A Choice Land - with Greg Prince

Hello and welcome to Inside Out. I'm Ian Wilkes. Um, I'm here with Jim Bennett.

Hello, Jim. Hello, Ian. How are you, sir?

I am doing well, and we're really excited to welcome back to Inside Out the one and only Greg Prince. Welcome back, Greg.

Thank you very much. Greetings from the East Coast.

Wonderful. Well, it's always a delight to have you on Inside Out. We learn so much. I'm going to jump straight into this because I see an interesting correlation between your strategic roadmap for improving Mormonism, uh, chapter 38, the International Church. Wherein you say the challenge in that, uh, uh, document, you say that until the early 1950s, converts in foreign countries were encouraged to emigrate to Zion, mainly Utah, the United States. While the policy worked to build the American church, it drained, uh, most of the foreign countries of the members best equipped to strengthen the church. I remember in the history lessons, uh, in the church, in the UK that the church claimed to have, uh, said that up to 100,000 Brits emigrated to the United States to join the church back in the, uh, uh, 1900s. Uh, other numbers, uh, that I've researched, uh, come to about 50,000 to 55,000. I've also heard that because of that mass emigration, uh, in the context of the church, that it actually saved the church. And that the doctrine and the teaching was that the United States of America was the chosen land and that these individuals were encouraged to emigrate, to build, and actually to save the church. This is something that I was, I was taught, uh, growing up in the church from the age of 16. And the connection I want to make between the roadmap is with a recent article, uh, produced, uh, on the 29th of June, uh, last month, where Elder Rasband talks about the Lord preserving the United States for the great unfolding of the gospel. Now, back then, people were encouraged to, uh, move to America. Uh, when the church built temples and churches across Europe and the United Kingdom, I think, uh, uh, President McKay, uh, said that, um, you don't need to come to America now. You can stay there. We build up the church in, in, uh, in across Europe and the world, et cetera. But the relationship is that the church still believes that America is the only chosen land. That is blessed by God like no other place in the world, that is chosen, it is sacred, and it's the place that Christ, uh, would return. Is that something that, Greg, you still hold onto? Uh, do you still think and feel that America is the chosen land, that Christ will return to the United States, and that, uh, the rest of the world, the membership is essentially, uh, needs to line up around the doctrine and accept that America is the chosen land. Because I always felt, uh, Yorkshire, where I'm from, was, was chosen. I kind of say that in tongue of cheek, but is there really a chosen land?

Well, you've asked, you've asked 3 questions in one sentence, and the answers in my book are not the same for all 3. Uh, I would alter your first question by asking, is America a chosen land for the Restoration? I think it was. I think at the time of the Restoration, this was an ideal setting, if not the ideal setting. If you look at the history of the Burned-Over District in western New York, The ground really had been prepared in a way that may not have allowed a similar outcome in other parts of the world. The second part of your question, I think, is, do I believe that Jesus will come to this continent? Um, my unequivocal answer is, I don't know. And number 3, what about the rest of the world? And my answer to that is the America, and even more, the Utah Church has still not gotten to where it needs to go in terms of the international church. Now, Jim, you said that last week the Tabernacle Choir was going to do 2 programs, one that would showcase how great America is, but the other for international distribution that would have a different message. Is that right, Mr. Pageant?

That's what I said. I was in error. I don't really understand why, but we did exactly the same program twice in a row. I think it was part of a thing CNN and C-SPAN and a bunch of other places covered the whole thing. And so maybe that was why, but I'm told that we're going to do the same sort of thing when we open the Salt Lake Temple rededication ceremonies that are going to last for 6 months. We're going to end up doing 2 broadcasts a week. I don't really get it. I don't understand why, but I do know that the church has said, and Mac Wilberg has said, we're not going to do America-themed music regularly anymore. We used to do like a Veterans Day program and a Memorial Day program, and we would sing the same sort of patriotic music. I think they made an exception for the 250th, but I, I think going forward the focus is on international, not on American.

Yeah, and that's been a difficult transition for the church as an institution, and I think for a lot of residents of the Great Basin as individuals to make, because from the cradle they heard the message that this is a choice land above all others, and in all respects the church was an American church. Even before it was an American church, it was a Utah church. And it took a long time for it to explicitly acknowledge that the United States didn't end at the Utah border. Now, Jim, you had a little bit of experience in that because some of your formative years were in Los Angeles. All of mine were.

All of mine were too. My family moved. Salt Lake when I graduated from high school. I stayed in LA and went to USC.

So yeah, well, I've got 20 years on you in age, and I can tell you in my early years it was still very much a Utah church that was lent to the Californians if they behaved.

That's— I, I— it was still that way, I think, for me too.

I went to Brazil as a missionary in 1967. And it was not an international church yet. It said it was, and some elements of it were there. What President McKay had done that was such a big step in the right direction was to take temples to foreign countries, because that then allowed him to say in good faith, stay where you are, build the church there. You will not be deprived of any of the blessings you may have received by moving to Utah from having remained in your native land. But I talked to Bill Bates, who was in the first stake presidency in Europe and later became stake president. And he said it took years after that announcement in the early 1950s to see a substantial reduction in the emigration to the United States of leaders of the British Church. And I think the same was true in other countries as well. There still was this perception that, well, if you want the real church, then go to the United States. We've made strides on that, but we're still not there. And so, Ian, I think that circles back to your original questions. Where do I come down on those things? I come down differently than a lot of my co-religionists do.

