A Conversation with Sandra Tanner

Hello and welcome to Inside Out, the program in which we talk to extraordinary people about the Mormon Church and faith. I'm your co-host Ian Wilkes, and I'm here with arguably the more righteous half of Inside Out, Mr. Jim Bennett. Hello, Jim, how are you?

Uh, well, arguably more righteous, But I think there's a good argument to be made both ways, probably more in your direction. I think there's a better argument to be made about the righteousness of our, of our really fascinating guests here today.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I am so excited. And to that point, we have, Jim Bennett, an extraordinary guest with us today. It's no secret or exaggeration to say that we've wanted to meet this very special guest for quite some time. And wasn't sure if it was ever going to be possible. So I'm absolutely delighted and honored to welcome Sandra Tanner to Inside Out. Welcome, Sandra.

Well, hello to you. Yeah.

Okay. It's just an absolute delight and a real honor to have you with us here. And so for the benefit of our listeners, Sandra Tanner is a highly distinguished and prominent American writer, scholar, historian, and researcher and a former member of the LDS Church and a 5th generation Mormon. Most notably, Sandra is a great-great-granddaughter of Brigham Young, the second president of the church. Sandra and her husband, Gerald Tanner, were both raised as Latter-day Saints, but began questioning the church in their teenage years. They married in 1959 and both resigned from the LDS Church in 1960 and later converted to evangelical Protestantism. Did I— hopefully I pronounced that right. I used to be a Protestant, so, uh, hopefully I got that right. In 1983, Sandra and Gerald founded the outreach group, the Utah Lighthouse Ministry. The scope of the Lighthouse Ministry was, uh, to document problems with the truth claims of the LDS Church and compare its doctrines with Christianity. Today, Sandra continues to operate the ministry after Gerald passed away in 2006. So the work and research of Gerald and Sandra Tanner is remarkable and extensive. Together, they have published over 40 books spotlighting the critical aspects of the LDS Church, primarily its history. Some of the more notable works include the book, include the book titled Mormonism: Shadow or Reality? Published in 1963. Their work is considered by many as truly groundbreaking and pioneering and includes printed original versions of early modern writings and scripture, including tracking doctrinal changes, as well as more notable experience related to the, uh, being prominent critics of Mark Hoffman, who was the renowned forger. So Sandra, thank you again for being here. I want to start perhaps most unusually, by apologizing to you publicly. Years ago, Sandra, when I was a bishop and a member of the Stake Presidency, and even before that time, when your name used to come up quite frequently with members of my ward who would come across your material, and I'm going back to, actually, I'm going back to the time on my mission in Scotland where Jim Bennett met in Scotland. When I was a full-time missionary, that's when I first heard your name. Yep, my year. Okay, we're going back to late '80s, '87, '89, when we served our missions in Scotland. Okay. And it was, in fact, I came across your name before, your name came up in the MTC in London in 1987, early January '87. And during my mission, and Jim could comment on this as well if he heard it. We know when he heard about your name, as your name came up, your name was associated with somebody who was anti-Mormon and somebody who was an apostate and somebody that we were counseled and advised to stay away from, that we were advised to stay away from your material. Over the years as a bishop and a member of the stake presidency, and these advice and counsel I received by including from Jim Bennett, some general authorities who provided training, they advised us that, um, Sandra and Gerald Tanner's material was unreliable, questionable. And so I, being a devoted, committed, unquestioning, undoubting member of the church, believed that and, uh, taught and counseled my members in my ward to avoid your material. And unfortunately and regrettably, I described you in similar terms as you were described to me prior to me being a bishop or a stake president. And so I want to apologize because being described, uh, also I wanna say that you were described and I described you as an enemy of the church. And I'm now described in the same language that people describe me as an apostate, having resigned from the church, uh, a, uh, an anti-Mormon. I've been described as anti-Mormon myself, and also I've been labeled as an enemy of the church by some within the church. But I want to apologize for my ignorance and immature, unprofessional comments and remarks that I shared with members of my ward who came to me, who came across your material, because I judged you and your material without researching it. And so I want to apologize to you sincerely for that. If I could turn the clock back, I would do so. And so I, I, you probably haven't had an introduction with a, with an apology before, but I am ashamed to admit that was my position. That was my counsel. And so I am grateful that you're here today, and I hope that you will at least consider accepting my apology.

Thank you very much. I've actually received a lot of letters with similar sentiments over the years. Many people have written to apologize. For things they said. And actually, I have been called far worse things than what you have mentioned so far.

I, yeah, that's okay. And I, again, I have so much respect for you. And so this meeting with you, this conversation, it means something to me personally, even though we've never met before. As we get into this, could you, you've done extensive research, you are the one of the pioneers of, you know, of post-Mormonism and researching the church history and going right back to the '60s, uh, which is extraordinary.

Well, Gerald put out a little pamphlet, I believe in 1958, before I met him, a little mimeograph sheet on criticizing the church on the racial stand. So the, the seeds of this were sown even before I came into the picture.

And that's extraordinary history.

Yes, it is, because he's just a young kid at that point.

Isn't that amazing? And so I came across your material on my mission often, not always, but quite often. And that was the first time that I really took notice at that time, even though I heard your name before. Jim Bennett, when did you become aware of Sandra Tanner, Sandra Jenelle Tanner's material?

