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Speaker 1: The reason that I left Mormonism, a big part of

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Speaker 1: it was that I could see there were inconsistencies and

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Speaker 1: that things were changing that shouldn't be changing.

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Speaker 2: Would you say there's more change taking place today? Or

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Speaker 2: it's always been a movement in change and it's just

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Speaker 2: shifting differently today?

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Speaker 3: The clearest way I can think about it today is

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Speaker 3: in terms of there just being different streams. After you

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Speaker 3: become a member, after you pass the baptismal interview and

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Speaker 3: you're baptized into the LDS church, you can kind of

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Speaker 3: believe whatever you want as long as you're not agitating

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Speaker 3: against the leadership. And so what it results in is

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Speaker 3: in a radical disunity at a belief level within the

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Speaker 3: Latter-day Saints.

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Speaker 2: What is the new Mormonism? How are both the beliefs

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Speaker 2: and practices of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

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Speaker 2: Saints shifting today? Given their life experience, research, and ministry,

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Speaker 2: I can't think of two people more qualified to address

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Speaker 2: these questions than our two guests today, Aaron Shafavaloff and

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Speaker 2: Brandi Bronson. Thank you both for coming on.

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Speaker 4: Thanks for having us.

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Speaker 3: Thanks for having us.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely. So let's just dive right in, and I'll start

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Speaker 2: with you, Brandi. Why are you interested in this topic

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Speaker 2: of the new Mormonism?

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Speaker 1: Well, I think it hits home for me because I

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Speaker 1: was raised a Mormon, and I was a Mormon for

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Speaker 1: 27 years, and I loved my experience as a Latter-day Saint.

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Speaker 4: And I love the people. I love the people.

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Speaker 1: And I see that as Mormonism is shifting right now,

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Speaker 1: people are turning more not towards Christianity, but this weird

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Speaker 1: mix where they're using a lot of the same words,

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Speaker 1: but I still don't feel like we're getting the gospel.

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Speaker 4: So I think that this really matters, and I want

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Speaker 4: to speak to it.

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Speaker 2: I can't wait to hear from your personal experience what

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Speaker 2: you've seen from the time that you grew up and

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Speaker 2: trends you're seeing shifting today. But Aaron, you have a

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Speaker 2: different story and motivation. Tell us about your interest in

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Speaker 2: Mormonism as a whole, but in particular in the new Mormonism.

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Speaker 3: I moved to Utah in 2005, and I've been doing

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Speaker 3: evangelism either at Temple Square or in downtown Provo or

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Speaker 3: near BYU for about 20 years, for about two decades.

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Speaker 3: And we've been seeing a lot of changes happening. in

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Speaker 3: the LDS culture. Um, but a short answer to your

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Speaker 3: question is I just love the LDS people would love

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Speaker 3: to see Christ honored for who he really is. And

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Speaker 3: with the true gospel in Utah as a part of

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Speaker 3: the evangelism church planning, uh, movement. And also I work

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Speaker 3: with Mormonism research ministry as a volunteer helping research these issues.

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Speaker 2: I hope everybody watching this picks up on the fact

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Speaker 2: that I picked the two of you, not because you

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Speaker 2: have an ax to grind, but because you love LDS,

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Speaker 2: you have an experience and a care for these, these

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Speaker 2: people that God loves deeply. And I want and I

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Speaker 2: know that's going to shine through today in our conversation. Aaron,

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Speaker 2: let me let me shift you as we get into

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Speaker 2: some details. Now, we're actually going to dive into the details.

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Speaker 2: But what is meant by the term the new Mormonism?

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Speaker 3: I think that if you look at Mormonism, you can

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Speaker 3: divide it up into different eras. There's sort of the

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Speaker 3: early Joseph Smith, late Joseph Smith eras. And then there's

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Speaker 3: the pioneer Mormon era. season, some people call it middle Mormonism,

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Speaker 3: where they're running with the radical distinctives of the things

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Speaker 3: that we think of as being weird today about historic

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Speaker 3: Latter-day Saint teachings really come to the foreground in middle

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Speaker 3: Mormonism or pioneer Mormonism. But in the 1890s, the Latter-day

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Speaker 3: Saint movement really tried to be more integrated into society.

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Speaker 3: And so it tried to systematize a lot of its

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Speaker 3: teachings and be more American, fit in more, celebrate monogamy

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Speaker 3: over polygamy. There's a number of issues there. And then

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Speaker 3: what happened is that there was the correlation era, I

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Speaker 3: would argue, where the LDS Church was trying to systematize

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Speaker 3: even further with its manuals and its institutionally supervised sort

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Speaker 3: of outlets. And we got a lot of influence from

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Speaker 3: Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkie, who became foregrounded, highlighted

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Speaker 3: voices in I think what happened, to finish this off,

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Speaker 3: in the late 1890s and in the 1990s, there was

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Speaker 3: an emergence, well, there was really the foregrounding of Mormon neo-orthodoxy,

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Speaker 3: where they're in dialogue with evangelicals, and they're becoming more

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Speaker 3: comfortable with rejecting the teachings of their own leaders, if

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Speaker 3: you will. And they're kind of quiet about it. They're polite.

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Speaker 3: They don't overtly undermine, but they do implicitly undermine the

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Speaker 3: tradition of Joseph Fielding, uh, Smith and Bruce McConkie. And

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Speaker 3: so you had a lot of influence from BYU professors. And, uh,

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Speaker 3: then you've had another movement where, um, there was a

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Speaker 3: more of a liberal LDS focus on higher criticism and

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Speaker 3: following some of the sort of the, the, the, the

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Speaker 3: atheistic criticisms of classical Christianity, Mormonism started adopting a lot

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Speaker 3: of that as part of it. It's apologetic. And then

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Speaker 3: we'll talk about it later, but you had the influence of, um,

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Speaker 3: an LDS philosopher named Blake Osler. So today the new

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Speaker 3: Mormonism is sort of a, it's a mix of different

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Speaker 3: streams of thought within the Latter-day Saint movement. Some are

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Speaker 3: more traditionalist following the big doctrines we think about coming

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Speaker 3: from Joseph Fielding Smith and Bruce McConkie. And some are

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Speaker 3: a vocal apologetic minority trying to really reinvent a kind

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Speaker 3: of synthetic or new Mormonism that is quietly and politely

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Speaker 3: trying to undermine and reverse the the teachings of some

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Speaker 3: of its most prominent apostles and prophets.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to come to you in a second, Brandy.

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Speaker 2: But first, Aaron, it sounds like there's always been changes

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Speaker 2: in the history of Mormonism. And of course, early in

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Speaker 2: Joseph Smith's life, when you have the Book of Mormon,

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Speaker 2: largely Orthodox in a lot of the teachings, but Doctrine

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Speaker 2: and Covenant, Book of Abraham, King Fault Discourse, then you

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Speaker 2: see some of these more radical teachings emerge. Would you

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Speaker 2: say there's more change taking place today? Or it's always

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Speaker 2: been a movement in change and it's just shifting differently today?

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Speaker 3: Oh, that's a great question. I think you're asking, is

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Speaker 3: it changing at the same rate?

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: I don't know. The clearest way I can think about

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Speaker 3: it today is in terms of there just being different

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Speaker 3: streams within the Latter-day Saint movement. And I think that

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Speaker 3: those streams are so different. I think of them as

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Speaker 3: ships out at sea that don't put an anchor down.

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Speaker 3: Each of these ships has the same flag, the same logo,

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Speaker 3: the same veneer, the same stated allegiance, but they're going

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Speaker 3: in different parts of the ocean. The winds are bringing

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Speaker 3: them into very different places. And today, the Latter-day Saint movement,

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Speaker 3: really sort of the unifying bond for Latter-day Saints in

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Speaker 3: the mainstream sect is really the institution when after you

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Speaker 3: become a member, after you pass the the baptismal interview

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Speaker 3: and you're baptized into the LDS church, you can kind

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Speaker 3: of believe whatever you want as long as you're not

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Speaker 3: agitating against the leadership. And so what it results in

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Speaker 3: is in a radical disunity at a belief level within

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Speaker 3: the Latter-day Saint movement.

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Speaker 2: Super interesting. Now we're going to get into your different streams,

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Speaker 2: which when you sent me some insights about this, it

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Speaker 2: was so fascinating. I think our viewers and listeners are

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Speaker 2: going to find this really helpful. Brandy, you break down

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Speaker 2: categories of Mormonism a little bit differently. You call it

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Speaker 2: kind of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0. Give us some of the

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Speaker 2: categories of how you understand the new Mormonism.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, first I want to add to what Aaron was saying.

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Speaker 1: And I think the Mormonism that I knew, the reason

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Speaker 1: that I left Mormonism, a big part of it was

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Speaker 1: that I could see there were inconsistencies and that things

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Speaker 1: were changing that shouldn't be changing, right? Like we believe

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Speaker 1: that it's line upon line. not retraction upon retraction. And

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Speaker 1: when I started to see a lot of inconsistencies on

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Speaker 1: that foundational level, that's when I started to go, oh,

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Speaker 1: something's really, really wrong here, right? But regardless of the

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Speaker 1: changes over time, I believe there's always been a foundational

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Speaker 1: claim of Mormonism, which is a great apostasy, and that

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Speaker 1: we are the one true church, right? And there's this

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Speaker 1: exclusivity to that. So I think that those transcend all

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Speaker 1: levels of Mormonism until New Mormonism. I think New Mormonism

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Speaker 1: is really the first time that I'm hearing that the

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Speaker 1: apostasy was more just an establishment of the ecclesiastical structure

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Speaker 1: of the church. but that we're just merely a denomination.

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Speaker 1: And for me, that kind of eradicates the exclusive nature

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Speaker 1: of Mormonism. So that's why I kind of call it

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Speaker 1: like a snake eating its own tail, where before there

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Speaker 1: were still legitimate claims to Mormonism and Mormonism now doesn't

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Speaker 1: have that. So I would say the first version of

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Speaker 1: Mormonism really is that OG Mormonism with Joseph Smith and

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Speaker 1: seer stones and large volumes of doctrine coming forth. And

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Speaker 1: that was just basically the Mormonism that I was aware of.

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Speaker 1: And then 2.0 was really that isolationist movement, like Erin

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Speaker 1: was talking about out West with the frontier and Brigham

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Speaker 1: Young instituting, blood atonement, and there was Adam God doctrine,

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Speaker 1: and there was a lot of really unique things that

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Speaker 1: took its own form within that second stream of Mormonism.

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Speaker 1: And then I would call 3.0 more of the Mormonism

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Speaker 1: that I was raised in, which is that things were

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Speaker 1: a little bit more harmonized. You could see that the

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Speaker 1: lectures on faith had already been removed in the 1920s.

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Speaker 1: So we didn't have that in the Doctrine and Covenants.

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Speaker 1: We didn't have a question about how many were in

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Speaker 1: the Godhead. I believe there were three and that they

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Speaker 1: were all distinct beings with unified purpose. The blacks had

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Speaker 1: the priesthood at this point, and Bruce Omerkonke was cool,

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Speaker 1: and we had all of this doctrine really solidified for us.

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Speaker 1: And so that was the Mormonism that I knew well,

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Speaker 1: but I did believe, and I always said this to

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Speaker 1: my friends growing up, which is we're different and it matters.

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Speaker 1: And especially my mom, she was a Methodist before joining

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Speaker 1: the church as an early teen. And hearing stories growing

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Speaker 1: up about how Mormonism was worth converting to, that Mormonism

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Speaker 1: was different than creedal Christianity, as.

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Speaker 4: They call it.

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Speaker 1: And that we needed the gospel. We needed the restored

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Speaker 1: gospel on the earth. And that's what I believed. And

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Speaker 1: so hearing this rhetoric now within New Mormonism that, you know,

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Speaker 1: as long as you're glorifying God and you're working towards this,

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Speaker 1: that there's really not a big difference is it's just

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Speaker 1: unheard of, in my opinion.

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Speaker 2: Now, in some ways, this is a whole separate conversation.

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Speaker 2: But what was like, give me the kind of Twitter

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Speaker 2: version of it. those cracks started to appear for you

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Speaker 2: that made you question the LDS faith?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, first, it was a lot actually had to

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Speaker 1: do with abortion and some of their their takes on

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Speaker 1: things that really led me to believe not that there

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Speaker 1: was an issue with Book of Mormon, because Honestly, Sean,

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Speaker 1: like even if I had social issues, I still was like.

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Speaker 4: Well, the restoration is true, right?

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Speaker 1: Like I have a testimony of the Book of Mormon

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Speaker 1: and of Joseph Smith and the restoration. So I was

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Speaker 1: never really wavering in that testimony. It wasn't until a

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Speaker 1: family member who I knew was disaffected with the church.

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Speaker 1: I sat down with him and I said, hey, like

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Speaker 1: what's going on with the church? I almost feel like

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Speaker 1: there's another apostasy going on. And I actually think a

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Speaker 1: lot of Mormons feel that way now, which also leads

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Speaker 1: into new Mormonism. I don't think that there's that. direction

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Speaker 1: that the leadership used to give. If you listen to

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Speaker 1: General Conference, you're just not going to receive a lot

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Speaker 1: of meat anymore. But I just felt a little disaffected

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Speaker 1: with the leadership.

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Speaker 4: And so I was like, maybe we have another apostasy.

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Speaker 1: And my family member told me to go look at

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Speaker 1: Mormon Think, which is a site that had both the

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Speaker 1: apologists as well.

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Speaker 4: As the critics view.

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Speaker 1: And I never would have looked at the gospel, any

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Speaker 1: other type of anti-Mormon stuff, right?

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Speaker 4: Like the CES letter and things like that. I couldn't

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Speaker 4: stomach that.

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Speaker 1: So Um, yeah, I looked at that and I started

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Speaker 1: to realize for the first time that the history of the,

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Speaker 1: of the Mormon church was not what I was sold

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Speaker 1: my whole life. And, um, that was a really hard

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Speaker 1: season for me because I didn't, I didn't know about

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Speaker 1: seer stones and hats and I didn't know about a

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Speaker 1: lot of the things that, um, the translation process that

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Speaker 1: we can get into all that. You're right. This is

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Speaker 1: a whole different conversation for another day, but, um, but yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think it was the historical claims of Mormonism as

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Speaker 1: well as the changing doctrine that really solidified that, oh, I'm,

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Speaker 1: I've been sold something that isn't true.

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Speaker 2: All right, folks, comment if you like.

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Speaker 3: You know what?

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Speaker 2: We want you to have Brandy back to do a

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Speaker 2: deep dive on her story and conversion. I'm so tempted

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Speaker 2: to go there, but we won't. We'll hold off on that.

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Speaker 2: One of the things you sent me, Aaron, was that

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Speaker 2: kind of these different strains, like six or seven different strains,

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Speaker 2: so to speak, for lack of a better word, who

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Speaker 2: identify as Mormons today. And of course, one of those strains,

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Speaker 2: you mentioned the name Blake Osler as an apologist who's influential.

