A Conversation with Peter Bleakley

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I'm here as always with— I can't think of a proper adjective. Uh, it's Ian Wilkes, ladies and gentlemen. Ian, take a bow. How are you, sir?

Thank you.

I am now bowing officially. So it's an honor to be here with Jim Bennett. Good morning to you. How are you?

I am doing great. I'm doing even better because we have a really, really fun guest here today. His name is Peter Bleakley. And hello, Peter. You know, we've exchanged many a conversation on social media, but this is the first chance I've had to actually speak with you. And very, very thrilled to have you here. Can you just sort of kick us off with kind of a 1-minute explanation of who you are and why you're so awesome?

Oh, thank you. Absolutely. And it's a great privilege to be here. I've loved this show since it started, so I've, I've been an avid fan. So it's a real pleasure to be here. So I live in England in the southeast corner of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. My parents met at Brigham Young University and had me and came home. So I have dual citizenship and I didn't go back to the States till my mission in the Florida Tallahassee Mission. So I've kind of had this slightly weird double identity existence and certainly growing up in a very Mormon church, a very American church, which was perceived as a ridiculous cult in my general community. At a time where there were enough actual Christians around still to be annoyed by us, which hasn't been a problem for a long time now. And, um, so grew up very faithful in the church, but with a family culture of, um, kind of taking responsibility for it, you know, not expecting the church to be perfect. It's our job to make it what it needs to be. So, so always faithfully attending, always being participating in leadership and callings. But also kind of having an ongoing conversation about, right, that was a bit rubbish, how do we do it better next week? Which I've discovered is quite rare and perhaps gave me some more resilience with the religion. Like many others, I've been through the standard trust deconstruction upon discovering how much the church lied to us about the church's origins and history and starting to see living apostles blatantly lying about stuff that you can prove they're lying about, which is obviously an issue. And, and, you know, the key moments a lot of people are age point to of things like the November Policy being an existential disappointment, the Gospel Topics Essays being a great moment in the sense of admitting so much we thought the church never would, but also confirming that the people we were told were anti-Mormon liars were actually quite accurate. Which again was a paradigm shift. And other things, you know, some key moments for me becoming rebellious, certainly when M. Russell Ballard said in the Face to Face that the Church has never hid anything from anybody, a year after teaching the CES staff to stop lying and to basically tell the truth and quit faith-promoting nonsense and to make sure that the kids hear the full difficult truth and history about the church at church to inoculate them. And then when it was his chance to like step up with a global audience of young people, he did everything he told them not to. And my brain just exploded at that point. I was like, we can't go on like this. It's insane. So I started ramping up my heated point critique of all this in Facebook, which very much upset my stake president, who's, who's actually an in a sense, a woke hero, um, who's a really good guy and has done a lot to make safe space for LGBTQ people, for example, and pioneer safeguarding in our stake. Um, so I'm in this sort of strange— he is one of my heroes, but also he eventually excommunicated me. I was kind of given the ultimatum, you know, you need to stop doing this. I had just started turning these things into a podcast, um, where I'm criticizing the leadership and saying what the church needs to change to survive. Um, and that, and the, the definitions of apostasy are so tight now, you can get anyone on anything for it. It just says any kind of public opposition to, it used to be just church doctrine, but they've added leaders and policies, church policies. If you oppose them publicly, you can be excommunicated. And in fact, it's compulsory. You, you know, the state president must initiate, uh, church discipline. So he was quite stickler for those rules. And I mostly got excommunicated as a tone policing act, which I find hysterical. He was very, very fixated on the rude things I'd said about the leaders, along with hours and hours of rational intellectual analysis with evidence. But that seemed to be the real trigger for him.

I think that highlights something that I've talked about a number of times. They tolerate criticism of ideas a whole lot more than they tolerate criticism of leaders. You know, I had that experience where I was very frustrated with the idea of the two great commandments being in conflict. President Oaks talked about that extensively, and there was at one point that Elder Christofferson talked about it, and I remember I posted on Facebook, a link to Elder Christofferson's talk, and then my comments where I said, I hate these ideas. I never even mentioned Elder Christofferson by name, but the post had his picture on it. And I got called on the carpet for that. I got— and it wasn't because of anything that I actually said. It was, how dare you criticize Elder Christofferson? Now, I have a huge soft spot in my heart for Elder Christofferson because he came and visited my father in the last days of his life, and I stood in a circle with him and gave my father a priesthood blessing. Elder Christofferson was the voice. He gave the blessing. But I was standing in the circle with my hand on Elder Christofferson's shoulder, and that blessing essentially released my father from this life. It was a beautiful moment. Elder Christofferson could not have been more great, gracious, and, and lovely, and, and just entirely, um, exactly what you would hope a man of God would be, what you would hope an apostle of God would be. So it was not my intent in any way to attack Elder Christofferson or criticize Elder Christofferson, but the fact that his picture was next to my critical sort of ruminations about an idea that I had a problem with. That was, that was too much. That was, that, that got me into trouble. I mean, Ian, if you had any kind of similar experiences to that or any insight into that.

I have, and I'll respond in the same order that you have. So the church, I would say the last 10, 15 years, last 10 years in particular, is less concerned, to your point, you're absolutely right, with doctrine and history and people questioning it because it's been buffeted aggressively, endlessly, fiercely challenged, questioned on every point of doctrine in the last 15 years since a lot of this material's come to the surface. You know, the essays, look at the essays. The essays, In my view, scale is a significant milestone in an indication of acceptance that there were issues doctrinally, politically, policy-wise, et cetera, past prophets. Elder Uchtdorf said in 2013 that past leaders have made mistakes. Me thinking he was referring to a rogue bishop or stake president, but no, he was talking about past prophets and apostles. So the church has been beaten to a pulp, frankly, on the doctrine and the history and is now uncomfortable still, but more accepting and more tolerant of that. What it isn't, to your second point, what it will not tolerate— oh, by the way, just one other point on the first point. It's easier for them to accept criticism from dead, about dead people, who are no longer here and they could throw them under the bus, you know, we disavow with this, we disavow that. Living prophets trump dead prophets, right? And so to the second point, when you question a living apostle or prophet or leader, that is much more difficult to accept when the people are alive and you can question them and challenge them. And, and that's less tolerance. I remember when Elder Oaks was interviewing me, he talked— after 2 or 3 questions, he spoke about this. And he spoke about, you know, supporting the prophet, you know, the stake presidency calling that I was being called to requires absolute obedience, living with exactness. He said, President, you might not accept or believe or understand everything the prophet's doing, but you must As a leader of the stake, uh, you have an obligation, a very sacred obligation, uh, more than, uh, the regular members to, um, you know, to follow, uh, the, the prophet and never to question the prophet. I was told that very expressly. I felt, um, the magnitude of that. It was very clear, um, direction and instruction. It felt like a commandment coming from him. Remember, at the time I was was he active. And I'm here next to an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, very stern, very strict. And by the way, in contrast, and I've never shared this, when he set me apart, he gave the most beautiful blessing. Elder Oaks, I'm talking about. And he said to me, and I was almost in tears, he said, President Wilkes, the Lord loves you. And I really felt that. I just remember that. I'm not sure I've shared that before. But, but when you challenge or question a living prophet, when you, you know, when you question the leadership, Um, that's a problem.