When I was 18 years old and I read a copy of The Godmaker. And I, Sandra, I'm not sure how you feel about that whole effort, but I think they—

we, we had some difference of opinions with Ed Decker and the Godmakers group. They were more hard-hitting than we felt comfortable with and more strident in their statements. Statements and approach. Um, when they did the movie, I was interviewed in it, but I was not consulted in any way to where I even knew what the premise was. I just knew they were doing a movie on the Mormons and would I be interviewed, just like I'm being interviewed by you now. And, uh, so we didn't see the film until the premiere here in Salt Lake. And Gerald was quite disturbed that night as he saw it. In fact, uh, unfortunately everyone assumed we would be thrilled with the movie. And so Ed came up to us, we were sitting on the front row. Ed Decker came up to us and put a mic in front of Gerald and said, wow, so what do you think of the film? And Gerald says, well, uh, I have some problems with this. So that didn't start things off well. But, um, Ed and a lot of his friends, I think their intent was good, but coming from a more strident position. But most people writing against Mormonism, uh, back in the 1980 time period, we're a little more strident, maybe on both sides. So, but Gerald was upset that they seemed to be overreaching, padding people's credentials. And so there are things in the film that disturbed him. And then when they came out with Godmakers 2, uh, we had serious problems with them because we felt they had just gone another step further down that road of sensationalistic filming without, um, putting things in a proper format. And Godmakers 2 implied that there was a worry that the Mormons could come out and kill you if you left the church. I had a man from New York phone me that was thinking of leaving the church that was scared to death to let his bishop know he was leaving for fear that he was going to get blood atoned.

Oh, gosh.

And I said, sir, I'm still alive and I've been doing this at this point. I've been doing this for 20 years. I said, they haven't got me yet. So I think you're safe. So yeah, it was problematic.

Well, Godmakers 2, I remember reading Godmakers 2 long after I read Godmakers 1. And there's some, all kinds of outlandish claims in there. The idea that Gordon B. Hinckley had this sort of gay sex romp house.

And yes, we wrote a rebuttal to that. Well, I don't know if you were aware of that.

I, well, I was not, but I, what I became aware of after The Godmakers was just how much integrity you and Gerald have, particularly, I mean, the thing that called that to my attention more than anything else, as Ian mentioned at the outset in the introduction, was your response to the Salamander Letter. You were the first ones to call that into question. And, you know, the caricature of the Tanners is, oh, they're just these terrible anti-Mormons and they're whatever they are. But that demonstrated that even something that would bolster your case if it were true you had enough integrity to say, wait a minute, this doesn't add up. This doesn't make any sense.

And, and we had been disturbed about this type of problem from the very beginning when we were questioning and studying. I mean, dark ages back in, in the late '50s, early '60s, when we would read critical things on Mormonism. Uh, it was upsetting to us when we would, we're trying to sort through everything to figure out what, how things happen and would find that it wasn't just that the Mormons were, uh, shading how they told their story. The Christians seemed to be doing the same thing. And that was part of the reason for us starting to publish was the very fact that I didn't see literature that would have spoken to me as a Mormon. Uh, so much of the critical material on Mormonism at the time was addressed to Christians. And at the time, about all you'd have to say to a Christian is the Mormons believe in plural gods and God was once a man. You just have to tell them the Lorenzo Snow couplet. And the Christians say, oh wow, no, I'm not interested. Uh, but that doesn't speak to a Mormon. So we thought, well, none of this helps us in our search. We're trying to figure out the whole gamut of these claims. So we were, um, firm in our original, uh, beginnings of writing that we wanted our quotes to be accurate, that so someone like you couldn't go back later and say, oh, those Tanners, they just changed all the quotes to make the church look the worst they can. So, uh, it came out of our own frustration of reading material and then realizing we couldn't fully count on it, that, uh, both sides needed to call to, up their game. So we have tried through the years to do that, to encourage the non-Mormon community that, um, you don't win by cheating. And we want to know how the story really happened. Don't give me a grandiose story that doesn't check out. And I mean that for both sides. I personally, obviously, I don't feel the story of Mormonism stands up under critical exam. But I want it to be on solid reasons, not because someone invented something.

Well, what was it about the Salamander Letter that, uh, uh, raised the red flags for you? I, I think it was Gerald who talked about it being too convenient.

