A Conversation with Nemo the Mormon

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out, the podcast that takes a pragmatic and balanced look at the Mormon Church and faith. We consider all the good the church does, and it does a lot of good, and we also look at some some of the problems and issues with the church and discuss ways in which the church can change and improve. As always, I'm here with my partner, the respectable Mr. Jim Bennett. Jim, how are you today, sir?

Good. That's a very tempered adjective. I like it. I like it. It gives me a boundary. I have to be respectful. I'm sitting here wearing my tie-dyed Rolling Stones shirt.

We have a very special guest for this episode, someone Jim Bennett and I have wanted to meet for quite some time. Today we're joined by Nemo the Mormon from the UK. Nemo, very welcome to you.

Thanks. Thanks. I hope not to disappoint. Oh, people have been looking forward to speaking with me.

Well, we've had some behind-the-scenes conversations, but I'm still fangirling over here. I am a Mormon fan. I just love the stuff you produce. I think it's so thoughtful. It's so common sense and straight to the point. And I think you are a very valuable voice of reason out there in the Latter-day Saint online universe.

Yeah, I concur. We've been trying to get together with Enemo for quite a few weeks. You know, the time zone A challenge, quite a challenge, you know, but we finally get you in the podcast. We have, uh, a few friends of ours that, um, don't go to church, who visit us from time to time, and they come to the house. And, uh, so a group of friends, um, said, have you heard of this Nemo fella from the UK? You must know him because he's from the UK. They think I know everybody from the UK. They think I know the Queen, I think.

We know the Queen, don't we, Ian?

We know the Queen.

We know the Queen, of course. Queen's dead. I can't have 4. That doesn't work.

But I've been well once with it, knowing Charles.

No, we knew the Queen, but I'm not maybe a big fan of Charles. Anyway, let's get into this. So I think the best person to introduce you, Nemo, is yourself. And so if you give us an introduction, a bit of background, that'd be great. And we've got a few topics that we would like to get into.

Sure. So I'm Nemo. I am from the UK, as my accent gives away, but I have a different accent to Ian. So we have that going. We can teach you all about that later on. I started doing what I do, which is hard enough to describe as it is, but I started a couple of years ago, maybe 3 years ago now, coming up 4, in a response to the This Is the Show videos put out by Fair Mormon. I felt like someone needed to provide a rational response. And, uh, I generally felt like what was missing from the dialogue at the time in the ex-Mormon space was someone that was doing short videos in response to things that they were seeing, in response to church statements and apologetics and whatnot, and, um, and just general short-form commentary. Because these long-form podcasts have been going for a long time, and they're great, and they provide a lot of help for people, But I thought we could do with something a bit shorter and a bit more concise. And it just tries to get to the heart of the issues quite quickly. So that's what I do. That's how I kind of, how I see my role within the space. Yes.

Well, that's really funny to me that this is the show is what sort of radicalized you because it radicalized me too because they kept quoting me. So that whole thing was about the CES letter and I wrote that reply to the CES letter. And they kept quoting me as if I was somehow on board with just how obnoxious that whole production was. And I since got to meet them and they flew me down to L.A. to podcast with them and they said, just give it to us, just tell us why you were upset about us. And we recorded about an hour of that and they said, okay, while you're here, let's just talk about a bunch of other things. And so I recorded a bunch of other things. Everything else I've recorded with them is out there online. That initial episode is still in the vault somewhere. They've never released it. I mean, it wasn't like I was swearing at them, but it was, it was very much, I think the way you handled this was awful. I think the idea of demonizing people who leave the church is awful. Uh, you know, and, and it, it went nowhere.

Well, interestingly, yeah, it seems that the powers that be at FAIR Mormon, as I will continue to call it, I don't care if they've tried to rebrand, I will keep calling it that. They seem to think that it wasn't doing very well either because they tried to take it down. And now the only place you can find them is on my channel pretty much, and maybe a couple of other places, other people that replied to them. But certainly they're on my YouTube channel. Scott Gordon from FAIR tried to have them taken down, and this is when I was brand new to YouTube.. But it didn't work. The, the, you know, the team at YouTube said, no, he's within his rights to commentate on this and to reply to it. And so it's staying up. And Scott wrote several follow-up emails, and I think they're on the CES Letter website. I think Jeremy's got them, but I should post them again. Scott's emails are on there of him going, well, I don't think this is right. And then they're like, well, too bad. So they're up there. They're immortalized. And I still have one episode downloaded that I've not responded to yet. I'm wondering whether doing it for like an anniversary of some kind or something would be, would be fun.

Oh, okay.

To dig that out. It's their one on temples.

What's been the reaction of some of the British leaders, our saints, to your podcast?

Depends which ones you ask. I was at state conference today and 3 or 4 people came up and kind of in hushed voices would shake my hand. Oh, you're Nima, aren't you?

Yes.

Yeah. I really like your videos. But don't want people to know, obviously. Um, and that happens. I've not been to a ward building in the UK yet where someone doesn't come up and say hi and kind of thanks me or, you know, just chats to me about it. So I'm well kind of known in the UK church, definitely. Uh, and some leaders like that, some leaders don't. Some leaders were helpful and then stopped being. I mean, I have my whole saga with Dallin H. Oaks, which we probably don't have time to get into, but I worked through my local leaders to raise some concerns with down there jokes. And some of those leaders, particularly of the area or General Authority 70 level, have decided to take a step back now and kind of make it all my state president's problem. And bless him, he knows he's between a rock and a hard place. My state president— got a lot of love for my state president, gave him a hug earlier when I saw him and we were chatting and we're very jovial. And he knows it's not personal. But he knows what his role in the system is. And I'm going to keep pressing into the fact that he's not able to fulfill his role in the system, because the system set him up to fail in dealing with someone like me who has concerns, who can back up those concerns with evidence. And the only way to try and put the concerns to one side is to say, well, we can't say they were lying because we don't know their intent, or, you know, we, we can't speak to their intent. And, you when I tried to escalate it to the people who could speak to their own intent, they refused to speak to their own intent and gave me some wishy-washy apologetic stuff. They told me to go read Fair Mormon. Dan H. Oaks told me to go read Fair Mormon when he promised to investigate my claims. It's, it's crazy.

Well, can I give people who may not know this— I know we don't want to spend a lot of time on this— can I give them like a 15-second of my understanding of what you did?

Yeah.

Is that you, you vote opposed to your leader, and particularly Dallin H. Oaks. You said because you have evidence that he lied. You know, Dallin Oaks was at the University of Virginia, was asked about, um, electroshock therapy to treat LGBTQ people, and he said that it ended before he was there, and there's clear evidence that that's not true. And so you, you ran that up the flagpole. It finally got to Dallin H. Oaks, who responded to you directly and said that he had been assigned to investigate your claims against Dallin H. Oaks, and finally came back with a letter that gave you a link to FairMormon, where FairMormon said that Dallin Oaks hadn't lied, and he called it an independent something or other.

Independent study.

An independent study from FairMormon said, I didn't lie, and I trust the matter's closed, and that was it. And he also sent a letter to your stake president about prophetic fallibility, or something, but your stake president destroyed it.

Yeah, that's about right.

Have you heard that whole story, Ian?

No, first time I've heard that.

Okay, well, I've done, I've done an episode on it that maybe we can point people to that will give them—

it's worth watching. Yeah, I think in our episode description I want to put it in there because you did everything right. You went through every, you know, and, and still there is no way in the system for anybody to hold anybody ecclesiastically above them accountable for anything.

Yeah. And yeah, Don H. Oates, excuse me, he set me apart in a stake presidency and him and I and a new stake presidency, we were trained by him. We had a weekend of training and we had the opportunity to have dinner with him. We spent quite a bit of time with him and we had him and I had some interesting conversations about different topics. But I, when I, you know, going into that state presidency as a true believer at the time, this is maybe, I don't know, 10 years or so, maybe a little bit longer now, came out of that, those conversations with questions and concerns that he didn't know as much as I expected him to know on basic things like, you know, the propheticness of, uh, of the prophet and questions about, uh, doctrine and history and, and, uh, you know, concerns that people have with the faith, except how to navigate faith. He was just, uh, either unwilling, uninterested, or just didn't have the answers in terms of wanting to get into it. I suspect he gets bombarded, as they all do, repeatedly by all kinds of people, and the only option they have is to redirect them to some— the stake presidency. If you look at the, uh, the new handbook of instructions there, that's very prescribed, is the handbook of instruction. I'll go through it in some detail. I'd love to do a podcast on that, Jim, but it's very prescribed. And again, it makes repeated references to, uh, if you have any questions, go to your bishop, go to your stake president. And of course, they, they're in a very difficult position because who do they go to?

