A Conversation with Stephen Hunter

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here with the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir?

I'm doing very fine today, Jim. How are you?

I am doing very well, particularly since this, this next guest is one of my favorite people on planet Earth. And I am really excited to be able to— he's got such an amazing perspective. And we're going to talk about some things that I think are going to be really compelling and things that we've not discussed on this podcast before. Inside Out, please welcome Stephen Hunter. Stephen, how are you?

I'm well, and, uh, just very excited to be with the Honorable Jim Bennett, who I've known for a long time. And I've heard Ian and you banter back and forth on this show, and, uh, have— I just think it's so cool that the two of you have decided to do this because it's such a big deal, I think, for, for the LDS culture to hear Perspectives on all sides of this real deep cultural spiritual battle that's going on in, in this time. And it just is, it's a needed thing. So it's, it's, it's just an honor and just really humbled to even be having this conversation.

Oh, well, the honor is all ours. The honor is certainly mine. I mean, we've known each other now, what, 20-something years?

Yeah. Way too long. Way too long. We've got, we've got way grayer hair than we did when we first met. That's for sure.

That is, that's absolutely correct. So Stephen, your background professionally is, uh, as a lobbyist, uh, working in politics. Uh, I think you were my unofficial campaign manager when I ran for the state legislature in 2006.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And yeah, that was a, that was quite the, the journey, wasn't it? And, and you know, Wayne Niederhauser, who won, is now just a dear friend and a really really wonderful guy and he works in the homelessness office now. And it's just, it's cool how life evolves and you went on your path. He went on his path. I went on my path, but yeah, that was, that was kind of our, our, our love story origins.

Jim was, I guess, so something like that. I could know. I mean, you, you, you've always been a dear friend, but it's been very interesting. And I think the thing that I would be compelling to talk about is your spiritual journey has taken me, taken you in some very interesting places. Do you want to just sort of give an overview of, of where you are and where you've been?