Yeah, well, we had, uh, of course, when we started questioning Mormonism, we were reading David Whitmer's pamphlet, An Address to All Believers in Christ. And we knew about, uh, magic and money digging and that to a limited extent. We certainly didn't know what we know today, but we knew from Whitmer and from E. D. Howe's Mormonism Unveiled, uh, that all those things entered into the picture of the beginning of the church. So when Mark Hoffman's documents came out, they supported that scenario of the magic folklore of New England, um, and carried it a few steps further. But for Gerald, when we first started hearing rumors about the Salamander Letter, Gerald was all excited about it. He thought, oh, at last, this is going to be the real, uh, deal breaker when this comes out. And so in preparation for, for finally get, hoping to get a copy, We were just hearing rumors, which now I think Mark Hoffman was floating them. Um, but at the time we were heard from different people in the history community. Oh, have you heard about this new document? And it's all about this magic and everything. And, uh, so Gerald's reading E.D. Howe again, reading Whitmer again, going back over Fawn Brodie's book. Trying to, uh, re— refresh his memory on all these things so that when he would finally see the document, he would be ready right off the bat to start writing an analysis up. So when he finally gets the, uh, we first got a typescript before we saw the original, and Gerald had a, uh, a not photographic memory, but a very good memory. And he, he saw patterns. Uh, and, and I don't know what the ramifications of all this are, but anyways, when he was reading, he could see the similarity of phrases. In the '60s or '70s, Um, we had done a pamphlet revealing statements of the three witnesses where we had printed Whitmer's address, uh, Martin Harris's Tiffany Monthly interview, and a pamphlet supposedly by Dave, by Martin, Oliver Cowdery, uh, Defense in My Rehearsal of My Grounds for Separating Myself from the Latter-day Saints. Uh, something to that effect. Supposedly in Norton, Ohio in, um, 18— what would it have been? 39 or something. I'm rusty on this. Anyways, when we printed that pamphlet, Richard Lloyd Anderson, Jim probably has heard his name. He came into the bookstore when it was just in our front room. And he came in and talked to us and he says, I challenge you to, uh, prove that the Cowdery defense is authentic. I don't think that's valid. I think that's a forgery. So this is years, uh, before Mark Hoffman. And we had just always assumed that Cowdery's defense was genuine. B.H. Roberts quotes it. Von Brody quotes it. Juanita Brooks endorsed it. And many people just were using it and assumed that Cowdery's pamphlet was genuine. And so Gerald says, well, that's something I guess we better look into that. Well, once we started on that rabbit hole, it led to all kinds of stuff. And we, the more we looked, the more we realized there weren't any copies of Cowdery's defense before about the 1900 timeframe. And that got us concerned. And then reading Whitmer's pamphlet, Whitmer says in, um, his pamphlet, An Address to All Believers in the Book of Mormon, I think it is, he says, Cowdery died believing the same as I do, that essentially that Joseph is a fallen prophet. Well, why wouldn't he quote that? If he had, I mean, Cowdery went back to Whitmer's home in his illness and died there. If he had come out against Joseph in this pamphlet, Whitmer would have certainly known about it. And yet Whitmer says nothing about Cowdery writing such a pamphlet, and yet it would have supported some of Martin, uh, some of David Whitmer's position. So that concerned us. So then Gerald started looking at the Cowdery defense and looking at Cowdery's letters in the Messenger and Advocate. And as he studied those two, one against the other, he started realizing the, word patterns in Cowdery's defense seemed to echo phrases in Cowdery's letters that were in different context, but the phrasing was similar and put into a different usage. And Gerald figured, well, somebody's using Mar— uh, Cowdery's earlier writings to compose something that would sound like Cowdery. So he had already gone through this kind of an analysis on the Cowdery defense. Now we, uh, knew that it was printed at least by 1900. So this has nothing to do with Mark Hoffman. It's just some early guy did some sort of pamphlet and attributed it to Cowdery. So we came out with a pamphlet, uh, stating all this research. So when the, uh, Salamander Letter came along, Gerald's already been down the road of trying to figure out if something is posing to be authored by one of the witnesses, but really wasn't. So when he's looking at the Salamander Letter, and looking at E. D. Howe's Mormonism Unveiled, and looking at an article that was in the, um, BYU Studies on, um, mm-hmm. Was it Joseph Knight? I can't remember now. Um, that when Gerald read those different things, he felt he could see patterns from those in the Salamander Letter. That same pattern of taking phrases and using them to make it sound like someone. So the more he studied all this, he became convinced that that was the case. Now, he wasn't necessarily thinking that Hoffmann made the invention, but Hoffmann had to be in with someone doing forgeries. But he became convinced that it wasn't an ancient, a prior text. And Gerald and I had discussions about this, and I said, Gerald, how do you know it's not the other way around? That Martin Harris always told the founding story a certain way and had developed phrases that the way he would describe it to people. And so the Joseph Knight letter and the statements by the neighbors in E.D. Howe's book all have the echo of these same phrases because they are correctly remembering the way that Martin Harris said things to them. And Gerald says, no, it's the other way around. Someone has to have read this BYU article and the E.D. Howe statements and chose phrases from them and put them into the document. I'm like, uh, hello? I mean, everyone in the church is admitting, accepting this. Dean Jesse doesn't want to accept this as an authentic document. They have motivation to have it be a fraud. So why would they concede to this? And Gerald said, I mean, he was so convinced. He says, I don't care. It doesn't matter if the whole world says it's authentic. It isn't. So there you are. So we had to do a split editorial in our newsletter because I said, Gerald, I can't let you put that out without me at least having some caution that the final say isn't in yet. So I have a little, in the newsletter, I have a little part of a page where I say, well, you know, there are all these people over here that say it's authentic, so we don't know for sure, but you know, Gerald has his point of view, I got mine, and we had so many people give us pushback on Gerald's article. And the Christian community was so mad at us that how can we throw a monkey wrench into the gears when we finally got this great document to smash the Mormons with? And you guys stand up and say, oh, sorry guys, it's not true. But, but there was no, there was, uh, Gerald was so adamant.

That, I mean, that's just such a remarkable story because it flies in the face of the caricature. It flies in the face of the idea that you're willing to do anything you possibly can. It demonstrates your integrity and Gerald's integrity. And you guys were kind of the lone voices in the wilderness for a very long time, were you not?

Yes, we were.

So, but just going all the way back though to the beginning, So it began with Gerald sort of publishing that pamphlet.

Yeah, I didn't know Gerald in '58, but when Gerald graduated from high school, he was not mission material. That's why they had that statement years back about we need to raise the bar on missionaries. It came from guys like Gerald. Uh, Gerald was smoking and drinking as a teenager. I have to tell you that, uh, Gerald comes from a family of alcoholics. And these are Mormon alcoholics, by the way, and not a bunch of heathen outsiders. Uh, Gerald descends from the John Tanner family. And, uh, saved Joseph financially. Um, the Tanners have an unfortunate, uh, backstory of alcoholism. And, uh, so Gerald's, um, great-grandpa would be Myron Tanner. And I think he was bishop for years down in the Orem-Provo area, but he was an alcoholic. And, uh, Myron's plural wife, Gerald's great-grandma, was an alcoholic and, um, was admitted to the Provo mental health place, whatever, because of alcoholism and Caleb's first wife had to raise the second wife's kids because she had a total breakdown. But then Gerald's father was, uh, Gerald's grandfather and father were alcoholics. This all down in Provo. So when Gerald was smoking and drinking as a teen, he was headed in the wrong direction in life. And had he even stayed a Mormon, I'm assuming he would have ended up like his dad, an inactive Mormon who drank and smoked. But when Bishop started hinting it was time to straighten up for a mission, Uh, uh, that made Gerald start thinking more seriously about his faith. He had just taken for granted that Mormonism was true. He just didn't want to live with restrictions, um, that it placed on him. So, uh, he started to find— he read the encyclopedia article on Mormonism, and that's what really started him, I guess, on studying. Because he found out there were splinter groups. And that got his curiosity to where he went to the Reorganized Church. He met this barber, James Wardle, and who had a huge private library on Mormonism. And he introduced Gerald into his library and all this research. He gave him the David Whitmer pamphlet. This, uh, eventually led Gerald to go back to Independence, Missouri to visit the splinter groups. That didn't believe polygamy. Because, uh, his family had had enough of polygamy, so that had no interest in him. But, uh, back there he met this little group led by Pauline Hancock, the first woman to lead the Restoration movement. And, uh, she preached just the Bible and Book of Mormon, and he, uh, got affiliated with them. So that started him studying David Whitmer and the early church, trying to figure out Um, what branch of Mormonism should he follow? And, uh, where would his spiritual direction take him? So he ended up with this little group in Missouri. Uh, I came to Salt Lake visiting my grandma and Gerald was holding a meeting in his house, his mom's house, dad's, um, to tell about his transition. To this little splinter group. My grandma, which is a long story anyways, my grandma heard about the meeting and took me. This is my grandma Young. So, uh, she married into the Young family. She wasn't a Young.