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Speaker 2: We can circle back to that. But what are some

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Speaker 2: of these main differences? Once somebody says, I'm a Mormon,

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Speaker 2: believe in the Restoration, follow some of these teachings, what

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Speaker 2: are some of those different strains that people can follow

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Speaker 2: today under the broad umbrella of Latter-day Saints?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really important when you hear Latter-day Saints say,

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Speaker 3: we believe or we don't believe, they're typically speaking from

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Speaker 3: a stream inadvertently, maybe inadvertently. sometimes over-representing their stream. But

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Speaker 3: the main streams that I identify are pioneer Mormonism, where

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Speaker 3: someone's got more of an interest in the distinctives of

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Speaker 3: Brigham Young. And you'll find some modern Latter-day Saints that

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Speaker 3: have this sort of flavor where they're more friendly to

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Speaker 3: some of these pioneer ideas. But you're going to see

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Speaker 3: this more with the fundamentalist movement or some of the

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Speaker 3: polygamist groups. We interact with them in Utah, the All

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Speaker 3: Red group, the Peterson group. There's just a number of,

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Speaker 3: you know, people think of this as like abstract, but

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Speaker 3: it's quite real here in Utah where we interact with

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Speaker 3: people that are a part of these groups. And then

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Speaker 3: there's some mainstream Latter-day Saints who kind of have one

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Speaker 3: foot in and one foot out. And you can tell

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Speaker 3: that they have some more affinity with this. The second

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Speaker 3: stream would be correlated Mormonism. And this is going to

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Speaker 3: be people who have a higher regard for Latter-day Saint

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Speaker 3: prophetic direction. And they think of, The manuals and the

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Speaker 3: general conference talks has been more sticky and reliable and

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Speaker 3: perpetual in their momentum. They're to be trusted. And there's

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Speaker 3: a lot of influence here with, like I said, Bruce

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Speaker 3: McConkie and Joseph Fielding Smith. And these people are either

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Speaker 3: very affirming of the King Follett discourse and something called

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Speaker 3: the Sermon on the Grove. They're very affirming that God

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Speaker 3: has a God, affirming of something called spirit birth, that

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Speaker 3: they'll use language like we're literal children of heavenly parents.

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Speaker 3: They're very overt about Heavenly Mother, if you ask them.

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Speaker 3: Some people might hedge on the as man is, God

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Speaker 3: once was, as God as man may be, but that

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Speaker 3: rhetorical layer of hedging typically behind it, though, is essentially

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Speaker 3: an affirmation of it. The third stream is, you could

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Speaker 3: call it Mormon neo-orthodoxy, or you might call it accommodationism.

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Speaker 3: And this is a view of, I think it was

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Speaker 3: really spearheaded mostly by BYU professors who realized that they

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Speaker 3: could minimize Latter-day Saint doctrine proper to what their standard

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Speaker 3: works or canon teaches, irrespective of what their leaders have

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Speaker 3: taught publicly. And so they really tried to approach something

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Speaker 3: called official doctrine or sort of a sense of formal dogma.

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Speaker 3: They really tried to strip away things that were not

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Speaker 3: supported by the standard works. And so you even had

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Speaker 3: some people starting to suggestively question whether Heavenly Mother was

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Speaker 3: a doctrine and you had a lot of Latter-day Saint professors,

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Speaker 3: really big names in this movement would be Stephenie Robinson

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Speaker 3: wrote Believing Christ, arguably as a kind of an undermining

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Speaker 3: and a rejection of Spencer Kimball's Miracle of Forgiveness. And

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Speaker 3: then you have Brad Wilcox today has a really famous

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Speaker 3: talk called His Grace is Sufficient. And they're really trying

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Speaker 3: to undo and undermine this very rich LDS prophetic tradition

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Speaker 3: of teaching that Salvation is, in the most robust sense,

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Speaker 3: a merit system that we're earning, qualifying for, being worthy

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Speaker 3: of the celestial kingdom and of exaltation. The neo-orthodoxy movement

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Speaker 3: or the accommodationism stream really is trying to say it's

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Speaker 3: not about merit. There's still a works-based system there structurally,

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Speaker 3: but they're really trying to go heavy into evangelical grace rhetoric.

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Speaker 3: And if I could speak very informally here, it's almost

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Speaker 3: like they have a crush on the evangelical view of grace,

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Speaker 3: and they yearn to have, they're thirsty for something that's

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Speaker 3: more gracious. Another stream would be revisionism, and this is

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Speaker 3: Blake Osler, Benjamin Spackman. These guys are really into higher criticism.

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Speaker 3: They have a very low view of Latter-day Saint prophets.

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Speaker 3: For them, the standard works are not as binding. Rather,

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Speaker 3: we have modern LDS prophets to almost help us understand

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Speaker 3: the subset or the parts of the standard works that

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Speaker 3: are still trustworthy. And some of these guys, they don't

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Speaker 3: even think God knows the future. They bought into open theism.

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Speaker 3: Contrary to the prophetic tradition, the Latter-day Saints, prophets and apostles,

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Speaker 3: who've taught very clearly that God knows the future exhaustively.

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Speaker 3: They really, Blake Osler, for example, argues that the Book

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Speaker 3: of Mormon is It has an ancient authentic core, but

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Speaker 3: Joseph Smith added his own sort of fictional layer on

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Speaker 3: top of it. He expanded this ancient core. So, I mean,

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Speaker 3: you're going to get this from guys like Jacob Hansen,

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Speaker 3: where they're really trying to reinvent Mormonism with a heavy

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Speaker 3: influence from Blake Osler. I'll try to finish this off.

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Speaker 3: Primitive Mormonism, and this is a real movement here in Utah.

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Speaker 3: This is very different. This is often a polygamy denier

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Speaker 3: movement adjacent stream of Mormonism that argues that Joseph Smith

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Speaker 3: never practiced polygamy. They have a very low view of

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Speaker 3: Brigham Young, even a conspiratorial view of Brigham Young's involvement

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Speaker 3: in polygamy. A lot of them don't really want to

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Speaker 3: talk about the book of Abraham or the later DNC sections.

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Speaker 3: They don't really have a high regard for modern Latter-day

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Speaker 3: Saint prophets and apostles, but they love the Book of Mormon.

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Speaker 3: And so because of that, there's more of that, you know,

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Speaker 3: early Mormon, Protestant, adjacent, evangelical-ish, sometimes I call it Evangelifish,

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Speaker 3: sort of, you know, version of stream of Mormonism. Some

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Speaker 3: of these are members of the mainstream Latter-day Saint sect

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Speaker 3: or institution out of Salt Lake City. Some of them

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Speaker 3: have left the Latter-day Saint institution and joined other groups.

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Speaker 3: There's two more, and these are very real. These are

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Speaker 3: people I talk with all the time, progressive Mormons who

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Speaker 3: long for the Latter-day Saint institution to adopt same-sex marriage

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Speaker 3: in a more robust way, into its theology, into its liturgy,

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Speaker 3: into its increasing accommodation and honor. They really celebrate the

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Speaker 3: idea that in the Latter-day Saint movement, you can be

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Speaker 3: transgender and go to church and hold your membership. And

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Speaker 3: as of 2019, the LDS church no longer counts same-sex

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Speaker 3: marriage to be an act of apostasy for purposes of

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Speaker 3: church discipline. So this, this stream, there's another Osler. There's a,

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Speaker 3: I think it's Richard Osler and Blair Osler, not Blake Osler,

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Speaker 3: but two other Oslers that really are representative of progressive

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Speaker 3: Latter-day Saints who are very much into feminism and liberal politics,

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Speaker 3: but they're very much accommodated and welcomed into the Latter-day

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Speaker 3: Saint movement who'd It doesn't do a lot of boundary

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Speaker 3: maintenance anymore unless you're agitating against the leadership. And then finally,

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Speaker 3: this is a gigantic stream in Utah. There's cultural Mormonism.

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Speaker 3: These are people who are not really that interested in

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Speaker 3: theological truth claims. They might be defensive of the Latter-day

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Speaker 3: Saint religion up front, but when you talk with them,

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Speaker 3: they're kind of like, I don't care. I love the

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Speaker 3: moral structure. I love that it makes me feel good.

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Speaker 3: It makes me a better person. It kind of doesn't

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Speaker 3: matter in the end whether it's true. It's still worth

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Speaker 3: believing because of the social moral benefit it brings into

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Speaker 3: my life. Anyway, those seven streams are very, very different,

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Speaker 3: but they're the kinds of people we actually talk to

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Speaker 3: in Utah. And I think they're important because it helps

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Speaker 3: us not project any one of those on the whole movement.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to come to you in a second, Brandy,

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Speaker 2: kind of for your reaction to these categories. But Aaron,

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Speaker 2: there's bottom-up research and there's like top-down research. You're obviously

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Speaker 2: doing bottom-up research because you're out there every day talking

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Speaker 2: to people, noticing these categories, right? what's your sense of

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Speaker 2: the size of these categories, the scope of them? What

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Speaker 2: is the biggest? What's the smallest? If you had to

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Speaker 2: give a sense of that, where would you place some

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Speaker 2: of the most significant and least significant ones?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, sometimes I find little hiccups or strands of pioneer Mormonism,

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Speaker 3: but that's really the minority position today. I think that

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Speaker 3: we're in a transition right now where we're sort of

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Speaker 3: quietly retiring aspects of correlated Mormonism. But that remains, I think,

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Speaker 3: the plural majority of the Latter-day Saint people, at least

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Speaker 3: among the people that really care about the truth claims.

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Speaker 3: The primitive movement, that's a minority view, but we just

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Speaker 3: run into it enough to make note of it. In

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Speaker 3: terms of the vocal apologetic minority, the young men that

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Speaker 3: want to engage on the street who have been watching

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Speaker 3: YouTube videos, Jacob Hansen, Hayden Carroll, these men are disproportionately

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Speaker 3: of the revisionist or Oslerian, uh, influence or the adjacent influence. Um, these, the, the,

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Speaker 3: the vocal LDS apologetic minority is disproportionately of the revisionist stream.

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Speaker 3: And they're very, they're, it, this is kind of frustrating

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Speaker 3: when you want to do public interactions or public engagement with, um,

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Speaker 3: informal representatives of the LDS movement. Um, the people who

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Speaker 3: are most willing to engage are typically leaning more into

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Speaker 3: the neo-orthodoxy or the, uh, revisionism streams, whereas the common

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Speaker 3: people we talk to are leaning more into the correlated streams.

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Speaker 3: So there's a divide there. I do interact a lot

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Speaker 3: with LDS apologists or apologetic-minded young men, and that's just

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Speaker 3: disproportionately LDS revisionism today. And I'm sure you've encountered that

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Speaker 3: with some of your interactions maybe with LDS professors and

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Speaker 3: so forth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so interesting because when I did the tour

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Speaker 2: that I posted recently, I was able to talk with

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Speaker 2: an outspoken LDS apologist and also sit down with a

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Speaker 2: stake president and their thinking and their ministry and their approach.

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Speaker 2: It was like eye-opening how distinct that it was and

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Speaker 2: really fascinating. It felt like it was almost two completely

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Speaker 2: different conversations and practices, which made me wonder how much

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Speaker 2: are your typical Mormon who goes to church and Who

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Speaker 2: are they listening to? Who are they following? Who's informing them?

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Speaker 2: And I think the church, it seems like they've lost

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Speaker 2: or they're losing the top-down ability to control, in a sense,

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Speaker 2: what people believe. And social media and YouTube has changed

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Speaker 2: all of that. Now, Brandy, you're shaking your head up now.

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Speaker 2: Tell me your reaction to the categories Aaron said or

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Speaker 2: just anything I mentioned that you think would be helpful.

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Speaker 4: I think it was a mic drop. I have nothing

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Speaker 4: to add. No, I always have something to add.

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Speaker 1: I feel like there is so much to say here

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Speaker 1: because I think Mormons are forced to be more nuanced

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Speaker 1: now than ever before. With the internet came the gospel

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Speaker 1: topic essays and a lot of things, and they're looking

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Speaker 1: at this going, how do I reconcile this? So I

425
00:23:18,140 --> 00:23:21,530
Speaker 1: think we're forced to become more nuanced. And in that regard,

426
00:23:21,590 --> 00:23:23,930
Speaker 1: you do kind of have this devaluing of these spiritual leaders,

427
00:23:23,950 --> 00:23:27,130
Speaker 1: like you said. This top-down authority structure for the first

428
00:23:27,170 --> 00:23:29,160
Speaker 1: time is kind of like, well, I'm going to hold

429
00:23:29,200 --> 00:23:31,359
Speaker 1: the prophet to the canon and I'm going to hold

430
00:23:31,380 --> 00:23:34,940
Speaker 1: the prophet to my own personal revelation. Whereas previously in Mormonism,

431
00:23:35,200 --> 00:23:38,440
Speaker 1: you did have when the prophet speaks, the thinking is done, right?

432
00:23:38,570 --> 00:23:39,530
Speaker 4: Like the debate is over.

433
00:23:39,950 --> 00:23:42,389
Speaker 1: And so with that in mind, you're like, okay, for

434
00:23:42,410 --> 00:23:44,530
Speaker 1: the first time, we're going to be the oracles of truth.

435
00:23:44,810 --> 00:23:47,570
Speaker 1: And if it matches up with my personal revelation, then

436
00:23:47,770 --> 00:23:50,109
Speaker 1: I will concede to the prophet. And we have not

437
00:23:50,130 --> 00:23:52,209
Speaker 1: really seen that before. So I think that there's that.

438
00:23:52,230 --> 00:23:54,820
Speaker 1: And I also love what Aaron was talking about. with

439
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,480
Speaker 1: people feeling like, well, at least I lived a good life, right?

440
00:23:57,540 --> 00:24:00,030
Speaker 1: And they feel really good about who they are.

441
00:24:00,050 --> 00:24:00,609
Speaker 4: That's such a.

442
00:24:00,590 --> 00:24:02,330
Speaker 1: Mormon thing for me when I was like, you know what?

443
00:24:02,690 --> 00:24:04,730
Speaker 1: If the Mormon church isn't true, at least I lived

444
00:24:04,770 --> 00:24:06,369
Speaker 1: a really good life and at least I was a

445
00:24:06,430 --> 00:24:08,730
Speaker 1: really good person. And it's funny looking back at that now,

446
00:24:08,770 --> 00:24:11,010
Speaker 1: especially as a Christian, having a very different perspective of

447
00:24:11,109 --> 00:24:14,730
Speaker 1: my own nature. But at the time I was thinking

448
00:24:14,770 --> 00:24:16,770
Speaker 1: really highly of myself. I think it also has to

449
00:24:16,790 --> 00:24:18,109
Speaker 1: do with the divine nature and we don't need to

450
00:24:18,130 --> 00:24:20,730
Speaker 1: get into that. But Mormonism really sets you up to

451
00:24:20,770 --> 00:24:22,830
Speaker 1: believe that it's us or nothing. That if it's not

452
00:24:22,869 --> 00:24:25,010
Speaker 1: the Mormon church, then it's no one. And so I

453
00:24:25,109 --> 00:24:27,170
Speaker 1: really felt that way as well. And so you're forced

454
00:24:27,210 --> 00:24:29,890
Speaker 1: to make it work. Like, why would I go anywhere else?

455
00:24:29,990 --> 00:24:33,100
Speaker 1: They clearly don't have the truth. It's Mormonism or bust.

456
00:24:33,520 --> 00:24:36,100
Speaker 1: And so I'm going to find a way to make

457
00:24:36,160 --> 00:24:38,660
Speaker 1: this work for me. I have a buddy named Michael Flournoy.

458
00:24:39,540 --> 00:24:41,440
Speaker 1: And he talks about how there's really three types of Mormons.

459
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,190
Speaker 1: There's social Mormons and there's spiritual Mormons and there's doctrinal Mormons.

460
00:24:44,510 --> 00:24:46,609
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of doctrinal Mormons have to

461
00:24:47,530 --> 00:24:50,649
Speaker 1: sometimes evolve into more of a social Mormon where they're like,

462
00:24:50,690 --> 00:24:51,030
Speaker 1: you know what?