Uh, that might be my fault because I've posted, I've posted several times a flowchart, as I understand it, of what happens when your local leadership can't resolve your concerns. So for example, and particularly the factual nature of your concerns, so if you're accusing a member of the First Presidency of lying, your state president can't resolve the factual nature of that because if you have evidence that they said something, uh, that was untrue or dishonest and then they were given a chance to recant and they didn't, in light of new evidence that showed that they were misinformed, or they, you know, what they said wasn't true. Lying involves a certain amount of intent. So the factual nature of it is you need to speak to their intent. And my stake president said, I can't speak to their intent. So the only people that can are at the top. So the person that dropped himself in it and probably will get in a lot of trouble or has got in a lot of trouble is Brooke P. Hales, because he was his assistant to the First Presidency. And he sent me an email that said, because I asked him, what is to be done when your local leaders cannot resolve the factual nature of your concerns as regards to a senior leader at the church? And he said, in which case, that evidence should be submitted to the office of the First Presidency for investigation. And right there, he established a precedent for people's concerns to be able to go above the stake president when the stake president can't resolve it, all the way to the First Presidency if necessary. I've been making stink about that, obviously, because it's a big deal. They, my local leaders all the way through the chain to Area Seventies above have tried to deny that that's what that actually means. And that, you know, oh, this isn't, this isn't saying that that's what should happen. They were just being nice because you badgered them or whatever, whatever they're trying to sell me. But ultimately, I think he messed up. And so that's why the church is now in the handbook, probably making it very, very clear that no matter what that vocal British guy is saying, you don't get to come and ask us questions, you've got to keep it with your local leaders. Because we don't want to deal with it. That's, that's, that's my narcissistic take on the, on the whole thing.

And that's in stark contrast to the repeated references in the New Handbook of Instructions where there's lots of, uh, direction, instruction that on a number of key topics and issues you have to get permission from the First Presidency. It's all there, replete throughout the, um, you know, like You know, the seal, divorce, you know, gay children, husband and wife divorces. There's frequent references to a process throughout the handbook of instructions where you have to get permission from the First Presidency before you can proceed.

Well, because they want control, but they don't want to be bothered by the questions. They don't— they want control without accountability, I guess, is the way I'd look at that. Yeah, that's exactly—

yes, exactly what I see.

Yeah.

Well, Jim, just thoughts.

You know, I sort of look at this and I realize that one of the things being in, you know, the title of the podcast is Inside Out. I'm inside, Ian's on the outside, and you are in a very, very interesting, delicate limbo place, Nemo, from what I can tell, because you are still a member of the church, you are still an active member of the church, but You will not sustain church leaders, but they don't seem to be willing to excommunicate you. And you're not worried about that? You don't think that that's going to be a problem?

No, it's not going to excommunicate me.

Is it because your stake president is such a good guy, or what happens when he's released and there's a new pharaoh in Egypt?

That is the question, because I think my stake president is sheltering me from a lot of it. And I know that my bishop at the time didn't want to. I've got a new bishop since, but he Uh, just doesn't want to get involved with it. So, um, as long as I don't rock his boat too much, he'll, he won't bother me. And I'm dealing directly with the state president at this point because it's kind of gone past the bishop. But when my state president's released, and I think he's just trying to ride it out until he is because he's been there for 7 years now, so he's not got long left, um, I think he's just trying to wait it out so then it's not his problem. But he's, he's a nice guy, uh, but at the same time, I think I'm, I'm pretty untouchable. Because what are they going to excommunicate me for? You can't excommunicate someone for not sustaining their leaders, right? You can't excommunicate someone for not paying tithing directly to the church, you know. You— yeah, you can't. What are they going to excommunicate me for? They've restricted my ability to exercise the priesthood because they've read the handbook as because I can't obtain a temple recommend, therefore I'm not temple worthy, therefore I'm not worthy to exercise the priesthood. Um, but I've been fighting that with my state president and he's struggling to come back to me with an answer because that's the reading of the handbook, but he doesn't want to contradict the handbook, but he doesn't think that's right. And he knows that whatever answer he gives me, I'm going to talk about online. So, uh, he's, he's kind of stuck really in that sense.

Well, so I mean, we can get into some of the topics here, but one of the things that, that we, we had a conversation, we were gonna, we were gonna tape and Ian wasn't available. And so we had a conversation where I got a chance to get to know you a little bit. But one of the questions I asked you then, I think your answer was fascinating and it was just, why do you do it? Why are you doing this? I mean, most people that are sort of in that situation, they cross over into the exmo space and become these, these hardcore church critics. You have not done that. That's not to say that your videos— excuse me— your videos are not hard-hitting, that they're not straightforward, that you pull punches, because you don't do any of those things. And I think you are actually, uh, far more effective in terms of defining clear criticism of the church than a lot of its angry— its angry critics are. But the question is, so why are you in this space? Why don't you walk away? I mean, it's very clear to me that there's still something about the church that you very much love and treasure. And so I think, I think people would love to hear just sort of your summary of that. Is that too much of a question to ask?

No, no, no. It's to be glib, you know, the reason I'm not raving angry is because I'm a Brit and I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. But the sort of not frustration in your voice there, Jim Bennett, but the kind of like, just what gives with this, is what's going on in my own brain. Most of the time, I don't know quite why I'm in this situation. People ask me, why do you stay? Why do you stay? And I try and come up with reasons, I try and give them answers. You know, I've talked about how I'm too cowardly to actually just you know, let the church die and leave it, you know, or I'm too stubborn or whatever sort of glib answer I give. But some of the honesty reason is I just, I don't know. I'm just, it didn't feel right to walk away. And so I did what felt right, which is to stick around and try and affect some change and try and make people aware of what's going on and you know, not, not just run from it. I, I can't remember what I said to you a couple weeks ago. I might have said something completely different because in those two weeks my thoughts on it may have changed. It's kind of an evolving landscape in my head. And I asked myself this question a lot: why do I, why do I go and punch myself in the face constantly? Because that's how it feels sometimes, you know, like I'm just banging my head against a brick wall because I know these leaders can't do what they need to do. They can't do what's right because they exist within a system that holds them. My state president can't just come out and go, you know what, you're right, you shouldn't be sustaining them, and that's fine. He can't do that. He's got to encourage me to sustain them. But equally, he can't resolve the reasons why I'm not sustaining them. He can't fix that. So what do we do? And it's this sort of morbid fascination, I guess, which has kept me around that Well, I want to know what happens when they can't. What happens to someone like me? Because if I'm then a case study, people can see, well, this is what it looks like if you do stick around. And you want to be really open and authentic, then that this is what it's going to look like in the best case scenario, because I've got great local leaders, you know, worst case scenario, you just get kicked out. But if everything falls the right way, and you are in a— because I'm in quite a sort of liberal community as well, I'm in Oxford Ward, which is full of academics and people at the university in there. So it's A bit like Berkeley is another one of those places where you can kind of get on no matter how you want to Mormon, as it were. Um, so I don't know if that answers your question, and we can keep digging into this if you'd like, but no, well, that's, that's very similar to what you said before. Okay, good.

You talk about, you know, because Peter Bleakley, yeah, is sort of in the same space, but he got kicked out. Yeah, they've excommunicated him. Yeah. And, uh, and you, I, I think the more you speak and the more influence you have, I think the more dangerous it would be to excommunicate you.

Yeah, the more they want to, but the less they can.