Are you, so are you Brigham Young's great-granddaughter?

Great.

Two greats.

Two greats. Okay.

Brigham Young was my great-great-grandpa. His son, Brigham Young Jr., apostle, was my great-grandpa. And he had about 6 wives and his third wife, fourth wife, I for— I'm not sure if they're sure of the count. Um, Abby, uh, married Brigham Jr. when she was 17 in 1887. So it was when Brigham Jr. was on the running from the law. And, um, that's, I guess, an act of defiance or something. He takes a plural wife in 1887. And, uh, my grand— I knew my great-grandma. She was alive till I was 12.

Hmm.

Abby Young. And then, uh, they had a son, Walter, who was my grandpa. So yeah, straight down the line. Uh, polygamy had very little impact on my life because I just had never, as a young person, thought it through. I just knew Abby as my great-grandma. I, I never thought of her in terms of being a plural wife, but she was a nice old lady. Uh, and Gerald's family is old-line Mormon family, was John Tanner. So, and my grandma's maiden name was Pierce. And so the Pierces were involved in Mountain Meadows Massacre. So we just have all kinds of roots that go back into the whole system. Anyways, that, I don't even know where I was at, but okay, so that's where we're at too on that part.

You know, you as a direct descendant of Brigham Young, we hear all kinds of stuff about Brigham Young, some great things, you know, we've got those priesthood books that are all focused around each of the prophets. I'm not sure if the church uses those. They did for a number of years, and Brigham Young has got his own priesthood book there. Does Brigham Young deserve the criticism, the regular common criticism that he gets of being a bad man or an ogre or as a cruel or selfish individual, or is that inaccurate? Was he a more noble man, more honorable man? Uh, what's your take on him being a, as a direct descendant of Brigham? What are your thoughts?

I think it depends on what hat he has on.

Okay.

Because if he put on his family home evening hat, I think he was probably a nice guy. But, uh, he wasn't the best husband. Um, my great-great-grandma, uh, Marianne Angel. Uh, wasn't happy with the whole deal. So, I think Brigham started out probably as a God-fearing man and probably joined Mormonism from real conviction. But I think he was corrupted by, uh, the system of Mormonism and put him on a power quest. Uh, I think power went to his head and by the time he gets to Utah, He starts exceeding the norms of dictatorship. So I see him when he's wearing his governor's hat or church leader hat. I think he's pretty stern. But most people have different sides to themselves. I mean, there are a lot of mean people that are nice to their dog, you know, so it all depends on what aspect of the life you're looking at. But to have 56 children, I don't believe that it's possible to be a good father to 56 children. I don't believe you can be a proper loving husband to 50-some-odd women. I don't think that he could be a loving husband to 16 women. He had children by 16. And even if he had only had the 16, uh, I don't think he could have been a proper husband to that many women.

Right.

So that aspect of his life, I don't respect him in those areas. Right.

Yesterday we had Greg Prince on our podcast. We've done about 6, 7, just amazing conversation with Greg. And the question I asked him yesterday, and I think it was, I was thinking about Brigham Young at the time. What was the motivating factor, do you think, in respect to Brigham wanting to have these wives, so many wives, right? Was it his genuine belief that the, uh, new and everlasting covenant of plural marriage was God's will? Was he driven by obedience to that concept, that principle, uh, you know, to have so many wives, uh, or do you think there were more, uh, other ulterior motives that drove Brigham Young to have so many wives? Was it more physical, uh, motivate— motivations, um, to gratify, you know, gratify his, his physical demands and, and desires? Or was it more of obedience? Or was it a combination of both?

Well, I think it's both. I would say to rack up those kind of numbers, when you, when you get up past 50, I mean, that's crazy. So I will say, I'm assuming he really believes this is going to make him some grandiose dictator god somewhere in the heavens later, that he's truly building this kingdom through having this many wives and children. But, uh, it doesn't help if they're pretty. I mean, it doesn't hurt if they're pretty. So a lot of them were homely and older, but a lot of them were really pretty women. Like Anna Liza Webb that married him and later divorced him. She was a beautiful woman. There were a lot of pretty— people will say to me, oh, but I saw a picture of all of his wives and they're all so homely. I said, you have to remember, you're seeing them as old women. You're not seeing them when they married him. So, uh, they, he had the ability to pick the good looking women. So I think there is a combination. It isn't, it isn't just to have a huge family in the hereafter. It's also to have pretty women around him. Uh, but he gets kind of snarky out here in Utah, you know, the one conference he gets up and chastises all the women to shut up and stop complaining, or in 2 weeks, whatever the date was, I'm going to set you all free and you got to shut up, get in line or you're out. And I mean, what a terrible sermon.

Oh, extraordinary. I remember, I think I was in the UK at the time. We came on holiday and we went to St. George. Jim Bennett shared this with you. And we took a tour of what I remember as Brigham Young's home in St. George, and, uh, there was maybe about 10, 15 on the tour, and this sister missionary was giving us the tour, and we went upstairs, and you go up to the top and you turn right, and immediately on the left is Brigham's bedroom, and then all the way along this corridor, you've got these bedrooms, if I remember it correctly, it's going back a few years, and I asked the question about how did that work? Um, I think because I was English. They probably thought I wasn't a member of the church. I was some tourist from England. Uh, but I, you know, so probably get away with asking that question, but I said, yeah, how does it work in terms of the time with, you know, with Brigham Young? What was that system? Anyway, the sister missionary didn't, she felt, she looked uncomfortable. She didn't want to answer that, but I found the whole thing, the way it was presented on the tour, it was like it was normal and it was just, that was just how it was. And he had these women that he had access to and You know, the whole thing was, I mean, I'm a convert to the church, so the whole thing is just bizarre anyhow, but you could tell that it was a question that the Sister Missionary didn't want to answer, was quite uncomfortable. And it just seemed so strange that he had this system, you know, this doctrine, this system, this organization of all these women. And I just can't imagine how that would function. And the hurt and the pain that those women must have gone through was Extraordinary. And yesterday with Greg Prince, we talked about the, the pain and suffering that many of those women, if not all of them, experienced at, at the hands of Brigham Young and, and others. Can you speak to that?