Well, it's been very interesting to be, in the Tabernacle Choir for the 250th anniversary. I, I really feel like Washington, D.C. sort of dropped the ball. I don't want to get too political, but the 250th anniversary was very political and very partisan. Word is there was a group called the America 250 that was a nonpartisan thing that was planning all of these events, and Trump took all the money from it and put it in a group called Freedom 250. That he had complete control over. And so all of the musical acts dropped out and the Great American State Fair was a total disaster. And Trump gave this big partisan speech and it was just really kind of, there was nothing unifying about it. And it's very funny to watch the video of the fireworks in Washington, D.C. on the 250th. Trump decided that they they needed to quadruple the amount of fireworks. And so if you look at the video, it literally looks like, um, a nuclear bomb. So many fireworks are going off that it's just ablaze with this eerie glow and way too much smoke. And everybody that was there said it was absolutely miserable. So, but I had the opportunity and the experience of doing these broadcasts for the 250th. And we sang God Bless America and we sang My Country 'Tis of Thee and we sang all of these things. And Andy Reid, who's apparently a member of the church, and I didn't even know who he was because I don't follow football, but he's the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. And he spoke and gave a very appropriate message for the 250th. And it really sort of made me sad that discussion of America as a concept and as an idea is so difficult in our current partisan and political environment. When we talk about America and being— America being necessary for the Restoration, uh, growing up that didn't feel partisan to me. Maybe it should have. And I grew up in a very Republican household. And so maybe I just kind of assumed that everybody else wasn't seeing some kind of partisan bent to it. But was that your experience? Is that the emphasis on America wasn't necessarily partisan? Maybe it was for Ezra Benson, but I'm not sure what—

No, it was not partisan, but it clearly was nationalistic.

Yeah.

But now that we look in our rearview mirror to the time when Americans made up the majority of the church population worldwide, how is it that that message still hasn't filtered through all the channels? And of the Q15 currently, 4 of them were raised outside of the United States, outside of North America.

Suárez, Kieran, Kosse, and who's the 4th?

Some guy named Uchtdorf you may have heard of.

Uchtdorf. How could I have forgotten Uchtdorf? Dang it.

He who may lead the church soon.

Yes.

So with 4 out of 15, you would wonder what those 4 guys think whenever the American drum is beaten so loudly. It's awkward and it's inappropriate.

Well, Uchtdorf and Oakes both came to the second broadcast on Sunday. And it was really kind of startling to see. Every time I see President Oaks, he just looks so very frail. And Uchtdorf looked so very vital and 10 to 20 years younger than he actually is. So I don't know how soon Uchtdorf ends up leading the church, but I think it may very well be sooner rather than later.

And if that happens, maybe that's when the institution will finally turn that corner and start to act like an international church. If the hierarchy represented the laity, then most of the members of the Q15 would be brown-skinned.

That's true.

Why?

My father actually had that conversation with Dallin Oaks at one point. And Dallin Oaks said that if you look at the composition of the Seventy, that is representative of the ethnic makeup of the church.

Well, it's closer.

I don't think—

Closer. I don't know it's fully representative, sure.

No.

But that has not permeated the Twelve, but it has started to. Permeate the Seventy, which I think is interesting.

It's interesting, but I don't know many people who consider the power base of the church to reside within the Seventy.

Yeah.

The Seventy are staff to the guys who make the real decisions, and that's the Q15.

That's very true. And one of the things that, uh, Ian and I talked— Ian, apparently, I'm not sure if he's going to— oh, he has rejoined.

Um, I'm back, gentlemen. You're very patient. Thank you. Sorry about that. I'm back. Go ahead.

That's all right. Well, but just very quickly, and I'm diving into Elder Rasband gave a talk in honor of the 250th, uh, that in some ways I think is really kind of problematic, and not because of its America focus, uh, but because it takes a very literal reading of scripture in a way that we haven't seen recently. We certainly saw this, um, with Joseph Fielding Smith and with Bruce R. McConkie, and we've sort of moved beyond that, at least in General Conference, beyond the sort of very literal interpretation of scripture. But in Elder Rasband's talk, he talked about the Garden of Eden being in what we today— in what today we consider the heartland of America. So very specifically saying the Garden of Eden absolutely was in Jackson County, Missouri. We kind of have stopped talking about that. But he also goes so far as to say that the earth was— he talks about the global flood and insists that it was a global flood. I mean, he doesn't insist that, but it's just very clearly part of his— there's not any sort of acknowledgment that maybe the reference to the global flood was metaphorical or was whatever else. It's just absolutely— it was It was separated. It cleansed the earth with water. And then he says the surface fractured into great continents separated by oceans. This is after the flood, all to protect what was destined to be the promised land, which the Lord had preserved for a righteous people. Now, the only other general authority I have ever heard make a claim like that is Joseph Fielding Smith, who takes the verse in Genesis that the earth was divided in the days of Peleg to mean that Pangea existed until the flood and then the continents split. And here Elder Rasband saying the continents split in order to protect America. The continents from America. And I just look at this and go, really? Do we have to reject plate tectonics to be faithful members of the church?

Yeah, I can agree with the first part of that, that the original landmass that they called Pangaea did split and formed the continents. But the second part, if you want to align with historical fact, The New World was the promised land for the Asians who came over in the Siberian land bridge.

Oops. Oops. Well, but you don't believe that the continents split 6,000 years ago after a global flood, do you?

No, we're talking hundreds of millions of years.

We, We are, and the church has been. I mean, if you go to church schools, no one's gonna— no one in a geology class or in a biology class is going to say the Earth is 6,000 years old or that the continents broke off after a global flood.

No, but 3/4 of the church members deny evolution. So what do you do with that one?

Oh, where does that number come from?

That came from a Pew survey. I think it's either Pew or Gallup, maybe 15, 20 years ago, that we are second only to the Jehovah's Witness in percentage of evolution deniers. Aren't we proud?

What does that do to you as a scientist as well as a member of the church?

Drives me up the wall. It, it means that there isn't much possibility for civilized discussion within the walls of a chapel about the way the world really is and how it got to be that way. Lester Bush corrected me at one point. I had thought that he left the church because of the cumulative pain of the way they treated him, and he said no, It really was because I realized there was less and less room within the church for people who thought as I did. And that's still the case. That's a very small space, and I think it's still shrinking. It's where I live, and I'm still comfortable living there, but it does grieve me that I am surrounded by co-religionists who are literalists and who can't get it into their thought that the scriptures have some parts that are literal but a lot of parts that are allegorical.

Have we talked about Ben Spackman here at all? I think we have a little bit.

He's mentioned his name on our podcast, or mine with you.

