episode. I think the church is damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If the church clamps down on I was talking to um someone today about uh this week about this. Let’s just say with child sexual abuse, if the church starts to really clamp down on pedophiles and really tell all the members in the leadership to report child abuse to police officials and if the church comes clean about all its coverups on uh child sex abuse and if the church um makes restitution for all of its child sex abuse coverups, I don’t think that’s good for the church. I think that just it’s basically like the Catholic Church uh encouraging its own spotlight. It’s basically asking the church to to commit suicide. So, the church is damned if it cleans up the child sex abuse problem.

2:16:20 Um, but it’s damned if it doesn’t because if it doesn’t clean up the child sex abuse problem, then it just has more lawsuits and more antagonists and more victims coming out and more embarrassment and more national and international news stories exposing the church’s cover-ups. So, the church is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t. And I think it’s decided that it’s it it bleeds. It’s going to bleed either way. It’s going to hemorrhage either way. It’s going to hemorrhage less if it continues to hide and lie and cover up and quietly settle and coersse child sex abuse cases. Um, and I think that’s the decision that’s made for its own benefit in terms of butts and seats and money and public relations. Um, but it’s but it loses either way. And I think it’s the same thing with Jeff’s with Jeff Strong. Yes, the church is hemorrhaging members. Yes, it’s hemorrhaging its women. Yes, it’s hemorrhaging its youth. Yes, it’s deceiving people with its history. Yes,

2:17:29 it’s mistreating people who leave. And it’s supporting narratives that are damaging to people who leave. And it’s still supporting a culture that punishes people who leave. On the other hand, if the church is compassionate and empathetic for people who leave, and if it teaches an accurate history, and if it is more supportive of women, and if it admits if it admits it’s been bigoted towards women, and if it admits it’s if it admits it’s been bigoted towards gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender people, and if it admits that it’s been racist, and if it provides support for its liberal and progressive members, and makes the church more empathetic and tolerant. Guess what? It loses a huge wing of its most believing and conservative and fundamentalist and tithepaying membership. And for the entire church, it undermines the belief even further that its prophets and its leaders are led by God because it

2:18:32 becomes one huge admission that over the past 200 years the church has been deceiving and misleading and harming people. So even though the church is going to bleed either way, by doing the morally right thing and the morally ethical thing, by coming clean, by being Christlike, by showing love, by showing tolerance, by showing support and even progressive tendencies, the church actually even accelerates at a higher rate its own demise.

2:19:08 What do you think? Is that am I wrong? Is that cynical? Is that pessimistic? Or Megan, do or do you have a more optimistic view of what happens if the church makes positive changes? I think a church that is really concerned, any church that is actually really concerned about emulating Jesus, the Jesus of the New Testament, I’m not talking about the God of the Old Testament who was drowning people. I’m talking about Jesus. They would be a church that always struggled because they would bring in money and they would find people who needed it and they would give it to them and they would allow people in who were having crises, who weren’t the most, you know, educated people and they would be more inclusive and they would always struggle. A church who follows Jesus would always struggle. When Jesus was on the earth, the stories that we have, he struggled to maintain a cohesive group of people.

2:20:19 So as a corporation, the church to me functions like a corporation and they are doing what they need to do to survive as a corporation because if they were 100% a church that believed in following Jesus, they would struggle and they would be okay with it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that’s the pickle the church is in. and the next year and 5 years and 10 years are just going to get more and more more and more interesting.

2:20:48 But anyway, Megan, so viewers and listeners, this was just a pilot. Um I think Megan does great work. I think Megan um is an important voice along with Rebecca Bibliotecha and Radio Free Mormon and and Radio and Bill Real and Alyssa Grenfell and Haley R. girls camp and all the other really useful and important uh Nemo the Mormon uh etc. I love the current crop of young uh and not so young uh liberal progressive and ex Mormon influencers and that includes the Faith Matters people. I think they’re doing amazing work at Faith Matters. Um so uh anyway, Megan, you’re doing such great work and and I today’s just kind of a pilot. So, what I want to end with today is please check out uh um Generally Unquable, Megan’s channels on Tik Tok and Instagram and YouTube. Subscribe here. Like and subscribe here.