At the Brigham Young, at the Brigham Young home in St. George, he would've probably just had one wife with him. Okay. Uh, he would take a wife down there for the winter, uh, Uh, and there was one in particular, and I can't remember now the name, her name, maybe Jim knows it, but, um, and I don't even know if she had children, but there was one wife in particular that he would take to stay with him in St. George.

I don't know who that would be.

And, um, so I was down there this last this year, uh, when, when do they do the dedication of the St. George Temple? Anyways, that's when I went down to St. George and went through the B.I., the Brigham Young home again. I always go through it when I go down there and see how they're telling the story. And, uh, so, but this woman was telling about how, well, the, uh, one wife, uh, he had one wife that he, she wouldn't have used the word favored, but that, um, traveled with him and would come with him to St. George. But it's when you get to the Beehive House in Salt Lake that you see the oddity of Mormonism. When you see this whole long house with all these gables and realize each gable represents a different wife that would have lived there in the home next to the Beehive House where, that he lived in. And, uh, tours through the Beehive House have changed through the years. When I was a kid going through there, they, uh, didn't own up to polygamy at all. They would just, you'd go through, when I went through as a teen, they would talk about, uh, this was Brigham Young's home and then the, uh, bedroom and then they take you to the next bedroom and they say, and this was the wife's bedroom and this was the son's bedroom and this is the daughter's bedroom. And it never occurred to me at the time to ask which wife, which son, which daughter, because it wasn't Mary Ann Angel. It was not my great-great-grandma. All right. That's extraordinary. So it, it was a crazy system.

Wow. I know Jim wants to probably jump in with a couple of questions and I don't wanna hog all the questions here, but what does, if I may ask, what, if any, if any time, what does a family reunion look like for you? I mean, you've got, we've got, uh, just this, I mean, 50-odd wives, countless children, you know, from Brigham Young. And then obviously they have families, they have families, families, et cetera. This must run into hundreds of, of, uh, related people that are connected.

I think I'm probably related to half the state, uh, between Gerald and I and polygamy on both of our families, you know, it's just, When I had the bookstore, I'd have people come in and say, oh, I'm related to you. I did my genealogy. That's right. Third or fourth, fifth cousin or something. Isn't that extraordinary?

Yeah.

My grandma and grandpa had, uh, 9 children and, uh, following the good old Mormon line. Oh, by the way, I think my grandpa was a polygamist, Grandpa Young. Uh, When, uh, because he was raised in a polygamous home with Brigham Jr. And, uh, so anyways, when he marries my grandma, I want this to be around the 1905 time period or something. After he marries my grandma, he wanted to go into polygamy. Of course, this is, uh, right around the time of the Second Manifesto. And my grandma says, no way. And he said, oh, you know, This is the thing we got to live. And my grandma pulled rank on him. She had a vision. Uh, she was very creative. She goes into this swoon. This is how she tells me the story. She goes into this trance and her spirit is up in the corner of the room and she's looking down on them sitting on the couch. And, uh, God tells her, you are not to go into polygamy. And so then next thing she knew, Walter's shaking her. Sylvia, Sylvia, what's the matter? Sylvia, speak to me. And she comes through too and she says, oh, Walter, God has shown me we are not to go into polygamy. Well, now the family all thought that put the end to it. However, after my grandma died and my mom and my sister are going through her papers, they find a postcard addressed to My dear husband, hope you can come see the boys before Christmas, blah, blah, blah. Your loving wife, so-and-so. It was not my grandma. And my sister saw this postcard and she grabs my mom and she says, Mom, who is this? This isn't grandma's writing. And my mom looks at it. So evidently there's some other young family out there that, uh, It's one of those times when you wish you had access to all the people that submitted their DNA for FamilySearch. If I got a bunch more cousins than I realized, but I have a lot of cousins, uh, even just from my grandma's 9 kids. I, we had a group of cousins meet and we had 18 cousins, uh, at Cracker Barrel, and that wasn't all of us. That was the ones we could gather up here in Utah, and we have more out of state. So it's a big family. But you had asked about how that affected the family. Um, we did not have a lot of association with the rest of the Young family. Um, And I'm not sure what all the reasons were. My grandpa died before my grandma and she remarried. And so I think that kind of separated her and her kids from a lot of the young, uh, get-together stuff. And grandma's, uh, my 3 uncles that went off to World War II. Ended up coming home drinking and smoking. And although they stayed here in Utah and were nominal Mormons, but they weren't living the Word of Wisdom. And I think World War II had a real effect on my grandma's kids of putting them out into the world where they ended up not as interested in Mormonism. My folks were married in the temple. And, uh, one of my aunts was married in the temple, but most of the family were just nominal Mormon. So our young family didn't see a lot of the rest of the young family. But at our cousins' reunions, it used to be 50 years ago, kind of half and half active, non-active. And over the years it shifted to where, uh, Uh, now when we have family get together, they'll sit around and play, um, blackjack or something and have a beer. So our family reunions have, uh, changed. We still have devout Mormons though in the family, the young, in my part of the Young family that, uh, come to family stuff and we all get along. Uh, no one makes an issue out of it one way or another. And the good Mormon ones just to have their Coke and the rest of us have coffee and no one says anything. This is, so we've learned how to be family without making religion, uh, an issue.

Yeah.

Good. Good.