So that was, that's, that's it. That's where I'm at. I'm riding this sort of tidal wave of the total destruction of everything generations of my family and I for my whole life worked to build these congregations. It's very personal cuz as you know, Ian, and, and you, Jim, being a missionary in Scotland, we, we rebooted the Mormonism in Britain from the 1960s onwards. We built all these things from scratch within our lifetimes, and now we are watching them be destroyed and relentlessly decimated. These communities of amazing, lovely people are evaporating, and the elderly people who were promised that if they put the church first, they would have this wonderful retirement of seeing their children and grandchildren married in the temple, that our wards would be stakes by now, which they should. If we were growing anything like we should, or retaining our members rather. We got the members, they're just not active. And, and that there'd be people to look after them. This particularly makes me angry that people in my parents' generation, they worked so hard looking after the elderly when they were younger, and the community of the ward congregation, you know, exemplary sacrificial Christian service for vulnerable elderly people in their last years. But there's no one to look after them now because all the younger kids have been alienated away. And that safety net that they, they in a sense paid into is not there for them now. So that's where I'm at. And, um, and I'm mad as hell and I'm not taking it anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. Don't look back. Peter, give us the full— Oh, this is great. I, you know, I've read, I've listened to some of your podcasts. I've read a great deal of what you've written. You're clearly very passionate, very articulate, and I think recognize a lot of the problems. And you've run into a lot of opposition even in the church. To your positions. You're also, you're one of what are called the BritVengers, which is a really fun— can you tell us just a little bit about that?

Yeah, I started around the same time as I started my podcast. There suddenly emerged a few other British voices into this space. And the way I really try not to be mystical, I don't have like, yeah, the Angel Moroni turned up with a a flaming sword and commanded me to have this mission. I'm not claiming to, to be a prophet. Anything beyond anyone can work out just by watching the data trends. You know, you don't, you don't need a miracle vision to know the church is toast. Um, and, but I do think that there is, in a sense, if you learn history and politics, that when, uh, uh, an established institution starts to face its doom and people get squeezed, they start— the pips start to squeak— that you will have a percentage of people who wake up and become revolutionaries, who say, we cannot carry on like this, it's not acceptable, look at the harm being done. Even in a very high demands or thought-controlled environment, which we have in the church, where most people are keeping their heads down and just getting on with their their Mormon busywork on the hamster wheel, there's going to be enough people who look up and see what's going on and see where it's all headed, and will want to speak out. So Nemo the Mormon, who's Douglas Stillgoe in Oxford, who's in a quite liberal, open-minded ward, because it's a university town, and, and has been very dedicated to the church, he served a service mission at the temple. He started his podcast where he was just basically fact-checking things. And the trigger for him was, interestingly, was the Ward Radio crew. When Cardinellis and Kwaku and the others were first recruited by FAIR Mormon to front their tits, This Is the Show Show, which was so completely not Mormon kosher as far as its attitude and language and everything. And didn't last long.

Yeah, This Is the Show, TITS was the acronym. That's the thing that actually introduced me to Cardin Ellis and to Kwaku and to the Ward Radio crew, because the This Is the Show show was designed directly to respond to the CES letter, and they didn't do any independent research at all for that show. What they did was take my CES letter reply and quote me repeatedly. And I found myself getting increasingly disgusted by the fact that this show, which was crude and obnoxious and just belittling of, of not— I mean, I, I think apologists get into trouble when you start attacking people and you don't attack ideas. And This Is the Show was all about saying Jeremy Runnels, who wrote the CES letter, was just an idiot and a jerk and just beneath contempt. And they were just laughing at him the whole time. I didn't realize— I mean, I'm a big fan of Nemo, and I didn't realize what radicalized him was tits. Yes, the This Is the Show moment, because that sort of became—

and we should clarify for our audience, that became Midnight Mormons, who have recently renamed as Ward Radio. And you've done a lot of conversations with them. Yeah, I have.

And I remember I got a hold of Brad Whitbeck, who's one of the guys, and he's, he's, I think, probably the most reasonable of those guys. And, and he put me in touch with Cardon Ellis, who flew me down to Los Angeles and put me up in a nice hotel. And we had an entire weekend where the first thing we did was confront why I was so frustrated with them. And I was very— they called me a boomer, which I didn't enjoy. I'm not a boomer. I'm very solidly Generation X. But they, they had just sort of been very dismissive. And, and I pushed back very hard. And after I was done, they said, okay, well, let's talk about all these other things. I mean, you're down here, you're down here for the weekend. Let's talk about a bunch of things. And we recorded several episodes for them. But they've never released that first episode where I held their feet to the fire. And that's kind of frustrating. The time has passed now that I don't think it would do anybody any good to release it. But a few things that were said in that episode were— one of the things I pointed out was, is if you have to attack Jeremy Runnels and you're not able to attack his ideas, It shows that you don't have an argument. I'm finding myself getting attacked over and over and over again. The people who are rudest to me are not the people outside of the church. They're the people in the church who think that the fact that I look for greater LGBTQ inclusion means that I'm somehow a terrible heretic and I need to be destroyed at all costs. And you have all of these Twitter accounts that will repost anything, no matter how innocuous, that I post about the church, and they'll put some terrible spin on it that shows that I'm just the worst guy in the whole world. I, I, do you see any of this in terms of— Ian, I want to bring you into this. Do you see people attacking people or ideas when they're trying to defend the church?

Both, to be fair. I, I see The intelligent people out there, uh, questioning, challenging the ideas, the rationale behind them, the facts, the data. So there are people out there that, that are more, uh, intellectual, uh, and, and, uh, more astute, and they want to have an, uh, adult conversation. And so I do see that. Um, thank goodness that those people are there. But I also see a lot of, uh, um, personal attacks on people's character. If they don't agree with someone, they have a different opinion than the person they disagree with, their character, they bring that character into question. I see more of that in the, from people in the church than people outside the church. That said, there's an element, Jim Bennett, there's a percentage of people out of the church that, and I wanna highlight this, that understandably feel very angry, hurt, incensed toward the church. They've been terribly hurt by the behavior of the church, and it's very difficult for them to forgive the members or forgive the behavior of the church. And I can understand that because I've been there. So you get them on both sides, in and out the church. The worst elements on both sides are vindictive, can be cruel. And so you get, you know, very strong feelings on both sides for, I think, understandable reasons. So it's just a full spectrum of opinions and feelings from different people of different backgrounds, intellectuals, from people who read a lot on the internet and automatically accept it's true. They're an expert in a particular field and they've learned it through the university of Facebook. And then they get, have an argument with a scientist you know, who's, you know, got some education and they know something a little bit, but they don't agree with them and they, and they, they, they, they could be quite offensive. So it's human nature. You see this. This is not unique to the church. This is everywhere. Right. And I think there's a need for a little bit more civility, a lot more civility. Let's come together. Let's, let's question the issues.