Yeah, I, I, I, Nemo, I think, I believe, and I've got reason to think like this because of, again, working with general authorities over the years and being trained by them and having conversations with them about if people don't sustain leaders or they're seen as a threat to the church, or they're, you know, not toeing the line, or they're— to quote Elder Oaks in a private conversation, as close as I can— bringing the church's name into disrepute. Because that was the first question, is anything I've done in my background that could bring the church's name into disrepute? That very first question. But I think you are very much on the radar of the Perfecting the Saints committee. I think the church sees you as a threat, and I would not be surprised that the papers are already drawn up for your excommunication departure. I really believe that because the church deals with this extremely aggressively, frankly. They're very smart people. They see you as a threat. I think, you know what, I think they know what to do. The question is when and how to do it. And I think your bishop or stake president has got very little, if any, influence when it comes to, uh, that the hammer coming down. And that, that's, you know, I mean, I hope that doesn't happen. I— you sound like you're happy in the space that you're in, uh, you know, you're making a big difference. But I suspect that's not sustainable from the church's position.

No, I will be heartbroken if I am excommunicated for a variety of personal and sort of public reasons. You know, there's a lot there that will be difficult. But I know that my stake, my bishop, my previous bishop told me, and others in the know have said that, you know, he's had uh, not firm instructions, but he's had the nudge from people to be like, you, you probably want to deal with this guy. And he's like, no, I'm not doing it. He's kind of stood his ground. Um, but I think that my current bishop wouldn't, and I think my stake president, if moved upon by the right people, probably would be like, okay, right, we'll just have to deal with this then.

Right.

Um, so I think in terms of the people that are angrily emailing from within the stake, are being ignored by my local leaders, because there are, you know, when I stand up and oppose and I sing in the choir, and, you know, my stake president knows that he is on the internet with me popping up from behind him voting opposed on the stand, because they made me sing tenor. I'm a bass, but they made me sing tenor, which meant I was sat behind the president. That's their fault. So, um, yeah, so anyway, uh, and he's fine with it, you know. He's like, oh yeah, I got sent this in my— I can't say he's fine with it. He probably would rather I hadn't. But he's good-natured about it, I should say. He got a text from his family WhatsApp group saying, oh, do you recognize this guy? And they'd sent him the video. And they're like, oh, you're on the internet, you know. And he just— he's very good-natured about it. And he knows it's not personal. So he's a good guy.

Good.

Well, thank you.

No, I was just going to ask in terms of what's on the agenda now on the horizon. I mean, you've covered so many different issues and so many different, you know, here comes Tim Ballard, here comes whatever it is. That's the issue of the day. And I'm curious as to which of those you think is the most important or the most damaging to the church. And I mean, which, which of those is top of mind right at the moment?

Yes.

Uh, I think temples for sure is where the church is really struggling with its PR and everything at the moment. Um, because you look at things like Chad Daybell, and I do have one of his books just behind me that I was given as a 13-year-old kid, so that's a bit freaky to look at that and, you know, kind of come to terms with who this guy had become. Um, but the church can go, well, you know, those are his fringe beliefs, those are not mainstream church beliefs. They can kind of distance themselves from that. A lot of believing members in Utah particularly don't trust the government at the best of times. So the SEC stuff's gonna fly right over their head. They'll just, you know, if anything, some of them are praising the church for keeping its money away from the SEC, right? So they, they don't care about that. But I think people seeing the church's name almost dragged through the mud by this apathy towards PR when it comes to temples, I think is, is gonna do a lot of damage because the church has always, from my understanding, certainly pre-Nelson, desired to be a good neighbor and desired to have people want members of the church in their community. Um, and I think that comes deep, deep within the Mormon psyche from being kicked out from town to town in the early days, right? We know what it's like to have people not want us in their town. So I, I figure to my mind that there's an outgrowing of that, of what we want to be good neighbors. We don't want people to have any excuse to be angry with us. We are kind people. We're good people, good Christian people. Um, but under Nelson, his ego seems to have gotten in the way of that, and now it's, we must have a temple exactly where I said it is, and it must be exactly how tall, uh, as tall as I want it to be, and we don't, we, we just don't care whether it annoys the neighbors or not.

Yeah, suddenly steeples are an essential part of our worship.

I wasn't aware of that until I wasn't either, and, and I feel really bad for the Saints in Hong Kong because The 2019 renovation plan of the Hong Kong Temple has got the steeple being removed and it won't go back on. So all these members that are now crying to all the city councils in Lone Mountain and Fairview and Cody and Heber, they're all going, oh no, the steeple, it would— and they're crying and they're doing that whole performative thing. They must be absolutely weeping at the cruelty of church leaders for removing the steeple from the Saints of Hong Kong, because according to them, it's the worst thing you could do to someone. Because it's going to completely ruin their temple worship, and it just makes no sense.

Well, and the Hawaii temple has, hasn't had a steeple for what, 50 years, 60 years?

No, Mesa, Cardston, Lay, and Paris are 4 that just don't have steeples. Okay, right off the bat.

So, so those ordinances don't count?

Because then, well, apparently, apparently not. Um, apparently, apparently not. And you know, the, the crazy thing is like the one they want to build in Fairview, I think it is, is taller than 90% of current standing LDS temples. So in 90% of cases, the church has been absolutely fine with a steeple shorter than like 170 feet or whatever it is. But in this one case, apparently it has to be ex— exactly that high. Otherwise saints won't be able to like do endowments. Gimme a break. It's nonsense.

Like, like many of our listeners, you know, myself, I'm trying to figure out what's, what's the, what's the difference having a steeple or not, or this, the height of the steeple? What is that enshrined in some doctrine, some history?

No, because David A. Bednar said last year in a video that's doing the rounds online, he said, who cares what the size of the temple is?

I've seen that.

As long as you have access to the same ordinances, that draw us closer to the Savior, which I don't usually agree with Bednar, but he's spot on in this case. You know, he's spot on. Who cares about the size of the temple? It's about what you do inside.

I have a cousin who was an Area Authority Seventy in the Belmont, Massachusetts area. And he was instrumental in getting a steeple on top of the Boston Temple.

About 2001, was that?

Yeah, that's about 20, a little more than 20 years ago. But they had built the temple, and they'd gotten permission to build the temple without the steeple, and they had opened the temple without the steeple. And then it became, okay, now it's time to get a steeple. And my cousin is one of the most, one of the most, one of the kindest, one of the most solicitous, uh, he's exactly the perfect person to negotiate that kind of difficulty. And I think that was resolved, uh, with a lot of community input, and, and I think should be sort of the template for why these— for how these things are done. But I, I absolutely with you in just how bizarre it is that we have, because we now have statements that talk about steeples. I'm not making this up, Ian. I didn't just pull these— that steeples are an integral part of temple worship, that the steeple represents Jesus Christ, that your temple worship is better, richer, more spiritual. Because, I mean, when I'm doing a temple session, I'm inside the temple. I don't have any perception of what kind of building I'm in.

But by design.

Yeah. And that's the way it's supposed to be. And so the idea that somehow this steeple is enhancing my temple worship is just belied by generations of experiences in temples that have not had steeples. The, the reason I cited the Hawaii temple is I think it's one of the first temples built outside of Utah. Yeah. Yeah, early 20th century, and it's never had a steeple. It's a gorgeous— I've been there once, but it's just an absolute— you can look at the pictures, it's absolutely gorgeous and beautiful, and the landscaping is lovely, and it's, you know, reflective of its environment. You know, it's reflective— unlike sort of the cookie-cutter temples we're getting now, it's very unique and has character and It has no steeple.

And I think that's at the root of it, to be honest, uh, with you guys, is that, um, the church is just building from a set of designs now, which Hinkley did in the early 2000s. A lot of those smaller temples he did were all of a very similar design, but they were smaller and they were generally acceptable to zoning. But the reason I bring up Paris is because Paris, 7 years ago, I think it was, that was dedicated. So just 7 years ago, they built another temple. Without a steeple, and Gerard Corset was asked about it and he said, yeah, it doesn't have a steeple, and that's because we had some planning and zoning to work around, but that's a good thing because it means that everyone likes and accepts the temple and they view it as their own and it fits in and that's great. So you've got presiding bishop of the church saying it's good to follow zoning because it means that everyone's happy with the temple. And then you've got, and the only people that are saying this are the church's local representatives, like area seventies and legal representatives who aren't really authorized to make these kind of statements, really declarative statements on temples, are saying, no, no, it's part of our religious worship, and it needs to happen. So there's this weird disconnect between senior leaders of the church saying publicly, it doesn't matter, and it's actually good sometimes when we play along with, with, you know, with, with the residents. And then these local lawyers and whatnot, seemingly undermining that. And I don't know where they're getting their direction from.