Well, so are we related? I'm just curious because I, I mean, I don't know of any connection directly to the Youngs. Uh, I'm a McKay. My middle name is McKay. David O is my great-grandfather. I'm also a Grant. Uh, Heber J. is my great-grandfather on my father's side, and David O. is my mother's grandfather. Uh, so I'm wondering if there's got to be somewhere where our family lineages line up.

Probably, if your family had any connection with the, the Arizona Saints. Uh, my Uh, great-grandpa James Pierce, that was part of the Mountain Meadow Massacre thing. He helped settle Taylor, Arizona. And so the Pierces are big down there. That's where my grandma met Walter Young. The Youngs were down in Arizona for a while. And, um, so, and then in Utah, our family has, uh, been knocking around Utah since the beginning. So yeah, I'm, if we looked, we probably related somewhere in that tree because we come from polygamous branches and that just seems to, all those pioneer families seem to intermingle along the way.

Well, you know, I, so Daniel H. Wells is my Heber J. married Daniel H. Wells' daughter. So Daniel H. Wells would be my great-great-grandfather. And Jedediah M. Grant, uh, yeah, so I, I don't know. Jedediah was one of Brigham's counselors. Uh, I think Daniel H. So the Daniel H. Wells story that I always tell everybody is, um, Daniel H. Wells was a practicing lawyer at the time of Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, before he joined the church and went west. And the family story is that Daniel H. Wells met Abraham Lincoln and said to him, "You, sir, are a dead man, for I swore to myself if I ever met a man who was uglier than I was, I would shoot him on sight." To which Abraham Lincoln, taking one look at Daniel H. Wells, said, Shoot away. If you're, if I'm uglier than you, I don't want to live.

Very good.

And I was told that story by my uncle who told me how much I look like Daniel H. Wells.

So, oh dear. Well, I hope I don't look like Brigham Young. I'll tell you though, my uncles do. Well, they're all dead now, but my uncles looked like Brigham Young and I have cousins, male cousins that, uh, in their younger years looked like younger pictures of Brigham Young. And, uh, one cousin in particular. And, uh, I always thought, what, you know, if you doubted we were Youngs, let me show you my cousin. I'd bring him out and you'd say, yeah, that's him.

Oh, wow.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Could we go back to the Salamander letter just briefly? You know, when you did your research and you published your research and your findings and you put your, I'm not sure, a disclaimer, you were trying to, you know, Gerald was, was, had this, he was able to identify and, and, and raise these concerns to publish, et cetera. And you put your piece in there. What happened after that? Because the, you know, the, you speak very convincingly and appropriately about the credibility of your research because as former member, as a former member, I resigned. I was frustrated and angry at times that the church was not honest, dishonest deliberately, had covered up, concealed, et cetera, important facts and truths related to the church, and therefore the church lacked credibility. I couldn't take it seriously on quite a few things. And so the need to make sure that the research that you were involved in, and the same goes for anyone else, to make sure that any research we do is absolutely reliable and trustworthy and honest, you know, for, for integrity purposes. When you published your findings, what was the react— going beyond the, the initial reaction, what was the next steps then when you flagged this up and there was now the potential that the, uh, the documents, uh, had the potential to be forgeries? What happened after that?

Well, we got a lot of pushback by everybody. And, um, Gerald wrote up his, um, uh, little pamphlet on putting together how he felt someone had used these other sources and used phrases to compose the Salamander Letter. And he wanted me to take it up to Sunstone. That year. Um, so I don't know what year this would be, '81, '82. I'm not, I can't remember now what year it was, but, um, Sunstone was meeting at the Hotel Utah at that time. Well, was it the Hotel Utah at that time? Anyways, you know the building I mean, what used to be the Hotel Utah. Uh, the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. Uh, anyway, Sunstone was having their conference there, and Gerald wanted me to take this pamphlet up and pass it around to everybody to show that, to warn everyone that he thought that this document wasn't authentic. And, uh, so I did that. I went up and passed out Gerald's pamphlet. My heart was not in this, but as being an obedient Mormon wife, I went up. And, uh, the next day, I believe it was, Mark Hoffman comes down to the bookstore. And he comes in and he says, Sandra, how could you guys come out against my pamphlet? Uh, you of all people, uh, I thought would, uh, it would be so excited at my find and just taken aback by you putting this out and that's going on, not trying to make me feel guilty about this all. And I said, well, all I can say, Mark, is Gerald has very convinced that there's something wrong with the document, that it doesn't look like It, uh, it doesn't look like an ancient or a, you know, a 100-year-old document. It looks like someone's copying. And, uh, Mari says, oh yeah, but I mean, look at the paper, the ink, everything checks out, you know, and it's, how can you question this? And I said, well, for one thing, you have no, uh, paper trail on it. Where'd it come from? How did you get it? Who owned it before? Why wasn't it known by anyone? And I didn't feel he was giving me satisfactory answers, but that wasn't convincing me that it was a forgery. I could just see he was very cagey about talking about his sources. So he starts telling me, well, if you guys keep making issues out of this stuff, uh, you're going to hurt my trade and Let me tell you, uh, I am in touch with the Thomas Bullock family, and Thomas Bullock was Brigham Young's financial secretary, and the family has all these financial records that Bullock had kept, and I'm trying to negotiate to get these papers, and so this would be really great. This is gonna probably really, um, cause the church some headaches when all this financial stuff comes about, out, how Brigham was, uh, using church money and capitalizing off of it all. And, uh, so I'm sitting there taking it all in. Oh, wow. That's really interesting. Okay. And well, anyways, he left. Gerald comes home. He'd been somewhere. And I said, oh, you missed Mark. Oh, you should have been here. Uh, and so Gerald wants to know what all was discussed. And I tell him about, well, I told him about your questions and doubts. You know, and I says, but, uh, he was cautioning me that we shouldn't, uh, make too much out in the news about this because, uh, he won't be able to get this deal through with the Bullock family if they have any thought that he's a crook or something, you know. Um, and so I give Gerald this whole spiel that Mark's given me about the Brigham Young financial papers. And Gerald just looked at me and he says, And I have a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you. And I'm like, what? I said, I says, Gerald, uh, I mean, that could be true. There really could be such papers. And he says, no, Marx put you on. That must be another one of his sales gimmicks. So Gerald at that point was just really, um, convinced. Mark was not necessarily the forger, but a crook. But at that time, we had not thought of Hoffman as that clever. Uh, Gerald was thinking more in lines of Lynn Jacobs, Lynn, uh, Mark Hoffman's sidekick. And Lynn seemed much more creative. And intelligent and all, that if someone were making up this kind of stuff, he looked like a more likely suspect than Mark. So Gerald wasn't necessarily saying Mark's the forger, but that he was a crooked businessman selling forgeries. Right, right. Well, after the bombings and all that investigation, we talked to the detectives about all of this stuff. And asked them about Lynn Jacobs. And, uh, the detectives told us, no, we looked in every way we could at Lynn's financial records, and we could not find any financial tie between him and Mark. They were just friends. If they could have found anything, they would have put him on the charges as well, but they could not find any connection. But that was Mark's genius, that he looked plain and not that shrewd, that you didn't think of him as that smart. But I'm even astounded now when I look at Mark's, uh, writing, when, like, when he'd write to his wife or to write to someone, it's chicken scratch, terrible. Handwriting, not hardly writing, printing. And, and then when you look at the Salamander letter and that smooth hand, it's hard for me looking at Mark's different correspondence and adding that up to the skill I see in his writing samples. I mean, I still find it fascinating that there could be that kind of difference. Um, but it's funny, I was looking at this the other day that after the bombings, you know, he injured his knee and his hand in the bombing that affected his right hand.