And so I'll elaborate on that. I mean, and this is what my next episode is going to focus on. So I've been doing quite a deep dive. Normally, people who aren't used to them can cope with about 2 minutes of ward radio and then they want to throw their phones into a fire or shoot some people or something. And they just react with visceral revulsion, which you can totally understand. They take a bit of getting used to. But if you kind of inoculate yourself and you can gradually listen to longer and longer, I got to where I could do 10 minutes. And then I had to take a break because it was just so massively frustrating because it's like, where do you even start with these people? But I've, I've powered through and I've listened and they're very prolific. I bless them. They work their socks off. They are cranking out content, as are several other podcasters of a similar ilk. Um, it's hard to keep up with it all. Um, but what, what's really struck me is they've joined in with the nuanced intellectuals like Patrick Mason and Tara-Lynne Fiona Givens and the people like them. In basically acknowledging we've got some major problems here. And, and very specifically when they're having a more serious conversation, they get a bit humble and they acknowledge. So Cardon has talked about how the church has lost its young people, that he, as a young father in California, his talents are being wasted. They've only ever had him teaching elders quorum every so often or something, and he's frustrated that he's dealing with technology from the Stone Age. So he, so that's another one, which is the total inability to modernize and to really engage with modern media and, and teaching techniques from a professional teacher in the curriculum, um, to waste the talent of the young people that they have just because they might be a bit controversial. Um, that he, they have, uh, sometimes he's, he's because he'll say whatever sounds cool at the time. He will say, oh, it's great that we have these elderly leaders. Because they're so wise and they have all this life experience and they're still in touch with the kids, you know. But in another episode, he'll be very blunt. He'll say, no, this is a problem. These people are completely out of touch. And he threw in a little phrase, which was something like 1960s suburban culture as a shorthand for what I think he sees as the frustration with standard TBM thinking in wards, that they're not prepared to have difficult conversations, that they want everything safe, that they, obviously they have made the choice to be intentionally aggressive and aggressive and to use language that normally would be completely condemned in Mormon culture because they, they realize you're getting nowhere by playing nicey-nicey all the time. So I respect that. So they're already somewhat rebellious in that sense while claiming to be defenders of the faith. But then, man, others, you know, I mean, an amazing moment was when Patrick Mason, who's one of the leading scholars in Mormon studies, who's usually quite wise, he didn't sign the Radical Orthodoxy Manifesto. He hasn't, I don't think, ever been employed by BYU. He's always kept a safe distance from being too much of a company man.

I need to jump in there and just say Patrick's mother is in my ward.

Oh, cool.

Uh, and she's one of my favorite human beings in the world. And the fact that Patrick has not been employed by BYU is not Patrick's choice. Okay, I don't think BYU was not willing to hire him because I think they consider him, he's faithful, he's, he's committed and he does a great deal of good, but he also is not afraid to acknowledge.

Yeah. Where the problems are. He's too honest.

Problems are, and I don't think he was ready for that.

No.

And he came on, um, this is this adorable episode where he came on. Um, and he's been so generous with his time to all the little podcast outfits. He came on 21st Century Saints. And he cried. They made him cry because they were talking about the actual pain and suffering of, of these people leave, you know, losing all their friends from the church because of the lies about the history and not that really not being handled well. And, you know, he feels it. Um, I, he's also, I think, treading a very careful line. Therefore, he has to be disingenuous at times as well. So for example, he wrote a book. Um, something like, uh, Restoration: God's Voice for the 21st Century or something, which was meant to be a kind of State of the Union address of the kind I'd be all over. Like, you know, this is where we're at as a church. This is the problems we have. How are we going to make it to the end of the 21st century? So I got it on audiobook and I was digging the garden all day in summer, listening to the whole thing through. And he mentioned the problems with race, because that's cool now since President Nelson has made it all right to pretend we're over racism. You can talk about that being a mistake. And, and this is another thing that Ward Radio and others have completely internalized now, that they, they say the racism was a mistake. It was never of God. How they reconcile with that, they, they deny it was ever taught as doctrine because they're ignorant. You listen to them talk about any topic. And they are half-baked. They know half the stuff but not the other half, and they make up things to fill the gaps. So in that sense, these, these apologist podcasters are kind of typical of local members that rather than actually consulting the full range of sources to get fully informed, they will just know a few things, enough to gaslight themselves, and then make up the rest based on their wish fulfillment. And that comes through loud and clear anytime they talk about the history of racism in the church. But so Patrick mentioned that, but at no point in a book about Mormonism in the 21st century did he mention LGBTQ people anywhere. And that was a gaping hole. And that showed me he is not the scholar I think we should be able to expect him to be and respect. He intentionally left that out cuz he knows perfectly well that the church's attitude to LGBTQ people and its incompatible— incompatibility with the values of people in the 21st century is a fundamental issue for the survival or future of the church and the current one. And he didn't mention it once. So these people honestly do start to compromise so much. I think they start to sell their souls. They lose their, their integrity. But, and, and, but where does this come from? In his wonderful, um, series of interviews with John Dehlin on Mormon Stories, at one point he literally said without batting an eyelid, as if this was completely okay, he said that the apostles and prophets of the church should basically focus on getting on with raising the money and keeping the lights on and doing the admin, and that it should be scholars and historians theologians who actually decide the doctrine of the church, i.e., people like him.

Hmm.

And that was a gobsmacking thing to say. It was, why was he not excommunicated immediately? Because he really should have been at that moment. But he's so used to working in these nuanced intellectual circles where everyone just accepts and they talk openly about how the general authorities don't know their religion anymore. They don't know the history, then they keep using that as an excuse. And Ward Radio use it as an excuse. All these other people at times, they're saying, oh, they're too busy doing their other jobs. It's like, well, what the hell is their job description? If they can't be trusted to determine the doctrine of the church and to be the guardians of its history and heritage and meaning in the world, what are they for? And but these people who know them well and can see what they do and say, just know they're useless at it. So all these people are now doing workarounds. You have the prepper fundamentalists who are just basing everything on their own revelations. There's a whole group of them now that are getting super excited about eclipses. They're apparently writing the letters Alpha and Omega all over America and, um, Israel at the moment, and they're all teaming up to announce the second coming basically. Um, We're goaded on by Avraham Gileadi with his idea, who, who also is into this idea that the eclipse this year is really significant and a sign, and his obsession with the Davidic servant has led to loads of children being kidnapped or tortured to death because their parents think they or they themselves are the Davidic servant, like Chad Daybell thought he was, the guy who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, um, the Thibodeaus who kidnapped her son. And took him to Alaska to sort of raise him to fight the Terminators in the end times, cuz they were convinced he was the Davidic servant. And this is all from Avraham Gileadi, and he's got a huge following and now it's all playing out. So people who are, I think the state of Mormonism is people have been told to expect incredibly dramatic and exciting things in their lifetime. Now they've been promised crazy stuff in their patriarchal blessings. Every other testimony meeting, you've got some little old lady proclaiming it's the end times and the second coming's any minute now. You know, they're all geared up for this amazing momentous world events and excitement. And all they get from their actual First Presidency is changes to meeting schedules and waving a hanky. That's it. So they freelance.