463
00:24:51,090 --> 00:24:51,330
Speaker 2: Yeah.

464
00:24:51,720 --> 00:24:53,740
Speaker 1: I can concede that things got weird with Brigham Young

465
00:24:53,780 --> 00:24:56,480
Speaker 1: and that there have been doctrinal changes, but I'm just

466
00:24:56,500 --> 00:24:57,880
Speaker 1: going to find the good and I'm going to serve

467
00:24:57,900 --> 00:24:59,429
Speaker 1: the poor and I'm going to go to church with

468
00:24:59,450 --> 00:25:00,970
Speaker 1: my family and I'm going to have that structure.

469
00:25:00,990 --> 00:25:02,690
Speaker 4: And to be honest with you, Sean, I.

470
00:25:02,670 --> 00:25:05,190
Speaker 1: Even considered staying Mormon when I believed there was nothing

471
00:25:05,250 --> 00:25:06,250
Speaker 1: after Mormonism.

472
00:25:05,910 --> 00:25:07,430
Speaker 4: Because I was like, what do I do with my kids?

473
00:25:07,590 --> 00:25:08,389
Speaker 4: I've got three kids.

474
00:25:08,570 --> 00:25:11,050
Speaker 1: I was looking forward to putting them through the church

475
00:25:11,350 --> 00:25:14,270
Speaker 1: and going through the same steps that I did. Mormonism

476
00:25:14,369 --> 00:25:16,869
Speaker 1: offered me a purpose and identity that not many people

477
00:25:17,270 --> 00:25:18,300
Speaker 1: had growing up around me.

478
00:25:18,340 --> 00:25:19,879
Speaker 4: And so I was like, what do I do with

479
00:25:19,900 --> 00:25:20,220
Speaker 4: my kids?

480
00:25:20,260 --> 00:25:22,700
Speaker 1: And there's really real questions that you would struggle with

481
00:25:22,740 --> 00:25:25,199
Speaker 1: if you start to see that Mormonism isn't adding up

482
00:25:25,240 --> 00:25:27,550
Speaker 1: on a doctrinal level. And so people are going to

483
00:25:27,590 --> 00:25:29,250
Speaker 1: become more nuanced. And so you're going to see a

484
00:25:29,270 --> 00:25:31,070
Speaker 1: million streams. I think this is just the beginning. I

485
00:25:31,109 --> 00:25:33,149
Speaker 1: think Aaron's going to have a list of 100 ships

486
00:25:33,630 --> 00:25:36,330
Speaker 1: by the end of the year because it's just, it's

487
00:25:36,350 --> 00:25:38,530
Speaker 1: getting untenable to follow the mainstream Mormonism.

488
00:25:39,550 --> 00:25:41,850
Speaker 2: Now, Aaron, I love your reaction to that because in

489
00:25:41,869 --> 00:25:43,359
Speaker 2: some ways, if you went back, I don't know, I'm

490
00:25:43,380 --> 00:25:46,620
Speaker 2: just throwing 10, 20 years ago, these number of streams

491
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:52,090
Speaker 2: would be surprising. Certainly the neo-orthodoxy with not just books

492
00:25:52,210 --> 00:25:55,110
Speaker 2: written by Blake Osler, at least early 2000s or so,

493
00:25:55,170 --> 00:25:58,990
Speaker 2: but being spread through YouTube is new. Some of the

494
00:25:59,050 --> 00:26:02,129
Speaker 2: progressive strain probably existed, but not as much as it

495
00:26:02,170 --> 00:26:04,890
Speaker 2: does today. Do you resonate with that, that in some

496
00:26:04,930 --> 00:26:07,350
Speaker 2: ways we're just seeing the crack and that we'll probably

497
00:26:07,390 --> 00:26:10,120
Speaker 2: have a lot more strains as we move forward into

498
00:26:10,140 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 2: the future?

499
00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:14,300
Speaker 3: It's hard for me to tell where things are going.

500
00:26:14,320 --> 00:26:17,300
Speaker 3: I'd it's moving so fast. I can barely keep up.

501
00:26:17,600 --> 00:26:21,070
Speaker 3: So I, I don't know. It's, you know, I think

502
00:26:21,109 --> 00:26:22,870
Speaker 3: one of the things that blows me away and there's

503
00:26:22,890 --> 00:26:26,010
Speaker 3: a book called the next Mormons, I think. And the

504
00:26:26,050 --> 00:26:28,930
Speaker 3: author talks about how over half of Latter-day Saint millennials

505
00:26:28,990 --> 00:26:32,490
Speaker 3: support same-sex marriage. So this is just a whole new ballpark.

506
00:26:32,510 --> 00:26:35,580
Speaker 3: It was a whole new ball game that we, we,

507
00:26:35,670 --> 00:26:40,460
Speaker 3: we can't predict. So I, I, I mean, it's really

508
00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:43,080
Speaker 3: interesting that you could come to Utah and, and really

509
00:26:43,119 --> 00:26:46,560
Speaker 3: not think about or read much, much about Mormonism and

510
00:26:46,619 --> 00:26:48,740
Speaker 3: just come with the gospel and come with a really

511
00:26:48,780 --> 00:26:52,030
Speaker 3: high view of the Bible and the resurrection of Christ

512
00:26:52,180 --> 00:26:54,690
Speaker 3: and salvation by grace through faith, and then plug into

513
00:26:54,730 --> 00:26:58,469
Speaker 3: a local church and then serve your community. And you

514
00:26:58,490 --> 00:27:00,530
Speaker 3: could get really far in a sense, you don't really

515
00:27:00,570 --> 00:27:02,510
Speaker 3: have to be an expert of Mormonism. It's, it's, it's

516
00:27:02,550 --> 00:27:05,790
Speaker 3: kind of imploding in some ways, in some quarters, it's

517
00:27:06,150 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 3: eating its own tail, like Brandy said. And, um, you, you,

518
00:27:10,630 --> 00:27:12,770
Speaker 3: You don't have to be an expert on Mormonism to

519
00:27:12,810 --> 00:27:15,620
Speaker 3: love on the LDS people with the gospel. It's such

520
00:27:15,660 --> 00:27:18,540
Speaker 3: a mess that if you just bring the stability of

521
00:27:19,140 --> 00:27:22,700
Speaker 3: the gospel and of the biblical worldview, I think that

522
00:27:22,800 --> 00:27:24,479
Speaker 3: is a salve for a lot of people who are

523
00:27:24,820 --> 00:27:27,840
Speaker 3: realizing that their feet are firmly planted in mid-air or

524
00:27:27,900 --> 00:27:28,740
Speaker 3: their own shifting sand.

525
00:27:29,940 --> 00:27:31,879
Speaker 2: I think what we're seeing in the new Mormonism, in

526
00:27:31,940 --> 00:27:34,310
Speaker 2: some ways, we're seeing in all sorts of other faiths,

527
00:27:34,510 --> 00:27:38,620
Speaker 2: like even within broader historic Christendom, there's no longer Billy

528
00:27:38,660 --> 00:27:42,390
Speaker 2: Graham type figure that ties people together across differences. There's

529
00:27:42,430 --> 00:27:45,570
Speaker 2: no longer a mere Christianity. There's all these strains and

530
00:27:45,730 --> 00:27:49,930
Speaker 2: infighting we didn't seem to have as much in the past. Brandy,

531
00:27:49,950 --> 00:27:51,630
Speaker 2: you mentioned something I want to make sure is not

532
00:27:51,730 --> 00:27:55,800
Speaker 2: lost on our audience. You mentioned the gospel topic series.

533
00:27:55,820 --> 00:27:57,980
Speaker 2: I actually have this book sitting on my desk right now,

534
00:27:58,560 --> 00:28:01,520
Speaker 2: and it came out in 2020, and you said it's

535
00:28:01,580 --> 00:28:06,050
Speaker 2: because of the internet. Now, explain to us what the

536
00:28:06,210 --> 00:28:10,220
Speaker 2: internet brought with challenges. that about six, seven years ago,

537
00:28:10,240 --> 00:28:14,120
Speaker 2: it says a scholarly engagement, some leaders felt like they

538
00:28:14,180 --> 00:28:15,620
Speaker 2: needed to formally respond.

539
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:18,790
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that the church did feel like they

540
00:28:18,810 --> 00:28:21,469
Speaker 1: needed to formally respond because the tanners and certain places

541
00:28:21,850 --> 00:28:24,370
Speaker 1: and institutions were putting pressure on the church to come

542
00:28:24,450 --> 00:28:26,750
Speaker 1: and be more honest and forthright with their own history.

543
00:28:26,850 --> 00:28:28,950
Speaker 1: And again, like I mentioned, I had never even heard

544
00:28:28,970 --> 00:28:31,120
Speaker 1: of the peep stone and the hat when I was

545
00:28:31,140 --> 00:28:33,520
Speaker 1: a Latter-day Saint. I went through seminary. I went to BYU.

546
00:28:33,540 --> 00:28:36,060
Speaker 1: I went through the temple. I had never heard of

547
00:28:36,119 --> 00:28:39,040
Speaker 1: these things. And I think that the church was forced

548
00:28:39,160 --> 00:28:41,380
Speaker 1: to concede to these things. I will say, though, that

549
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:43,180
Speaker 1: when they brought out the gospel topic.

550
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:44,900
Speaker 4: Essays, I believe it was 2014. Is that right, Erin?

551
00:28:45,080 --> 00:28:47,420
Speaker 1: I think it was 2014 when the gospel topic essays

552
00:28:47,460 --> 00:28:51,530
Speaker 1: came out. And they were kind of quietly released. A

553
00:28:51,570 --> 00:28:53,290
Speaker 1: lot of people didn't really know about them. And I

554
00:28:53,330 --> 00:28:55,010
Speaker 1: think it was more for the church to go, hey,

555
00:28:55,170 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: we did it.

556
00:28:55,690 --> 00:28:58,730
Speaker 4: Like, we said it. It's out there. And now we're

557
00:28:58,750 --> 00:29:01,310
Speaker 4: not hiding anything. But it was never really publicly announced.

558
00:29:02,150 --> 00:29:03,980
Speaker 1: So I think it had to kind of get its

559
00:29:04,040 --> 00:29:06,300
Speaker 1: own momentum, and people started to hear about it more

560
00:29:06,400 --> 00:29:08,660
Speaker 1: as time went on. But to be honest with you,

561
00:29:08,800 --> 00:29:11,900
Speaker 1: as an active Latter-day Saint, it was being introduced to

562
00:29:11,940 --> 00:29:13,760
Speaker 1: ideas that I never would have heard through my ward

563
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,480
Speaker 1: or my stake president or my bishop that the internet

564
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: allowed not only for me to be exposed to these things,

565
00:29:19,340 --> 00:29:21,200
Speaker 1: but also to put pressure on the church to actually

566
00:29:21,220 --> 00:29:23,350
Speaker 1: concede to them. Because I will say, even with the

567
00:29:24,120 --> 00:29:27,130
Speaker 1: CES letter and Mormon Think and all these sites that

568
00:29:27,150 --> 00:29:29,930
Speaker 1: I was visiting, it was the gospel topic essays. It

569
00:29:29,970 --> 00:29:32,590
Speaker 1: was hearing from the horse's mouth. these things that were

570
00:29:32,650 --> 00:29:36,270
Speaker 1: conceded about the first vision narratives, about the historical claims

571
00:29:36,290 --> 00:29:38,790
Speaker 1: of Mormonism that I went, oh my goodness, they're conceding

572
00:29:38,810 --> 00:29:41,020
Speaker 1: to this. I thought this was just anti-Mormon propaganda. This

573
00:29:41,080 --> 00:29:42,100
Speaker 1: is why I was told never to go on the

574
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:44,680
Speaker 1: internet because this was going to take away my faith

575
00:29:44,700 --> 00:29:46,580
Speaker 1: that I know was good and true. And so I

576
00:29:46,620 --> 00:29:49,050
Speaker 1: think it was really hearing that the church had to

577
00:29:49,070 --> 00:29:52,270
Speaker 1: concede to these things that really solidified my decision to leave.

578
00:29:52,350 --> 00:29:53,750
Speaker 1: And I think the church was forced to do that

579
00:29:53,790 --> 00:29:54,510
Speaker 1: because of the internet.

580
00:29:55,810 --> 00:29:58,110
Speaker 2: Just to give people some context, I have at least

581
00:29:58,130 --> 00:30:02,290
Speaker 2: a 2020 gospel topic series here. And there's topics like

582
00:30:02,390 --> 00:30:05,610
Speaker 2: DNA and the Book of Mormon, some of those serious

583
00:30:05,670 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 2: challenges that undermine some of the Book of Mormon claims.

584
00:30:08,780 --> 00:30:12,060
Speaker 2: There's chapters here on plural marriage after 1890. A lot

585
00:30:12,100 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 2: of people learned about how many wives, a couple dozen plus,

586
00:30:15,480 --> 00:30:18,420
Speaker 2: Joseph Smith had. Of course, questions related to the Book

587
00:30:18,460 --> 00:30:22,310
Speaker 2: of Abraham. These are huge challenges. Some of the claims

588
00:30:22,350 --> 00:30:24,550
Speaker 2: that Joseph Smith made, again, in the Book of Mormon

589
00:30:24,650 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 2: about blacks and the priesthood going back to the 1970s.

590
00:30:28,690 --> 00:30:32,170
Speaker 2: These were pushed by the internet and the church felt

591
00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 2: the need to formally respond. This version that I have

592
00:30:35,740 --> 00:30:38,140
Speaker 2: is at least 2020. So that's six, seven years ago.

593
00:30:38,540 --> 00:30:41,460
Speaker 2: And of course, social media and YouTube has even taken

594
00:30:41,560 --> 00:30:44,620
Speaker 2: off since then. Aaron, let me circle back with you.

595
00:30:44,780 --> 00:30:46,970
Speaker 2: You mentioned the name Blake Osler. I read one of

596
00:30:47,010 --> 00:30:51,830
Speaker 2: his books recently, Exploring Mormon Thoughts. He's a brilliant thinker,

597
00:30:51,850 --> 00:30:55,780
Speaker 2: a systematic philosopher, really, as far as I can tell.

598
00:30:55,800 --> 00:30:58,150
Speaker 2: And there's been some brilliant thinkers, obviously, going back to

599
00:30:58,170 --> 00:31:01,880
Speaker 2: the Prats in the beginning of the LDS movement. But

600
00:31:01,920 --> 00:31:06,460
Speaker 2: he's a very sophisticated, thoughtful thinker. Explain a little bit

601
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:09,400
Speaker 2: who he is and his influence and how we're seeing

602
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:14,400
Speaker 2: it play out today through some of these neo-Orthodox LDS apologists. Yeah.

603
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:16,730
Speaker 3: As he shares his own story, as I understand it,

604
00:31:16,980 --> 00:31:19,080
Speaker 3: he came to a head where he realized he could

605
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:22,340
Speaker 3: not trust Joseph Fielding Smith on the topic of evolution.

606
00:31:22,420 --> 00:31:26,440
Speaker 3: Joseph Fielding Smith was more fundamentalist and more evangelical adjacent

607
00:31:26,500 --> 00:31:28,740
Speaker 3: on some of these issues. You might even say that

608
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:33,870
Speaker 3: Joseph Fielding Smith had a more inerrancy adjacent view of scripture.