Yeah. If, if it, if it goes on too long, just start yelling at me. And so I was born and raised in Ogden, Utah, and which has got a little bit of a different cultural vibe to it, I think, than most places in Utah or in Mormondom. There's, there's kind of a blue-collar element to it. There's an ultra-conservative element to it. And then there's kind of this really liberal core that exists in, in, in Ogden area and, uh, really diverse ethnically. Uh, just a great place to grow up. And my parents were both, uh, really active LDS and we went to church most Sundays. Uh, and, uh, but my parents were also both Democrats, which was, was kind of an anomaly, um, in Utah for me. And so I was raised with a little bit of a different perspective on just how we see other people. And I feel like that was a real blessing for me being raised in, in the church and having believed in all the things the church teaches and also kind of having this different social political perspective, I think started to shape who I was as a person. And I remember at a really young age just wanting to know, what in the hell am I doing here? What is the point of all of this? There's got to be a reason. There has to be a reason why I'm here. Why, why are there wars? Why is there death? And, uh, it was just the earliest questions I, I asked myself and when I was 7 years old, my dad, uh, drove me to New York with him for— he, you know, he didn't travel very much, but this trip he went to New York for some meetings and he took me out there with him. And I went to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium and I saw this, this player named Rickey Henderson who just died last December. And I couldn't believe what I was watching. I watched this African-American man play the game of baseball with such panache and flair. I'd just never seen anything like, I mean, I was a little kid and so those things are very impressionable to us. The reason why this is important is I became obsessed with Rickey Henderson at the age of 7 years old. And the reason why Rickey is such an influence is because he was African American. So that even, that was like the roots of me starting to think about social justice. Like, why are people, uh, not equal in this country? And, and how did that come about? And who is Martin Luther King? And when I was, when I was 7 years old, I, I went home and memorized the I Have a Dream speech after I saw that baseball game. It was just kind of a weird spiritual progression, maybe not typical, but I lay that background for you so you can understand these questions about social justice and, and at a really young age wondering why, what's the purpose? Why, what are these systems in the world that, that tug and pull at us? And I, I wanted to know. And so, uh, the vehicle for me to know was Mormonism, cuz that's what I was raised in. And, uh, and so I, I utilize it as much as possible, but I remember like 10 years old really thinking deeply and having long conversations with my parents about Wait a minute, so Black people couldn't have the priesthood until the year I was born? I don't understand, like, help me understand that. And they would be like, well, it was just, it was really, really sad, but God spoke and now they can, you know? And so it was like, okay, well, what was wrong in the first place? You know? And like, these things just existed at a really young age and the answers that I had from my priesthood leaders and adults that were LDS, they just weren't good enough for me. So I just felt this push to go figure it out on my own, to read whatever I could. I remember in high school, I, I, I was like really into Malcolm X and I didn't eat pork for a year because I thought maybe I was supposed to become a member of the Nation of Islam, which was totally not something that a white man like me could do. Um, I'm just saying I've always been a weird guy and have thought through things differently. And, um, went on a mission to Perth, Australia and loved every minute of that experience. I loved, I loved that I got to meet so many different people that believe so many different things. I learned about, I learned about crazy Pentecostal speaking in tongues. And this stuff I'd never seen. I met Hindus and Buddhists and Muslims and I just started to, and I started to read Nibley and, um, I just, my worldview just started to open up. And there was this, uh, this man that we met, uh, on my mission. His name was Steve. That's all I remember. And he was a former Mormon who, um, who was gay and had left the church because he was gay. Australian-born Australian guy. And we just tracked it into him like it was a crazy thing, but he was a Buddhist. And so he would have us come over every Wednesday night and he would make us vegetarian food and he would talk to us about meditation. And, you know, I had no idea what that was. And he talked to us about the Bhagavad Gita and, and these these mystical pieces of Eastern spiritual teaching that I just thought were so beautiful, and they really resonated with me. And so at that time, I'm trying to walk this newfound, like, meditation, mindfulness. I mean, this is in the late '90s. I'm trying to weave that into my beliefs about the church, beliefs about Joseph Smith, and how to make it all fit. Um, fast forward, you know, another decade, I come back, I graduate from college and, uh, I get my first job, uh, interning as a lobbyist for another lobbyist. And then that's just kind of how my life took me. I ended up working in politics. But the thing that stood out to me when I started working in politics was, man, I was kind of raised in a Democrat home and my parents were always like, You know, Bob Dole is such an a-hole and Richard Nixon was a piece of crap. And, you know, but then I'm working with all these Republican politicians and I'm like, these guys are not, they're not bad guys. They're good people. Like they're amazing people. And I, I loved that. You know, I loved working on campaigns for people that ideologically I had no solid ground with. I just love them as humans and I feel very blessed for that opportunity that just changed my mindset, you know? And I think in this, this time of our crazy world, it would be really interesting if more people did that. However, I'll go back to the story. I, I got into politics. I, you know, I did lots of campaigns and including, uh, the near successful Jim Bennett. Yeah, we were, we were like a couple votes, weren't we? Um, politics votes. Then right after that, I met a woman named Mia Love, um, and, uh, and I started to have lots of conversations with her and ended up working on her campaign with some really great people. And that took me to some places that a boy from Ogden, Utah had no business being in. I mean, she just rose like a star and, um, had so many opportunities to meet so many incredible people. And it just really opened my eyes to politics. Like, I'm sitting in offices of people who really run the world, and I'm looking at them and listening to them speak, and I'm like, man, you are not who I thought you were. On one hand, you're learning in politics, like, these are human beings and they have heartbeats and they have souls. And on the other hand, you're learning there's nothing really special about them. They're just, they're just people, and they're flawed because they believe their thing is more correct than the person they're fighting against. And morally, they're very questionable people. And, um, you know, it's just, it was just a really interesting experience. So I started to have like this crisis about my identity and what I was doing with my life in politics. And, um, I remember saying this prayer asking, asking God to like solve this angst I had inside of me. And how, how am I not feeling so close to you, God? How, how do I become more spiritual? And it was this really deep, heartfelt prayer. The day after that prayer, I got on a flight to DC to go meet Mia for some stuff. And, um, I sat next to the author of The Shack. Um, do you ever read the book The Shack? Do you know the book The Shack? It's pretty, pretty popular. Pretty popular Christian fiction, but it was this, uh, it's like in the top 20 bestsellers of all time, like of any book. Uh, they made, they made a movie of it and I had read the book and it was this kind of this wild, um, take on, on the Christian Trinity. So the story is about this guy who, uh, his daughter is, is murdered, um, in this shack in the woods and it, it devastates this man. And after several years, one day this guy gets a note in his mailbox and it says, his, the guy's name is McKenzie. It says, McKenzie, meet me in the shack on Saturday. God. So McKenzie runs up the mountains to, to, uh, to find out what whoever this huckster is, this crazy person who's written him this note. And he goes to the shack where his daughter was murdered and he bursts open the door. And instead of finding, um, the killer of his daughter, he finds the Trinity. But the Trinity is like kind of heavyset Black woman who's cooking dinner in the, in the kitchen and, uh, a really cool like hipster guy who's representative of Jesus. So God the Father is representative of this African-American woman cooking dinner in the kitchen. Jesus is this cool hipster guy. And then the Holy Spirit is like this young, beautiful woman. And so the point of the book is like, God comes to us in the forms that we need the most at the times that are the most comforting to us and the ways that are the most comforting to us. This kind of stuff really just, it just started to crack me open. And my relationship with Paul Young, this author, became a real deep thing to me. And one night, uh, the night I met him, he grabbed me by the face as he said goodbye like this, grabbed me by the face and he said, if you want to find out who you are, Steve Hunter has to be at zero. And, uh, I'd never heard anything like that. Like, you know, I'd read about ego death in Eastern mystical things, but I never thought about it for myself. What is, what is this Steve Hunter at zero thing? So I remember I went, uh, and I just asked God to take me to zero. And, uh, which was a huge mistake. That was dumb. Very dumb thing to do. Don't, because, because I believe, I believe that, um, you know, whatever you want to refer to God as, I believe that it's love first and foremost. And I believe that that love wants us to find the truth. And so, um, the next day after I said that prayer, my life kind of blew up because, because first and foremost, I'm an idiot, um, and there are some consequences to some things I've done in my past. And, um, so that set me down this road of like, what now? Now that I've been cut off at the knees and resetting my spiritual existence. Uh, I still believed in the church. I still believed in, in Joseph Smith and the history of the church. And so I was trying to like weave all this together. And I remember reading Graham Hancock's book Supernatural. I don't know if you guys know it, but it's this big tome about the history of, of psychedelics, uh, throughout time and how prevalent they have been. And at the very end of the book, he talks about how possibly even Mormon founder Joseph Smith used psychedelics. And, and I was like, wow, what? That's crazy. So I just started to research ayahuasca and psychedelics because I had tried lots of other things. And, um, so for a few years I researched it, stayed active Mormon, tried to live the best life I could. And, um, try and be as close to God as I could, but I eventually found, uh, uh, a ceremony where I, I did psychedelics in, in 2016. It's kind of crazy. One of the nights, one of the first nights I did it was the night Trump was elected for the first time. Um, which was a crazy, crazy experience. Crazy experience. Um, beautiful too, you know. So what I encountered in these medicines, uh, these plant medicines, is something, something beyond this like thinking mind that is constantly like running, you know, chattering to us, telling us what to do, what not to do, um, here's this idea, here's this plan. It was something beyond all of that that you, that you step into, but somehow it's still you. It's just, it's like a more complete version of, of this small egotistical thinking mind. And so my encounter with psychedelics happened and, and, uh, I went to do psychedelics for two reasons. Number one, I wanted to know God. I wanted to finally know like what, just show yourself to me. Like, can we please get this over with? I've been looking for a very long time for you and I would like you to tell me. That happened. Number 2, I want to know if I should stay in the church. And my answer was, yes, you should stay in the church. And so I did. And then was called to be an elders quorum president, and then was called to be a bishop. And yeah, it's been a crazy, crazy journey. And then, um, we can get into the story why I left, um, being bishop, but that was, uh, that's what led me kind of back through, um, a few experiences with psychedelics and then eventually kind of a dark night of the soul experience these last few years. And then, uh, last, last October I was baptized an Orthodox Christian. So, uh, which is a It's a fairly long way of putting the story, but there's the context.