Freelancing, I think, is a great way to describe this, you know, because people You, if you go back to the original history of the church and Joseph Smith, he was the ultimate freelancer. He was the one who went out into the woods and sought to find out which church was true and got this wonderful vision. And so the entire enterprise of the church is based on, on somebody freelancing like this. But those kinds of, uh, dramatic powerful spiritual experiences, as the church goes on over time, those become the province, the sole province of church leaders. You know, if somebody were to stand up in testimony meeting and say, uh, God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to me when I was praying in the woods last night, they'd probably be called up into a disciplinary council. They'd get into trouble. So, so I can, I can, I can understand the, the desire for that, the desire for drama, the desire to make yourself the center of a great story. The people that are sort of stirring up that drama, the people who are freelancing now, who have sort of stepped up and decided to be the defenders of the church, the— they, they are actually quite critical of the church in a lot of ways. You know, we talked about Jacob Hanson attacking the church for hiring Aaron Sheridian, for, um, allowing a transgender woman to be baptized. And Jacob refused to use the proper pronouns to describe this woman. And he's sitting there complaining that the First Presidency had approved this and knew all of this. And so you have all these people that, that are attacking the church and they want credit for being defenders of the church while they do it. Jacob Hanson repeatedly, when he comes back to these issues, he repeatedly plays snippets of my conversation with him that Stephen Pinecker moderated. And it's getting really old because, you know, it's like, here's Jim Bennett, the activist against the church. Because Jim Bennett is waiting for further light and knowledge to come on the LGBTQ issue, and he insists that no further light knowledge can or will come, and that he will leave the church if it does. Yet somehow I'm the activist, somehow I'm the one who's attacking, and it's nonsense. It's garbage. These guys, these defenders of the church who are freelancing are doing so and attacking the church because the church isn't— the church is moving in a direction that they don't like and that they're not willing to participate in. And so they just— they go out there and they do this kind of apocalyptic kind of warning that the church is doomed if they don't do exactly what Jacob Hanson and Greg Mattson of Quick Media and these other guys all the things that they insist have to be done or the church isn't true anymore. And I, I think that figures into this. I mean, they're not apocalyptic. They're not like Brian David Mitchell who kidnapped Elizabeth Smart, who think that they're a new prophet. But they do think that their big powerful ideas are things that the brethren need to hear, that the brethren are missing And they're the only ones who are brave enough and strong enough to be able to do this. This is a phenomenon that I think is going to continue to increase. And, you know, because, you know, as Peter points out, anybody with a microphone can have a platform. You know, nobody, nobody called us to do this. And yet here we are in our second year of doing this podcast. And technology allows anybody who wants to, to step up and say what they want to say about the church. And it's kind of hard to hold people's attention with the same kind of repetition that we get, the mind-numbing Sunday school answers that we've heard for decades. People are looking for more, and I don't blame them. But I think, you know, I think Peter's right, that can lead us into trouble. Do you agree?

I do. I do agree with that. This is another fantastic comment that Peter made. He made many excellent points in his conversation. And so, I mean, let's look at this. Look where the church came from, right? You know, we just did a podcast on Kirtland. Look at all the things that happened in Kirtland and then before that. And You know, at Kirtland, the heavens were open and people, crowds spoke, you know, congregations spoke in tongues. They saw angels, right? These were, you know, Moses, Elias, which we think is a messenger, Elijah. And I think I was right on the messenger thing, wasn't I?

Well, yeah, but it's funny because I just want to jump in here. Sorry to interrupt you, but, you know, we went and looked that up and you said that the messenger was Michael.

Yes, yes. I thought it was Michael.

Yes.

And Bruce R. McConkie says he thinks the messenger was Gabriel.

All right. Well, I could tell you right now, Bruce R. McConkie was wrong. I'll tell you why he's wrong. I'm right.

He's wrong.

And there's nothing he can do about it. Because I'm alive.

There you go.

And also, I had a dream about this. And that makes me— and a vision. That I'll share one day. And for the whole world should follow this vision. No, no, seriously, I'm joking around. But yeah, I knew it was some ancient prophet, or heard some of it was an ancient prophet.

Yeah.

So I mean, these extraordinary things happened at Kirtland, right? It wasn't exclusive to the First Presidency. You know, these, you know, the stories about Satan riding up with his angels on the back of a horse and being commanded to—

I need to interrupt you there because That was not at Kirtland. That was at Logan.

Okay.

The Logan Temple.

I got the temples mixed up, but I think it happened.

I remember that story.

Yeah.

And that's very much a folklore story, but it has been perpetuated over the years and passed down over and over. But it was a Logan Temple dedication, not the Kirtland Temple.

Well, let me throw a bit of a— what do they call it? Is it a— what's the American term? Left ball, left wing.

A curveball. Anyway, a curveball.

Um, when I heard that story, uh, Logan— now I just told me Logan— I felt the spirit. And you're telling me it's a folklore story, correct?

That's what I'm telling you, yeah.

Oh, there's another podcast. Oh my goodness. Anyway, whatever. So all these major things happen. Right? You know, Almira, Kirtland, Nauvoo, right? The trip to Salt Lake, et cetera. Major things happened. There was revelation after revelation, visions after visions. And then you contrast that with the church today. The church teaches that the heavens remain open, they're not closed. And we are now living arguably, and you can challenge this, in a much more tumultuous time. We are more connected, globally, economically, politically, we're connected technically. Things that happen in the world now impact us. We're definitely more connected than the time of Joseph Smith on a global scale. And major events are happening on a very different scale. I think if I'm right, I don't think they were happening at the same scale. There were wars going on around the world, etc. You know, this is before the First World War, the Second World War. There was major— this is before major events for sure. But I don't think it was on the same scale. So we're living in a time of extraordinary change and challenge. And you contrast the First Presidency and the leadership experiences on revelation and visitations that happened in the early days of the church where there was less tumultuous time. Versus now where we need it more than ever in a world of, that's very scary, let's face it, increasingly scary threats of nuclear war. Putin's made 3 threats I think so far, right? The world is pretty unstable at the moment. And where's the church on this? Where's the leadership on this? Where's the direction? Where's the relevancy of the church on key topics that are happening? Is it our position politically? What's his position on abortion? What's his position on LGBTQ, his official position? What's the position on what's going on in the world, politics? Where's the revelation now compared to what, you know, what happened in the past? Why are we not getting those visitations? Why are we not having, in such a tumultuous time that we're experiencing right now, more than ever, we need those visitations. We need a restoration of those Older, those teachings, those principles. Heaven's open, we need help. Goodness me, we need help. We need Moses to come back, Elias the messenger to come back, we need Elijah to come back. We need help. Where is it? Where's the church in direction and leadership? And so you've got people leaving the church and rightly talking about these things. You know, what's the church relevance in the world today? Where's its leadership? What's the direction? What's the position on different things? And you've got people inside the church asking the same questions. Where— what's its stand? What's its role in the world? Remember, this is the only true living church upon the face of the earth. Section 130. It's the only church that represents, um, uh, the universe, God, Jesus Christ, uh, and the prophet is the only mouthpiece of the only true church. So what does that mean? Um, does he still meet with Christ? Surely he does. And if, if not, why? As why has that changed? Is there some revelation that says he's no longer gonna be around? You know, Christ is not gonna visit for a while or whatever. You're on your own for the last few days, right? Or what about all the prophecies and all the revelation about the last days? What's the latest on that? What do we do? How do we prepare for all the events that are unfolding? Remember what President Nelson said? He said when he was called, you ain't seen nothing yet and take your vitamins, right?