I don't recall that we had any discussion of Yeah, well, Ben Spackman is a faithful Latter-day Saint, and I think he's now finally gotten his PhD, but was working on a PhD talking about the church's history with evolution. And the thing that really opened my eyes and how he talked about it is he said, he said, we, you need to look at scripture through the lens of genre. He says, for instance, if someone were to ask you, is Much Ado About Nothing literal or figurative? You would stare at them with a blank stare and say, well, it's fiction. What are you talking about? And he said, exactly. It's a different genre. We don't apply that kind of a measure to what is obviously fiction and something that is not designed to be taken literally. And he says, if you go back and you look at the cultures from which all of our scriptures came from and look at the time frame, and you, you look at why they were writing, how they were writing, the genre in which they were writing, uh, you better understand scripture. And instead, the Joseph Fielding Smith approach is you look at all scripture as ancient journalism, that there was somebody sitting there next to Job transcribing everything that his friends were saying, and his friends were speaking in this poetic Hebraic poetic form. And I mean, that's just nonsense. Clearly, the Book of Job, I mean, that's one of the easiest ones to point to. It comes from a different genre. This is not— was never intended by its author to be taken literally.

Well, let me amend your statement, Jim, that you talked about the books of the Bible and how and when they were written. Go back from there, particularly with the Pentateuch, the first 5 books of the Bible, the books of Moses. Those represent a written version of oral traditions that preceded the writing of those traditions by centuries.

Yep.

If not millennia.

Yep. Well, and we as literalists say, well, those are the first 5 books of Moses.

Yeah, written by him, just like the Book of Abraham was written by Abraham. Yeah, but lot—

I mean, the first 5 books don't make any claim to be written by Moses, and they're very—

except that the King James Bible at least says the books of Moses.

Yeah, I mean, we've attached that label. Yeah, but Joseph Smith has painted us into a corner too, a little bit, a little bit, to a little extent.

But we've all painted— we've allowed ourselves not only to remain in that corner but to paint ourselves into a tighter corner through the use of more recent paint.

Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean by that?

That we, we have tried to become even more fundamentalist of even disallowing the possibility for allegory. And that just creates all kinds of problems. Particularly where it's obvious that the men in the church and the institution itself have made mistakes, but we don't allow ourselves to acknowledge that those are mistakes, in the same way we don't acknowledge that many of the scriptures of the Bible and perhaps all of the Book of Mormon are allegory.

Well, we do acknowledge that in theory. Like, the Book of Mormon repeatedly talks about if there are mistakes, there are the mistakes of men. It talks about the weakness of the people writing. It talks about— there, there is no solid theological basis for a doctrine of infallibility anywhere in the church. There is, however, an overriding cultural expectation of infallibility that is, is at odds with the actual doctrine and with the actual scriptures.

But even what you quoted from the Book of Mormon, Jim, puts the blame on men and leaves the church blameless, and that's not defensible either.

Hmm. Okay. That's an interesting way to put it. Ian, are you back here?

I, I, I am back. Uh, you've been very patient. Thank you. I've missed quite a bit of that. I'm sure it was gripping. I'll get to listen to it later. I don't know if you've completed the conversation around Elder Rasband's article, but there's some fascinating things that I got from that, which I, I, forgive me if you've already covered. And he talks about in the article that America is a promised land, is a stepping stone to life, to eternal to the presence of God the Father, Jesus Christ, if we live faithfully. That's why we called it the Promised Land. I, I have a problem with that. I always had a problem with that because when, when I was in the YSA and I came over, uh, I actually moved for a short time to Seattle and there's a whole story behind that, which I won't go into, but I felt at one time that I needed to go to the Promised Land. And America was a popular sound. So I went and I attended the Bellevue YSA ward in Seattle. It was amazing. It was, I've never seen so many YSA. I wasn't actively looking for a wife, nothing like that. I just got back from the mission, Jim. I'd been back, oh, I don't know, maybe 9 months. I'd gone to the Salt Lake to witness a sealing with President Banks and the McLean family from Scotland. Been a long America.

I went to that too.

You were there for that. That's right. Fell in love with America, loved Americans, and loved the culture and felt I, I, at times I felt I'd been born to the wrong country. It was kind of odd thing to think and feel back then, but there was a, there was a time I felt that. I went to America, lived there for quite a while, um, and was told by the bishop that I need to go back to England to build up the Kingdom there because I was interested in moving to America, I was like, well, hang on, you know, this is the promised land here. So I always, uh, well, for a long time I associated, uh, a lot of the doctrine and the salvation and getting back to the kingdom of God with, uh, being in America, going to America, rightly or wrongly. That's just something that I, I felt at the time. And I wasn't alone, by the way. And so when I read Elder Rasband's article throughout the article, there's a physicality, there's a geography. America's physical. Uh, it was separated from the rest of the world to protect it. I, I don't know. I don't know what he means by that. Does he mean that it had to be exclusively Christian, uh, and a big, uh, geographical area LDS, Mormon, uh, et cetera? Did he mean by that, that, that, uh, it couldn't be close physically to other religions, if the world was physically, you know, the plates were dividing, there was a, a physical, um, transformation of the earth and America was physical. I think he is saying that in the article. I don't know what is behind that, but for me, he misses an important point. And the point is the gospel, to me at least, is like the internet is like Wi-Fi that I can't seem to get right now., or couldn't get earlier when you guys were talking. And, um, but, but the Spirit is like Wi-Fi, it's everywhere. And the gospel is everywhere, and the Spirit's everywhere, and God is everywhere. And love and all the principles of the gospel are everywhere. It's not attached to some place physical. You don't have to go to a place physically to be saved. There's no place on earth that is necessarily, uh, chosen. Uh, the, the, the places depending on the righteousness of the people and the individual, there are very sacred spiritual places outside of America. Jerusalem, uh, uh, the places that the Savior went. I have places that I go to that are very spiritual. Uh, we've talked about one of them, Jim, on one of the episodes called New Bikips.

Yeah.