Stephen, what is psychedelics?

What is psychedelics? I would say that it's any encounter, um, with a visionary state or, uh, I wouldn't even say that it's, it requires ingesting anything. I would say that, that a psychedelic experience is something that's kind of been like hippified, like you, the hippies use the term and it's made it sound what I, I would say psychedelics is the encounter with the visionary state. And most people I think would say psychedelics are a medicine of sort to help, help you expand your your mind.

But you're saying that you don't necessarily need, uh, a drug or medicine. This can be done through, uh, other means then?

Yeah, I would, and I would, I would advocate for the other means, um, far more than ingesting anything because I—

Meditation kind of thing? No. Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Okay.

Interesting. Yeah.

Well, Stephen, Steve, as you're talking about this, I'm thinking you were a bishop at the time when you were approached by Rolling Stone magazine. We have a common friend, a man by the name of Steve Urquhart, who was the Senate majority whip in the Utah legislature. Steve and I were neighbors when I lived down in St. George. We used to have Sunday dinner every week together with his family. His kids are the same age as my kids. And he ended up leaving the church and creating essentially his own church. Uh, it's called the Divine Assembly, and they refer to the Divine Assembly with the psilocybin sacrament. It's essentially a legal framework that allows for, uh, using psilocybin mushrooms, uh, legally or without fear of prosecution. But Rolling Stone approached Steve to do an article about that. And you and I are both— we both sat down with that reporter. Steve recommended me as somebody that was on the inside of the church. I actually spoke to this reporter in the basement of the Tabernacle. She came to Tabernacle choir rehearsal and Mike Levitt said, oh, you're talking to a reporter? You can come down here and talk in the basement. And I thought, I'm not sure you know what we're going to be talking about. But you're quoted rather extensively in that article. You're quoted as a— you were a serving bishop at the time, correct?

Uh-huh. And yeah, that was a really intense experience for me personally, deciding whether or not to do that. At first, I wanted to be anonymous, but by the time the article was ready to come out, I had gone through enough where I was ready to leave being bishop and, um, and, and I just said, yeah, please use my name. I, I would, I would like that. And I, I don't think that made some people happy, which is, which is fine. Um, but yeah, that was a, it was a really, on a lot of levels, it was a very, it was a really difficult thing to do.

Was that sort of the catalyst for your actual departure from the church?