And all he said is the most anodyne dreck that he heard in Sunday school in the 1940s as a young adult. He hasn't moved on intellectually. He's still a young earth creationist, anti-evolutionist. He hasn't got an intellectual mind. Um, but they're, they're so desperate for something meaningful to happen. They're just running with anything. So that's one faction. You got the other end of the spectrum, the nuanced intellectuals and academics like the Gibbons and others who purge themselves, you know, to, in a sense, I appreciate them trying to do what they're doing and create space for thinking about the religion differently. And when you look at what they publish, they're very blunt. You know, the Gibbons have come up with a totally alternate Mormonism to the one of the gen— the First Presidency. But haven't been excommunicated. Patrick Mason's appearing on Mormon Stories telling everyone that the prophets are so useless they can't be trusted with doctrine anymore. Nothing happens to him. And then there is the rest of us sort of in the middle, sort of the you, I, and us who are like, we have got to bite the bullet and stop being in denial about where the church is going, that it's in extreme danger of total collapse. The leadership are useless. They're just, they, they are visibly incompetent and unable to cope with the challenges of today. And hey, what a surprise, people are leaving in droves and their missionary program is, is causing more missionaries to leave the church than they actually baptize. And the real statistic globally for retention of converts is 80% leave within 2 years now. We all see it locally, but we convince ourselves it's just a local aberration. It's not. That is the global picture. We're a machine of failure. And no one is holding the leaders accountable for that. They're all blaming themselves because that's what they've been trained to do. It's your fault. You didn't try hard enough. You didn't do it right. Hasten the work. Keep doing the thing you were doing before, but more. That was a damn script. Um, And, and then you have the people like Ward Radio and Co who are waking up from a conservative point of view. I think they know that gay marriage is coming and they're having a big panic, especially this year since the, um, church has visibly allowed a gay married man to have a calling and take sacrament in his ward and has called an LGBTQ ally as president newsroom. Although interestingly, as some have pointed out, he hasn't done anything since then for 3 months. It's radio silence. So we don't know if he's been shuffled out already or what's going on there, but it's rattled them. They're panicking.

I can say I know Aaron Sherinian well.

Yeah.

And, uh, I have not spoken to him about that, but my guess is that he is extraordinarily embarrassed by being the story.

Yeah.

And so I don't think that he's been muzzled so much as he's decided that he wants to keep a low profile because he knows who his client is and wants to bring attention to the client, not to him. But Ian, I want, I want you to jump in here if you can. Does, does Peter's assessment here ring true with your own? Is this how you're seeing the environment out there?

Yeah, it does. I was going to ask Peter, you know, with all your knowledge and understanding of these different moving parts, Peter, so fragment— you've got this, it's like a, like a plane that probably reached its peak in the '80s in terms of church consolidation, growth, etc., etc., and things working and stakes being created, wars being created, etc. The time when Jim Bennett was serving a mission, we I think that's probably the '80s, '70s, '80s when it all peaked, and then '90s, and sadly declined then. And you've got this like plane in the air that, that seemed to operate really well at the time, uh, within, within its own world, of course, its own, um, sphere of influence. And then the plane is like, uh, watching this crash and burn happening, you know, wing fall off, an engine fall off, instruments are not working. Uh, the pilot still thinks, uh, everything's going well. A bunch of old guys who are really not in touch with reality. All these fragmented pieces, if you like, beginning to fall off the plane as the turbulence intensifies. And they're going through all the storms, all the, you know, the lightning, the thunder, etc. And the plane is really not designed to operate, you know, in those kinds of conditions. So, you know, maybe that's not the best analogy, but from your vantage point with all the different moving parts and, and, you know, where people are, different ages, different generations, you know, you've got the traditionalists, you've got the Generation X, you've got the Millennials, etc., etc.

Uh, what's the new one? What's that?

The, the Alphas? No, it moves on, right? Yeah, the Millennials are grandparents now, so there's, there's Gen Z and then there's the Alphas. Yeah, I was watching a TikTok all about that.

Jim Bennett, you know, all these things going on, politics, LGBTQ, right? I mean, all these different things moving. But where do you, from your perspective, Peter, what if you were to plot the trajectory of things are heading? You've got all these things happened historically, you've got your recent historical things, you've got the current stuff going on, and you've done really, you've done a fantastic job trying to piece all these things together, podcasts, talking about different things. I think it's great. And if you were to plot in your mind the trajectory of where things are heading, where do you see things in the next 5, 10 years? Because we talked earlier, we privileged about, talked about the, the, you know, the relevancy of the church. And let's remind our listeners, the only true living church upon the earth. That claim has been made many times, albeit not recently. Where do you see Two questions, plotting trajectory of where things are gonna go. And the other question is, is, uh, in the context of the only true living church upon the face of the earth, what do you see the, the role of the church, uh, uh, look, looking forward along that trajectory?

Right. And I've got, I've got, I think I, and it's been a journey. I think I've got some really interesting and very simple, which is a relief, answers to both of those questions. Um, and, and why I still have hope and bother. So we'll come to why I believe Mormonism was meant to be and could still be the most relevant global religion for the space age ongoing. Um, because of some of its unique qualities or ideas, not that they're necessarily being reflected by the mainstream today. So, but the first question is the trajectory. Um, for me, I think there are two, um, key components or two things if you want to get informed about, go to these. Number one is Hugh Nibley's, um, valedictorian farewell address to Brigham Young University, which I think was in 1981-ish, something like that. Um, which was titled Leaders and Managers, and he nailed it. He saw exactly where the church was going and he warns everyone. In that moment, he was the most useful prophet of the 20th century in our church, and I'll talk about what he said in a minute. And the other one is one of Radio Free Mormon's early episodes, which was called Apostolic Coup, which I think is one of his highest rated for good reasons. Um, in the Apostolic Coup, he talks about how Brigham Young shut down, uh, the separation of powers and democracy and how the church was led at a very early point. And I pinpoint that as the key cause of all the problems that have inevitably played out today. And if we are gonna save the church, it will have to go back to a point before that. Um, Brigham Young, the, the church had been leaderless for a long time after Joseph Smith's death. They were in Winter Quarters in transit to the West. His own personal center of power was as president of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. But you also had the Seventy. You also had the stake leaders who used to be quite high up. If you go to Section 107 of the Doctrine and Covenants, We have a very democratic system of government in our church. We have a written constitution, which cracks me up when Americans who obsess about their written constitution then want to have a dictatorship of the prophet. They don't realize that they've got one too, and it's also meant to be quite democratic. And while they insist we're a theocracy, theocracy.

Yeah.