It's a place I go to. It's my, my Mecca, my personal place that I go to when I go back to, uh, the UK. I have to go. I, uh, feel compelled to. I don't, I don't go all the time, but I go most of the time. And it's a place where I've had some profound, uh, spiritual experiences. It is a geography. It's a physical place. And, and I'm not saying for one second that, um, you, you need to separate them, but I'm simply saying that It's not all in America. The world doesn't evolve around America or American, you know, the Constitution of the United States. I, I believe that America is, uh, a better democracy than anywhere in the world. You know, look what's going on in the UK. I won't get too political here, but it's a, an absolute mess. Others might argue against this, but, uh, what I'm saying is that these, to be saved, to achieve salvation, you don't, you don't have to be in America. You don't have to believe or accept America as the chosen land. I don't. And that the Earth itself, isn't the Earth itself a chosen physical body? You know, Christ created the Earth. Surely the whole thing is sacred. I shouldn't call it a thing, but the whole planet, this beautiful environment in which we live, including America, but not just America, is spiritual. Doesn't the Uh, put the great price, talk about the earth having a spirit. Didn't Enoch talk about that? That the, the, the, the earth cries out because of the wickedness and groans because of the wickedness upon it, upon its land. So I see the whole earth as spiritual and many, many distinct places outside of America are very spiritual. Do you both, uh, to hear from you first, Greg, do you see it in the same way as I do? And I'd love to get your opinion on this as well, Jim.

Yes, I do. In— if you go back to the injunction of Jesus, he said, take the gospel to all the world. He didn't say bring them to Jerusalem. And the early apostles planted the church wherever it would grow, most of that growth not being in Palestine. Uh, and it's because of that that the Catholic Church has always acted like an international church because it always was. Whereas the LDS Church began in a very small part of New York, and for the first 7 years of its existence, that's where all its converts came from. It wasn't until the first European missionaries in 1837 that it stretched anywhere beyond the United States, with the exception of a little bit of proselytizing in Upper Canada. And I think it's because of that that we have remained such a United States-centric religion. That plus the Book of Mormon with its allegory being misunderstood as literal, I think that goes to part of it as well. And I think that's what Joseph Smith bought into as well, that from the earliest weeks even of the re— the Restoration, he was looking westward to Missouri as the place where it was. That was the border of the Lamanites, literally. There used to be a sign in near Independence, Missouri, that said, this is where the border of the Native American lands was established, right here on this line. And that's where they sent those early missionaries. So with all of that embedded into the early church, you can understand why ever since then the outgrowth of that has been American-centric, even though that goes against the original Christian church.

Well, even in the early church, the— even when we went to the European missions, Um, the, the message was come to the United States.

Oh, absolutely.

Here to Zion.

Yes. And it wasn't just an inferred mission. It was, this is what you need to do, and if you are righteous, you will do it. It became really the sign that you were serious about this, right? You would want to go to the United States. I, my recollection, Jim, you may be closer to the answer than I, but, uh, that there were periods in the 19th century where the majority of the American church members were foreign-born.

I think that may very well be true. I know that if you go to Utah and you look at a lot of the town names, Hyde Park, Utah, Leeds, Utah. I mean, these are British names. These are names taken from the UK, and a lot of the pioneers that crossed the plains had English accents. They probably sounded more like Ian than, than like either of us.

Yeah, first British and then not long after that Scandinavian, because the Scandinavian missions, which opened in 1850, were enormously productive. For decades into the 20th century, there was always the assurance that there would be at least one Scandinavian General Authority so that that constituency would have a voice at that level.

That makes sense. That's where Howard Anderson used to talk about that, Anderson being a Scandinavian name. But, you know, when I, when I went to Scotland and Ian, I don't know if you had any of these kind of delusions. But when I went to Scotland and they would talk about Benbow's Farm, Wilford Woodruff went and converted 500 people in one fell swoop and baptized all of them the same day. And then they all came to the United States. And I thought, well, geez, I am going to be the next Wilford Woodruff. It's now time to do that again. And of course, that doesn't happen anymore. And even if it did, even if we were able to baptize 500 people one pop. We say, great, stay where you are, build up the church where you are. Did you ever consider yourself a possible Wilford Woodruff, Ian?

Oh no, not anywhere close. There was that other missionary, wasn't there? Dan Jones from Wales. Do you remember him?

Jones?

Yeah, Dan Jones. He was a prolific missionary, baptized thousands, or over a thousand. He was another great, uh, great missionary. I was lucky. I, I, I baptized, I think, 5 people in my entire mission, maybe 6 people. Um, and that was, that was good for Scotland. So I was nowhere near anything close to, uh, Wilford Woodruff. And if I take this a bit further, gentlemen, this, this idea that America being the chosen land Do you see, as I do, this feeds into the wider American culture beyond Mormonism? And I see it now in the current political climate where America and many Americans and your current president, and I don't wanna get too political here, believes that America is the greatest country on the planet and that the American life, the American dream, the American way of life is the best way to live in the greatest country and that America is number one. America comes first. And it's interesting because I, I work with quite a few Americans, uh, in my professional work, uh, often. I used to work more extensively with Americans in, in my past. And there is a sense of pride and can-do, which I think is fantastic. We seem to lack that in the UK, by the way, in my opinion, my experience, we, we lack that. There's other countries lack that. And I see many, many qualities in the United States. But do you see the relationship between the church's doctrine, these, uh, talks and remarks by Elder Rasband, America's the chosen land, et cetera., the current political climate, economics, trade, the, the current geopolitical situation that we're in. Do you see the relationship between the doctrine of the church and the broad American attitude and culture that America is number one? We need to, we, we are in the most powerful country in the world, and that, that is arguably correct, I believe. Can you see any, um, Can you see that? Can you see the advantages of that? And are there any disadvantages to that broader?

Well, I see that as the prevalent culture for sure. Occasionally it has its ears boxed like this week with the World Cup. And we find out, ah, you know, there are areas where we're not dominant in the world and the rest of the world probably smiles knowingly. Um, also, when you consider that what has made America great from the very beginning has been immigrants, where do you get off on the nationalism stuff? And that turns out to be true today as well. If you look at the people who are making the huge difference in the United States, you don't have to go back very far to see that they were not citizens of the United States. And some, like Elon Musk, foreign national, born in South Africa. The thing that has made America greatest is our willingness to allow in the best and the brightest from other countries, and that aggregate melting pot has produced something truly unique in the world, but it's not inevitable, and we could lose that edge. And I think in the past few years, we've lost a lot of that edge. Right.