One of the things. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I, I honestly think the catalyst was right before I got called to be bishop. I have a, I have an uncle who, uh, took his own life in just on December 30th, 2019. And I was called to be a bishop just a few short weeks after that. And I was really close to this uncle. We, uh, he was, He was gay and lived in Kaysville, Utah and owned a flower shop and had struggled with the church and his battles with his own, his own demons from his childhood and trying to figure his life out. He was 72 years old. And when he took his life, and that was really devastating to me. And then immediately after that, I got called to be bishop and COVID happened. And there was all kinds of stuff going on with that and some disagreements with how that should or shouldn't have been handled by priesthood leaders. And then, um, and then I met Andrew Garfield, um, thanks to, thanks to Troy Williams and some other good people that I think we all know. And Andrew came to my ward to research his role in Under the Banner of Heaven. And, you know, that was a little bit of a, of a hiccup. And started some interesting conversations with, uh, some people in the church. And so I think that the catalyst was like lots of things building to that. And then the crescendo was the Rolling Stone article. Um, and when that, when that came out, I had already decided that it was, it was time for me to go.

Did, did the Rolling Stone article mention the fact that you were using psychedelics?

That I had, well, not using, but that I had been to ceremony. Yeah.

That you had been to ceremony.

Yeah.

I mean, did, did you come under fire for that from priesthood leaders?

Uh, no, not priesthood leaders, but, but people in my world. Yes. So you go from, you go from being a bishop, which is kind of a big deal in Utah, right? Where you know, it just, it just comes with its own natural, like, oh, you're a bishop, that must mean you're an awesome person, you know? And, um, which I'm not. I'm not an awesome person. I, I would argue, uh, and so I don't know. I think, I think culturally, I think in your career that it plays a role even though it shouldn't. And it's really got nothing to do with it. It just does. And so it was far more of that world. Oh, well, Steve Hunter, the guy who was a bishop, now he's just like a, he's a drug user and he's like this weirdo guy that, you know, like all that stuff was the result. But the priesthood leaders were not, you know, to be honest with you, the priesthood leaders were very kind. They didn't like what I was doing, but they were always very kind.

Well, so, um, I, I'm really fascinated with so much of what you've said here, and I'm fascinated with the idea. There's a thesis going around that, and I think, I don't know if that's the book that you cited, but the idea that Joseph Smith and the early Latter-day Saints were using psychedelics, or that psychedelics were a part of early church history, particularly in the dedication of the Kirtland Temple. There's been talk about the idea they passed around wine, and then people are having all of these visions. Do you think that psychedelics were a part of early church history?

I honestly, I personally, I don't care if they do. That was the impetus for me to to take the leap to go search, research this stuff. But I don't know if there's even enough evidence to do that. I know there's a book, I think I mentioned it to you the other day, Jim, it's called Hearts Made Glad. I think this guy wrote it in the '70s and he, you know, he attempts to build the bridge between psychedelic use, especially the night where everybody saw Christ in the Kirtland Temple. Um, he tries to draw those connections with psychedelics, you know, that I think the, the, the wine buckets or whatever, the, the barrels of wine that were sort of there. Um, I, I, I think Joseph Smith certainly, uh, was capable of finding them and using them. Whether he did or not, I don't know that we can know. And I just don't know that it matters. What do you think?

Well, it's a fascinating thesis. I mean, there isn't evidence one way or the other. But one of the things that's difficult when you confront early church history is how do, you know, if Joseph Smith was just making all of this up, how do you account for the witnesses? For the Three Witnesses particularly, who were disaffected from Joseph Smith for a good chunk of their lives and who had every incentive to sort of expose him as a fraud. And Joseph Smith at different times was really quite cruel to all three of them. Um, and Dan Vogel talks about the idea of sort of collective hypnosis And I'm thinking that if the psychedelics make more sense than, than the collective hypnosis thesis, but I'm not sure that, I mean, is it possible that people take psychedelics and have a common vision essentially? I mean, that, that doesn't, that doesn't seem to add up either, does it?