Yeah. In Section 107. 7, it says the First Presidency is equal in authority to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Also equal in authority to them are the First Quorum of Seventy, if they're voting unanimously, and equal in authority to all of them as well, not, not inferior, equal, are stake high councils. At the time in the early church, they only had two stakes, so that was quite, you know, a significant thing. And the 12 apostles were a bit like the New Testament model where they roamed around and local leaders would kind of direct them. The Apostle Paul deferred to local leaders in some locations about where he should go next on his ministry, and they kind of tried to make that work, that, you know, in a sense, the leadership presiding authority was in stationary locations and the apostles were traveling missionaries doing what they told them to. But anyway, that's a bit of, you know, biblical context for that idea. And it says in there that if the first— that any of those quorums can discipline the other ones when it comes to church discipline. And it says that any bishop can convene a council of 12 high priests to put the president of the church on trial if needed. And it says specifically because the president is not above any other member of the church when it comes to church discipline. And the council of the bishop, which they give it a fancy name in those verses, but it is clearly explained that that's what it is. It's a bishop and 12 high priests can, as a judge in Israel, can the common council, they call it, can put the president on trial. So for a start, like all healthy democracies, we have a strong separation of powers of equally authorized institutions. To be checks and balances on the others. So there should be no leadership decision made without accountability and without at least all the other General Authority quorums and any stake presidency or even a bishopric agreeing to it. And if people step out of line and commit crimes and sins, which our First Presidency have been, they should be disciplined immediately. They should, they should be dealt with. They're not irreplaceable. So that's that. Then you have the idea of common consent, that that is not enough, that any decision made in the church should be presented to the whole membership for a democratic vote. And in the very early days of the church, they'd have a debate. They weren't pretending to be all unified. You know, Joseph and the classic case, which can— is now— has crept into the curriculum in the support resources the church offers on its website., as context for studying church history and the Doctrine and Covenants, they do reference this account situation where Sidney Rigdon, who had a lot of struggles with mental illness, had been basically quite useless to Joseph Smith as a First Presidency counselor for a long time. So Joseph wanted to fire him and have him replaced, but Sidney was very popular and kind of awoke from his sickbed to fight back. Um, so they had a conference and it was all written up in Times and Seasons., and it was a heated debate. Joseph Smith explained his reasons for wanting to fire Sidney. He spoke to defend himself and other people supported him continuing. And then the members voted and they voted against Joseph Smith to keep Sidney. So Joseph reconciled to Sidney. They had a few more years of much more productive working relationship, but the president of the church. Was voted overruled by the membership after being presented with the dilemma. And they, they discussed it and prayed about it and made their decision. Um, all of that democracy, accountability got swept away at Winter Quarters when Brigham Young decided to create a dictatorship of the 15 Apostles. He, he kind of appointed himself as President of the First Presidency, he rejigged the High Councils and the Seventies by basically swapping them around. He broke up their institutional loyalty and sense of identity by, I think, basically releasing the High Councilors and make it all, and, you know, from the stake's leadership and making them Seventies and releasing the Seventies and making them High Councilors, but now a much more junior ranking level. And that's how the church has been led ever since, as a dictatorship of the apostles. When we were kids, the language around voting to sustain someone in conferences was always about the leaders being held accountable to the people. Is that what you guys heard? I, it's certainly what I did consistently. The word accountability was all over the rhetoric from President Kimball and others during the '70s and '80s. They've shifted it now. This is one of the other things that have turned me into rebellion, is the leaders started in General Conference teaching that your vote to sustain the leaders is an unconditional loyalty vote, that you sustain them whatever they do thereafter. And F. Whitney Clayton taught that in no uncertain terms while I— but they always give it away while ironically insisting this is not blind obedience. But then he literally defined blind obedience. Henry B. Eyring taught in The Power of Sustaining Faith in 2019 in General Conference. I think it was 2019 or '18 that it is literally a sin you should repent of before any temple recommend interview or any conference to think of the leaders of the church as even having human weaknesses. And he quoted George Q. Cannon saying that if, if the leaders need disciplining or sorting out, God can do that. It is not our job to hold leaders accountable. It would be a sin to do that. It's for God to kill them, basically. And that's been their new narrative. And this is literally the opposite of what the scriptures say. It's the— it's destroyed common consent accountability. It is the opposite of what we were taught about the votes. Growing up. And they know, and I think it's because their dictatorship is illegitimate. They know it. They know they're not practicing the written constitution of the church. They know they are not practicing a common consent, even though they keep claiming to. Therefore, they have to make sure that no one realizes we could all vote them out of power and it wouldn't break the church. That's what they're terrified of. So they're now teaching that it's unthinkable to vote against them. It's a sin to even contemplate that they might be doing anything wrong. And that's a child abuser's power-hungry charter that you can't ever hold leaders accountable. They, they've got carte blanche. They can do anything, and it's up to God to stop them, not you. And that's not how the church was established. The church, as originally constituted, understands human weakness. It will deal with people going off on a tangent and not being sensible. It trusts collective wisdom. And then I realized our scriptures are power. And this is one of the reasons the church is relevant to the 21st century in the modern age. All of our scriptures teach democracy, and democracy is the future in a, in a civilized world. This 20th century was the power of the century of the empowerment of people away from dictators and monarchies. The Pearl of Great Price teaches that God runs heaven as a democracy. The war in heaven wasn't people getting out guns and shooting each other. It was a debate before a vote. And God let us vote about the actual plan of salvation. And the majority view got won. And he trusted them because the collective, if you talk things through and think, you will arrive at the right decision. The, the majority will usually be right. The Book of Mormon teaches that democracy is the system of secular government that God wants. One of the huge story arcs in it is a transition from monarchy to democracy, to elected judges and chief judges. And again, it describes a separation of powers that the local judges, uh, that, that regional senior judges can be put on trial by a, by a team of lesser judges. And that even the overall chief judge can be put on trial and held accountable by a congress or a quorum or whatever of lower-ranking judges to remove them from power if needed. So that is modeled in the Book of Mormon as how government should work. And it teaches that the voice of the people is usually correct. If the people by majority vote for something bad, so be it. They deserve the cataclysm's coming. But that's a much more trustworthy system than even a prophet monarch. But, well, you know, and then the Doctrine and Covenants with its Constitution, Section 107, teaches that the church should be led by exactly the same principles. Separation of powers in secular government, that is your executive, which is for us a monarchy, for you guys, elected president. The legislature, which for you guys is Congress and Senate. In Britain, it's the House of Lords and House of Commons. And you have the judiciary, um, as, and they all have, have the power to discipline and, and hold each other accountable. And that's essential. Um, the, so, you know, well, so that, that, that from RFM pointing to the moments where we shifted from democracy, from Democracy to autocracy is a very important bit to understand that we lost it early on.