2:21:50 Like and subscribe on Generally Unquable. I should also say um I I love I want to give a shout out as well to Julia. Um she she does um what’s her channel? I’m spacing analyzing Mormonism. Analyzing Mormonism again on Tik Tok and and Instagram and YouTube. Julia does great work as well. Check out her channel. Um, uh, today was just a pilot and we want your feedback. Do you like doing a weekly news episode? Do you like, uh, what Megan brings and and this this format of cherrypicking five to seven stories, covering some of them briefly, covering some of them more in depth? I also want to say the the Mormon newscast is a great show. Uh they broadcast every Monday um evening with Rebecca Bibliotech and Mormonish. I should have given a shout out to Rebecca Biblek or Mor Mormonish. Check out um the Mormon newscast with Radio Free Mormon, Bill Real and Rebecca Bibliotech. Um some might ask why do this show or why do something like this if there’s that? And I would just say I think we need more

2:22:56 news, not less. and I love their takes, but I like Mormon Stories podcast having its own review of news and um uh I I I like highlighting Megan and what she has to say and I hope to have Rebecca or RFM or Bill Real or Colby Reddish or others on this uh show if we do it more. So, in my view, it’s it’s just about more is better. I like the cross-pollination. I think a rising tide lifts all ships. So, if you’re concerned about why we’re covering news when the Mormon newscast exists. Heck, I I helped start the Mormon newscast. Um, and I’m a big fan of it. So, I just think we need more discussion of news, not less. What What’s your thought, Megan?

2:23:46 Yeah, I agree. I agree. I I actually had a listener send me a couple of tips one time and they said, “Hey, is it okay if I send these off to Rebecca Bibliotecha as well?” And I said, “Absolutely. We as an ex Mormon community especially, the more that we collaborate, the more people learn about these things. I don’t need it to be a competition. I’m not in the battle of good and evil like I was when I was a member. I’m in the battle of maybe this same not even a battle.

2:24:14 I’m in this space that maybe Jeff Strong is in as well where I want everyone to find what resonates with them. And maybe that’s Bill and RFM’s voice. Maybe that’s our voices. Maybe it’s more Rebecca Bibliotecha. I want them to have the choice and I want them to show up where they find the most value. And the more that we offer, the more choice people have. And outside of the church, for me, making choices was really new.

2:24:40 And it’s a good practice to choose what you want. I love it. So viewers and listeners, if you like this format, if you want to see Megan come again on Mormon Stories, please share that in the comments. Uh, also email us at mormontories@gmail.com if you’ve got uh suggestions. Please again like and subscribe uh to this channel and generally unquoteable. Um, please donate to Mormon Stories podcast uh at mormontories.org/donate.

2:25:07 You can support our legal fund where we’re defending ourselves against a lawsuit from the Mormon Church where we believe they’re trying to silence and smear um us and intimidate us. You can go to mormontories.org/legal /legal to support us there. You can also donate and support generally unquoteable. How do people do that? I have a Patreon. They can look me up on Patreon at Generally Unquable or go to YouTube and just watch my videos. Yeah, I get a little bit of ad revenue from there and it’s awesome. It helped me pay off my kids braces.

2:25:35 I love it. Um all right, and yeah, check out uh other episodes coming in the days, weeks, and months ahead here on Mormon Stories. Um, thanks for joining us and uh uh you know um yeah, we hope to cover more news in the days, weeks and months ahead. So Megan, again, you do great work. Thanks for all you do in the community. Thank you. Thanks everyone for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Be good to each other, be kind to each other and uh we’ll see you all again uh very soon. Take care everybody.