609
00:31:34,620 --> 00:31:39,290
Speaker 3: And Blake Osler talks about how he basically realized he

610
00:31:39,330 --> 00:31:41,310
Speaker 3: had to chart his own path. He had to go

611
00:31:41,330 --> 00:31:44,660
Speaker 3: in a different direction. And What followed was a series of,

612
00:31:45,200 --> 00:31:48,800
Speaker 3: I would say, undermining or turning over of Latter-day Saint positions.

613
00:31:49,740 --> 00:31:53,900
Speaker 3: I think the most important issue where Osler speaks against

614
00:31:53,960 --> 00:31:56,140
Speaker 3: his own prophetic tradition is on the issue of the

615
00:31:56,200 --> 00:31:59,000
Speaker 3: regress of deities. And the idea here is that Joseph Smith,

616
00:31:59,850 --> 00:32:02,270
Speaker 3: in the King Follett discourse, taught that God was once

617
00:32:02,310 --> 00:32:04,610
Speaker 3: a man as we are now, and followed that up

618
00:32:04,670 --> 00:32:06,489
Speaker 3: in a sermon called the Sermon in the Grove, where

619
00:32:06,510 --> 00:32:08,530
Speaker 3: he taught that the father had a father. And now that,

620
00:32:09,550 --> 00:32:11,870
Speaker 3: there's two issues there. What did Joseph Smith mean? And

621
00:32:11,890 --> 00:32:15,900
Speaker 3: then What did subsequent Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles receive

622
00:32:15,940 --> 00:32:18,920
Speaker 3: that to mean? What did they think that meant? How

623
00:32:18,960 --> 00:32:22,900
Speaker 3: did they take that and run with it? Well, the

624
00:32:23,090 --> 00:32:28,550
Speaker 3: near-unanimous position of Middle Mormonism, Pioneer Mormonism, Integration Era Mormonism,

625
00:32:30,070 --> 00:32:33,950
Speaker 3: Correlation Era Mormonism, even he concedes in his book that

626
00:32:35,270 --> 00:32:38,170
Speaker 3: the dominant position has been that Heavenly Father has a

627
00:32:38,190 --> 00:32:41,560
Speaker 3: Heavenly Father, that there's essentially a Heavenly Grandfather There's an

628
00:32:41,760 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 3: ancestry of gods that these deities have a domain that's

629
00:32:45,620 --> 00:32:49,719
Speaker 3: specific to them, respective to them. So you'll hear things like, well,

630
00:32:49,740 --> 00:32:53,080
Speaker 3: there's one God for us, or there's a Most High

631
00:32:53,480 --> 00:32:57,180
Speaker 3: pertaining to us. And this is the kind of Latter-day

632
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 3: Saint theology that we've run into, that we've trained to

633
00:33:00,880 --> 00:33:05,860
Speaker 3: interact with. Well, Osler goes back to the Kingfellate Discourse

634
00:33:06,060 --> 00:33:08,500
Speaker 3: in the Sermon on the Grove, and he argues instead

635
00:33:08,520 --> 00:33:11,800
Speaker 3: that two things that it's not that heavenly father was

636
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:16,660
Speaker 3: not yet God. And, um, and then as a man

637
00:33:16,720 --> 00:33:20,340
Speaker 3: became later a God, rather he argues that heavenly father

638
00:33:20,540 --> 00:33:23,660
Speaker 3: was always fully God. And now he's, he's defining that

639
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:27,090
Speaker 3: differently that he's always chosen perfectly and had the fullness

640
00:33:27,110 --> 00:33:32,890
Speaker 3: of divinity. And then he, uh, emptied himself of divinity subtract,

641
00:33:32,910 --> 00:33:35,770
Speaker 3: you know, he was, it's kind of like super canonicism.

642
00:33:35,830 --> 00:33:39,680
Speaker 3: He takes a break from being fully divine and, becomes immortal,

643
00:33:40,420 --> 00:33:44,250
Speaker 3: and so he condescends and he experiences mortality, and then

644
00:33:44,330 --> 00:33:47,630
Speaker 3: he resurrects and ascends and goes back to participating in

645
00:33:47,670 --> 00:33:50,970
Speaker 3: full divinity. So in Osler's view, it's not that God

646
00:33:51,010 --> 00:33:53,990
Speaker 3: was at a point never had been God and then

647
00:33:54,030 --> 00:33:56,190
Speaker 3: became a God, and it's not that there's an ancestry

648
00:33:56,230 --> 00:34:02,340
Speaker 3: of divine superiors that are domain-specific. In his view, rather,

649
00:34:02,480 --> 00:34:05,540
Speaker 3: there's one Godhead with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost that

650
00:34:06,090 --> 00:34:11,310
Speaker 3: And there's no other godheads beyond or superior to or

651
00:34:11,370 --> 00:34:16,160
Speaker 3: beside this godhead for other domains. So, I mean, evangelicals

652
00:34:16,180 --> 00:34:19,719
Speaker 3: got really excited about the direction this was going in.

653
00:34:20,239 --> 00:34:24,000
Speaker 3: But he was essentially also was undermining his own prophetic

654
00:34:24,020 --> 00:34:27,160
Speaker 3: and apostolic tradition. So some of the young Latter-day Saint

655
00:34:27,580 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 3: men that we talked to on the street today are

656
00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:34,040
Speaker 3: insistent that, quote, we believe there's only one God, that

657
00:34:34,080 --> 00:34:38,109
Speaker 3: he's always been God. Now, there's a little asterisk on that.

658
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:42,939
Speaker 3: Osler argues that when Heavenly Father became immortal, there was almost,

659
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:46,060
Speaker 3: you might call it a substitute deity or a deity swap.

660
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 3: Someone fills in for Heavenly Father and temporarily functions as

661
00:34:50,180 --> 00:34:53,250
Speaker 3: Heavenly Father. And Heavenly Father, as we know him, as

662
00:34:53,290 --> 00:34:58,550
Speaker 3: a mortal, is temporarily worshiping a deity who temporarily has

663
00:34:58,590 --> 00:35:02,330
Speaker 3: taken his place. So anyway, this is not the traditional

664
00:35:02,350 --> 00:35:05,500
Speaker 3: Mormonism that probably uh, Brandy grew up with. It's not

665
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:09,310
Speaker 3: the traditional Mormonism that we've interacted with. Um, Osler feels

666
00:35:09,530 --> 00:35:12,370
Speaker 3: very free to say things like Brigham Young's theology was

667
00:35:12,410 --> 00:35:16,350
Speaker 3: a disaster. He, he writes that. He also argues that, um,

668
00:35:16,450 --> 00:35:19,630
Speaker 3: it's really not Brigham's place to be much of a

669
00:35:19,680 --> 00:35:23,180
Speaker 3: theologian that he's, you know, that it's, it really wasn't

670
00:35:23,219 --> 00:35:25,360
Speaker 3: his role or position to be a theologian that you

671
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,020
Speaker 3: really need. You really, I would argue that the posture

672
00:35:28,060 --> 00:35:30,500
Speaker 3: is you really need people like Blake Osler to kind of, um,

673
00:35:32,020 --> 00:35:36,700
Speaker 3: undo the errors of Latter-day Saint prophets and apostles. I

674
00:35:36,739 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 3: hope that gives you a flavor, though, of where that goes. Yeah,

675
00:35:40,000 --> 00:35:40,600
Speaker 3: that really does.

676
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:42,180
Speaker 2: Question I want to ask both of you to weigh

677
00:35:42,219 --> 00:35:48,180
Speaker 2: in is, is there any strain within LDS theology today

678
00:35:48,260 --> 00:35:53,040
Speaker 2: that you think is genuinely moving more Orthodox? And you

679
00:35:53,080 --> 00:35:57,320
Speaker 2: call this the neo-Orthodox, and you said evangelicals got excited.

680
00:35:57,900 --> 00:35:59,600
Speaker 2: I've got his book here. I think he wrote it

681
00:35:59,719 --> 00:36:03,460
Speaker 2: early 2000s, his first draft. if I'm not mistaken, 2001,

682
00:36:03,460 --> 00:36:07,900
Speaker 2: so it's been around a quarter century, influencing people. Is

683
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:13,620
Speaker 2: there a movement towards evangelicalism or broadly Protestantism, or I

684
00:36:13,780 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 2: guess those aren't the terms we're looking for, orthodoxy in

685
00:36:16,820 --> 00:36:19,620
Speaker 2: any one of these strains, or is it still bound

686
00:36:19,700 --> 00:36:24,730
Speaker 2: by certain broader Mormon commitments, even if we can question

687
00:36:24,770 --> 00:36:27,970
Speaker 2: things like God had a father and the progression of deities?

688
00:36:28,310 --> 00:36:29,830
Speaker 2: What's your sense of that, Aaron? Then I want to

689
00:36:29,850 --> 00:36:30,430
Speaker 2: come to you, Brandy.

690
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:34,460
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I would separate out revisionism or sort

691
00:36:34,480 --> 00:36:38,700
Speaker 3: of the Oslerian stream. And then I would separate that

692
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:44,350
Speaker 3: out from BYU neo-orthodoxy, which is more evangelical adjacent in

693
00:36:44,469 --> 00:36:51,450
Speaker 3: some rhetoric, at least. Now, that LDS neo-orthodoxy per Stephen E. Robinson,

694
00:36:51,469 --> 00:36:55,950
Speaker 3: Brad Wilcox, I think those are the kinds of people

695
00:36:56,820 --> 00:37:01,590
Speaker 3: that the evangelical interfaith movement got really excited about. because

696
00:37:01,630 --> 00:37:05,270
Speaker 3: they're trying to distance themselves from LDS traditionalism. They're trying

697
00:37:05,290 --> 00:37:09,290
Speaker 3: to politely do it by, by not publicly discounting their

698
00:37:09,330 --> 00:37:12,770
Speaker 3: own prophets and apostles, but they're essentially undermining their own

699
00:37:12,790 --> 00:37:15,950
Speaker 3: prophets and apostles. The problem though, is it's, it ends

700
00:37:16,010 --> 00:37:20,050
Speaker 3: up being, it ends up being more rhetorical than structural

701
00:37:20,270 --> 00:37:24,149
Speaker 3: in the end. There's a book by Kendall White, maybe

702
00:37:24,170 --> 00:37:28,430
Speaker 3: it's O. Kendall White called Mormon Neo-Orthodoxy, where the author

703
00:37:28,530 --> 00:37:35,590
Speaker 3: argues that, um, there's a tension within Latter-day Saint thinking

704
00:37:36,050 --> 00:37:41,240
Speaker 3: because Mormonism started with the Book of Mormon and more

705
00:37:41,920 --> 00:37:47,299
Speaker 3: primitive Protestant American views of God. And because that's sort

706
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 3: of embedded in the scripture and because then it shot

707
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:53,689
Speaker 3: off later to a more finite view of God, they're

708
00:37:53,830 --> 00:37:58,850
Speaker 3: always struggling with this pull between finitism and absolutism. And

709
00:37:59,410 --> 00:38:03,150
Speaker 3: Neo-Orthodoxy represents sort of the pull back to absolutism, but

710
00:38:03,190 --> 00:38:06,590
Speaker 3: they never really make a full commitment to it. The

711
00:38:06,670 --> 00:38:11,710
Speaker 3: structure underneath it still ends up being essentially Mormon. And

712
00:38:11,910 --> 00:38:14,680
Speaker 3: that goes for both the Neo-Orthodoxy movement and then the

713
00:38:14,719 --> 00:38:18,060
Speaker 3: revisionism of Blake Osler. They're still arguing that God is

714
00:38:18,120 --> 00:38:21,720
Speaker 3: essentially an aggregate of inadequate finite parts. They're still arguing

715
00:38:21,739 --> 00:38:25,260
Speaker 3: that God is not truly transcendent over all of creation.

716
00:38:25,760 --> 00:38:29,290
Speaker 3: They're still arguing for some form of, often arguing for

717
00:38:29,330 --> 00:38:34,770
Speaker 3: some form of exaltation that violates Christian principles. They're still

718
00:38:34,790 --> 00:38:38,970
Speaker 3: not giving God glory for everything that Christians give him

719
00:38:38,989 --> 00:38:41,900
Speaker 3: glory for. They're still not, I think I would argue,

720
00:38:42,960 --> 00:38:46,500
Speaker 3: promoting the kind of unadulterated full worship of Jesus as

721
00:38:46,760 --> 00:38:49,880
Speaker 3: a terminus of proper worship. they're really not going the

722
00:38:49,940 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 3: whole way to, to end by, sorry, the thought. I

723
00:38:55,580 --> 00:38:58,960
Speaker 3: think this is where here Christians and evangelicals are, that

724
00:38:59,000 --> 00:39:01,940
Speaker 3: we do well to retrieve our own creedal heritage of

725
00:39:01,980 --> 00:39:06,140
Speaker 3: the Nicene Creed and to, to think more about Chalcedon.

726
00:39:06,580 --> 00:39:08,740
Speaker 3: Those things were really valuable to the, to the Christian

727
00:39:08,780 --> 00:39:12,219
Speaker 3: tradition in terms of drawing boundaries. And I think where

728
00:39:12,239 --> 00:39:17,710
Speaker 3: some people, evangelicals, where we were getting excited, we started

729
00:39:17,730 --> 00:39:20,980
Speaker 3: to compromise the boundaries and we started to say, well,

730
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,299
Speaker 3: maybe if Latter-day Saints can use the same language, we

731
00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:27,130
Speaker 3: can count them in. Even though they're still excluding us,

732
00:39:27,250 --> 00:39:29,469
Speaker 3: they're still saying that we're of the great apostasy and

733
00:39:29,489 --> 00:39:32,560
Speaker 3: they're still not receiving our baptisms as valid. And they're

734
00:39:32,580 --> 00:39:35,660
Speaker 3: still saying that there's a great apostasy. People started to

735
00:39:35,820 --> 00:39:37,100
Speaker 3: maybe compromise on those issues.

736
00:39:38,460 --> 00:39:40,980
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really helpful. What's your sense, Brandon, in terms

737
00:39:41,020 --> 00:39:42,900
Speaker 2: of the categories that you gave 1.0, 2.0, 3.0? Is

738
00:39:42,960 --> 00:39:46,839
Speaker 2: there any part of you that says, well, 4.0 might

739
00:39:46,860 --> 00:39:50,299
Speaker 2: be a significant strain to those who are Orthodox or

740
00:39:50,340 --> 00:39:52,969
Speaker 2: do you not see that kind of movement taking place?