Yeah, that is a great point. My brother-in-law at one point pointed out to me that the 107th section of the Doctrine and Covenants provides the process by which the president of the church can be excommunicated. And, you know, early on in the days of Joseph Smith, uh, that was not a hypothetical. The idea right now of Russell Nelson being excommunicated is, is ludicrous. How would it happen? You know, I mean, the entire church would have to rise up against him in unity for it to even be taken seriously. I remember as a kid even saying to my father, why do we bother voting in church? Why do we even bother? I said, I've never seen anybody vote opposed. And to this day, I have never been in the room when someone has voted opposed that I'm aware of. I think maybe I've been in the conference center when somebody's voted opposed, but I haven't noticed it happening. It's certainly never happened on the local level when I've been there. And my father's point was, you're not voting. This isn't a democracy. You are saying, I sustain this decision. And you are, you are giving your— so, and I always was kind of moved by the fact that we'd be watching conference at home, and my father would always raise his right arm to the square whenever they asked to sustain, because he says, this is to the Lord, this is an indication to the Lord that I sustain these leaders. And so I can see some value in that, but it's very clear as Peter has pointed out here that the intention initially was something very different, that you were supposed to vote. You were, you know, this, this whole story about Sidney Rigdon, who Joseph Smith wanted to release as a counselor in the First Presidency and the Church wouldn't let him, you know, that, that is a really compelling story that demonstrates that early on, that's the way it was supposed to work, that the Church as a whole did everything by common consent. And we don't conduct anything by common consent that way anymore. But we also haven't had a lot of the big kinds of revelations that have been adopted by common consent. You know, when people talk about the Proclamation on the Family, it's worth pointing out that that has never been presented to the Church as a revelation. It has never been sustained by common consent. It's just been issued and we're— and it's held up as a kind of scripture or as a kind of revelation, even though it hasn't gone through the process that the canonized revelations have gone through. So I think this is a really powerful idea that Peter's raised here. And I really think that I'd like to see more of it. I'm not seeing any of it. Are you seeing any of it in I'm not, I'm not.

And I agree with you.

I think Peter's raised another really good point. I think Section 107 is fascinating. And I've, you know, it talks about the relationship, the 70 with the 12. It talks about the 12 and the keys and the accountability of the 12, about standing high councils at the stake of Zion, former quorum equal in authority in the affairs of the church in all the decisions to quorum, the presidency, or to the traveling high council, end quote. There's a whole fascinating group of verses there in regard to the structure of the democracy, and holding each quorum accountable in front of a council. It's there, black and white. Interestingly, and check me on this, when Joseph Smith started practicing or teaching polygamy, I don't think that— that came as a revelation to an exclusive small group of people. It wasn't— I think it was the First Presidency that received that revelation, or Joseph Smith, rather, received that revelation about practicing polygamy. I don't think it was put to the church as a vote. There's, I think, there's a few reasons for that. I don't think the church would have accepted that. And these mechanisms, these structures that 107 discusses quite a bit, wouldn't have allowed Joseph Smith to practiced polygamy officially, I think he would, these instruments would've been activated and he would've been released or been called out or had to change his, his revelation. I don't think he would've been accepted.

Absolutely. Yes. So the other one, the other thing to point to is Hugh Nibley, who said, this church is being taken over by lawyers and businessmen. And he said this was the downfall of the Roman Empire. Because when you allow manage— the managerial class of people, not leaders. He said leaders are often mavericks. They think outside the box. True leaders are, are a bit revolutionary. They're not company men. They're not predictable. Um, you need that variety. But he said this, you know, the— what destroyed the Roman Empire, and he made a clear comparison to the church, was they became obsessed with money and, and the profit motive and the business management became the dominant mindset, and that lawyers also came to power. And what do you see now in the church today? Every corner of it, including most of the general authorities, are either lawyers or business managers.

My companion Peter, who was just enrolled into BYU there, said, "Uniblit lives around the corner." I did not believe him, and I said, For over half an hour I didn't believe him and he said, Ian, go around the corner, knock on this door and that's Hugh Nibbler. And I thought, I'm, I'm being a complete idiot here. I just, I'm being wound up. I went round, round the corner, it's 2 or 3 blocks away, knocked on the door and Hugh Nibbler came to the door and I had a meeting with him. And Jim Bennett was not aware of this. I met with him for about an hour in his house, 3 or 4 blocks from where I was staying for a few weeks in Provo. And he talked about, uh, some fascinating things. And Jim, I think we should do a podcast on this because I— it's all coming back to me now. One of the things that he talked about, Peter, is the, uh, the— he, he said that the church is far removed from the original constitution of the church, that it was how it's organized, how it's structured. He had some, uh, grievances. Uh, I think, uh, Jim, I, I— okay, I'll be careful, but I He came across a bit tipsy to me. I have to say that, guys. I have to say that he was a bit tipsy. And yeah, I joined the church at 16. I know what tipsy is. I grew up with people being tipsy around me. But anyway, he seemed very liberal with his— quite open talking to complete strangers. I introduced myself at the door and told him who I was. I'd served a mission in Scotland. He told me that he had family relatives, of course, in Scotland. Nibley, right? Charles W. Nibley, I think, and other relatives. He said he used to go to climb Ben Nevis most years.

Oh, you told me that story already about him saying he wanted to climb Ben Nevis.

I told you. I thought I— forgive me, I thought I didn't mention that, but I obviously have. So yeah, we spent about an hour and he was talking about the church has gone far away from the Book of Mormon, too far from the original restoration of the church. It's becoming too secular. It's not as respecting the constitutions and the divisions, the organization of the church, the sanctity of the, uh, of the vote. Uh, he made some references to that. It wasn't a, you know, I didn't spend hours with him, but a good hour, maybe an hour and a half was what I had with him. But he, he talked about the destruction of the church, um, as, you know, uh, uh, uninspired, uh, changes that were made, uh, manmade changes that were coming that he was concerned about. And removing— not following the principles of the Book of Mormon. He talked at least half an hour of the Book of Mormon. We all know he was an extraordinary Book of Mormon scholar, perhaps the church's most prolific Book of Mormon scholars at that time and probably since. But he talked about a lot of— rather, some of the things that you were talking about. And so when you mentioned Udible, that kind of reminded me of some things that I'd actually forgotten about. And so he kind of talked about the disintegration of the church and the church becoming fragmented and dissolving and all these fractions and not really staying on the steady path, the true and narrow path and the original constitution as it was revealed through the Prophet Joseph Smith. So I just wanna highlight that because that opened up some Mm.

So, so he could see it. Yeah. His, his scholarship hasn't necessarily stood the test of time, but he was a great social conscience. He was quite a liberal thinker. I found a book soon after our mission called Of All Things, which is loads of quotes from Hugh Nibley on all kinds of topics, not the usual ancient studies stuff. And he was quite a radical, and it's amazing watching that speech at BYU, how he brought it all there. And he also predicted that these managers and lawyers would destroy the historical monuments of the church. I think at the time they were gutting the Logan Temple, which Brigham Spencer Kimball later said he regretted doing. But we've just watched President Nelson destroy the Sistine Chapel of Mormonism, or the Saint Peter's. He's absolutely gutted the temple after promising one of his many lies, after standing in a press conference which I watched, in which he and the people with him promised that they were going to restore and preserve the original Victorian era sort of Brigham Young architecture of the inside in order to shuffle all the workers out. And then they just destroyed it. And he kept changing his mind and wanting more baptisteries and so on. And they've, they've, they've pulped everything. They've lost the murals. You know, when they sent missionaries to study with the Impressionists in France to create these murals that were going to this monument of the pioneers. That was going to greet Christ to see his second coming. President Nelson, because in his ego, um, as an autocrat, and autocrats always destroy the art of the people that, that they didn't create because they get jealous of it. It's absolutely cliché. And this is something that Brits just cannot understand. Why on earth was there not people surrounding that temple site in protests and camps? Protecting it from the bulldozers. You have no concept in America, or certainly in Mormon America, of your heritage, of preserving historical artifacts. We are all over that here. You know, I, I can walk 10 minutes and I'll be in a church that's 1,000 years old, and we look after this stuff, or we, we don't destroy it easily. Um, but there seems to be no sense of preservation. There was enough protests to save Minerva Teichert's murals in Manti. Um, but they're all sitting there watching the Salt Lake Temple absolutely destroyed after these people promised they wouldn't and that they'd consulted with conserv— conservation experts to preserve it all. What a lie. They were always planning this. I mean, it's extraordinary. And Brigham Young and— sorry, and Nibley predicted that.