Yeah, you know, I was in the church for for 37 years, still associate with the church in many ways. This is the first time I've ever heard in this conversation, in any conversation, some significance or symbolism or meaning or representation in terms of the steeple. First time ever.

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, I think the key driver behind this is almost exclusively Nelson and folks who was driving this, in particular Nelson. And I learned a bit about, um, I saw Nelson's, um, just, uh, commitment or, or, um, uh, approach to certain topics and unbending, unyielding approach to certain topics when he talked about, um, you know, the, uh, referring to the church as the Church of Christ of Latter-day Saints instead of the Mormons. I, that was the first time I saw how strict and prescriptive and, um, and, and very firm and very direct that he was on this. And I got an insight into his personality and he's behind this because the only way the church can show growth right now is not through proselyting. You know, we're having less kids, so there's a fewer, uh, uh, uh, you know, children on record coming to church. People having smaller families. The proselyte efforts, the missionary effort is failing. We know that the social media side of missionary effort is failing. Jim Bennett talked about that. And so how does the— and the church is very nervous, very cautious about how it reports growth. Now we're seeing the rate of growth decline over the last few years. We're seeing huge impact on the, you know, the church membership in the UK in particular and other parts I'm not sure the numbers here, and we've seen it across the world, certainly in Europe and probably parts in— to a little extent, maybe in the US and to some extent in Canada. But how do they show growth? Well, they build more temples. Yep, they've got the money. And as I mentioned on our messaging, as we're going back and forth, I know now, since working last week, that the church is beginning or looking at— you come on in.

Can you back up just a little bit? You cut out. Okay, I've heard it and I was very excited to know what you know for a fact.

Yeah, I—

well, I've heard, uh, recently again from some reliable sources that the church is, uh, about to, uh, formally record at the unit level, the stake level, endowments, sealings, um, Washington's anointings, certainly the endowments and measuring people's commitment and activity in terms of temple attendance. I'm hearing that frequently from reliable sources. And so that's, to me, that's very smart, very clever. How do they show progress? How do they show growth? You know, what do they measure? And I think the temple growth is an area that they can control. Whether they will go further and begin to— and I don't think this will happen— count the number of people who have accepted the gospel on the other side. I mean, how can you— I don't know how you could argue against that. But if you have members standing up in testimony meeting who've gone to the temple and they say they've done so many sessions or they've had an inspiration or a prompting that 5 of their family members have accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it's like, will the church measure that? I don't think that will happen, but that would be extraordinary if it does. But Jim Bennett, I am hearing that, um, they are— will be looking at measuring temple activity. Uh, but it's a problem is, is that in certain parts of the world, the temples are not attended, and they can't find people to even operate the temples. Yeah. So, but this is an area— this is a personal, um, goal or ambition, if you like, a very aggressive ambition on the part of Nelson. It's his thing, it's his pet thing, it's his focus.

Yeah, and I, I, I posit, I have posited in recent times that it is in direct response to, um, to Hinckley, because Hinckley was known as the temple building prophet, and he's gone, right, well, I'm just gonna out, I'm gonna outdo him. But Hinckley oversaw the dedication in his time as prophet of double the amount of temples that Nelson's currently overseeing the dedication of. So he's announced tons, but he's only built half the amount that Hinckley actually got built and up and running during that time. So, you know, he, he's, he's not quite doing as well as people would, would think. Uh, he's making a lot of promises, but we'll, we'll see how, how are they've cashed. I think these are gonna become a mausoleum, these temples for, you know, to the church because without quoting Peter Bleakley too much, they're gonna become a rod for the member's back because you're gonna have very few members being expected to run these temples and We were just starting to consolidate stakes here in the UK where people could actually get out and get into their communities because they didn't have 3 callings anymore. And now they're all going to be told they have to be ordinance workers and have to be in the temple, and we're just going to become insular again. Sorry, Jim, you want to say something?

No.

Well, I just— you, when you, when you talk about the Hinckley and Nelson thing, and you've done, you've done a lengthy video on this, you— this is sort of fresh for you. Do you see— was there a personal animus there? I mean, did the president— because I grew up with sort of President Hinckley at the center of everything. He wasn't the president of the church when I was a teenager, but both Spencer Kimball and Ezra Taft Benson were incapacitated fairly quickly into their, into their time. And President Hinckley, at one point, he was called as a third counselor in the First Presidency. So he's always been kind of the, for me, the centerpiece. And when he finally became president of the Church, it just seemed like, oh, okay, yes, this is how it's supposed to be. But I don't get any sense from him that there's any animosity or any disdain for President Nelson.

No.

And, but I, I, the only thing I can see is the 1990 talk that President Nelson gave. Yeah, that was almost identical to his 2018 talk about the name of the church. And 6 months later, Hinckley, as a counselor in the First Presidency, essentially publicly corrected and embarrassed him. Yeah, and I get the sense that perhaps President Nelson took that personally.

Yeah, I see it as a bit of a one-way feud, like Hinkley's too, too nice or too, uh, suave or whatever adjective you want to use. Um, he's too cool essentially to get embroiled in that sort of feud. He's above that sort of thing. That's what it would strike me as, you know. He, he was secure in his position. He knew what he was meant to be doing, and so he felt he could just correct Nelson when he needed correcting because he was putting too much focus on something that he didn't really see as an issue. And we don't need to worry ourselves with that. We can just make the nickname shine with added luster, as he said, right? We just crack on. They could call us worse. I think so, he said. But then you go on to 1997, when Nelson goes, okay, well, can I try this approach? And he does what would work for him, where he's just really sycophantic towards Hinckley. And again, Hinckley gets up and jokingly puts that down and goes, no, no, we shouldn't be acting like that. I thought this was a conference, not a funeral. You know, like, why are you giving me an eulogy? Why are you You know, and challenges him to a duel and everyone laughs. And then Monson, also loved by people, gets up and says, oh, we'll be your seconds. And everyone laughs again. And I think what we're seeing, what this tracks is Nelson sees that those people are loved in a way that he isn't. And so he commands to be loved by making everyone quote him or, you know, by pushing this sort of divine leader narrative that he doesn't sit comfortably in, but he wants to be adored in the same way. That's like me psychoanalyzing him from a distance, that's kind of what I see is he wants to be adored in the same way his predecessors were. He doesn't like the way that they just kind of effortlessly carried on because I don't think he's the same kind of communicator. I think he knows that about himself. He's not warm. He's a heart surgeon. Right. You know, they're a different kind of person. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, Ian.

Yeah, no, I, I, I, uh, I, I can I think they're really important points. You two could be verging on the end of the lane of apostasy, according to a recent statement by Elder Oaks, our shared friend there. So Elder Oaks gave some remarks in the General Conference Leadership Meeting in April 2024 called Patterns of Apostasy, Fizzle Apostasy, some instruction from Elder Oaks. He says here, apostasy refers to a person's abandonment of the most fundamental, most basic religious beliefs, such as believing in God or the restoration of the priesthood authority. Patterns of personal apostasy include the following: focusing on past prophets rather than living. They who garnish the, uh, sepulchres, sepulchres of the dead prophets begin now by stoning the living ones. They return to the pronouncements of the dead leaders and interpret them to be incompatible with present programs. It's a fascinating statement here with some instructions, but they want to just focus on the living prophets. I think I read a statement or a quote rather that living prophets trump past prophets.

Yeah, that's 14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet, which is an old talk, which it basically says bluntly, a living prophet is more important than a dead prophet.

So it's extraordinary. I mean, all this profound wisdom and propheticness of all the prophets that we grew up with. Jim and I are a bit older than you, so we've gone through Ezra Duff Benson, Spencer Kimball. I joined the Church when Spencer Kimball was the prophet. Again, extraordinary. Ezra Benson, when Jim and I were serving in missions and learned a great deal about the Book of Mormon through President Bennett and President Hinckley with temples and profound and got a lot of wisdom. What does it matter what they say or what they think? I mean, the church, what's interesting is that they, the church quotes past prophets, uh, all the time. And, uh, and then tells you not to focus on past prophets. It's, it's just a strange situation.