741
00:39:54,150 --> 00:39:56,250
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting because I agree with Aaron. There's kind

742
00:39:56,270 --> 00:39:58,190
Speaker 1: of this weird limbo going on where people are saying

743
00:39:58,210 --> 00:39:59,730
Speaker 1: a lot of words, but I don't think they're really

744
00:40:00,050 --> 00:40:02,690
Speaker 1: properly understanding what they mean. And so you have young

745
00:40:02,790 --> 00:40:05,630
Speaker 1: LDS now who are saying words like grace or gospel

746
00:40:05,670 --> 00:40:08,710
Speaker 1: or salvation, and they don't really define it through the

747
00:40:08,750 --> 00:40:11,290
Speaker 1: Mormon lens, the traditional Orthodox Mormon lens, but they're also

748
00:40:11,350 --> 00:40:13,810
Speaker 1: not defining it through a proper Christian lens. And they're

749
00:40:13,830 --> 00:40:15,650
Speaker 1: kind of floating in this space. And then when you

750
00:40:15,690 --> 00:40:17,049
Speaker 1: get into it with them, a lot of them, it's like, well,

751
00:40:17,070 --> 00:40:19,190
Speaker 1: we'll just focus on orthopraxy anyway. Like just be a

752
00:40:19,190 --> 00:40:21,170
Speaker 1: good person kind of thing, right? And so it goes

753
00:40:21,210 --> 00:40:23,379
Speaker 1: back to the social Mormon stuff. But I do see

754
00:40:23,450 --> 00:40:26,380
Speaker 1: a subset of Mormons actually getting frustrated with the lack

755
00:40:26,540 --> 00:40:28,940
Speaker 1: of direction and wanting, I was actually joking with a

756
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:31,180
Speaker 1: Latter-day Saint the other day because I still have a

757
00:40:31,180 --> 00:40:33,299
Speaker 1: lot of Latter-day Saint friends and I still communicate with

758
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:36,060
Speaker 1: them and want to have a relationship with them. I

759
00:40:36,120 --> 00:40:38,779
Speaker 1: want the best for them. And we were talking about how, man,

760
00:40:38,820 --> 00:40:40,900
Speaker 1: wouldn't it be nice if Mormonism had its own council

761
00:40:40,980 --> 00:40:43,250
Speaker 1: right now to just kind of lock it all in

762
00:40:43,489 --> 00:40:45,790
Speaker 1: and to get everybody on the same page and maybe

763
00:40:45,810 --> 00:40:47,509
Speaker 1: come up with a new article of faith or have

764
00:40:47,550 --> 00:40:48,770
Speaker 1: a creed. We don't want to use the word creed

765
00:40:48,790 --> 00:40:51,049
Speaker 1: because that's kind of triggering the Mormons, but some type

766
00:40:51,070 --> 00:40:54,390
Speaker 1: of article of faith, right, that you can champion around

767
00:40:54,489 --> 00:40:56,930
Speaker 1: and really get that unified feeling because I think people

768
00:40:56,950 --> 00:40:58,589
Speaker 1: are missing. And this is another reason why I think

769
00:40:58,650 --> 00:41:01,590
Speaker 1: people are moving to more of that traditional Christian language

770
00:41:01,650 --> 00:41:04,310
Speaker 1: is they don't have that group identity anymore in Mormonism.

771
00:41:04,430 --> 00:41:06,950
Speaker 1: Like what is the ism of Mormonism? What is that

772
00:41:07,469 --> 00:41:09,569
Speaker 1: What is that boundary of like, what do we need

773
00:41:09,610 --> 00:41:12,450
Speaker 1: to agree with on a fundamental level that makes us Mormon?

774
00:41:12,570 --> 00:41:14,570
Speaker 1: And I don't feel like people really feel that identity

775
00:41:14,610 --> 00:41:15,469
Speaker 1: as much as I used to.

776
00:41:16,260 --> 00:41:18,580
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. Two of you said the same thing.

777
00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:21,379
Speaker 2: You're kind of hitting at what is, to use your term, Erin,

778
00:41:21,420 --> 00:41:25,739
Speaker 2: what is essentially Mormon? That's the way you framed it.

779
00:41:26,180 --> 00:41:28,890
Speaker 2: And you seem to be implying, Brandy, that it's not

780
00:41:28,969 --> 00:41:31,930
Speaker 2: really known as clearly as it was in the past.

781
00:41:32,510 --> 00:41:34,330
Speaker 2: So let me ask you for a second, Brandy, what

782
00:41:34,390 --> 00:41:37,330
Speaker 2: that was in the past that you think tied. And

783
00:41:37,350 --> 00:41:40,419
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the in the past, like 25,

784
00:41:40,420 --> 00:41:42,760
Speaker 2: 50 years. And then I want to come to you, Aaron,

785
00:41:42,780 --> 00:41:44,920
Speaker 2: and ask what you mean by essentially Mormon today and

786
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:48,480
Speaker 2: what ties it together. So what would have been those

787
00:41:48,660 --> 00:41:54,270
Speaker 2: big pillars that made something essentially Mormon before the new Mormonism?

788
00:41:55,270 --> 00:41:56,550
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question.

789
00:41:56,650 --> 00:41:58,670
Speaker 1: I think first and foremost, like faith is here to

790
00:41:58,710 --> 00:42:00,610
Speaker 1: answer the questions of who are we and where are

791
00:42:00,650 --> 00:42:04,000
Speaker 1: we going and who is God? Those are very foundational questions.

792
00:42:04,140 --> 00:42:06,799
Speaker 1: And Mormons used to say that we were born of

793
00:42:06,860 --> 00:42:10,100
Speaker 1: divine natures to actualize our divine nature and become gods.

794
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:11,299
Speaker 4: Like that is why we're here.

795
00:42:11,880 --> 00:42:14,990
Speaker 1: And God is not some immaterial because there's no such

796
00:42:15,030 --> 00:42:16,739
Speaker 1: thing as immaterial in Joseph Smith's language.

797
00:42:16,780 --> 00:42:18,430
Speaker 4: Right. If you read the Doctrine and Covenants, there's nothing

798
00:42:18,510 --> 00:42:19,390
Speaker 4: truly immaterial.

799
00:42:19,430 --> 00:42:22,350
Speaker 1: So Christians are out there worshiping like a God that

800
00:42:22,370 --> 00:42:26,080
Speaker 1: just doesn't exist because to him immaterial means non-existent. But

801
00:42:26,680 --> 00:42:29,580
Speaker 1: to believe in God, to believe in that physical being,

802
00:42:29,600 --> 00:42:32,089
Speaker 1: that exalted man of God who is married and has

803
00:42:32,260 --> 00:42:35,549
Speaker 1: spirit children, and that we can perpetuate that cycle. And

804
00:42:35,570 --> 00:42:38,030
Speaker 1: that's why we're here. We're all acquiescing to the same

805
00:42:38,170 --> 00:42:39,530
Speaker 1: eternal divine law.

806
00:42:39,969 --> 00:42:42,450
Speaker 4: And so we're divine. God is divine.

807
00:42:42,550 --> 00:42:45,009
Speaker 1: We all have the same species. And we're here to

808
00:42:45,050 --> 00:42:47,609
Speaker 1: perpetuate and create forever worlds without end. And that was

809
00:42:47,690 --> 00:42:50,250
Speaker 1: my purpose and my being. And that is, I mean,

810
00:42:50,310 --> 00:42:52,930
Speaker 1: I know, Erin, and we, through the streams, it's obvious

811
00:42:52,950 --> 00:42:54,930
Speaker 1: that there are some Latter-day Saints early on who didn't

812
00:42:55,010 --> 00:42:57,130
Speaker 1: fully get on board with the regress of gods. But

813
00:42:57,150 --> 00:42:59,290
Speaker 1: that was something that I never knew there was another option. Like,

814
00:42:59,330 --> 00:43:01,549
Speaker 1: that's all that was sold to me, right? So that

815
00:43:01,590 --> 00:43:04,009
Speaker 1: was just Mormonism to me. And everyone I knew, we'd

816
00:43:04,050 --> 00:43:05,830
Speaker 1: talk about what kind of worlds we were going to make.

817
00:43:05,850 --> 00:43:07,109
Speaker 1: You know, we were going to have Nerf gun fights

818
00:43:07,190 --> 00:43:09,140
Speaker 1: on there. And, like, I knew I was going to

819
00:43:09,160 --> 00:43:12,440
Speaker 1: be eternally pregnant forever, which I wasn't excited about. But

820
00:43:12,660 --> 00:43:15,620
Speaker 1: I was happy to, you know, have babies and stuff.

821
00:43:15,660 --> 00:43:17,720
Speaker 4: And actually, I know this is kind of a caveat,

822
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:18,420
Speaker 4: but polygamy.

823
00:43:18,850 --> 00:43:21,630
Speaker 1: I know that polygamy became something through the second manifesto

824
00:43:21,710 --> 00:43:23,590
Speaker 1: and more of that at the end of like the

825
00:43:23,590 --> 00:43:26,810
Speaker 1: 2.0 era of Mormonism. I would say 3.0 was that, oh,

826
00:43:27,330 --> 00:43:30,069
Speaker 1: polygamy is, you know, that's for the fundamentalists. And we

827
00:43:30,110 --> 00:43:32,980
Speaker 1: kind of stick our noses up to those, those freaky fundamentalists.

828
00:43:33,340 --> 00:43:34,839
Speaker 1: But I still believe that it was an eternal law

829
00:43:34,860 --> 00:43:36,839
Speaker 1: that needed to be practiced in the next life for

830
00:43:36,860 --> 00:43:38,280
Speaker 1: Brigham Young's doctrine.

831
00:43:38,700 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 4: And I believe I'd have to share my husband.

832
00:43:40,360 --> 00:43:43,680
Speaker 1: And these were really hard doctrines that I swallowed because

833
00:43:43,940 --> 00:43:46,020
Speaker 1: that was to be a Mormon is to believe that.

834
00:43:46,420 --> 00:43:48,520
Speaker 1: you know, polygamy is an eternal law that the new

835
00:43:48,540 --> 00:43:50,319
Speaker 1: and everlasting covenant did include that.

836
00:43:50,460 --> 00:43:52,839
Speaker 4: So, um, I would say that was.

837
00:43:53,040 --> 00:43:55,719
Speaker 1: Mormonism from what, from what I grew up in and

838
00:43:55,820 --> 00:43:57,760
Speaker 1: everyone around me, we were all on the same page.

839
00:43:57,860 --> 00:43:58,860
Speaker 4: There were no issues.

840
00:43:58,940 --> 00:44:02,620
Speaker 1: And I also think speaking back to technology, it's fractured

841
00:44:02,640 --> 00:44:05,130
Speaker 1: so many people because you can find your own brand

842
00:44:05,170 --> 00:44:07,270
Speaker 1: of Mormonism and then there's an echo chamber and then

843
00:44:07,290 --> 00:44:09,450
Speaker 1: it builds, right? Like you get the progressive branches and

844
00:44:09,469 --> 00:44:11,370
Speaker 1: you get people who are like, yeah, you think like me, like,

845
00:44:11,760 --> 00:44:13,160
Speaker 1: I thought I was all alone. And it just kind

846
00:44:13,200 --> 00:44:15,100
Speaker 1: of builds these echo chambers where you see a lot

847
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:17,420
Speaker 1: more factions that didn't exist before the internet.

848
00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:20,020
Speaker 2: I was recently reading, and then I'm going to come

849
00:44:20,060 --> 00:44:22,340
Speaker 2: back to you, Aaron. I was recently reading a BYU

850
00:44:22,380 --> 00:44:27,100
Speaker 2: prof who didn't deny the progression of gods, but just said,

851
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:31,219
Speaker 2: it's such a small minority. It's not significant. We don't

852
00:44:31,300 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 2: talk about this. It's secondary. Let's focus on what really matters.

853
00:44:35,760 --> 00:44:38,750
Speaker 2: Sounds like your experience was very different from that, wasn't it?

854
00:44:39,950 --> 00:44:42,109
Speaker 4: Oh, absolutely. That was the whole point. It was like,

855
00:44:42,270 --> 00:44:45,190
Speaker 4: who am I? I'm a divine daughter. Where am I going?

856
00:44:45,390 --> 00:44:47,370
Speaker 1: I'm going to be, I was sealed to my husband

857
00:44:47,390 --> 00:44:50,210
Speaker 1: in the Sacramento temple and in between semesters at BYU,

858
00:44:50,230 --> 00:44:51,450
Speaker 1: because that's totally a Provo.

859
00:44:51,250 --> 00:44:51,810
Speaker 4: Thing to do, right?

860
00:44:51,830 --> 00:44:53,669
Speaker 1: It's just like, hey, let's go get sealed in between

861
00:44:53,969 --> 00:44:57,290
Speaker 1: our studies and our semesters. And I knew that we

862
00:44:57,350 --> 00:44:59,630
Speaker 1: were just going to create worlds and have spirit children

863
00:44:59,670 --> 00:45:02,510
Speaker 1: and perpetuate that cycle over and over again, because to

864
00:45:02,590 --> 00:45:05,030
Speaker 1: be stagnant, to not create was damnation.

865
00:45:05,620 --> 00:45:05,779
Speaker 4: Right.

866
00:45:05,860 --> 00:45:08,560
Speaker 1: It wasn't necessarily separate from God as much as it was.

867
00:45:08,680 --> 00:45:11,120
Speaker 1: We were here to build. We're here to create. And

868
00:45:11,160 --> 00:45:13,640
Speaker 1: if you speak to older Latter-day Saints, they will still

869
00:45:13,680 --> 00:45:15,440
Speaker 1: concede that they'll be like, well, what do you mean?

870
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:16,560
Speaker 4: And this was the problem I had.

871
00:45:16,500 --> 00:45:19,110
Speaker 1: With creedal Christianity was this idea that we're just here

872
00:45:19,130 --> 00:45:21,810
Speaker 1: to glorify God because I'm like, well, wouldn't like a

873
00:45:21,870 --> 00:45:24,009
Speaker 1: bigger God would want you to become everything that he

874
00:45:24,130 --> 00:45:27,250
Speaker 1: is and have those worlds and dominions and to be

875
00:45:27,290 --> 00:45:29,200
Speaker 1: able to create the way that he does. And so

876
00:45:29,219 --> 00:45:31,980
Speaker 1: I never truly understood when I was LDS what was

877
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 1: so enticing about the Christian God and the message of

878
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:37,469
Speaker 1: why we're here. Because for me, I was an eternal,

879
00:45:37,820 --> 00:45:39,930
Speaker 1: uncreated being who had the potential to do what the

880
00:45:39,950 --> 00:45:41,630
Speaker 1: Father did. And I thought that that was more loving.

881
00:45:42,170 --> 00:45:44,890
Speaker 1: So yeah, I didn't have that. There was no discrepancies

882
00:45:45,350 --> 00:45:46,590
Speaker 1: when I was growing up with that doctrine.

883
00:45:47,250 --> 00:45:48,629
Speaker 2: Erin, let me circle back to you again. You used

884
00:45:48,650 --> 00:45:52,319
Speaker 2: the term essentially Mormon. And in the past, it might

885
00:45:52,360 --> 00:45:56,920
Speaker 2: have been the priesthood, the scriptures, the living prophet, the

886
00:45:57,390 --> 00:46:01,850
Speaker 2: the progression of deities, baptizing for the dead, certain core

887
00:46:01,910 --> 00:46:05,670
Speaker 2: beliefs and practices that are found uniquely, or at least

888
00:46:05,850 --> 00:46:10,799
Speaker 2: uniquely expressed in Latter-day Saint scriptures that are not in

889
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,359
Speaker 2: the Bible, or at least maybe hinted at, but not

890
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:17,960
Speaker 2: in their fullness would be argued. What are those essentially

891
00:46:18,200 --> 00:46:22,680
Speaker 2: Mormon beliefs that tie people together today? Or is that

892
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:26,080
Speaker 2: era of kind of essential beliefs itself even crumbling?