Well, I, around America's 250, if people were reposting a video from Ronald Reagan where Reagan said, you can go to France, but you will never be a Frenchman. You can go to Japan, but you will never be Japanese. Uh, but if you, anyone can come to the United States and be an American. And just listening to that, I just go, this, this is the party of Trump, Ronald Reagan versus Donald Trump. You know, I look at my own political evolution in that I haven't really evolved all that much. I still believe pretty much everything I believed when I made my living working in Republican politics. But we've now reached a point where all of that is wild-eyed liberalism, apparently. Ronald Reagan, I think, would probably be drummed out of the Republican Party in 2026.

Can, can I extend your sentence by one phrase and ask you to to complete it, and that is, you can go to hell, but, uh, I'll let the people at home complete that for themselves.

Do you know, do you know what's interesting? And what's interesting is I listen to you both and there's, I just identified a correlation in my own life from what listening to you, uh, you both, and that is I joined the church because I wanted to improve my life. My life wasn't great, as you know. In many ways, it sucked. Even a slight improvement would have been a big transformation in my life back then. But along came the church, along came the missionaries, and showed me this extraordinary life that I could have. And I leapt in. I just grabbed it with up by both horns, and it was just an amazing experience and deeply grateful to the missionaries and, and the members at that time who introduced me to a, a very, very different and a much more positive, constructive, constructive life, more meaningful, and, and, and gave me much more happiness and stability, which I desperately needed at that time. And one of the drivers behind that was my personal driver to improve myself personally, professionally, educationally, et cetera, et cetera. And the church played a huge role in that, how it's organized and structured, the seminary program that I came into, um, just the whole structure and, um, organization of the church and the, uh, opportunities to serve and the opportunities to improve. For example, giving a talk in front of someone. Which terrified me. Uh, I got some training on that from the branch president, uh, and that I never thought I would be able to do, to talk in public. I mean, I was so lacking in confidence and trying to find my way. I was a very lost young man back, you know, the age of 16. And the church helped me find myself and, and gave me the vehicle to help me achieve the things that I wanted to achieve. I also connect that to what Greg said earlier. I think it was Greg's, uh, kind of alluded to this, where America is great because over the centuries or so it's attracted, um, the best people. And I thought, well, why did I move to Canada? Because I mean, I was in the UK and I moved to Canada to give my kids a better future, which I didn't see them having in the UK. And that's the whole of the conversation. And I, I'm absolutely convinced, uh, I'm right. I was right then to move my family to Canada. At the time, there was some intrepidation, but mostly, um, confident that was the right thing. I look back and undoubtedly it's been absolutely the best decision we ever made. It's been confirmed over and over again, and also it improved my own life and that life of my wife. And I see a relationship between the church trying to bring the best out in me, and I see a— my response to that is, well, can I achieve this in the UK? Well, to— yes, to an extent. Um, that was relatively successful, uh, in the UK, but couldn't achieve the full measure of my, um, economic goals, objectives in the UK. I still believe that. And yet, and so moved to Canada. I went through the system and it's been an amazing experience. So this drive, this, the church, the principle of the church motivated me to physically move my family, which was tough, but the right thing to do. Uh, we all agree to move to Canada. Do you see the relationship, the connection between the church principles and physically moving to another country, especially in the current climate where I've got family, friends right now who are desperately wanting to leave UK? It's a real problem and they're looking for a better place, a, a, a physical geography that they can go to. Perhaps it's America. Perhaps it's Canada. It's certainly not the UK from many of my friends and family. Can you see that relationship though, between the gospel principles of wanting to improve themselves and the need to go to a place where people can achieve their full economic prosperity and full measure?

I think there are two elements to it, Ian. One is the culture and the other is the place. I have a good friend who presided over the Ecuador mission back in the 1970s, and he would talk about how the Ecuadorian native missionaries would go from whatever level they were when they started their mission to a level by the end of their mission that was multiple Why? Because the culture of the church that they experienced as missionaries lifted them to that much higher level. That was independent of geography, but geography can also be an advantage. I would venture that the advantage within the United States is not that it— because of the church, It's because of the culture of the United States and what the church adds because of the values that it imparts to its members is an additive effect to that. Let me, let me throw out 3 examples from my life and then try to tie them together. One is not long after I got married, and I've been married now for 53 years, Jolene and I went back to her home ward in Heber City. My recollection, it was the Heber City 4th Ward. We went to sacrament meeting and the benediction by one of the men in the ward included the phrase, if I'm remembering it correctly, we thank the Lord that we live in this area insulated from the outside world. They felt that that was a blessing, that this was their refuge. The second example was that when I was running our biotech company for many years, each summer we would take an intern from my alma mater, which then was Dixie College, now it's Utah Tech University in St. George. And I was really quite taken and disappointed with the naïveté of many of the interns who were returned missionaries. Because I thought, you guys were out there in the world And it turned out that they had their blinders on. They had carried essentially that Heber City mentality to their mission and home. And the third was my close relationship with Paul Dunn over the last 3 years of his life, where one time I said, Paul, you, you as a General Authority have traveled all over the world, but you and your colleagues don't know the Church. And he said, you're absolutely right. And he said, it's not because of me, Paul. It's because that from the time he left the house until he got back, he was with a handler. All three of those, I think, point to a self-inflicted problem in the church that we have become so insular that we're not aware of the larger world. And if we turn outward and start to take advantage of that, we realize, yikes, we're not the only ones in this game. And maybe we need to have a different worldview that will give us a different outcome. Um, yesterday, Jolynn and I attended for the first time in our lives, a Hindu wedding. Ceremony itself took an hour and a half. It was in a home. It was an amazing consciousness-expanding experience. I've talked many times about the value to me of sitting on the Board of Governors of Wesley Seminary. Those are just two examples of breaking out of that insularity. And that insularity can be the church, or it can be the United States, or usually a combination of both of those. It's really self-defeating. It's not elevating. It works against us. And I wish more of our co-religionists could understand that and become citizens of the world rather than running for refuge. Jim Bennett, you see it in your state all the time. I think that's the major reason Utah has such a high growth rate. People are scrambling to get back to that refuge because they can't take it in the broader world anymore. I hope that's not too strong a condemnation.