And, and sorry, mentally I think it's very, the church's favorite phrase, myopic, because they're so unaware of their own mortality. Because they're gonna die and then they're gonna become a past prophet. So anyone who sits and thinks about that for more than 30 seconds realizes, well then hang on, why should I listen to anything you say if it's just gonna be superseded by the next guy?

The whole thing's so strange or odd to me.

Yeah. Well, my, my mother is granddaughter of David O. McKay and she's—

Nice Mormon flex there.

Well, yeah, I'm flexing here just, well, just to, show how petty even the McKays can be. Okay. Because she, she's often said there's nothing deader than a dead prophet. And the evidence she cites for that was the parking space that was set aside for the family disappeared the day after David O died. And I went, really, Mom? That's, that's your biggest problem there? So, I mean, there very much is this kind of I don't want to use the word royalty because I'm not trying to say that I am royalty, because I have always felt that that is such an awkward sort of thing and such a counterproductive thing to worship these men and their families and whatever else than it is to accept that they are just like us. And one of the, one of the reasons I think that Hinckley was so beloved in a way that perhaps Nelson is not, is because Hinckley did not take himself seriously at all. Hinckley was a genuinely humble man in a position of power, and that is so rare that it's also very endearing. And you, you do not get that same sense from President Nelson. That, that you get the sense that a heart surgeon takes himself very seriously. And it's a lot harder to have the kind of warm fuzzies that you have for Hinckley than you have for Nelson for that kind of a reason. But I also want to get to just quickly to this idea of past prophets and living prophets, because I think one of the things— it's so funny because they'll say, all right, don't listen to past prophets when they're wrong. And then we say, okay, well, when were they wrong? And the answer is, well, no, no, no, no, no, they were prophets. I mean, it's this really strange— yeah, Potemkin village of infallibility that I think is the biggest problem in the church. The fact that we can't ever say, you know, when Brigham Young said that God will kill interracial couples on the spot when his law is in place, he was full of beans.

Yeah, he was wrong.

We can't say that. We can say past prophets may have been wrong and don't worship past prophets. But okay, well then, can we correct the things that were wrong? Correct the things that were— they, they want to make sure that they think that if, if we don't see the church as this infallible institution and all the prophets of a piece of this one sort of perfect doctrine that has never been taught incorrectly, they're, they're afraid that everybody's going to run for the doors. And what's happening is that they're sacrificing short-term gain for long-term destruction. Yeah, the short-term, that works for a while. And then long-term, somebody Googles Brigham Young and race and reads that statement and they have no tools. There's, there's no resources to say, well, how do I reconcile that? How do I reconcile something that's so blatantly wrong with this idea and they just get silence. If nothing else, some silence is probably the best thing they'll get.

And then it's, it's a problem because it doesn't even work in terms of timescales because, you know, the Prophet is meant to be the Prophet for our day. So they could make that argument that, you know, well, you need to listen to the current Prophet because he's got the current up-to-date gossip, whatever. Yeah, he's got the current up-to-date revelation from God, right? He's, he's being told by God what we need to know right now. Except for Wendy Nelson says that Russell M. Nelson comes in and now he's been unleashed because he can deal with all the stuff that he's always wanted to deal with. So, well, okay, what is it then? Is a prophet meant to be just holding on to stuff and then bringing it in when it's his turn? Or should he actually be listening to God and going, right, what does the church need now? Do they need— do you know, in 1990 he may have had a point about the name of the church, perhaps, but the Mormon moment happened since then. The I'm a Mormon brand took off. We had the I'm a Mormon campaign. The word Mormon was some incredible SEO real estate for the church to have. It was an incredible brand. It meant good things. Yeah, the church didn't take itself too seriously. When the Book of Mormon musical came out, the church responded in a positive, appropriate way, I think, as best you could probably expect from a religion that's had a play done about it, right? You get all that. Then is what the church is, is now when Nelson gets up in 2018 and goes, oh yeah, well, that thing I thought in the '90s, it's, it still tracks, so we're gonna get rid of all that. Do you see what I'm saying? Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. President Monson, we're all winning victories for Satan.

Yeah, just spending millions of dollars, millions of dollars handing Satan trophies.

You know, as I listen to this, uh, I find this extraordinary, actually. You know, the only true living church on the face of it. I, I just, I'm so— I find the whole thing so bizarre. Nelson is one of the oddest people, out of these prophets ever to be in that position. Uh, very aggressive, very prescribed, um, you know, very detailed. It must be like this. It's like his way or, or the highway, so to speak, and unbending, unyielding. Uh, you know, if, if Nelson's mind is a reflection of God and God's will, then that should concern us because it, it's disorganized. It isn't— it is— God is organized, isn't orientated, is confused, got a confusion disorder, no answers, very little influence in the world, et cetera. I suspect if this was ever the true Church of Jesus Christ, of Jesus Christ, then the church has probably apostatized. 'Cause I don't think God, the God that I know and believe in and trust and have confidence in, thinks or operates or feels like Nelson does on many different—

No.

So, and the, the church, you know, I made reference to the church leaders being very smart and intelligent and they, and they are in many ways, but in other ways they are, you know, many of them are quite stupid because they're painting themselves into this tight corner where, you know, again, very prescribed. This is how we operate. We've got all, you know, got a lot of the answers, et cetera, that it's supposed to be, but they won't change. They won't listen. They want the very, you know, controlling, trying to control the narrative. They're afraid of the truth. They have conflicting, contradictory remarks. It's an organization of, I think, operationally, and I know the operation of the church pretty well from the Sheik Prince right down to the units, I think it's really, and across the different, I don't know the Seventeen, how they're organized such as intimately, but from an operational infrastructure and organizational perspective, very well organized, absolutely one of the best organizations in the world. But from a direction and from inspiration and from being open and honest and having common sense and just being open, and it, it's just lost and it's confused and it's disorientated and it's being tossed, uh, to and fro by every wind of doctrine and philosophy of man.

Yeah, it's, it's as Hugh Nibley predicted, right? The management class have took over. Peter and I talk about this a lot. The management class have took over. So the church is incredibly well organized, but it lacks any sort of inspiration or arts. I mean, Jim Bennett, I'm not going to make you comment on the tab choir, but for goodness sake, can you guys learn some new arrangements anytime soon, please and thank you? You know, it's one of those things. We've got rid of all our cultural programs. We've got rid of all the things that used to make it fun to go to church. Because it's just become slowly this gray, dull thing that people are expected to still commit everything to and get nothing enriching back other than being told that they're in the service of something greater than themselves, which they can get in other places. Uh, it's, it's, but it's, yeah, Nelson as the mind of God. The irony there is just that he's the one that said a couple of conferences ago, maybe, 'Now is the time to stop insisting that it is our way or no way,' when that is his exact attitude to the world. His exact thing is, 'Now I'm prophet, it is my way or no way. It will be as I say it will be.' I think that's his talk Peacemakers wanted, I think, or need.

Well, you know, the Peacemakers talk, uh, to me, I mean, I, my, my expectations for Nelson were fairly low. I had a hard time actually adjusting to Monson after Hinckley. Hinckley to me was just— this was what a prophet is. This is how it's supposed to work. But I warmed up to Monson as we went. The peacemaker talk took me so by surprise because to me it was exactly timely. It was— it had that kind of inspiration that you say is lacking or is— and I think can be lacking. But on this occasion, I thought it was very much present. And I thought, this is not just the best talk that Russell M. Nelson has ever given. It's one of the best talks I have ever heard in a general conference. And I thought, this is what a prophet is supposed to be, what a prophet's supposed to say. And then 6 months later, he gave the talk where he said, don't listen to anybody who doesn't believe. Don't take counsel from anyone who doesn't believe. And I just felt like I don't know that he even got it. That talk was supposed to be because when the impact of that talk was such that everybody listened to it and he even said this in the talk, he said, you're listening to this and now you're hoping somebody's going to be nicer to you. And I hope they are.

Yeah.