893
00:46:26,969 --> 00:46:28,910
Speaker 3: It's a great question. I think Latter-day Saints are asking

894
00:46:29,219 --> 00:46:34,319
Speaker 3: that same question. There is a BYU student named Noah

895
00:46:34,420 --> 00:46:40,140
Speaker 3: Aramit who has talked about how the Latter-day Saint movement,

896
00:46:40,200 --> 00:46:45,360
Speaker 3: the LDS Church, has provided, it's proffered different models of

897
00:46:45,400 --> 00:46:48,020
Speaker 3: what constitutes official doctrine, but it doesn't really have an

898
00:46:48,060 --> 00:46:52,230
Speaker 3: official doctrine of what constitutes official doctrine. And they're starting

899
00:46:52,270 --> 00:46:55,810
Speaker 3: to talk more now about what he calls covenantal non-dogmatism

900
00:46:55,890 --> 00:46:59,950
Speaker 3: or radical non-dogmatism, uh, that, and the way this plays

901
00:46:59,989 --> 00:47:02,819
Speaker 3: out on the street for me is some Latter-day Saint

902
00:47:02,860 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 3: students will say, well, maybe sort of the essential core

903
00:47:04,940 --> 00:47:07,560
Speaker 3: is the baptismal interview, the series of the short series

904
00:47:07,580 --> 00:47:10,920
Speaker 3: of questions asked before they allow you to be baptized

905
00:47:11,000 --> 00:47:12,860
Speaker 3: into the LDS church. Maybe that is sort of the

906
00:47:13,260 --> 00:47:17,589
Speaker 3: modern functional creed of the Latter-day Saint movement. And I

907
00:47:17,630 --> 00:47:22,030
Speaker 3: pushed that even further. Um, Because in reality and in practice,

908
00:47:22,190 --> 00:47:27,860
Speaker 3: there really are no required beliefs at all after baptism

909
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:33,040
Speaker 3: into the LDS church. So at a standard evangelical church,

910
00:47:33,120 --> 00:47:36,870
Speaker 3: if you become a member, it's predicated on continued belief.

911
00:47:36,930 --> 00:47:40,270
Speaker 3: Of course, there's patience for seasons of struggle and doubt

912
00:47:40,330 --> 00:47:44,219
Speaker 3: and lots of grace and mercy, but If somebody at

913
00:47:44,260 --> 00:47:47,530
Speaker 3: my church, for example, said, I no longer believe Jesus

914
00:47:47,590 --> 00:47:49,330
Speaker 3: rose from the dead. I don't believe there's a God.

915
00:47:49,370 --> 00:47:51,710
Speaker 3: And they persisted in that belief for, say, a year.

916
00:47:52,090 --> 00:47:55,750
Speaker 3: They were recalcitrant after lots of pleading. We would remove

917
00:47:55,790 --> 00:47:59,219
Speaker 3: them from the roles of our local church and, of course,

918
00:47:59,260 --> 00:48:02,040
Speaker 3: invite them to be a welcomed guest, a welcomed visitor,

919
00:48:02,880 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 3: to come and mingle. And we would want to be

920
00:48:05,140 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 3: a good influence on them. And we would want them

921
00:48:07,020 --> 00:48:08,980
Speaker 3: to hear the word of God. But in the Latter-day

922
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:15,280
Speaker 3: Saint movement, If you are a stated atheist, if you

923
00:48:15,739 --> 00:48:20,480
Speaker 3: privately confess to your bishop, if you self-report a stated

924
00:48:20,660 --> 00:48:23,900
Speaker 3: ongoing rejection of Joseph Smith, a rejection of God, a

925
00:48:23,940 --> 00:48:27,360
Speaker 3: rejection of Jesus, that is not grounds for removal of membership.

926
00:48:28,060 --> 00:48:32,460
Speaker 3: There are no continued requirements for any beliefs whatsoever, so

927
00:48:32,500 --> 00:48:36,320
Speaker 3: long as you're not agitating against the leadership or publicly

928
00:48:36,430 --> 00:48:41,190
Speaker 3: agitating for your views. So really, in terms of like,

929
00:48:41,330 --> 00:48:44,009
Speaker 3: after you get through the gate of baptism, there are

930
00:48:44,050 --> 00:48:49,669
Speaker 3: no unifying required beliefs for membership. And there really isn't

931
00:48:49,830 --> 00:48:53,110
Speaker 3: that much of a policing or boundary maintenance on the

932
00:48:53,410 --> 00:48:56,610
Speaker 3: meaning of the terms that you affirm in the baptismal

933
00:48:58,489 --> 00:49:03,259
Speaker 3: initial baptismal interview. So, I mean... I've heard Latter-day Saint

934
00:49:03,300 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 3: thinkers talk about how you kind of, in theory, you

935
00:49:07,040 --> 00:49:10,509
Speaker 3: could hold to a neoclassical view of the Trinity and

936
00:49:10,530 --> 00:49:12,850
Speaker 3: be a Latter-day Saint. Or you could be a full-on

937
00:49:12,890 --> 00:49:15,790
Speaker 3: Brighamite and hold to infinite regress and the gods are

938
00:49:15,850 --> 00:49:18,910
Speaker 3: still growing and they're polygamous. You can kind of believe

939
00:49:18,950 --> 00:49:22,910
Speaker 3: what you want. You can be... a progressive who loves

940
00:49:22,950 --> 00:49:28,990
Speaker 3: same-sex marriage and everything related to LGBTQ. So you don't really,

941
00:49:29,710 --> 00:49:32,190
Speaker 3: you know, this is on the street. This is the

942
00:49:32,230 --> 00:49:35,760
Speaker 3: way I engage this. I say, what does a person

943
00:49:35,840 --> 00:49:38,739
Speaker 3: have to believe in order to maintain their membership in

944
00:49:38,760 --> 00:49:42,300
Speaker 3: the LDS church? And the conversation might move to a

945
00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:45,080
Speaker 3: temple recommend interview and I relocate it. It's not about that.

946
00:49:45,100 --> 00:49:49,550
Speaker 3: I'm asking about retaining your essential membership. And do you have,

947
00:49:49,650 --> 00:49:51,470
Speaker 3: here's how I put it. Do you have to believe

948
00:49:51,510 --> 00:49:57,469
Speaker 3: in Jesus to continue to maintain your essential membership in

949
00:49:57,489 --> 00:50:00,290
Speaker 3: the LDS church? Do you have to believe in Jesus?

950
00:50:00,870 --> 00:50:04,180
Speaker 3: And the final answer is essentially no. You do not

951
00:50:04,219 --> 00:50:08,390
Speaker 3: have to believe in Jesus anymore to retain membership. or

952
00:50:08,430 --> 00:50:11,549
Speaker 3: maintain your essential membership in the LDS church, so long

953
00:50:11,590 --> 00:50:14,650
Speaker 3: as you're not agitating against the leadership.

954
00:50:15,610 --> 00:50:18,339
Speaker 2: Now, maybe I'm totally missing something here, but I could

955
00:50:18,380 --> 00:50:20,900
Speaker 2: think of two reasons for that. Number one is you

956
00:50:20,940 --> 00:50:24,380
Speaker 2: want as many people in the church to inflate your numbers.

957
00:50:24,400 --> 00:50:29,930
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a cynical reason. Second is within LDS

958
00:50:29,989 --> 00:50:34,470
Speaker 2: seems to be a much more focus on orthopraxy than

959
00:50:34,630 --> 00:50:37,670
Speaker 2: on orthodoxy. Hence, a lot of apologists that I've talked

960
00:50:37,690 --> 00:50:41,370
Speaker 2: with say, you know, the proof is in the fruit,

961
00:50:41,630 --> 00:50:45,580
Speaker 2: so to speak. Test a prophet by its fruit. And

962
00:50:45,600 --> 00:50:48,219
Speaker 2: whether somebody apparently says they believe in Jesus or not,

963
00:50:48,300 --> 00:50:52,200
Speaker 2: regression of gods or not, all the other Mormon scriptures

964
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 2: outside of the Bible, the Trinity, if they are living

965
00:50:56,420 --> 00:50:59,759
Speaker 2: out the way Mormons are supposed to live out, they're

966
00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:02,910
Speaker 2: completely fine with that. Is that your take or am

967
00:51:02,989 --> 00:51:06,150
Speaker 2: I missing something on why there would be apparently so

968
00:51:06,270 --> 00:51:09,790
Speaker 2: much allowed diversity within LDS today?

969
00:51:09,810 --> 00:51:12,890
Speaker 3: Aaron? Yeah, I think it comes down to not really

970
00:51:12,910 --> 00:51:15,190
Speaker 3: understanding the gospel. And so I think what you'll hear

971
00:51:15,230 --> 00:51:19,150
Speaker 3: from the people you've talked to, and maybe Brandy could

972
00:51:19,170 --> 00:51:21,719
Speaker 3: speak to this, but there's this fundamental idea that if

973
00:51:21,780 --> 00:51:24,500
Speaker 3: I'm just a good person, everything will work out. And

974
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:27,380
Speaker 3: I think that there's a misunderstanding here of the gospel

975
00:51:27,420 --> 00:51:34,540
Speaker 3: because for evangelicals or Protestants or classic Christians, we fundamentally

976
00:51:34,580 --> 00:51:36,930
Speaker 3: do not believe we're good people. I'm not a good

977
00:51:36,969 --> 00:51:39,270
Speaker 3: person who occasionally does bad things. I'm not a bad

978
00:51:39,310 --> 00:51:41,850
Speaker 3: person who's inclined to do bad things. And I need

979
00:51:41,870 --> 00:51:44,370
Speaker 3: to be born again fundamentally. I need to be forgiven.

980
00:51:44,390 --> 00:51:47,610
Speaker 3: I need to be adopted by God. I need to

981
00:51:47,670 --> 00:51:51,070
Speaker 3: be united to Christ or I will be punished rightly

982
00:51:51,150 --> 00:51:53,550
Speaker 3: and justly for my sins and go to hell forever.

983
00:51:53,750 --> 00:51:56,810
Speaker 3: I need to be redeemed from the penalty of the law.

984
00:51:57,290 --> 00:51:59,130
Speaker 3: I need Jesus to be my proxy. I need him

985
00:51:59,150 --> 00:52:04,210
Speaker 3: to fulfill the full covenant keeping obedience that was required

986
00:52:04,250 --> 00:52:06,490
Speaker 3: of me. I need Jesus to do that on my

987
00:52:06,550 --> 00:52:09,640
Speaker 3: behalf as my proxy, or I will be condemned to

988
00:52:09,700 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 3: hell forever. And I can receive that gift immediately as

989
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:17,319
Speaker 3: a free gift by very weak faith, by very unimpressive

990
00:52:17,780 --> 00:52:21,100
Speaker 3: weak faith with the changed heart. And so I think

991
00:52:21,239 --> 00:52:24,649
Speaker 3: that Latter-day Saints kind of fall back to, and this really,

992
00:52:24,670 --> 00:52:27,570
Speaker 3: this really is not that much different in my view to,

993
00:52:29,440 --> 00:52:32,839
Speaker 3: what we might call mainline Protestantism, not to conflate that

994
00:52:32,880 --> 00:52:37,180
Speaker 3: with mainstream Protestantism, but the PCUSA, sort of the United

995
00:52:37,620 --> 00:52:43,609
Speaker 3: Methodist inclination more and more of progressive mainline Christianity, where,

996
00:52:43,910 --> 00:52:46,310
Speaker 3: you know, whether Jesus rose from the dead really isn't

997
00:52:46,370 --> 00:52:48,969
Speaker 3: pivotal anymore. It's just about being a good person. It's

998
00:52:48,989 --> 00:52:52,390
Speaker 3: that fundamental idea that we're good people and that we

999
00:52:52,410 --> 00:52:55,020
Speaker 3: don't really have to worry about the wrath of God. Hmm.

1000
00:52:55,670 --> 00:52:57,989
Speaker 2: Brandy, jump in here and give your comments on what

1001
00:52:58,010 --> 00:52:59,850
Speaker 2: was just shared if you want to weigh in as well.

1002
00:53:00,830 --> 00:53:03,170
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think with New Mormonism, you're seeing this undertone

1003
00:53:03,210 --> 00:53:07,029
Speaker 1: of universalism and political correctness. And so while you'll see

1004
00:53:07,070 --> 00:53:09,890
Speaker 1: Latter-day Saints get online and say, it's this way or

1005
00:53:09,910 --> 00:53:12,110
Speaker 1: it's this way, they'll go, hey, listen, at the end

1006
00:53:12,130 --> 00:53:13,790
Speaker 1: of the day, we're all going to make it. And

1007
00:53:13,810 --> 00:53:15,629
Speaker 1: what we're not going to do is judge each other

1008
00:53:15,790 --> 00:53:18,009
Speaker 1: for differences in our doctrines.

1009
00:53:17,610 --> 00:53:18,470
Speaker 4: Or the way that we practice.

1010
00:53:18,510 --> 00:53:21,860
Speaker 1: And that's what's kind of interesting about this emphasis on orthopraxy.

1011
00:53:22,420 --> 00:53:24,200
Speaker 1: Because on one end you say, hey, we can all

1012
00:53:24,239 --> 00:53:25,779
Speaker 1: disagree on doctrine at the end of the day, but

1013
00:53:25,880 --> 00:53:28,120
Speaker 1: the way that we live our lives as social Mormons

1014
00:53:28,360 --> 00:53:30,529
Speaker 1: really is what's going to bind us together. But then

1015
00:53:30,550 --> 00:53:32,830
Speaker 1: you get online and you see how people respond to

1016
00:53:32,850 --> 00:53:34,609
Speaker 1: each other when you say, hey, you shouldn't be leaving

1017
00:53:34,650 --> 00:53:36,569
Speaker 1: the temple with a strapless dress on. Like you're not

1018
00:53:36,610 --> 00:53:38,770
Speaker 1: even keeping your covenants. You're not in your garments. And

1019
00:53:38,790 --> 00:53:40,689
Speaker 1: you'll get a lot of people saying, hey, that's between

1020
00:53:40,730 --> 00:53:43,190
Speaker 1: her and the Lord. We're not to judge them. Now

1021
00:53:43,230 --> 00:53:46,810
Speaker 1: we've got Mormons openly who are faithful Latter-day Saints claiming

1022
00:53:46,830 --> 00:53:49,930
Speaker 1: that they're active, drinking coffee, having, you know, obviously the

1023
00:53:50,050 --> 00:53:52,090
Speaker 1: tattoos and the piercings is a little bit more nuanced

1024
00:53:52,110 --> 00:53:53,370
Speaker 1: now because they took it out of the handbook. They

1025
00:53:53,390 --> 00:53:55,210
Speaker 1: never advocated for it, but they kind of just slowly

1026
00:53:55,230 --> 00:53:56,850
Speaker 1: took it away, which is kind of how Mormons change

1027
00:53:56,870 --> 00:54:00,360
Speaker 1: things from the top. But there is a sense of

1028
00:54:00,560 --> 00:54:03,239
Speaker 1: don't judge. And the one thing you shouldn't do is

1029
00:54:03,260 --> 00:54:06,620
Speaker 1: judge people. So that's that political correctness creeping into new Mormonism.

1030
00:54:07,030 --> 00:54:08,660
Speaker 1: where at the end of the day, even what you

1031
00:54:08,719 --> 00:54:10,839
Speaker 1: do and how you represent your Mormonism needs to be

1032
00:54:10,920 --> 00:54:12,940
Speaker 1: up to you. And no one else can tell you

1033
00:54:12,980 --> 00:54:15,520
Speaker 1: how to live that way. And to Erin's other point,

1034
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:19,440
Speaker 1: I know people who are atheists, who are active Latter-day Saints,

1035
00:54:19,840 --> 00:54:21,640
Speaker 1: who go to church and do the things. And a

1036
00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:23,960
Speaker 1: lot of it is because of the social repercussions that

1037
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,609
Speaker 1: would ensue if they were to leave and potentially lose

1038
00:54:26,630 --> 00:54:29,469
Speaker 1: their family or their marriage or their job. But it

1039
00:54:29,489 --> 00:54:31,770
Speaker 1: really comes down to, are you stepping in line Are

1040
00:54:31,810 --> 00:54:33,870
Speaker 1: you stepping into church every week? Are you fulfilling your

1041
00:54:33,890 --> 00:54:35,649
Speaker 1: calling and doing the things that you need to do?