Yeah.

He said they were gonna do it. Yep. So go on.

Well, sorry, I, I, the, the Manti Temple, what was interesting to me is that there was a huge grassroots protest against it.

Yes.

And that the church changed its mind. But I think it was Elder, it was either Elder Rasband, I think it was Elder Rasband.

Yes.

Who insisted that, uh, the protest had nothing to do with it.

No, no, no, no, no. The, the prophet had a revelation to make another temple down the road. And that's another thing. No one needs these extra temples. They're mostly empty. They, they, desperately trying to persuade elderly Utahns to serve missions and second and third missions because they can't keep the buildings open. They no longer require a critical mass of members in an area to have a temple because when you have hundreds of billions of dollars, you can't buy people's hearts and converts with money, but you can build— buy temples. You can build as many of those as you like to keep the illusion of growth going. So to kind of get back to and wind up sort of the overall narrative here and what the question was, So I've identified why the church is crashing, that the leadership is not— has lost its democracy. Therefore, it's lost the collective wisdom of all the members. It doesn't consult. And immediately you do that, you have a completely disconnected oligarchy living in a bubble. They've taken on the values of the lawyers by normalizing lying. They have patronizing people by withholding information from them. They've taken on the ethos of the business managers. Of judging success by gaining unbelievable, eye-watering wealth. You've got all these apologists being delusional that literally they can hand a checkbook to Jesus and isn't his central bank in good shape and the church will save the world when they've forgotten that the first thing to fritter into nonexistence is the theoretical concept of money. When society collapses, as soon as you have the kind of disasters they're expecting in the last days, the stocks and shares evaporate overnight and no good was done with that wealth. Whereas if you got a classroom of 10— of 30 primary kids who are 10 years old, it would take them 20 minutes to decide how to spend $200 billion exactly how Jesus would. But our First Presidency and apostles can't. So they haven't. They're just growing the money. They haven't spent any of it even to save the dying church. That's how useless they are and how little imagination or inspiration they have. That's how bad it is. And so what's the solution? What's the way forward? As things are, young people are not going to remain in an institution that is institutionally racist and still hasn't apologised for the racism of the past and still hasn't addressed the racism in its scriptures. Which is there still canonized, including in the Doctrine and Covenants telling people not to liberate slaves. The— you are not going to have young people stay in a religion that's the last institutionally sexist institution in their lives, where women are second-class citizens, where they're not allowed authority or decision-making power. It's simply unsustainable. And increasingly, They are not going to stay in an organization that treats them and their LGBTQ friends as anathema, as impossible, as outside of God's plan and purpose. They just aren't. So the reality is, until the church changes and liberalizes socially, it's doomed. The young people are not staying, never mind the lying and the child abuse machine that it has become, which usually is older people who care about that. And that's enough for them to leave. But certainly for the next generation, sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia, total no-go zones. However people try to deny that, you just have to accept that reality. The— so Istuns, their mission— and while you have elderly people with dementia have appointing nepotistically their friends and family to all the decision-making and leadership roles and the bureaucracy, They will never have a missionary program that works, even though they've got the money to hire Bill Gates. They could hire Bill Gates to sort their IT out. They could hire the most expensive and skilled Nobel Prize-winning advertisers to create a missionary program that works. We have nothing that appeals to the educated middle classes. The only people we're baptizing now are the very poor and vulnerable, usually single males. Who are lost. Um, when we, you know, I asked my elders quorum president, when was the last time we baptized a middle-class family? And he said, oh, I know exactly. It was the Rayfields, you know, who joined the church in the '70s. And that's pretty much my experience as well. This is a religion, and here's the positive vision. So it's doomed. It's, it's already gone. Wards fall below a threshold from which they cannot recover. And it's happening in America now. It's already happened here long ago. As soon as you lose so many of your young people, you've got no one to look after the elderly, no one to fulfill the callings, no one to be the missionaries, and it quickly disappears. Like, it accelerates. Your wards become a hospice where you're just caring for the elderly till they die, and that's it. That will be the end of your congregation. And all you can do then is start merging the wards and the stakes until all we have is online church, and then it's gone. And that's already happened here in Britain, or it's about to, um, and across Europe and in most of the rest of the world. So this, these people who spent so much energy going into the world to convert the global church, they've then completely neglected us. They've ignored us while we were screaming at them. We won't be here soon. The church will functionally cease to exist in Britain or have any hope of recovery in the next 5 years. It will be that fast and, and certainly next 10. And the changes that need to happen are going to be difficult and painful. So they need to be happening now because you can't pull them out of a hat overnight. Then in 5 years' time when it's too late, it's already too late. So that is doomed, you know, just accept that, have the reality check. So what is the immovable objects? We have to ordain women. We will have to have LGBTQ inclusion. It's a given. We are going to have to address our racist scriptures and be honest about them. But the point is Mormonism has within itself the tools to do all of that and always has. Because we're meant to be run as a democracy and we have an overriding philosophy of learn from your mistakes, repent and do better, eternal progress and progression. We map God's interaction with mankind as being very dependent on the social developments of mankind as, as, uh, you know, historically when the people were living in small tribes, we have the patriarchal religion that is small tribe based. As soon as the first nation states began in, in the Sumerian region, in the, in the Fertile Crescent, boom, Abraham is there in one of the first places to develop writing. And you then have a different phase. You have a national sense of the Israelites, and that's how Bronze Age society functions. The second, you then have international empires. The Empire of Alexander and then the Roman Empire. Jesus comes, Christianity, the international religion. And each time it's more sophisticated, it's less brutal. Um, it's more modern in a sense. And then restoration, the Industrial Revolution, the next leap forward into technology in the world of today. Joseph Smith saying ev— And it's with this modern idea, stop being led by dictators. It's, this is peop— religion is about common consent. We all learn from each other. Everyone is a priest. Everyone is a prophet. And some argue, despite his polygamizing, he was moving towards women having certainly at least a parallel priesthood. Um, and, and the idea we, this should be the religion for the space age because he also said Every culture in the world has had gods talk to them. So we're not the only true church anymore. And the church leaders, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, said Mormonism is all truth, even if it comes from heathens, even if it comes from scientists. Boom. Humanism as a religion that will last forever.

Well, Peter, we're coming up here, uh, on a hard stop, uh, But I mean, there's a lot to digest there, but we very much appreciate your willingness to come and share this with us. Ian, do you have any final words here?

I have no final words.

All right.

All right.

Well, we'll continue talking.

We'll let that stand. We appreciate you spending your time here with us, Peter. Thank you for being here, and as always, thank you, Ian.

Thank you. To all of you listeners, we will—

we will see you next time on Inside Out.