He also had some kind of injury in prison. I've heard now that, that he's not capable of writing.

He tried suicide and laid in the jail for a whole day, I think, not all night. Effect of circulation and stuff. But then in prison, uh, he later, or maybe it was during his trial hearing, he wrote some stuff with his left hand. And, uh, he said he could write better with his left hand than the right hand. And I thought, well, that's curious. I wonder if he could write equally well with both hands before all this started.

Yeah. Yeah.

Did he, uh, fool us all by maybe using his left hand to write and when he's doing his forgeries, but left, I'm left-handed, left-handers slant their letters different than right-handed. And, uh, I haven't done a particular study of the shift of his handwriting. But, uh, just casually looking at it the other day, it didn't look to me like a left-hander's writing, but I don't know how much my writing looks like a left-hander's writing. But, um, it is a— there are differences when you write left or right. And Mark's handwriting is a curious part of the story. It doesn't match the skill needed for the documents on the surface. So what's the answer to that? I don't know, but we were not able to find another, uh, man working with him to do the, uh, invention of the writing skills.

Did, did the church, uh, What happened next when, when the church leaders became aware of the potential that this was a fraud, did they approach you? Did you sit down with the Mormons?

Oh heavens, no, no, no. The Mormons, uh, they wouldn't have been seen with me did their life depend on it. Um, the BYU guys and, uh, Dallin Oaks and, and crowd all had to come up with these wonderful explanations of how salamanders could represent angels. And the, this, these, isn't it glorious? We have this wonderful illustration of the light coming out of the fire and they could romanticize this whole thing to make it sound like a real testimony meeting. And I'm thinking, really, salamanders? And we're gonna, we're gonna put them in part of the gospel here. Um, so it was, they were very creative in trying to some way make this sound like it didn't change the narrative. You could fit this with angels some way. And that's what makes it so funny is when it all turned out to be forgeries, you go back and you read their defenses at the time and it's just kind of comical. Um, but it was a hard time for the church. It was a hard time for his historians. This whole period with Mark Hoffman forced the church to look at the magic background of the Smiths. That's what made, um, Mike Quinn do his Early Mormonism and the Magic Worldview. And it— that all forced the church to take another look at the early life of the Smith family. So in over the years, we've seen a change in how they word all that to where, uh, and this even affects the First Vision stuff, so that they've had to, to smooth out all the wrinkles, you have to fuzzy up the story. I grew up with a delineation of exactly the time when everything happened. Everything had dates and, and you knew it was all exact. It was just 100% told one way. Now it's like, oh, well, you know, we can meld together all of the different accounts of the First Vision and some way make an amalgamation that makes this beautiful picture. And they don't, you don't have to worry about a timeline. It's, it's all fuzzy. They're making everything more fuzzy now because it's just a general scope. Of overview of everything. That wasn't what I was raised on. I was raised on very emphatic, absolute Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruce McConkie kind of stuff.

Right, right, right.

This is a different world.

Yeah, pretty different world.

Yeah. Um, what, with all of your experience and your research and your insights, was there any one thing that triggered your doubts, questions, concerns, and convinced you that the church wasn't what it claimed to be? Was it a series of major things like the, you know, the Salamander Letter where you've got prophets? We have Dallin H. Oaks right now, who's the prophet of the church, and prophets are supposed to see things that we can't see. They're supposed to know things that we can't know., and they're supposed to be able to— they get revealed to the things that the regular member can't, don't see or feel. Was there any one thing that triggered your doubt in the authenticity of the church, or was it a series of things? And what, if there was several things, what were those major issues that you had at the time?