1042
00:54:35,790 --> 00:54:40,109
Speaker 1: And it becomes a very outward faith with no meat

1043
00:54:40,170 --> 00:54:42,700
Speaker 1: on the inside. And that's what's really sad about it.

1044
00:54:42,750 --> 00:54:46,240
Speaker 1: To echo his points on the gospel, these people are lost.

1045
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:48,620
Speaker 1: They don't understand. They probably don't understand who they are

1046
00:54:48,739 --> 00:54:51,840
Speaker 1: before God, and they don't understand God. And when I

1047
00:54:51,900 --> 00:54:55,600
Speaker 1: was LDS, I believed in a different version of my creator,

1048
00:54:55,900 --> 00:54:58,500
Speaker 1: and I would have rejected and outright did reject the

1049
00:54:58,540 --> 00:54:59,500
Speaker 1: God that I now worship.

1050
00:54:59,969 --> 00:55:02,529
Speaker 4: Because I was given false ideas about him.

1051
00:55:02,650 --> 00:55:05,050
Speaker 1: It was really sad, but I, the more that I ruminate,

1052
00:55:05,070 --> 00:55:07,870
Speaker 1: the more I realized that Mormonism is a counterfeit of

1053
00:55:07,890 --> 00:55:10,629
Speaker 1: the Christian gospel, but it also offered a straw man

1054
00:55:10,950 --> 00:55:13,589
Speaker 1: of the Christian gospel because I not only saw that

1055
00:55:13,610 --> 00:55:16,640
Speaker 1: Mormonism wasn't the real Christianity, but when I left, I thought, well,

1056
00:55:16,660 --> 00:55:19,060
Speaker 1: I'm never trying that because, you know, the Council of

1057
00:55:19,100 --> 00:55:21,600
Speaker 1: Nicaea is what created the Bible and the Trinity. And

1058
00:55:21,700 --> 00:55:24,359
Speaker 1: I was, you know, I was committing modalism everywhere with

1059
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:26,280
Speaker 1: my versions of the Trinity. And I was so ignorant

1060
00:55:26,300 --> 00:55:28,460
Speaker 1: to so many things, but I had been sold lies

1061
00:55:28,500 --> 00:55:31,120
Speaker 1: about what Christianity really is. And so these people just

1062
00:55:31,219 --> 00:55:34,049
Speaker 1: need to be told the gospel in a way that is, um,

1063
00:55:34,989 --> 00:55:37,049
Speaker 1: they're able to understand it. And that's going to be

1064
00:55:37,070 --> 00:55:38,730
Speaker 1: the hard part is how do we evangelize? How do

1065
00:55:38,750 --> 00:55:41,270
Speaker 1: we articulate the gospel to people who don't fit into

1066
00:55:41,290 --> 00:55:43,489
Speaker 1: the categories that I did? Because people ask me, Brandy, like,

1067
00:55:43,530 --> 00:55:45,410
Speaker 1: how do you share the gospel with these people? And

1068
00:55:45,450 --> 00:55:47,660
Speaker 1: sometimes I'm like, Hey, listen, these are not the same

1069
00:55:47,680 --> 00:55:50,799
Speaker 1: Mormons that I was. And so I'm learning this with you.

1070
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:54,020
Speaker 1: Like this is challenging and it's, the landscape is changing

1071
00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:54,600
Speaker 1: so quickly.

1072
00:55:55,750 --> 00:56:00,810
Speaker 2: Let me narrow down into a particular passage that evangelicals

1073
00:56:00,850 --> 00:56:03,850
Speaker 2: and Protestants often debate and discuss with their LDS friends

1074
00:56:04,450 --> 00:56:09,210
Speaker 2: is 2 Nephi 25-23. I know you've talked about this, Aaron.

1075
00:56:09,650 --> 00:56:13,670
Speaker 2: What's traditionally how that has been understood, and how are

1076
00:56:13,710 --> 00:56:15,870
Speaker 2: we seeing that shift today?

1077
00:56:16,750 --> 00:56:18,730
Speaker 3: It's a great data point, and it's a great use

1078
00:56:18,770 --> 00:56:22,330
Speaker 3: case or example for a lot of these changes. In

1079
00:56:22,370 --> 00:56:27,750
Speaker 3: the earliest versions of Mormonism, you really had a more Wesleyan, Arminian, revivalist,

1080
00:56:28,130 --> 00:56:32,640
Speaker 3: sort of excited, charismatic, evangelical adjacent view of God and

1081
00:56:32,660 --> 00:56:35,359
Speaker 3: the gospel. And you do have some strains of perfectionism,

1082
00:56:36,340 --> 00:56:40,100
Speaker 3: some passages of the Book of Mormon. But one problem

1083
00:56:40,120 --> 00:56:42,680
Speaker 3: that both Latter-day Saints and evangelicals have with the Book

1084
00:56:42,700 --> 00:56:45,500
Speaker 3: of Mormon is that we tend to read modern Mormonism

1085
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:49,239
Speaker 3: into the 1830 Book of Mormon. The short story is

1086
00:56:49,280 --> 00:56:52,310
Speaker 3: in the late 1950s, as best as I can tell,

1087
00:56:52,330 --> 00:56:57,680
Speaker 3: the Latter-day Saints culture with especially its leadership, its prophets

1088
00:56:57,719 --> 00:57:01,580
Speaker 3: and apostles started interpreting after all we're saved by grace,

1089
00:57:01,780 --> 00:57:05,180
Speaker 3: after all we can do in second Nephi 25, 23,

1090
00:57:05,180 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 3: as grace kicking in or applying after we've exhausted maximum

1091
00:57:10,260 --> 00:57:14,140
Speaker 3: effort and not just effort, but meritorious effort. There's an earning,

1092
00:57:14,160 --> 00:57:19,710
Speaker 3: a qualifying, a being worthy of, and a maximal possible obedience.

1093
00:57:20,430 --> 00:57:23,170
Speaker 3: And then, and only then does grace apply in the

1094
00:57:23,210 --> 00:57:28,190
Speaker 3: fullest sense. And this was perpetuated by prophets and apostles

1095
00:57:28,490 --> 00:57:34,130
Speaker 3: from the mid-20th century into the late 20th century. And

1096
00:57:34,170 --> 00:57:38,430
Speaker 3: that's when the neo-orthodoxy shift, a lot of it had

1097
00:57:38,450 --> 00:57:42,650
Speaker 3: to do with this passage with Bruce Hafen and Stephen E.

1098
00:57:42,660 --> 00:57:46,980
Speaker 3: Robinson and people like now Brad Wilcox who are saying, well, actually,

1099
00:57:47,680 --> 00:57:50,380
Speaker 3: we were wrong to read it that way. And they

1100
00:57:50,410 --> 00:57:53,520
Speaker 3: assign that misreading typically to a cultural problem when really

1101
00:57:53,540 --> 00:57:59,820
Speaker 3: it was a top-down institutionally influenced problem. And they started

1102
00:57:59,900 --> 00:58:01,820
Speaker 3: to say, well, maybe after all we can do means

1103
00:58:01,880 --> 00:58:05,440
Speaker 3: in spite of all that we can do or notwithstanding

1104
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:09,130
Speaker 3: all that we've done. Now, grammatically, that's possible. I actually

1105
00:58:09,170 --> 00:58:11,850
Speaker 3: think that you can suss that out when you think

1106
00:58:11,910 --> 00:58:15,130
Speaker 3: about talking to a friend and you say something like,

1107
00:58:15,250 --> 00:58:17,040
Speaker 3: after all I've done for you, I can't believe X, Y, Z.

1108
00:58:17,870 --> 00:58:19,570
Speaker 3: Sometimes we do use it that way, and that might

1109
00:58:19,610 --> 00:58:23,010
Speaker 3: be the original reading of 2 Nephi 25-23. But the

1110
00:58:23,050 --> 00:58:25,240
Speaker 3: point I would make is that prophets and apostles in

1111
00:58:25,260 --> 00:58:28,560
Speaker 3: the LDS church are supposed to have the authority and

1112
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:34,140
Speaker 3: the revelatory influence to help train us how to read

1113
00:58:34,160 --> 00:58:36,000
Speaker 3: the scriptures. They're supposed to be in a position where

1114
00:58:36,040 --> 00:58:40,230
Speaker 3: they can authoritatively help us interpret scriptures. And what happened

1115
00:58:40,250 --> 00:58:43,730
Speaker 3: was that Latter-day Saint, BYU professors and so forth, decided

1116
00:58:43,790 --> 00:58:47,240
Speaker 3: that LDS prophets and apostles, they got it wrong. And

1117
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:50,240
Speaker 3: so they started trying to basically turn the ship around

1118
00:58:50,380 --> 00:58:54,220
Speaker 3: with 2 Nephi 25-23. And eventually there was a bottom-up

1119
00:58:54,340 --> 00:58:57,380
Speaker 3: influence into the LDS prophets and apostles where they started

1120
00:58:57,440 --> 00:59:02,050
Speaker 3: to adopt that more neo-Orthodox reading. Now, where are we

1121
00:59:02,110 --> 00:59:05,650
Speaker 3: at today? Just because they've reinterpreted this passage in a

1122
00:59:05,670 --> 00:59:09,090
Speaker 3: more evangelical adjacent way doesn't mean they have evangelical theology.

1123
00:59:09,450 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 3: And so I think the question at the end of

1124
00:59:11,260 --> 00:59:14,440
Speaker 3: the day still is, is Mormonism as a structure and

1125
00:59:14,480 --> 00:59:18,110
Speaker 3: as a system, is it still systematically a works-based system,

1126
00:59:18,590 --> 00:59:21,350
Speaker 3: even if they're not using the overt language of earning

1127
00:59:21,390 --> 00:59:24,230
Speaker 3: and qualifying for in the same way that they once did?

1128
00:59:24,730 --> 00:59:27,970
Speaker 3: I would argue that it's still a works-based system, but

1129
00:59:27,990 --> 00:59:29,350
Speaker 3: that's for a different discussion.

1130
00:59:30,020 --> 00:59:31,540
Speaker 2: Yep, folks, you heard it. If you want him to

1131
00:59:31,580 --> 00:59:34,320
Speaker 2: come back and lay out that case, why he still

1132
00:59:34,340 --> 00:59:36,740
Speaker 2: thinks it's a work-based system, you're going to have to

1133
00:59:36,780 --> 00:59:38,300
Speaker 2: let us know in the comments, and we will do

1134
00:59:38,380 --> 00:59:41,080
Speaker 2: a follow-up on that one. Let me, just a couple

1135
00:59:41,120 --> 00:59:44,020
Speaker 2: questions here as we've got to wrap this up. Given

1136
00:59:44,040 --> 00:59:47,970
Speaker 2: the shifts within Mormonism, are either or both of you,

1137
00:59:47,990 --> 00:59:50,890
Speaker 2: and I ask this question, are you seeing more people

1138
00:59:51,050 --> 00:59:54,750
Speaker 2: turn to Christ, actually, in the sense of kind of

1139
00:59:54,770 --> 00:59:59,180
Speaker 2: the orthodox, historic understanding of who Jesus is? given that

1140
00:59:59,260 --> 01:00:02,660
Speaker 2: there are strains of like re-envisioning the nature, at least

1141
01:00:02,900 --> 01:00:05,280
Speaker 2: in terms of the way it's described, of faith and works,

1142
01:00:06,280 --> 01:00:11,120
Speaker 2: re-envisioning kind of the Trinity in some sense, re-envisioning authority

1143
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:14,680
Speaker 2: in some sense. Are we seeing more people come to

1144
01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:18,200
Speaker 2: Christ because the language is at least closer? And like

1145
01:00:18,220 --> 01:00:21,520
Speaker 2: you said at the beginning, Brandy, there's language to describe

1146
01:00:21,600 --> 01:00:26,740
Speaker 2: Mormonism as another denomination rather than the complete restored gospel

1147
01:00:27,260 --> 01:00:28,360
Speaker 2: and all the other sects.

1148
01:00:28,780 --> 01:00:29,380
Speaker 3: Were false.

1149
01:00:30,000 --> 01:00:32,300
Speaker 2: So I'd love your take on that from each one

1150
01:00:32,320 --> 01:00:34,640
Speaker 2: of you. I'll start with you, Brandy. Are you seeing

1151
01:00:34,680 --> 01:00:37,990
Speaker 2: more people respond now in light of these shifts, or

1152
01:00:38,070 --> 01:00:39,070
Speaker 2: is it really hard to tell?

1153
01:00:40,350 --> 01:00:42,790
Speaker 1: Well, I think it's actually both and, because I feel

1154
01:00:42,870 --> 01:00:45,470
Speaker 1: like on one end, the LDS church is becoming, they're

1155
01:00:45,490 --> 01:00:48,950
Speaker 1: de-emphasizing from the top, a lot of these core Orthodox

1156
01:00:49,370 --> 01:00:53,910
Speaker 1: Mormon doctrines to cast a wider net and to maintain

1157
01:00:53,970 --> 01:00:56,430
Speaker 1: and retain members. So that's what I think is kind

1158
01:00:56,470 --> 01:01:00,310
Speaker 1: of the main catalyst behind some of these changes, the

1159
01:01:00,350 --> 01:01:03,010
Speaker 1: de-emphasizing of the doctrine. So I think in one end,

1160
01:01:03,050 --> 01:01:05,930
Speaker 1: it's actually to retain members and so to keep the

1161
01:01:05,970 --> 01:01:09,350
Speaker 1: church thriving. On the other hand, I see God using this.

1162
01:01:09,610 --> 01:01:11,350
Speaker 1: I see God using this in a big way. Like

1163
01:01:11,370 --> 01:01:14,310
Speaker 1: for example, I met up with a girl at the

1164
01:01:14,350 --> 01:01:18,410
Speaker 1: gym and she was, she's still LDS, she was excited

1165
01:01:18,470 --> 01:01:20,790
Speaker 1: about how the church is allowing all these different translations

1166
01:01:20,830 --> 01:01:22,650
Speaker 1: of the Bible now. So now we don't just have

1167
01:01:22,670 --> 01:01:24,250
Speaker 1: to read the King James Version, and they had a

1168
01:01:24,290 --> 01:01:26,610
Speaker 1: policy update, and have you heard, and all these cool

1169
01:01:26,630 --> 01:01:29,450
Speaker 1: changes are happening, and she's amped, and she's pumped. And

1170
01:01:29,500 --> 01:01:31,700
Speaker 1: in one way, you're going, okay, so Mormons are clearly

1171
01:01:31,800 --> 01:01:34,020
Speaker 1: wanting some type of change. Like, they don't want to

1172
01:01:34,040 --> 01:01:37,060
Speaker 1: read King James. They don't want to emphasize obedience and

1173
01:01:37,120 --> 01:01:38,920
Speaker 1: merit mercy, and all the things that I was told

1174
01:01:38,980 --> 01:01:40,440
Speaker 1: I had to do to reach the celestial kingdom, they

1175
01:01:40,460 --> 01:01:43,140
Speaker 1: don't want that anymore. Some of them really do want

1176
01:01:43,160 --> 01:01:44,570
Speaker 1: the grace of the gospel, even though, again, they don't

1177
01:01:44,610 --> 01:01:48,580
Speaker 1: properly understand the foundation of Christianity anymore. So I think

1178
01:01:48,600 --> 01:01:50,270
Speaker 1: in some ways it's going to help retain. But then

1179
01:01:50,290 --> 01:01:53,130
Speaker 1: in other ways, like talking to Pastor Brian from Unveiling Mormonism,

1180
01:01:53,190 --> 01:01:55,190
Speaker 1: which I want to give him a shout out. He's incredible.