Same time, I hope you're nicer to other people. And the way everybody took that talk was, oh, good. Everybody else is not a peacemaker except for me. And they continue. I mean, if you go online, the bullies that were attacking me relentlessly, you know, kicked it up a notch after the Peacemaker talk.

The deshnats are still there.

They're still there. They're worse in some ways. And so I don't know where I'm going with that other than to say that I don't— I don't think it's fair to say that President Nelson— we've been piling on President Nelson to the point where you could walk away from this and say, well, there's just no way he could be a prophet, no way he could be inspired. And from my perspective, the Peacemaker talk made it clear that when the Lord wants to speak through his prophet, the Lord is able to do that. And that's what I think the first section of the Doctrine and Covenants means when it says, whether by the voice of my own whether by my own voice or the voice of my servants. It's not that everything my servants say is the same as what I would say. It's everything I say through my servants will be fulfilled. And I very much believe that what he said through that peacemaker talk was indeed the will and the word of the Lord. And it states that so much of other things that are said are not.

Yes, but even if it then comes across it's incredibly hypocritical for him to be asking that of people when, you know, we know the way that his mind works and the way that he, he acts. It's kind of that almost then goes, well, this must be coming from somewhere else because this wouldn't come from him because he doesn't operate like this. You know, his, his be nice to people and, and, you know, hold space for people isn't necessarily his approach, which is bizarre.

It is. There's something else as well, and this may be the first time you've heard this or seen this, or maybe not. But I've heard often that some of the talks that are delivered are strategic talks because they need talks. And there's lots of examples of this actually, where the church leaders in conference refer to past talks, and they could pull out a quote from President Nelson. If you get accused of not being listening or responding or being flexible, et cetera, et cetera, will say, well, hang on a minute, President Nelson gave this talk, and they'll pull out a couple of quotes. And those are the strategic talks, and that happens all the time. And so that correlation between the correlation committee and the talks, a lot of it is highly strategic, and they quote each other in order to maintain the narrative. But I think—

Can I just apologize to Jim Bennett there for a second? Um, just because, uh, I feel like you were trying to rescue Nelson's reputation somewhere there, and I turned it straight back into a negative on this. I think, I think my, just my frustration is that there are very good messages given at conferences. Not that there's no good messages, it's just they're often very hypocritical, and, and that frustrates me. But sorry, carry on, Ian.

No, I don't. Well, I just, I'm not upset about you taking shots at Nelson so much as the shots at the Tab Choir.

Oh, okay. Well, I won't withdraw that. That stands, and you can hand deliver that to Matt Wilberg if you'd like.

All right, I'll be sure to do that, because, because they love suggestions over there.

Oh, I've heard.

That's the one thing they actually read when, when you first join. They read you a list of things. The first thing that Matt Wilberg says to you is, we don't want your suggestions, uh, we don't care what you're saying. I mean, I'm not paraphrasing. He says these exact things and it kind of gets a laugh, but he says, look, this organization is over 95 years old. If your idea were a good idea, we would be doing it. And we've been going through all— and so, you know, all this heavy hubris in that, but yeah. Well, it may be, but from my perspective, there's something really delightful about serving the church through the choir, through music. And it allows me really to sidestep a lot of the rest of the stuff, because especially when music and the spoken word takes place at the same time as my home ward, I don't go to church, or at least I don't go to my own ward. I have to go to another ward to take the sacrament. But this is my entire worship, and it's just all music, and it's all lovely messages, and it's an ecumenical message.

And so I guess I'm just jealous I don't get to sing with the Tab Choir. That's what it really is, Jim.

So, well, if you are ever in Utah, I can get you— I try to do this with Ian, I didn't have enough lead time, but, uh, if you're ever in Utah, I can get you a guest spot singing at least in a choir rehearsal.

Oh, absolutely, let's make that happen. Sorry, Ian, I interrupted you. Yeah, sorry.

No, that was a—

Defending the choir's honor.

No, that was a good timely interruption, Nemo. Absolutely, there are wonderful messages that come out of conference and state conference and, you know, Sacrament, and a lot of it does translate to rank and file members, and that's what's extraordinary about the Church is the goodness of the members. You mentioned that earlier. I think one of the challenges that the Church has had, the leadership over centuries, you know, uh, decades, is this culture of certain prophets. And I agree, by the way, with you guys, uh, Hinckley was a very different prophet for me, a very different experience. Somebody who was human, approachable. I, I, I saw him as just somebody that I've, I've, I, I just connected with, although I, I, I only met him once. Um, just to shake his hands and just found him just a lovely individual. But the culture of the church, culture in the leadership part of the church, is that the leaders, men and women, they have to follow the line. They've got to toe the line. They might have some ideas, they might have questions, but they've got to be very careful about how they communicate that, how they approach that. You know, do they come across as somebody who's questioning the prophet? There's a strange— again, I speak from some experience from being a bishop, being on the Stake Presidency, certainly on the Stake Presidency, there's a strange— when the Stake Presidency speaks, pretty much that's it, you know, the conversation has ended. You might get the odd rare, quite rare member questioning something.. But they even then that they're thinking the culture is that you have to be careful because they could be seen as somebody who's being disobedient, and not toeing the line. And you've got this very distinct— it's not just unique to the Mormon Church, it's in other organizations, you see in businesses as well. But you've got this culture in the church where the prophet is probably surrounded by a number of, you know, yes people. I'm not saying Oaks is one of them. But I think Oaks is very much aligned to the Nelson. But if they come with ideas, fresh ideas, or even questions about any aspect of the prophet, that is just a no-no. You just cannot do that because these are, in many ways, it's a political organization internally. You know, this is a culture. If you want to aspire and you want to get the next calling, and I do believe this does exist, I know a lot of the leaders, Jim Bennett, very sincere. Good people, wonderful people, and they're serving through the goodness of their hearts. I believe most of them are like that. But there is this culture where you have to walk in a certain lane. You can't ask certain questions, you can't question internally. There's no process to do that. And if you step out of line on that lane, then, you know, then I think that that's frowned upon. So you've got this, you know, you've got this leader here, this prophet who is hell-bent and going a certain direction. Probably not getting any other alternative advice or ideas or other options. He might hear it and then just dismiss it. But probably being told what he wants to hear. Look, you're on the right path, keep building temples, etc. We're showing signs of growth with temple activity, let's measure temple activity, etc. And, and let's absolutely make sure that we are forcing and pushing our way through any local jurisdictions and legislation to make sure that we get what we want. And if we have to, we've got the muscle now, we've got the financial muscle. Let's make sure that we build temples with the steeple design structure, the height that we want. And so this comes down from Nelson and from Oaks, in my opinion.

Well, Nemo, how do we fix it?

Well, because it's that thing, isn't it? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. That's what they say. And the church's wealth isn't helpful. And I think it's one of the reasons why we shouldn't be celebrating how wealthy the church is because it can lead you into that sense of feeling, like you said, Ian, where like, right, well, we've got the means, we can just sue Cody, Wyoming into the ground. We have more money than we have deeper pockets. We have a law firm that will do it for us and we can just, and that removes the need for humility, which humility is often the driver of of compromise and good, uh, relations with individuals. And, you know, the, the— just, just because you're the, the one true and living church on the earth with, with a prophet who speaks to God doesn't mean you don't need to be humble. Because, because there, there's nothing about the church's unique claims, whatever they are, that, that allows for arrogance. And I think the church is caught up in its own hype and has become arrogant. And I don't think Nelson's narcissism as, uh, as I will call it, um, helps with that because his way of operating is about, right, how can we show that we are the best, we are, we are superlative in these ways. And, and that's not the approach the church needs to be taking. The church needs to take it right. How can we— the only superlative they should be interested in is how can we be good, or as good as possible, in doing good to others, in being good neighbors, in, in being positive. That's the only superlative they should care about. And there are ways they could frame what they're doing is, oh, well, this makes us good because, you know, we're spreading our message. And yes, well, some of Satan's minions might be trying to get in the way by saying they don't want it in their backyard. But really, ultimately, they don't know what's good for them. And we know what's good for them. But that's again, when we start thinking we know what's good for people, there's the hubris there becomes a problem. There's— you've lost the humility. It's like Uchtdorf said, I really loved what Uchtdorf said. In the latest conference, and Uchtdorf is one of the keys to fixing the church, I think, if, if we can make it happen, is when he said, yep, there are people that don't believe in God. I respect, and I respect those beliefs. And he essentially, to paraphrase, he said, we're just saying we have something to offer that we think will help make you happier, but we understand that you can have happiness outside this church, and we're not saying you can't. And that's an adult way of dealing with people that view things differently than you do. And that is completely contrary to the way that Nelson is running the church currently. I don't know if you two have thoughts on that, but that would be my kind of view of that.