Oh, I think it's probably accurate. Howard Anderson used to talk about Utah whine. He'd say Utah whine is, honey, when are we going to move back to Utah? Yep. And, but when you talk about Paul Dunn not knowing the church, um, Anne Tyler's book, The Accidental Tourist, which was an Oscar-winning movie as well. Are you familiar with The Accidental Tourist? It's the story of a guy who writes travel books, and the travel books all tell you how to go through all these places in the world and still feel like you've never left home. Uh, different ways to insulate yourself from the cultures that you're visiting. And it very much feels to me that that's what the General Authorities do on a regular basis. They come into, uh, you know, I saw this in Scotland, you know, when, when Ian, I don't know if you, do you remember when President Monson, Elder Maxwell, and Elder Alexander Morrison came and we had this big, huge meeting. We had a meeting with the missionaries and a meeting with all these people. And it was, they came and they brought America with them. They came with their whole entourage and they were completely insulated from anything genuinely Scottish. And I actually loved it because I felt like I was back home for a couple of hours as I was pulled into this big sort of American meeting and everything is just— and I don't know how to put my finger on it in terms of what made it feel American or why, but it's just very much— you get this sense and I see this in the Tab Choir. I, when we went to Argentina, and Elder Quentin L. Cook came with us and he opened the concert with a bit of a speech in English. And he talked about how great it was to be in Buenos Aires. And I just thought, Buenos Aires, can't you at least try to sound like you're pronouncing this correctly? There's just this I don't know that it's arrogance, but it's just sort of a blithe ignorance of cultures beyond the United States that you see in church leadership.

I think it's ignorance that in part is based on laziness and in part is based on fear.

What part's based on fear?

I think there are a lot of people in this church who don't want to look at the data because they are fearful that their house will crumble, their house of faith. And so there are many people who, when they look at anything that's not self, don't know how to deal with it. The technical term is xenophobia. It's fear of the different. It can be geographical, it can be cultural, it can be religious, but certainly the mentality of the first century of Mormonism was insular. I can understand that because there was literal, sometimes life-threatening, sometimes life-taking persecution. And the response to that is to circle the wagons. We still have a circle the wagons mentality in this church that is way, way out of date, and it is dysfunctional. It works against us.

It's the persecution complex. We're looking to be persecuted. We think, we think that's a sign of a true church, is being persecuted.

Well, it— and this probably sounds paradoxical, but it's a blend of persecution complex and superiority complex.

I think you've hit on something absolutely critical as I listen to you both. I listen to you, Greg. This is exactly the culture of the church. You know, elite, the only true church, we have all the answers. Our way is the only way, uh, we have the covenant, ha, we're in the chosen land, uh, if you want to get back to God, you have to, um, follow exactly what we say, what we do, how we think, how we feel. It's that American church cultural psychological ideological component to it. And that is a barrier to growth. It is. The other side of that coin is to do what Christ did, which is go out into the world and meet people, all the different cultures, understand and embrace and respect and love everyone because we are not all alike unto God. As an international church, as we connect this back to your roadmap, doesn't that mean that we, we go out there with an open mind and with a big heart and we talk to people, we have conversations, meaningful conversations with people about who they are as individuals, their culture, and that we respect their culture. We don't want them to replace their culture or their thinking. We want them to be better people and to live the fundamental principles of of the gospel of Christ. That's how I see Christ being a, um, uh, I, I see Christ being international, not just physically or geographically, but in the whole way he taught. You know, when, when he sat on the hills and went around the homes and, and if it had met anyone, Americans, Brits, Italians, Middle East, Chinese, if it had met any, or it was in any of those countries, he would've taught them universally the the principles of his gospel. And there is strength in that. There's not fear. There's strength and there's faith in that. And there is value in that and not having to conform. Real quick, I'm in this group, The Thoughtful Saints. It's an extraordinary group of individuals. And if you don't think and behave in a certain way, or if you ask a certain question in a certain way, you are outside of this mold. Even at my very best Christian self, uh, they describe me as an apostate because I'm not thinking or asking the right kind of questions, or I'm not conforming. I'm not fitting exactly in the mold. And when I step back from those conversations and I, I see them talk to each other, even the people who supposedly comply or conform to this mold, they even argue within themselves. And there's some extreme thinking. And so I think the, to your point, Greg, I think it is an absolute hindrance to the church and a barrier to the church. And it's both fearful and it's elitist at the same time. And by the answer's not to cut oneself off, strength And faith is by reaching out, not by being insular. That's opposite to what Christ taught, who he was.

Yeah. Let me give you an example. I think I've brushed against it in the past on this podcast. Several years ago at Wesley, because retention of youth is a universal problem in religion. And not just in Christian denominations. Wesley had a 2-day symposium. We had about 50 religious leaders there, mostly from the D.C. area, but some traveled from afar. I had made a call to Salt Lake saying, send somebody back here because you need to be part of this discussion. The person they sent was at that time the General President of the Young Men. So kudos to them that they sent somebody who had the appropriate title to engage in this kind of discussion. He sat there for 2 days and didn't say a word. And I think it was a combination of coming into that room thinking, well, we got the answers, and then realizing, yikes, I can't even speak this language, and as a result, not saying a thing. It was an embarrassment, I think, not just to him individually, but to the church he represented. He didn't know how to interact with that group, and I think we see this way too often that we are so inward-facing that we don't even know how to turn around and interact with the rest of the world. We see it in our language at times. We don't even know how to filter our Mormon speak in such a way that other people can understand it. It doesn't dawn on us that some of the words we use are incomprehensible, if not totally weird, to other denominations. Whereas it would take very little effort to think ahead and say, all right, is there a common language of Christianity we can use? Yeah, there is, and it's easy to do it. Let's do it.