1181
01:01:55,630 --> 01:01:59,200
Speaker 1: I love his ministry. And he is talking about how

1182
01:01:59,240 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 1: many ex-Mormons he's seen come into his church and in

1183
01:02:01,660 --> 01:02:05,110
Speaker 1: churches in Utah in particular. Because the second you say, hey,

1184
01:02:05,150 --> 01:02:08,270
Speaker 1: we're just another denomination, you're going to get Mormons going, okay, well,

1185
01:02:08,290 --> 01:02:09,350
Speaker 1: then I'm going to go wear pants and.

1186
01:02:09,310 --> 01:02:11,550
Speaker 4: Drink coffee and I'm going to go listen to better music.

1187
01:02:11,910 --> 01:02:15,220
Speaker 1: And so you're kind of opening the door to people

1188
01:02:15,280 --> 01:02:17,780
Speaker 1: wanting to try out other churches. I actually, I work

1189
01:02:17,800 --> 01:02:20,140
Speaker 1: in the check-in area at my church and I've seen

1190
01:02:20,280 --> 01:02:23,340
Speaker 1: Mormon families come in. And I think that some of

1191
01:02:23,360 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: them are just like, hey, well, we're kind of feeling

1192
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:26,860
Speaker 1: like for the first time that we can go check

1193
01:02:26,900 --> 01:02:29,050
Speaker 1: out other churches. I never thought I could. When I

1194
01:02:29,070 --> 01:02:31,360
Speaker 1: was Mormon, it was like Mormonism or bust. You don't

1195
01:02:31,380 --> 01:02:33,360
Speaker 1: go to a different church. You don't go, you know

1196
01:02:33,380 --> 01:02:33,640
Speaker 1: what I mean?

1197
01:02:33,660 --> 01:02:35,160
Speaker 4: Like there was a great apostasy. Haven't you guys heard?

1198
01:02:35,520 --> 01:02:37,620
Speaker 1: But now it's kind of like, you know, you can

1199
01:02:37,660 --> 01:02:40,200
Speaker 1: go and try out other things. And so there's a

1200
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:42,060
Speaker 1: little bit more freedom there. So I think it's actually

1201
01:02:42,100 --> 01:02:43,920
Speaker 1: hurting the church. And I think it's also a way

1202
01:02:43,940 --> 01:02:45,720
Speaker 1: to retain members. And I don't know how.

1203
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:46,280
Speaker 4: It's going to shake out.

1204
01:02:47,060 --> 01:02:49,240
Speaker 2: Very interesting. Aaron, what's your take on this?

1205
01:02:50,010 --> 01:02:53,050
Speaker 3: When it comes to the vocal apologetic minority of revisionism,

1206
01:02:53,250 --> 01:02:55,970
Speaker 3: I'm actually seeing in that corner of the LDS universe,

1207
01:02:56,390 --> 01:03:00,620
Speaker 3: a more aggressive anti-Protestantism. So definitely there's a, there's a, uh,

1208
01:03:00,700 --> 01:03:07,520
Speaker 3: recalcitrant entrenching, uh, an aggression toward really an anti-Protestantism when

1209
01:03:07,560 --> 01:03:10,280
Speaker 3: it comes to the neo-orthodoxy wing of things. I think, um,

1210
01:03:10,930 --> 01:03:13,280
Speaker 3: it's hard to tell. Uh, it's, it's the kind of,

1211
01:03:13,790 --> 01:03:16,330
Speaker 3: I think about the parable of, was it Jesus talked

1212
01:03:16,350 --> 01:03:18,950
Speaker 3: about those that went, is it the parable of the

1213
01:03:18,990 --> 01:03:21,890
Speaker 3: virgins where they're all going to see the, the, the bridegroom,

1214
01:03:22,470 --> 01:03:24,290
Speaker 3: but they don't all have oil in their lamp. I'm

1215
01:03:24,330 --> 01:03:29,320
Speaker 3: sorry if I, I, uh, miscategorize that, but there's a

1216
01:03:29,380 --> 01:03:32,160
Speaker 3: sense in which some people are drawn to the Savior.

1217
01:03:33,740 --> 01:03:37,080
Speaker 3: It's almost like they're flirting with the gospel of grace.

1218
01:03:37,140 --> 01:03:41,730
Speaker 3: They kind of want it in some sense. They want

1219
01:03:41,770 --> 01:03:45,270
Speaker 3: to believe it, but they can't quite commit themselves to it.

1220
01:03:45,290 --> 01:03:49,850
Speaker 3: And I've had really important discussions with Latter-day Saints where

1221
01:03:50,170 --> 01:03:55,010
Speaker 3: someone really is thinking about making the jump, but the

1222
01:03:55,070 --> 01:03:58,370
Speaker 3: call to discipleship is just staring them in the face. The, the,

1223
01:03:58,530 --> 01:04:02,830
Speaker 3: the cost of making that switch, um, is, is too

1224
01:04:02,870 --> 01:04:05,070
Speaker 3: much for some people. And so they ultimately decide to

1225
01:04:05,130 --> 01:04:10,350
Speaker 3: just stay. Um, now I will say that the encouragement

1226
01:04:10,410 --> 01:04:13,670
Speaker 3: of the LDS church to read the Bible in modern English,

1227
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:20,880
Speaker 3: I think is the first genuine, uh, positive, like pure,

1228
01:04:20,900 --> 01:04:23,890
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe it isn't, but I just, It's

1229
01:04:24,290 --> 01:04:28,270
Speaker 3: the thing that I've celebrated most without reservation in the

1230
01:04:28,310 --> 01:04:31,450
Speaker 3: Latter-day Saint community. I love it. Their encouragement to buy

1231
01:04:31,490 --> 01:04:36,820
Speaker 3: an ESV Bible, or at least the permission, the favorable

1232
01:04:37,060 --> 01:04:40,620
Speaker 3: rhetoric toward experimenting with reading the Bible in a language

1233
01:04:40,700 --> 01:04:42,500
Speaker 3: other than the King James, I think is probably one

1234
01:04:42,520 --> 01:04:45,680
Speaker 3: of the most positive developments we've seen in the Latter-day

1235
01:04:45,700 --> 01:04:47,360
Speaker 3: Saint community. I love that.

1236
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:49,600
Speaker 2: My encouragement for LDS who are with us is my

1237
01:04:49,640 --> 01:04:53,390
Speaker 2: encouragement for anybody is start with the Gospel of John.

1238
01:04:53,660 --> 01:04:56,910
Speaker 2: I love that book. It's so insightful and interesting. And

1239
01:04:56,930 --> 01:04:59,010
Speaker 2: then maybe Galatians or Romans to get a little bit

1240
01:04:59,030 --> 01:05:02,210
Speaker 2: of a balance. But Randy, Aaron, this is so helpful.

1241
01:05:02,410 --> 01:05:04,990
Speaker 2: You both are the perfect guests to explain this. And

1242
01:05:05,050 --> 01:05:07,590
Speaker 2: I'll say one last thing. If you're LDS and you've

1243
01:05:07,610 --> 01:05:09,820
Speaker 2: stayed with us, I would love to know what you

1244
01:05:09,840 --> 01:05:12,740
Speaker 2: think about this. I do not read all the comments

1245
01:05:12,860 --> 01:05:16,000
Speaker 2: on all my videos. I literally don't have time. But

1246
01:05:16,020 --> 01:05:18,420
Speaker 2: I'm going to read many. I'm not promising I'll respond

1247
01:05:18,440 --> 01:05:19,590
Speaker 2: to all of them, but I'm going to go through

1248
01:05:19,610 --> 01:05:21,810
Speaker 2: and read a lot of the comments on this video.

1249
01:05:22,250 --> 01:05:24,370
Speaker 2: I want to know what you think. What category do

1250
01:05:24,390 --> 01:05:26,990
Speaker 2: you fit into? Are there categories that we missed? What

1251
01:05:27,030 --> 01:05:30,189
Speaker 2: do you see? What are your thoughts on this conversation?

1252
01:05:30,210 --> 01:05:33,100
Speaker 2: And if you're LDS, say, hey, I'm LDS. Here's what

1253
01:05:33,120 --> 01:05:36,320
Speaker 2: I think. I would be fascinated to get your take

1254
01:05:36,440 --> 01:05:38,700
Speaker 2: on this conversation and beyond. I think it would be

1255
01:05:38,760 --> 01:05:42,790
Speaker 2: real helpful for everybody. Brandy and Aaron, how can people

1256
01:05:42,870 --> 01:05:46,350
Speaker 2: follow what you're doing? Brandy, are you doing stuff publicly?

1257
01:05:46,390 --> 01:05:50,070
Speaker 2: I heard the podcast on unveiling Mormonism. That was fantastic.

1258
01:05:50,110 --> 01:05:53,550
Speaker 2: But anything else you're doing where people can follow you? Yeah.

1259
01:05:53,610 --> 01:05:55,600
Speaker 1: So about two years ago, I wrote a book called

1260
01:05:55,620 --> 01:05:58,740
Speaker 1: The Journey to Jesus, just trying to connect with people

1261
01:05:58,780 --> 01:06:00,590
Speaker 1: who have left Mormonism and telling them, don't give up.

1262
01:06:00,760 --> 01:06:02,080
Speaker 4: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

1263
01:06:02,480 --> 01:06:04,560
Speaker 1: There is a Christianity and a Jesus offered to you

1264
01:06:04,600 --> 01:06:06,780
Speaker 1: after Mormonism. And there's a bread of life out there.

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01:06:06,820 --> 01:06:08,320
Speaker 1: And I wanted people to have that hope that I

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01:06:08,390 --> 01:06:11,350
Speaker 1: had found So I created a landing page. It's just

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01:06:11,410 --> 01:06:13,170
Speaker 1: the journey to Jesus on Instagram. And that's where I

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01:06:13,190 --> 01:06:16,070
Speaker 1: connect with a lot of ex-Mormons and Christians and have

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01:06:16,090 --> 01:06:18,970
Speaker 1: learned a lot about new Mormonism through being online on Instagram.

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01:06:18,990 --> 01:06:19,820
Speaker 4: So you can just find me there.

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01:06:20,720 --> 01:06:21,640
Speaker 3: Love it. All right, friends.

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01:06:21,680 --> 01:06:23,320
Speaker 2: I would love to know if you want me to

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01:06:23,360 --> 01:06:26,960
Speaker 2: have Brandy back to hear about her journey to Jesus.

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01:06:27,600 --> 01:06:30,280
Speaker 2: If your publisher could send me a copy, I'd love

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01:06:30,300 --> 01:06:32,860
Speaker 2: to get one and talk to my team. Aaron, how

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01:06:32,900 --> 01:06:34,040
Speaker 2: can people follow what you're doing?

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01:06:34,920 --> 01:06:37,800
Speaker 3: I volunteer with Mormonism Research Ministry, which is at mrm.org.

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01:06:38,830 --> 01:06:41,690
Speaker 3: And also the Utah Christian Research Center. We have a

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01:06:41,710 --> 01:06:44,250
Speaker 3: brick and mortar place in Utah. You can come and

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01:06:44,910 --> 01:06:47,700
Speaker 3: there's a free tour. There's a bookstore there. But we

1281
01:06:47,720 --> 01:06:50,060
Speaker 3: also have a YouTube channel for the Utah Christian Research

1282
01:06:50,100 --> 01:06:52,860
Speaker 3: Center where I've given a number of lectures on a

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01:06:52,900 --> 01:06:55,620
Speaker 3: topic I call mapping Mormon theologies. And this is where

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01:06:55,640 --> 01:06:58,060
Speaker 3: I've tried to kind of delineate the different streams of

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01:06:58,180 --> 01:07:00,960
Speaker 3: LDS thought and map them to historical developments. So if

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01:07:00,980 --> 01:07:02,740
Speaker 3: you're more interested in this, I would look at the

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01:07:02,760 --> 01:07:06,550
Speaker 3: YouTube channel for the Utah Christian Research Center. Super helpful.

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01:07:06,650 --> 01:07:10,350
Speaker 2: I'm a huge fan of mrm.org. Co-wrote a book, as

1289
01:07:10,390 --> 01:07:14,030
Speaker 2: you know, edited with Eric Johnson, who works there. It's

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01:07:14,070 --> 01:07:16,810
Speaker 2: just my go-to ministry that I refer people to. A

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01:07:16,830 --> 01:07:18,650
Speaker 2: lot of people don't know, I actually edited a book

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01:07:18,690 --> 01:07:21,030
Speaker 2: you gave us a contribution, Aaron, called Sharing the Good

1293
01:07:21,090 --> 01:07:24,440
Speaker 2: News with Mormons that lay out different strategies how to

1294
01:07:24,500 --> 01:07:27,000
Speaker 2: do this. All right, friends, make sure you hit subscribe.

1295
01:07:27,020 --> 01:07:28,940
Speaker 2: Let us know what you think about this kind of

1296
01:07:29,060 --> 01:07:32,240
Speaker 2: content on my channel. It's not really apologetics. It's about

1297
01:07:32,680 --> 01:07:35,550
Speaker 2: trends and changes that are taking place. If you have

1298
01:07:35,570 --> 01:07:38,650
Speaker 2: any suggested topics you'd love me to explore, let me

1299
01:07:38,690 --> 01:07:42,530
Speaker 2: know that below. We also have a master's program, and

1300
01:07:42,570 --> 01:07:45,470
Speaker 2: we talk about different faiths and world religions and offer

1301
01:07:45,570 --> 01:07:49,370
Speaker 2: full classes on Latter-day Saint theology and practice. So if

1302
01:07:49,390 --> 01:07:51,890
Speaker 2: you ever thought about studying apologetics, we'd love to have

1303
01:07:51,910 --> 01:07:56,070
Speaker 2: you at Talbot at Biola University. All right, friends, this

1304
01:07:56,110 --> 01:07:58,380
Speaker 2: was awesome. Thank you both for coming on. We'll do

1305
01:07:58,390 --> 01:08:02,620
Speaker 2: it again. Hey friends, if you enjoyed this show, please

1306
01:08:02,680 --> 01:08:05,460
Speaker 2: hit that follow button on your podcast app. Most of

1307
01:08:05,500 --> 01:08:07,900
Speaker 2: you tuning in haven't done this yet, and it makes

1308
01:08:07,980 --> 01:08:10,720
Speaker 2: a huge difference in helping us reach and equip more

1309
01:08:10,760 --> 01:08:14,960
Speaker 2: people and build community. And please consider leaving a podcast review.

1310
01:08:15,340 --> 01:08:18,930
Speaker 2: Every review helps. Thanks for listening to The Sean McDowell Show,

1311
01:08:19,090 --> 01:08:22,910
Speaker 2: brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University,

1312
01:08:22,970 --> 01:08:27,269
Speaker 2: where we have on-campus and online programs in apologetics, spiritual formation,

1313
01:08:27,350 --> 01:08:29,910
Speaker 2: marriage and family, Bible, and so much more. We would

1314
01:08:29,930 --> 01:08:32,900
Speaker 2: love to train you to more effectively live, teach, and

1315
01:08:32,939 --> 01:08:35,730
Speaker 2: defend the Christian faith today. And we will see you

1316
01:08:35,870 --> 01:08:37,349
Speaker 2: when the next episode drops.