No, it doesn't. Um, I, but I think, I think what's happened in Utah with the psychedelic movement. I mean, the whole Rolling Stone article was about, you know, there are two places where psychedelic use is, it's growing everywhere, but it's exponentially higher in two parts in the world. Now think about this, Tel Aviv and Salt Lake City. Those are the, those are the two highest pla— I mean, it's just exploded in these two areas. And all you have to do is go, oh, there's some commonalities there with like the cultural history. Like there's, it's, they, there's just a very religious, you know, very stringent background for people. And so people are coming out of that and psychedelics are, are doing that, that work for them in a lot of ways. Um, but I, I think you have to ask yourself this, at what point in the psychedelic journey, is it ever meant to be something that becomes a collective, like systematic, like, okay, now we're gonna create a new system based on psychedelic use. So everybody get in a room and let's all have the same vision about what we should do. It's just like meditation to me. It is. Meditation is brutal because you're, you are sitting in a room alone with your own thoughts. There is nothing more brutal than that. And it also is the gateway to absolute peace and enlightenment. And so psychedelics is a personal journey. What I'm seeing in my own soul and in my own mind, when I'm in a psychedelic experience, that is for me. That is not something I'm supposed to lay on somebody else or try to explain to somebody else. And, um, so I think it's real problematic to, to start thinking that, well, we should have these churches built. I'm not criticizing anybody who's done it, but I'm saying that I just don't feel that it's, I think it's a very personal thing and it should only be. And so if there was psychedelics in the early church and there was some kind of connection to, I think that would, that would be akin to a lot of what's going on in Utah right now, where you have a lot of these quote unquote shaman. Um, getting people in a room, doing whatever they want with them in these very deep personal experiences, and telling them things that, that exploit, exploit them. Hey, I'm, I'm your shaman, I'm your teacher. The medicine is telling you that you need to do this with your life. Nobody else can tell you those things. That's only for you to know. Does that line of thinking make sense? Did I articulate that okay? I hope so. It's, I just think it's a huge problem. Uh, and, and it would be damning if Joseph Smith used psychedelics to get other people to believe or see things that Joseph Smith wanted them to see.

I, I think this is a fascinating conversation. It's something that I'm interested in exploring further in regards to the history of the church and the, in the restoration of the church and psychadelics and other, um, means in which these visions were experienced back in the time and place of Joseph Smith. As I listen to you, Stephen, and I think, I don't know much, I don't know anything about psychedelics, uh, really, but, you know, this is a state of mind where your mind's open and you're, you're receptive to a, what you're describing as a personal revelation that's unique and distinct to the individual. As I listen to that, I can relate to that from meeting people on my mission and throughout my life who've had those kind of experiences without being part of an organized religion necessarily. But the connection I'm making as I listen to you is that when Joseph, uh, was, uh, was around and he was trying to build up his church, there are accounts where they would pray and Neil and Joseph would have the people in the prayer circle or in the group imagine things in their mind. In fact, he would describe to them, you know, the, the, the, what God looked like or Jesus looked like or what the, uh, visitation of the angel looked like. They called it the mind's eye and they used this, uh, and probably had, uh, was under the influence maybe of some other medicine, drug, or psychedelic, perhaps, potentially. We know that happened at that time in that place across a whole range of different people's experiences in upstate New York. You know, there was the, there were mushrooms that were grown and people used mushrooms back then. These are, these are, you know, the natural products that was around at that particular time. But I'm thinking if you connected those kinds of psychedelics and the meditation and, and, and I'm trying to describe something I know nothing about, but, and then you have someone who's kneeling with you, Joseph Smith, who's trying to create this image, this vision in your mind and describing it, et cetera, and having you influencing your interpretation of what you what you're seeing or what you think you're seeing. And if you concentrate hard enough, you know, when we pray personally, when we kneel down and we pray in our room by ourselves, and we, it's what we church teachers, and we pray and we get so intense when we pray, the brain and the mind is so powerful, we can create these images, these visions, these experiences, we, you know, can influence us. And then, and then if someone is there, helping to create that in that setting. And then two, there are psychedelics involved. And three, and really importantly, Joseph Smith, who is purported to be a prophet, is, is telling you how to interpret that experience. And it means that we have to set this church up and everybody needs to be part of this salvation. I'm trying to make, connect the dots between your experience and how this could potentially motivate someone like Joseph to create a church and then be very successful actually in leading people in the direction they want to create this system that you talk about, this organization. Am I seeing it in the same way as you in terms of making those connections?

Yeah, and I think all three of us in this conversation are victims of of somebody else telling us what to do and, and being exploited ourselves because of our desire to believe something higher than us. I think that that's— you can be whatever you, you choose to be and believe whatever you choose to believe. I don't, I don't care if you're the most extreme atheist or the most extreme far-out believer in God. Everybody gets to believe. However, I think it's human nature I think every single person on Earth desires to know why they're here. We, we just crave it. We crave it. We just want to know, why is there suffering? Why do I have to pay taxes? Why, why do I feel bad when I do that thing that actually feels good? You know, like, what is— what's going on with me? And so I think everybody wants to know these things. So what has happened, and I, I would say this, just my personal experience with spirituality, is that I have desired to find answers and I have wanted to know the answers so badly that I want to believe what someone else told me. First and foremost, why? Because it's, it's very obvious, like, oh, that is a holy person. I'm going to trust that holy person and the words that they say. So when you put people in a circle in a room, um, and everybody is believing that the person at the front of that room is a holy person, what you're doing with your mind and your imagination is you're giving that away to something external. And when you do that, then the external becomes your mind. It becomes the home for your imagination. It becomes the place the receptacle where you're putting all of these desires in your heart, so then it can translate to you whatever it wants, whatever its objectives are. It's being translated back to you. So I would say that the spiritual path needs to be a path where you confront the thing that you have believed in externally, and you say no to it, and you look within rather than giving fealty to something or a person that is outside of you. It can only come from inside of you. It is, you know, read 5 pages of Carl Jung, read 1 page of any book in the New Testament, and you will find out that the truth is inside of you. And I don't think that— I think people are so wanting to know the truth that they're willing to like, oh my gosh, Joseph Smith, like what an awesome guy. He's amazing. We're going to do this thing in this ceremony in this secret room. Yes. Please, I want to know answers. Tell me.