The major jumping off point was reading David Whitmer's pamphlet, An Address to All Believers in Christ. And, um, so this is, we're back to 1959 here. Yep. Where David Whitmer held up to me as a seminary and institute student as, um, his dying testimony was to the Book of Mormon. And held up as the epitome of, uh, a testimony you could rely on. This man was in the room where it happened. And I'm reading his pamphlet, and it's all different than regular Mormonism. You got a rock and a hat. You don't have him sitting there looking at the plates. You don't have him using the Urim and Thummim. I, there isn't any priesthood in the early church. Uh, nothing is this, nothing sounded familiar to what I had heard at church. He talked, when he talked about the changes in the revelations, that disturbed me. I went down to Sam Weller's bookstore and bought a Doctrine and Covenants and a copy of the 1833 Book of Commandments. And I took it back to my grandma's house and my grandma and I sat there day after day reading the Book of Commandments against the Doctrine and Covenants. And doing that, I absolutely, uh, was shattered that if God's speaking to Joseph Smith and he's got a scribe there writing it down, how can they go back later and revise Revelations from God. Thus saith the Lord. And it, and this wasn't hearsay. I wasn't reading apostate literature. I'm, I'm looking at the documents. When Gerald and I started asking questions at church from different people, oh, you're reading anti-Mormon literature. No, I've been reading the Doctrine and Covenants and the Book of Commandments and Then we heard about changes in the Book of Mormon. So, uh, we started studying that. Now, we didn't have a photo reprint of the Book of Mormon at that time, but there was, um, well, let's see, I guess the Woods reprint would have come out about that time. Wilford Woods, um, Joseph Smith Begins His Work, Volume 1, where it's a photo of the first edition. But anyways, we had read about the 4 changes where the word "the Son of" is added in on the nature of God. And Gerald had brought up to me that, um, the whole Godhood was in question because the testimony of the 3 witnesses was to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which is one God. And the Book of Mormon seemed to teach one God. So how do we reconcile this with the First Vision? So our very beginning studies were in Mormon documents, not anti-Mormon literature. Well, I guess the church would consider David Whitmer as anti-Mormon, but, uh, how do you separate his testimony into two parts and say the first half of his book's true, the second half's all lies? Well, if I'm going to believe this guy, then I need to look at everything he said about Joseph Smith and early Mormonism. Why did he leave the church? Was there any truth to that? I mean, you want to hold him up as the guy I'm supposed to believe why I should be a Mormon, but you don't want to read the rest of what he said. So that was the kickstart to everything was to determine, is David Whitmer telling the truth? Is this verifiable? And it brought up all sorts of questions about early Mormonism. It brought up questions about the First Vision. We were dealing with the First Vision problems in '59. Our meetings with, uh, my meeting with my bishop when I was asking questions that, uh, year before I formally asked for my name to be taken off. Uh, a lot of that centered around problems with the First Vision. We didn't know about all the accounts they have today, but we could see there was some kind of problem. The early church statements didn't seem to support this father-son developed theology of God and Jesus being separate people. The early Mormons seemed to just have one God. I mean, yes, we found out about the Lectures on Faith in Lecture 5 that the Father is a being of spirit and the Son's a being of tabernacle. Well, that didn't fit First Vision scenario, the way I was taught First Vision, that we knew from that, that God the Father had a physical form. So our starting point to all of this centered, I guess you'd say, around the nature of God. Is the God of Mormonism's First Vision story valid, or are we looking at this all wrong? But it started with, in essence, with David Whitmer.

Sandra, I, I, Jim Bennett and I could listen to you all day. Honestly, I, I've learned so much and your research methodology and skill and aptitude and intelligence in researching and finding truth and facts, especially someone like myself and so many others who devoted, you know, left home and got thrown out and was homeless for a few nights and served a mission and sacrificed so much on something that I just believed to be completely accurate and reliable. And now, you know, a few years ago, learned that, you know, it isn't. And, and the devastation, the heartbreak that I felt when I realized that the church, uh, in many ways wasn't as honest or authentic. I'm so— we're so grateful that you've taken time to be with us today. We, we're at the end of our, uh, conversation here, podcast. Again, I could, I could do this for longer, and, and that would be selfish on my part, but Jim Bennett, do you have any closing thoughts, comments before we close?

No, I'm just very honored to have met you. You're a legend. And I think you— your integrity shines through. I mean, I'm still— unlike Ian, I am still an active believing member of the church. But I think one of the things that the church needs to do is confront all of the messiness, uh, that you and your husband have been so diligent about bringing to light. I, I don't think we do the church any favors by trying to bury reality and trying to bury the difficulties. I, I, I, I do personally see a path forward in terms of faith and belief, even recognizing a lot of the challenges that you have raised, but But I think you have been an essential part of the conversation, and, and I think you are a force to be reckoned with. And I, I think the church is slowly starting to re— I mean, you look at the Gospel Topics Essays, you look at the Joseph Smith Papers, you look at all of the things that the church is now doing to sort of move towards greater transparency. And you, you have to say, look, Sandra and Gerald Tanner were there first. You know, you, you, you were the guys that sort of paved the way to towards an honest history of the church. And I, I mean, to, to, I mean, to talk about anti-Mormonism or any of that sort of thing. I mean, certainly your story with Mark Hoffman demonstrates that you are interested in truth. You are interested in facts. You are interested in history. And long term, I think everybody benefits, including the church, when the truth comes to light. I think anything where we try to sort of bury the truth or say some things that are true are not very useful— somebody said that once— it does not do the church any favors. And I just think that you are a treasure. And I'm just so grateful for, for your integrity and for your brilliance. And I very much appreciate the opportunity to visit with you here.

Well, thank you very much. That's very kind of you. And I, I, from my side, I would give kudos to the Church Historian's Office finally being able to start telling that what actually happened and, uh, winning the day over the powers that be that tried to keep everything, uh, into the back vault. And I'm so glad they have done the Joseph Smith Papers. There's such a valuable research tool. The odd thing is, as I've had Mormons tell me, That's anti-Mormon. They don't believe the church put it out. Right. Oh dear, how things have changed.

Yeah, I, I've, I had those conversations when I was on the Stake Presidency. Sandra, you are remarkable. It's an honor. It really is personally, professionally to have, have met with you again. I'm sorry for the things I thought and said about you. Um, I am so grateful to have met with you. And again, Inside Out podcast, these conversations, so many of the people that have these online conversations, so important conversations, are doing so on the very foundation that you built, you and Gerald built. You are the originals, you are the first. And we, you know, our listeners will be thoroughly appreciative of the conversation we had today. Thank you so much. Our love to you and your family. And so, on behalf of Inside Out, all of our listeners, I want to thank you, Jim, for your always insightful comments and contributions. Just really enjoy with you, Jim, doing these podcasts. And again, Sandra, a very special thank you for taking time to come on Inside Out and have these conversations with us. Thank you, Jim Bennett.