Well, that's interesting.

Well, you, you've said, you, you've talked about, um, I think it was Wesley Theological Seminary where they were talking about, um, why don't, why don't you Mormons have a seat at the table? And you said the Mormons won't even admit there is a table.

Uh, yes, actually, let me tell you about two occasions. That was when I took the president of the seminary golfing, and after he requested on the third tee that I talked to him about Mormonism, at the end of the round of golf he said You have a good religion. You should be at the table. And I said, David, the problem is we have yet to acknowledge that there is a table. The other is that I arranged for Marlon Jensen and two of his colleagues to have lunch at the seminary. This is when he was in the First Quorum of Seventy and was the Church historian. And during that lunch, which included several theologians of various denominations, One respectfully said, Elder Jensen, we have wanted a Mormon at the theological table. We cannot find one who knows the language. So both of them go in the same direction, Jim. Yeah, I think, I think at the table and we have not learned the language. That's necessary to have a seat at the table. Some of that's changing, but it's changing very slowly, and it's with only a few people, and those people tend not to be in the hierarchy at all. They tend to be self-selecting never to be in the hierarchy by the fact that they have the audacity to mingle with the heathens.

That sounds like it's going to be the story of my life. Or is the story of my life.

Why does the church behave like this? And I go back to some of the old—

Well, there are two. You've heard—

Make some—

You've heard two labels. I add a third. There's active, there's less active, there's radioactive.

Oh.

I could think of, there were 3 thoughts I had listening to you there, Greg. You know why the church behaves like this and it's probably because it's lazy, not caring enough and is, you know, in terms of having a seat at the table and probably doesn't value enough or recognize how important it is to have a seat at the table. When I first came to Canada many years ago now. Very quickly, my eyes were opened to a lot of the issues related to what we, we, we describe, or is described, or, um, referenced as First Nations, Indigenous communities across Canada that we don't have like this in the United Kingdom. So I came from a very different culture, very different background into Canada. And, and, and you two gentlemen can, can very much relate to this. Um, in regards to, um, uh, natives and, and the indigenous people, et cetera. And basically I, uh, needed and wanted to take the time to learn about these cultures, their distinctness, their uniqueness. They're all very different in many ways. And these are the historical indigenous people of Canada and to work here. And to live here, it was important to understand, recognize, and to learn about that. And I took the time and the effort and the opportunity to do that. It affects my personal life to some extent. I've got friends in these communities who are very, very important to me, but it also affects my work. In fact, the rights, the treaties that belong to these ancient people and are now enshrined in Canadian law. You have to consult on projects and it's a legal and regulatory requirement. I'm here on a project right now as we speak, um, with intermittent internet access here. I'm remote, uh, but there's a big First Nation Indigenous community, uh, component to this project I'm working on. But what I'm saying is that I took the time, I'm interested, I want to learn about these other cultures. I want You know, we have these meetings. I have a seat at the table. I listen. There's an approach. There's certain words you can't use. You can't, you shouldn't show up in a white shirt and tie, for example, because it reminds these communities of the times of the colonial times where the, uh, white, uh, sometimes British people and others came and separated children from their families. There's a lot of pain associated with certain memories, certain words, how you dress, how you behave. And it's, there's a complex and dark history here in Canada in respect to that. And so it's important to take the time to learn and to understand and be aware. There are Indigenous awareness training programs that people should participate in. Vated, and many do. I think if the church took that attitude, was, was really, uh, implemented what I think international means, going back to the roadmap, by understanding, respecting different cultures, not trying to Americanize everything. I think American culture is important, and you can bring a little bit of America, sure, but it's, it's about, um, respecting other cultures, learning how people think and feel. It's a bit like, and I might get some pushback on this, and that's okay, a bit like homeschooling. I think there are some probably upsides and downsides to homeschooling. I think if the child is insulated from kids at a younger age, it's probably not a good idea. Again, there are different opinions on that. I'm a person that likes to be out in the world, working with people, learning from people, being collaborative, respecting people's views and cultures, understanding. And that's how and why I've had some success in my personal life and in my professional life. And I've grown as a result. My kids have grown by having that outlook. My whole family's grown. The people I've met and I've worked with that come to Canada, I've asked them, why did you come? Because they wanted to improve their life. And so you've got this people with these attitudes who were trying to improve their lives and they're motivated and driven to do so. And so I'm surrounded by amazing people that, um, that from different cultures that learn from each other and we do great things and they belong to different cultures and different religions. And that's, uh, the religious aspect doesn't come into the projects, but their cultures do. And I've learned so much from them. And I just think it's the way Christ, I think it's how Christ thought and how he lived. And I think it is a barrier to the church and the church is, it could do more. It could have a seat at the table and it just doesn't care enough or just lazy, too lazy to, to make the effort. So this article that Elder Rasband wrote, that kind of doubles down on, you know, the only true church and this is our chosen land and we, we need to, you know, protect the chosen land and et cetera. The way to change the world is not by insulating yourself. The way to change the world is by engaging with people, by being with people and influencing them and getting close to people. That's how we, we, that's how we get a better world, right?

Yeah. There's a lesson from biology. And we've learned it only recently, and a lot of people refuse to learn it. Parents, though well-meaning, have tried to protect their children from exposure to things in the environment, not just concepts, but biological things, like not exposing them to certain foods, not allowing them to play in the yard, Uh, and what we're finding is these kids don't have very good outcomes. The incidence of sometimes serious allergies skyrockets in them because they were not exposed in their earlier years to all of these factors in the environment whose net effect is to condition us and to prepare us to live in the larger world and live a healthy life. I see the same thing allegorically within religions. Some people have expressed to me concern of, well, gee, if you sit at the table with the other religions, is that going to be a threat to yours? And my answer, having done that for 8 years now at that level, is it sharpens my focus. And it also increases my appreciation for the strength of the other traditions, that we all bring something to that table if we're willing to sit at the table and learn the language.

I think that makes an awful lot of sense. I, uh, what's the, what's the solution then? I mean, is there a solution? I mean, is it just, we just plod ahead and hope that sooner or later we wake up and figure out how to interact and embrace the rest of the human population.