Well, your response to Uchtdorf, I very much also want to hear your response to Kieran.

Yes.

Talked about, you know, you, you're a British Latter-day Saint, and he's a hometown boy. So, um, He's actually a hometown boy in my ward. He was in my ward for years.

Okay.

His family was in our ward. And the way I describe him is I say, as delightful and wonderful as he is from the pulpit, he's twice as wonderful when you meet him in person. That he is this kind of person that is actually genuinely what you're seeing is what you get, and what you see is really kind of wonderful.

Yeah, well, so when I was— when he was called, we were obviously all celebrating, you know, we were— you can see it here, but I've got a little Union flag, we were waving it, right? We were all going, oh, isn't this wonderful? Um, and I was immediately— because I know where he was state president, state president in Bristol Stake, so I know people in Bristol Stake, you know, quite a few people there, people that have left the church, people that are still in. And so I'm immediately reaching out to contacts and going, right? Who knows him? What can we find out about him? What was he like? Because that's, for me as a commentator on the church from a UK perspective, this is gold. I get to talk about him and, and you know, this, he's one of ours and, and that sort of thing. And I've got these insights. Lots of people were not willing to go on the record and talk about him because they like him so much and they didn't want to come across in any way as being seen as providing a critic with ammunition about him, right? Because they didn't. Because particularly believing people were like, you know, I, I don't, I don't want you to twist what I say about him. And then even non-believers were like, no, I still have a good relationship with him. And him knowing, or other church leaders knowing that I've talked to you about him might cause him some grief and I don't want that. You know, so I've heard nothing but good things about him. Um, for the most part, he was brought in as stake president at a time when Bristol Stake was having some problems with,, child sexual abuse and issues with members being convicted and things being put in the newspapers and whatnot. And my gut feeling is he was brought in around that time because he is a PR professional. He knows how to talk, he knows how to calm things down, and he wasn't there to bury the story by any means, but he was there to smooth relationships over with the community, uh, provide reassurance that, you know, these individuals are anomalous or whatever, or, you know, he was, he was there to do, to do that sort of thing. And I think he's very effective at it. He, um, he is nice, he's lovely. I've met him once in person, I was quite young, um, but yeah, he, he's, he is as nice as he comes across. And Jim, you probably know him better than I do personally, but we're all very happy.

The question that I hear from people who know him here, here, and some people who left, is, yeah, he's nice, he's wonderful, what's this calling gonna do to him? Is he going to be able to continue to be the magnificent Patrick Kearin that we knew as he is sort of thrown to the wolves as the junior apostle? You know, we've talked to Hans Mattson here on this podcast, and he talked about the way he describes the Quorum of the Twelve, that it's a minefield. You know, these are men that are thrown together that have to interact, that have to agree, at least in public, And they're stuck with each other. There's no way out except death. And a lot of them don't necessarily like each other.

Well, because we know from 1978, right, that didn't they wait for— wait for Markey Peterson to be out of the country so that they could pass the—

and Delbert Stapley to be in the hospital.

Yeah.

So he's the one who wrote a letter to George Romney telling him that Abraham Lincoln was killed by God for freeing the slaves. I mean, it's just, it's just astonishing how some of that was.

But yeah, what's he going to do to him?

What's he going to do?

I don't know. I don't know. Because we've seen the slight decline of Uchtdorf. I mean, he made a comeback this last conference. That was excellent. But, you know, he gave us Doubt Your Doubts, which was a bit, okay, come on now, don't be like that. And I think he kind of had his tail between his legs a little bit when he was demoted by Nelson, which there's no other way to look at that. Um, he is the first in a very long time to be in good health and yet not kept on in the First Presidency. People that have been alive but have been dropped have usually been because they're ill or whatever. So, um, it was a demotion because his brand of Mormonism doesn't gel with the way that Nelson wants to run the church. And I think looking at the way it's going to go now, Nelson will die within the next year or so. Like, he, he might make it to 100, but he's probably not going to make it much further. You have a fall at 99, you get sedentary. I've watched it in patients, you know, it— that really cuts your clock. Once you stop moving around so much and you become sedentary, that's what drops, you know. I'm not— I can't diagnose him, but, you know, I, I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't around for, for many more years. And then that means Oakes, but Oakes is also in his 90s. I think Uchtdorf's looking in good health. So if Patrick Keiran can hold on and kind of keep his head down. And people like Gong as well can kind of keep their head down. You have the people that just play a bit nicer. Then some of the other junior apostles that have started sucking up to, um, Nelson, uh, hopefully will kind of let that go. And Quentin L. Cook, bless him, I mean, he'll suck up to anyone. So whoever the new prophet is, he'll quote them ad nauseam. Sorry, it's true. Him and Anderson, they're the worst. Honestly, for that, for—

I think— go ahead, you will continue.

No, no, no, no, no, carry on that, otherwise I'll say something libelous, I'm sure.

I think the church— I really like Uchtdorf, apart from that, uh, you know, that talk he gave in 2013 about— and I saw, I saw as a classic talk about, you know, past leaders made mistakes. It was the October conference, the other was Explore. He was a breakthrough for me. And I think the church would be very different underneath them. I think the church is, is in many ways, in some ways rather, lost its way. I think it's become too powerful. I think it associates, you know, divinity and how true it is with its financial strength. You know, it's got a lot of influence. And I agree, I think it lacks under this leadership, it lacks a degree of trying to be kind and gracious here, a degree of humility. And it's really not maybe reminding itself, you know, what its intent is, what its purpose, you know, the purpose of its existence is, is to do good and to help people. It's, um, it's got all those hundreds of billions of dollars, and, uh, you know, what is he doing with that? It could do, you know, if it's 3 luxury apartments in San Diego. Yeah, if it's really— I know we're all good people here, we got good hearts here, and I know that if we had $150 billion I think we would, you know, we'd be doing a lot of good with that. We'd be spending that wisely and sensibly.

I'd be hiring people specifically for the purpose of informing me as to how that is best spent. Like people like Will MacAskill who know how to do good charity work, you know, who, he's part of the kind of effective altruism lot. They're like, right, we have so much money, how do we use it the best? You know, what are the best charities and things like that?

And the church has said that it's putting that away for a rainy day. But what does that mean? What is a rainy day? I mean, right now we're living in a time of, you know, significant inflation, inflation is coming down a little bit, but cost of living in the US is very expensive, Jim. You know, I got a lot of friends across the US, very expensive groceries, rent, you know, interest rates in Canada, it's gone through the roof, right? People—

Yeah, it's not great here.

And the UK is going through a tough time. UK just came out of a technical recession, I think a month or so ago, right? So there are people, including in the church, who are struggling financially. What is a rainy day? What does that mean? What is a rainy day?

The Washington Post or Wall Street Journal, I forget which of the two it was, but one of those articles where they talk to Roger Clark, head of Enzyme Peak, they talked about, you know, a rainy day like 2008. And there's, you know, all the Wall Street crash. Now, citing the Wall Street crash as a rainy day by which you're building up stocks and shares is just idiocy. Because what happens, what happened to the Wall Street crash? Everyone's stocks became worth a lot less, right? That's the whole point. So, you know, saying, oh, we've got all this money in stocks and shares and we're saving it for if the stock market crashes is, is just stupid. Frankly, it makes no sense. Um, but they talk about 2008, and we know what the church did in 2008 because they admitted it. They trimmed the budget. So, so they've cited rainy day cases and gone, oh yeah, if something like 2008 were to happen, then we've got all this money. But all they did was fire janitors and say, well, we don't need them anymore, we'll trim the budget, we'll make it cheaper to run the church. But so they keep—

no, this was gone before. Janitors went out like near the end of the 20th century.

We still had them in the UK.

Oh, did you?

Wow.