Yeah, that, that just, I want to jump in because that really hit me, that what you just said really hit me on a very personal level. If, if, if you add to what you said already, my experience, which might be similar to, to, to yours, Stephen, where when I was 16 investigating the church, uh, met the missionaries, had these quite profound experiences, spiritual experiences, but I was in a, uh, a, uh, situation of vulnerability. I was lost. I wasn't happy at home. I had, uh, shockingly or surprisingly to my friends who didn't even think or feel like I did, deep philosophical questions about life. They thought I was crazy. You know, they would think about sports all the time, which I did, you know, sport, girls, and that was it. But I added to that, you know, important questions for me. And I was only, you know, a young teenager. But I was in a state of vulnerability. I was lost. I had questions about life. And I was extremely vulnerable. And on top of that, met the missionaries who were very nice, very wonderful, and told me about Joseph Smith and had this, this, this image of Joseph that he was an extraordinary individual and that he was the prophet and that I should give myself up to that. And then when I felt the spirit, when I had a spiritual experience or any experience that I look back, uh, that is, uh, the missionaries, and I shared this with Jim Bennett, they told me what that was, what I'd experienced, why I experienced it, and what I now should do, including getting baptized, going on a mission. And they mapped out my entire life. And I believed, I believed it hook, line, and sinker. Because what, who was I? What did I know? I knew nothing. And I was extremely vulnerable. And there came along these missionaries in the church, which was a completely, uh, different life experience, which is actually was more positive actually than my own family life. But I gave myself, I gave myself over to the missionaries, to the church who then shaped and molded me and, and shaped and influenced every aspect of my life and did so up until, you know, uh, a few years ago. So, um, it was my vulnerable state also. To add to what you're saying, that was a big factor in the church essentially owning me and taking full control. Does that, does that resonate with you at all? Is that something that you can relate to?

Completely. It completely resonates with me because I have been the guy that has bought every self-help book that has ever been printed. I have all of them. I have tried every religious spiritual path. On earth. I've, I've drunk sludge from vines in the Amazon. Like, I, I've been willing to give that up, Ian, you know, the same, because you just want to know. Like, somebody just tell me how to do this thing called life. Please tell me. Um, but what to, to the story about the use of the imagination and the way that, like, you know, the way that Sidney Rigdon and Joseph came back and were like, okay, here's the plan of salvation, here's what heaven looked like, there's 3 degrees, and da da da da, How did they come to the same conclusion, the same vision? To me, all of this stuff, whether you're in a, in a ceremony with a shaman at the head, a good, well-meaning shaman or not, or you're in a church watching a bishop bear his testimony on the pulpit, or you're tuning into conference on your TV on, on an October Sunday, we are all giving ourselves over to something that is not what's inside of us constantly. And, and my path has led me to reject that way of spirituality. And, and I'm so grateful for that. It has been a brutal, hard, difficult experience. Um, but where I ended up, you know, a year ago, because for me, a big thing about Joseph Smith was this whole use of the occult. Right. This very deep, like, connection with magic daggers and magic circles in their home growing up and how this all played out. And then he died with a Jupiter talisman around his neck. And like, this guy was like Aleister Crowley before Aleister Crowley, you know? And, um, Aleister Crowley, yeah. And, uh, it's fascinating story. And so after I left the church, I thought, man, this occult stuff is really interesting to me. Um, and, and maybe that's, that's a real piece of Joseph Smith's, like, that's how I can find out who Joseph really was. And so I really got into it and, um, it led me down this really interesting path where it kind of obliterated everything about me. And I found myself a little over a year ago in a really, really dark place. And, uh, I was, I was in. My room in the middle of the night and had convinced myself that there, there was no point in life anymore. I had spun myself through every spiritual hoop that you could go through. I had done everything you can. And I had, I was just done. There was no meaning, there was no purpose. And this voice came to me and it was in, it was in me. It wasn't like an exterior voice. It just said, you have forgotten Christ. And I was like, no, I haven't. You know, what are you talking about? I haven't forgot Christ. I love Christ. You know, it's, he's awesome. And I just heard the word, you've forgotten Christ. And so I like thought about what would, what, Why, why is that even a thing? But I got up and I ended up watching this thing on YouTube about Orthodox Christianity. The way that it showed up for me was just so, so crazy. Just out of the blue. I can't even tell you how crazy it was that it showed up. And I, I, I'm answering, I'm getting to your point, Ian, that you were trying to make through this story is I Orthodox Christianity appeared to me in the middle of the night at the darkest time of my entire life when I was ready to be done, to call it quits. And I, I had never heard of it. I had heard of every other religion. I had heard of every— and, and so when I became an Orthodox Christian, it was because it was the only thing I have found, period, ever, that forces me into myself. It doesn't tell me— it does not tell me what to do. It tells me— it tells me to go inside and figure out all these demons that I have. And you realize your imagination, your, your, your belief system, your thinking mind. So, so if Joseph Smith is sitting people down and saying, okay, let's close our eyes and let's visualize this thing, now start thinking about modern spirituality. And how that is, that is the case in so many walks of the spiritual path for so many people. Let's visualize. Let's use our imagination. Let's picture things in our minds. Orthodox Christianity says, no, do not use your imagination. Do not use your thoughts because these things come from the external. The external is always trying to talk to you and trying to get you to be something that the external wants you to be.