In my dream world, I would have a President Uchtdorf, who has the street cred to do it, stand up repeatedly in General Conference and other venues and say, to be Effective Latter-day Saints, we must be citizens of the world, not hide within the United States and somehow proclaim that that makes us any better than the others. That's what I think we need is to hear it from the highest levels and then hear it repeatedly from men and women who have walked that walk and can lead by example.

You know, the church actually has tools at its disposal to help do this. And the one that I think is very effective and has done this almost in spite of itself is the missionary program. Uh, you can't spend 2 years in a country and not end up to some degree immersed in the culture.

No, Jim Bennett, that's what I talked about earlier. That's what shocked me with some of the interns in our biotech lab. They had done the They had done it overseas and they'd managed to insulate themselves from those cultures for 2 years and were as naive when they came back as when they went out. Yeah, it can be a moderating factor, but the missionary system itself is very insular. It does not encourage the missionaries to blend with the cultures when they're out there. It conditions them to blend with the church that's out there. But what I would love to see is the pairing of our missionaries with missionaries from other denominations working on Christian service projects. Then you would really learn I think what this world is all about and what the world of religion is all about. Can you imagine spending 3 months or 6 months paired with a Methodist or a Roman Catholic engaging in Christian service, what your view of the world would be at the end of that period? I think you would have a deeper appreciation for the value of your own tradition at the same time that you would have a great reverence for the traditions of others.

Yeah, I think that's a fantastic point there, comments, because as I've been outward looking and open thinking and trying to learn from others, it's helped me appreciate my own culture. There are things about my own culture, you know, in Yorkshire specifically, UK Yorkshire, which I hadn't understood or appreciated or valued as much as I do now. And I think about all those little quirks that we've got as Yorkshire people, all the sayings and, and all the different silly and funny and often intelligent things that Yorkshire people say and do, which are unique just to that little part of the world, even in England, which I appreciate now. I never really understood or appreciated or even saw that. So this outward looking thinking, this more openness is the way to go. And I think there's some good advice there, or counsel, or information there for the church leaders to really review this and just take probably a different look and see how this thinking, this attitude can actually improve the church as an organization and how we think and feel, but also remove some of the barriers to growth. And we're coming up to the end here, or rather I am. I need to, as you know, I'm working on a project site right now and I need to go. And so you gentlemen can continue, but if you think this is the end of it, so then we could probably wrap things up, make a few final comments. What do you think?

I think the challenge for us is not to create the value that's out there. It's to overcome the fear of our people that keeps them from engaging in that.

I think that's a great summation of what we've talked about here. And I think very much that the church has a wonderful and bright future. And I just wish we would be taking the steps to get there faster than we're taking them, because I think we're moving in that direction. But I think we're not as far down the road as we ought to be. And maybe Uchtdorf is the one that pulls us over the line.

And, and I don't wanna sound arrogant here. I don't, but I honestly believe if, if, if I was listening to this podcast with, you know, all the conversations with Greg specifically, I, I would see a lot of the answers to the problems in the church. Frankly, I think the answers, many of them, uh, without trying to oversell the roadmap, they're in the roadmap. That are in these conversations. This is real stuff. We're not, uh, dilly-dallying around things. We're really talking about the issues.

And there are many, many—

I'm not saying we have all the answers. I think we have covered a lot of the issues. You know, we've done, what, 25, 28 episodes with you, Greg. We've really tackled a lot of the issues and we've come to the table, I think, with some good answers, some very honest answers, and I think the church I think the church probably knows these things. It's not stupid, it's intelligent. Um, but somehow has yet to figure out how to implement some of these answers that are not ours exclusively. We've talked about them, but I think the church knows what to do and how it needs to do things, and it could do better. I, I, so yeah, I, I'm with you, Jim Bennett. I expect great things from the church. Uh, and again, it all comes down to leadership. You know, you can determine what a ward is like or stake is like, and this is my experience being on the bishop, being on stake presidency. A lot of it, maybe not all of it, comes down to the leader. It really does. That's my experience. That's my opinion. Very strong opinion on that. My ward was the way it was because of what I did and the previous bishop there and building on his work. And our stake president, uh, we had a great stake president., and we achieved a lot, and it was down to the, the, the, the leader. And I hope that our leadership in the church at the highest level can get better, stronger, more collaborative, more outward, uh, looking, less insular, and more, um, more emotionally intelligent. Emotionally intelligent is a term that we've used in, um, in my industry at times when working with different communities. And, and I think some of the leaders in the church lack that, frankly. Well, um, any final closing comments from each other, and then we'll give—

Oh, go ahead, Jim. Uh, I don't want to sound unpatriotic, but little d democracy doesn't work very well because you have a mass of people What has worked for 250 years in this country is that you have a democratic republic, that the voice of the people selects leaders in the hope that those leaders can do what the mass of people unorganized cannot do. The question is, do you get the right leaders?, and that makes all the difference. If you get the wrong leader, things can go to hell in a handbasket real fast. I'm about halfway through the magnificent History Channel series narrated by Tom Hanks on World War II, and it gives you a deep appreciation, not only for the value of leadership, but The Danger of Leadership, where you see how a few men both saved the world during World War II and threatened to destroy the world during World War II, all embodied in a handful of individuals. That's, that's the challenge for us. You need the right leaders to make things happen. It doesn't matter what the institution claims to be.

Amen.

Amen to that. So on that final note, gentlemen, we will close this episode. Again, this has been extraordinary. I've learned so much. I hope our listeners and viewers have enjoyed this as much as we have. Gregg, we are immensely grateful to you for your insights and your experience. We hope we can continue these conversations. I think there's more to discuss. Jim, as always, it's an absolute delight to, uh, to do this with you. It's such a, um, highlight of, of, um, our lives, I think. I hope. I think we're enjoying it still. So to all of our viewers and listeners, thank you for being a part of Inside Out. I hope you enjoyed this as much as we have. And again, Jim, thank you. And Greg, a very special thank you to you as well. Thank you.

T-Ball. Thank you.