Yeah, yeah, I was in a bishopric in 1998 when they made that transition, and I really resented the fact that all of a sudden on Saturdays—

I was, I was born in '97, and I have vivid memories of teenage me knowing that the ward cleaning lady, the person hired by the church to clean, the member who was cleaning, was I won't say her name because she won't like it, but yeah. So certainly in the UK we had them for, for longer.

Oh well, good deal. Well, we're coming up near the end here. I'm just— I want to transition from, okay, we've looked at the church and we see what some problems are, uh, I want to look to the future a little bit here in a specific way. Uh, do you, Nemo, do you think that Dallin Oaks is going to be better than Russell Nelson? It's a very loaded question, so be sure to answer carefully.

It's like comparing injuries, isn't it? It's like, do you want a broken jaw or like, or a broken toe? It's— I don't want either, um, but you got to pick one. Uh, I, I think— I don't know whether we're gonna see some Bensonism where he's really, really tough on things and then he becomes prophet and he kind of just chills out for whatever reason. Um, I dunno whether we'll see that. I don't know. I don't think it'd be good for gay people or LGBTQ people. Don't think that's gonna be good under him. I think he's desperate to canonize the Family Proclamation. Um, and we'll get it into the triple combo or the, the quad basically as soon as he can. Because he's the only one that keeps on talking about it. And that'll be his thing that he's free now to do, that he's been thinking about for ages, as Wendy Nelson says. But beyond that, the best you can hope is that his inner lawyer sees what Nelson's done as the way things are to be done. And he just goes, well, it's my job just to manage the church through the same way. And he goes, right, well, these are the rules, these are the rules we play the game by. So this is what we'll do. And it doesn't get any worse, but it doesn't get any better. That's like, that's the best I think we can hope for. And then we see what Uchtdorf can do before Bednar takes over for 10 years and everyone has to have a parting.

Ian, is that how you see it?

Yes. Yes. I, I've been, you know, I've met Oaks, uh, a couple of times. We spent that weekend with him, got, uh, I, I think he's a very smart individual. One of the smartest people I've ever met, actually. I do see that he's very fixed and entrenched in the way Nemo is talking about. So I just see much of the same, sadly.

Go on, James. Salt take.

This is actually— so I don't know Oakes personally well. I have met him on a number of occasions. I know he was very close to my father. My sisters grew up with Jenny Oaks, who is now Jenny Oaks Baker. She's the violinist and she's a big deal that way. So they're, they're fairly— they know the Oaks family. And one of my sisters is very good friends with Oaks's current wife and tells this funny story about when she was telling people who she was dating, she wouldn't give the name. So this is a guy who is He's left a much higher paying job and is making much less money now. And he's gone every weekend and he's all this and that. Sounds terrible. Who is it? Well, it's Dallin H. Oaks. And everybody that knows him personally tells me that in person he is a delightful, kindhearted,, genuinely humble man. And then when he stands up at the pulpit, he's reading to you a legal brief. This is how his mind works. And he comes up with legal brief and it comes across cold and it comes across, unfeeling and arrogant. And, you know, I'm watching him very closely with regard to the LGBTQ issue because, yes, there's no doubt that he's the one that's been leading the charge on it. But what I am seeing in a lot of these talks is his attempt to sort of come to terms with it in a way that he feels is consistent. And he's moving around quite a bit. You know, he started with this idea of, okay, there's two conflicting commandments, and so we can carve out bigotry against LGBTQ people in the tension between those two commandments, which just drove me nuts. That, that, that's absolutely not at all. At least in my mind, what Jesus was saying. You fulfill the first great commandment by living the second. That's how you show your love for God, by loving your neighbor. And when that sort of fell flat, he moved on to this idea of, oh, well, yeah, okay, um, yeah, gay people, there's nothing really wrong. They're gonna go to one of these other two kingdoms, and these other two kingdoms are really quite good. So don't, don't give us too much of a problem over this because We're just sending them to a great place. And doesn't that make everybody happy? No, no, it doesn't. It doesn't make anybody happy. Frustrates everybody. But you can see him mentally trying to thread this needle. And the optimist in me and the faithful part of me says that hopefully we are being set up for a Nixon to China moment. As I described, you're gonna have to, you have to explain that to me.

I'm, I'm a fetus, essentially.

You're not a Star Trek fan? Star Trek VI, uh, Spock says to Kirk, there's an old Vulcan proverb, only Nixon could go to China. Uh, President Nixon, right, uh, was a— built his career on being a rabid anti-communist. Okay, the Communists were a huge conspiracy. Nixon was out Benson-ing Benson in terms of how he made his bones on prosecuting Alger Hiss, who was convicted of being a Soviet spy. And a lot of people—

Everything's a comic plot.

Yeah, yeah, it was all— So everything with the communists were all out to get us. And Nixon was the one who out of nowhere normalized relations between the United States and mainland China. And everybody said that that wasn't possible, that we would never be able to build a relationship. And the people— the person who reached out to do that was Richard Nixon. And he had so much more credibility with everybody because the rabid anti-communists were like, well, if Nixon thinks this is okay, then maybe this is okay. Maybe this won't be that bad. And a lot of people, I mean, Nixon, I don't know, in the age of Trump, Nixon's crimes seem almost quaint to me. But Nixon is remembered for being this scoundrel and remembered for being this criminal. But if anybody remembers him positively, he's remembered for opening up mainland China to the West.

And so, so you're saying we could see—

we're the one to receive some kind of revelation, it would have credibility not just with us but with the Desnats too, with the right-wing members of the church. What?

With the right-wing members of the church. I mean, or either the, the current crisis that we see unfolding with certain sort of more conservative Mormon commentators where they're getting frustrated with the Brethren for being a bit too soft on certain things, um, and they just don't know who to be mad at anymore. Are they mad at us? Are they mad at the Brethren? Who are they, you know, who are they getting mad at now?

Yeah, well, we're pretty much at the end of, uh, of a podcast here, uh, Nemo, Jim Bennett. And so I think, uh, we should probably wrap this up.

Uh, I mean, I've got time, I'm, I'm happy.

Okay, okay, I, I will. I, I What time is it over there?

You're supposed to go to bed, aren't you?

Oh no, it's only quarter to 8. I'm allowed to stay until at least 9.

You know, I've thoroughly enjoyed this, Nemo. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us here, Jim and I, on Inside Out. If you're interested, we'd love to have you on again, and there's so many other topics that we'd love to discuss with you. Jim, before we close the podcast, do you have any— and same to you as well, Nemo— any final comments or remarks?

Well, we never did get the explanation for where the name Nemo comes from. You do have a 30 seconds or less?

Yeah, it's Latin for nobody. Um, and the idea of the channel was that it's not about me. I'm kind of just a bit of an avatar for, for every member who would end up in my position. Um, and I never wanted this to be a channel that's about me or, uh, you know Yeah, it was meant to be about the facts and about the arguments and about the logic, but all.

Yeah. So are you angry and upset that now you are a beloved figure that everybody thinks is a rock star?

Oh yeah, raging. I was in Oxford the other day and someone saw me come out of a cafe and went, Nemo? I said, yes. Oh, is it you? Yes. And came over and shook hands and took a picture or whatever. But I've been spotted in Utah a number of times, but I've never been spotted in England. And it frustrates me. Great. Me because I like my anonymity.

Uh, how do you handle the paparazzi?

No, they're dead. Don't— no, not even close. Um, but yeah, I, I— it's, it's one of those things where I, I did just want to— and I don't mind, I don't mind people liking me as a person. I guess it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's certainly not my fuel.

You, you are a delightful person. You are a very bright person.. And I thoroughly have enjoyed this chance to visit with you.

Yeah, thanks. And, and Nima, I, I think the work you're doing is extraordinary. I think it's helping so many, uh, people. And, uh, I, again, Jim Bennett and I, and on behalf of listeners, really appreciate you taking time to join us today to share your thoughts and your experiences. So folks, to our listeners, as they say, that's all folks. Uh, that's it for this podcast. Uh, please join Jim and I next time on Inside Out, where we look forward to more lively, robust discussions about the modern church and faith. And so, Jim, thank you. Uh, Nilo, thank you.

Pleasure.

Thank you.