It—

the external world does not want you to be what you truly are. And in order to become what you truly are, you have to go inside. And you do that by not talking, by not using your imagination, and by paying attention to how many thousands of thoughts per second are traveling through your brain trying to hook you. And if you can detach from those, then you can start to see that there's something real there. And what that is, is for each individual to discover. So, so I think that Joseph was probably just an incredibly gifted, wonderful person who figured out how to do what every other spiritual guru this day and age is doing, like monetizing and building something that, that creates, uh, sort of a singular imagination point in a collective.

Well, so it's really fascinating to me to, to hear about you landing on Orthodox Christianity. Most people who, who leave the church, I mean, all of the research suggests that they usually sort of wander off into atheism. And don't look for any other sort of organized religion. And yet you have found, um, solace and strength in Orthodox Christianity. Can you sort of expand on that a little bit?

Um, it's, it's really this, it's this thing I think that, you know, we have We have John Dehlin and RFM and Bill Reel, and like, we have this whole realm of people that have left the church and they have their reasons for doing it and they've done a lot of incredible work. I mean, there's just like all of this stuff, right? Inconvenient Faith really, really kind of exposed these two sides. And, um, and then you have people that are trying to stay but that have questions. And then you have— but there's, there's no talk about the middle. Like, what happens when somebody leaves the church and finds faith? What happens when somebody leaves the church and finds a spiritual path that is true for them? I, I think that that's a conversation that should be had. Um, Uh, in this, in this conversation about leaving the church and staying in the church, I think that we should be talking about if you leave, you know that you can find the truth still. You're not, you're not committed to hell and damnation of your own, just like atheistic worldview. You can find something that really has meaning for you in your life. And, and I think, I think we ought to be. Encouraging that a lot more than just picking apart whether the church is, um, operating in a good way or not. I don't know. That's my opinion. So the way Orthodox Christianity works for me is, is because of those very things which I had talked about, which is you've got to figure out what is going on inside of you, and that is how you solve the problems of the world. If I can, if I can know what's going on with me, what's wrong with me, or what needs to be fixed, or how I can be a more kind, gentle per— if I can fix that, that and deal with that mess inside of myself, then maybe someone next to me will start that process, and the person next to them. It's, you know, I used to think that like having the largest microphone in the world was the correct way to help people. You know, I was either— my dream as a kid, I wanted to play second base for the Yankees, or I wanted to be president of the United States, because those were the two best ways to help people. They were the largest microphones. And so my life has been a process of having the crap kicked out of me and becoming humble from believing those two things. The only way to help the world is to go inside of yourself. That is the truth. That is what Orthodox Christianity has taught me, because it is, it is something it hasn't left from the time Jesus walked the earth. He taught the disciples, the disciples taught disciples that they were disciples, and then they taught their disciples. It wasn't about like this, this laying on of hands, priesthood authority, John the Baptist showing up on the Susquehanna River and like appear— it was like, it was taught to them. And what was taught to them? How to find God inside yourself. That's what Orthodox Christianity teaches, and that's why It absolutely turned me completely around from a life of like thinking about myself and what makes me happy and what about my feelings and let me use my imagination to visualize my future. That is not a path. That is, that's like a, that's like a selfish endeavor to bring yourself comfort and pleasure. Orthodox Christianity teaches what, what I know Christ taught is run from pleasure. Run from comfort. And that is, those are the answers to the spiritual path for me when I didn't even know they existed.

So has Orthodox Christianity actually distanced you from psychedelics?

Uh, well, like I said, I think at the beginning to Ian, uh, when he asked me what are psychedelics and I said, I, I advocate for you don't need them. Uh, but I think, I think what we have to talk about a little bit is in a culture like Mormon Utah, where you obviously have a pocket of believers that are going to defend absolutely everything about the church all the time, no matter what, and say that that's the way, and that's fine. That's totally okay. I understand that. But what about the people that don't feel that way? What is a vehicle for them? To, to actually believe that there's something beyond God. Because I think if you leave the church, for so many people, it's impossible to reconcile that you are in something that you gave your life to, you believed in, and now you don't believe it anymore. So therefore nothing must be true. I think it's such a natural move to atheism from people who leave the church because it was an all-or-nothing church. Absolutely all or nothing. The one true church, the gospel's true no matter what, you know, like, I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine the other night. I do life coaching now, and I work with people who are transitioning and trying to figure out their path into whether to stay in Mormonism or to leave. And he told me about his wife and how she's struggling to, you know, they've left the church, but she really struggles about going back to church even though she doesn't believe it. Why? Because her father died a few years ago in a really tragic way, and she feels so guilty that if she leaves the church, she's not gonna see her dad in the next life. I mean, these are the kinds of, of emotional ties we have to the church. And when we leave, man, I guess I'm not going to see my dad again. You know, it's, it's crazy. That is, that's crazy. If you love, we should be teaching people that if you love, that love is going to last forever. It doesn't matter who it is that you love. It doesn't matter how deeply you love them. That connection is, is forged. And, and you are going to have that because God is love. I need, I just, I just believe that. So yeah, I think orthodoxy, uh, to get back to your question about whether I, I, I think psychedelics are a path. I think psychedelics are a path for people who are in a situation where they think, man, there must be no God. You know, it's like this crazy, it's like this crazy thing that happens in strict religious cultures where You know, if somebody loses their virginity, they go, well, I'm broken now, so I might as well just let it ride. You know, that is psychotic. That's, that is the, that's just like demonic in its purest form to, to make people think that because you've done something that the system doesn't approve of, that you're broken. You are not broken. You are, you are a a person who is on a path and you need to learn from whatever that thing is. That's what needs to be taught. And I think that that's, that's available outside of Mormonism. And psychedelics help you start thinking bigger than this little tiny myopic worldview that you were so used to. And, and unfortunately, I think the myopic worldview people jump into when they leave the church is, geez, well, nothing must be true. But psychedelics give you a path to start seeing things differently. So for me, without psychedelics, I wouldn't be an Orthodox Christian. I also wouldn't be an Orthodox Christian without Buddhism. I also wouldn't be an Orthodox Christian without Mormonism. You know, these things, you, you just, I think you just have to be a seeker and you have to ask the questions constantly. What am I doing here? What is my purpose? And eventually it will lead you somewhere. But don't stop asking those questions and don't get fixated on, you know, whether this doctrine is true or whether that policy is right or whether, you know, that law should be changed.

It—

I just don't think those things matter. I think what matters is what is inside of you. You've got to figure that out and you've got to know how to figure that out. And you just got to look. It takes work, tons of work.

Well, I appreciate you doing that work because I think it's inspiring and helpful to the people who are listening to this podcast. And I think it's inspiring and helpful to me. Uh, I just, it is really, it is really, um, uplifting. Uh, to hear somebody talk about their spiritual journey with the kind of confidence and the kind of commitment that you have demonstrated. The fact that you have taken a journey that has taken you outside the boundaries of the church, um, is less important to me than the fact that you have done this with integrity and with a commitment to finding the truth and the seeking. I mean, if the church is about anything, it's about the idea of continuing revelation. It began with a question. It began with somebody trying to find out the kind of answers that Steve Hunter has been searching for his entire life. So I just can't thank you enough for being vulnerable enough to share this with everybody. I think it's going to help people, uh, and help them as they navigate their journeys wherever they go. Ian, do you have any parting thoughts here?

Just what an honor to meet with you, Stephen. I would love to spend more time with you. There's a few subjects I'd like to get into with you, actually with Jim Bennett, which we could talk after this. But I want to thank you for taking time to come on Inside Out and sharing your insights. I think they're quite extraordinary.

Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I hope that there is— look, I hope that there's just a recognition in people who are grappling with the realities of the LDS Church, whether you are all in or all out or somewhere in between, I, I just, I hope that my slipping on thousands of banana peels somehow is, is something for people to look at and go, there is a, there is a way to find the truth in myself, in myself. It's not Steve Hunter's truth. It's not Jim Bennett's truth. It's not Ian's truth. It's, it's, it's true for each of us as individuals. And you have got to, you've got to demand it. You have got to fight for it. It has to be your number one desire. Because without that, the truth for yourself, you're going to be living somebody else's truth. And, and that's not, that's not, that's not a good way to live. Um, it's just not. There's a higher, better way, and it's inside of you.

Very much appreciate that, Steve. And I— Ian, uh, I very much want to have Steve back.

I, I, I, I, I would be excited about that. There's a few of the topics I want to— I'll share with you guys after, but there's some things I'd like to, uh, chat with you on, which I think is— aligns with Stephen's experience really well.

So Thank you both so much. What a pleasure.

Thank you, Stephen.

Thank you.

Thank you. And thank you all for listening. And we will see you next time on the next episode of Inside Out.