A Conversation with Terryl Givens

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out. I'm, uh, your co-host Ian Wilkes, and I am usually joined by Jim Bennett, but he's not with us here right now, but would reconnect with us as he is traveling, um, and he has some connection issues, but Jim Bennett will hopefully be back on into this conversation shortly. This week we have a very special guest indeed. We have Terrell Gibbons. Terrell, welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out. Good to be here.

Thanks for asking.

Okay, it's a real honor to have you with us today. You've been very patient with our technical issues, but we'll get into the conversation here. Um, we have, uh, we wanted to have you, have you on the podcast for quite some time. And we've been going for about 2 years and we've matured. We've had a number of wonderful people on. We have people on who are very active in the church, mission president bishops. We've had Richard Bushman on and we've had people who are also navigating the faith and they're still connected to the church, but on the outside, but many of them have not lost the faith. They still believe and still try to find meaning and purpose in through it in the Mormon Church. And so we, as a podcast, we try to take a middle road in regards to position on policies and history with the church with the intent of trying to help people. And you have an extraordinary legacy of helping people deal with a whole range of different issues. But before we get into some of that, Would you be kind enough to provide a little bit of background in yourself growing up in the church, your experience with the church, your callings? That will give us a little bit of important perspective and context.

Okay. Well, my family joined the church when I was about 8 years old, 8 or 9. And so I was baptized with siblings and parents in Southern Arizona. And as often is the case, my family just kind of faded into inactivity after a few years. So before any of the gospel really took, I found myself already kind of at the peripheries, um, a member in name only. Uh, when I was 16, we moved back east to Virginia. Um, and that was a, a kind of harrowing transition for me because, uh, I was quite happy and content, active as a good student and athlete and scholar, young scholar, and Arizona, suddenly I find myself living in a tent in a campground while my dad looked for work, rather perplexed at what was going on. Still don't know exactly the whole story there, but, uh, we found ourselves reconnecting with the church in a very small rural ward in Central Virginia. And, uh, and at that time it did take very quickly. I found myself, uh, deeply interested in the, the theology, or at least the doctrines of the church. Started hanging out with the missionaries, read voraciously, uh, reoriented my whole future plans and, uh, found myself a couple years later out at BYU as a young student and preparing for a mission. Uh, served in Brazil, came back and married in the temple and settled into the life of a young academic. And it was so, you know, from that point on, my life was more or less a kind of straightforward path of development in my understanding of the gospel, my commitment to the gospel. I had a few personal ups and downs, don't need to go into here, but I found myself at a subsequent time really having to reassess in a very a very deliberate, self-conscious kind of way. What am I committed to and why? And what are the wellsprings of my faith? So I feel like I don't have an inherited testimony or one that just kind of grew organically, but one that I really had to work very self-consciously and deliberatively to determine if I was going to be committed to this gospel. So I served as a bishop, raised a family in the church. And found myself really by total happenstance rather than deliberate planning in this new burgeoning field of Mormon studies. And so wrote a number of books for Oxford University Press on Latter-day Saint history, the Book of Mormon, biographies, other works. And then it was in 2012 where I feel my life took another kind of direction, and that was, um, Sheri Dewitt, Deseret Book, asked my wife and I if we would write a book that, um, introduced the gospel to a national audience during the Romney campaign. And so it was supposed to be written largely for a non-Mormon audience. This ended up being The God Who Weeps, and we were very surprised and delighted to find that it resonated in unexpected ways with Latter-day Saints, and especially with those who were looking to fortify or rediscover their faith. And so at that time, I won't give you all the details, but we found ourselves founding a nonprofit organization that funded us to travel wherever we were asked to come and speak to members who had questions, faith challenges, who wanted to ask tough questions. And so we were doing that more or less from about 2012, all the way through COVID, when fireside culture kind of died out in the church. And I've since relocated to Brigham Young University where I'm a senior research fellow.

Okay.

That's an excellent introduction. What's your— excuse me, what's your relationship, with the church now in regards to, um, meeting members in firesides or one-to-one or meeting in the smaller groups, people who have questions or concerns about the gospel. Is that still your current, uh, capacity with the church?

Well, you know, I don't have any official, never had any official role in that regard. It was always a matter of, um, and, and we never advertised, um, never promoted ourselves or our organization, called it the Temple and Observatory Group. But we, by just by word of mouth, um, and through, I think, social media, word spread that Fiona and I were available. We had funds from independent donors. And most all of the time we were accepting invitations from bishops, stake presidents, sometimes even area authorities in Europe. Um, and it, you know, to the, at the present day, we continue to respond to whatever invitations we have, but there's much more scrutiny, much more supervision now on the part of the church. Uh, firesides, as I said, have come under a kind of wave of suspicion, I think, the last few years. So we, we go wherever we are invited and wherever there is local church, um, authorization for those visits. But we certainly don't purport to be official spokespersons in any way. Right, right.

Uh, this is interesting. When I was, I was serving as a young bishop, uh, similar to yourself many years ago. This is back in, um, late '90s, uh, mid-2000s. And rarely did I come across, uh, individuals who had questions to do with policy or doctrine back then. It was more personal, you know, related, uh, questions. I mean, I, as, as a young bishop felt very inadequate, actually, and overwhelmed in regards to those, dealing with those issues. But there was never really, I can't remember very many concerns about faith or policy doctrine or history. As I fast forward, when I had my calling on the stake presidency, where we were set apart by Elder Oaks and Elder Cook and received some training from them and training from other General Authorities, the situation had changed. I mean, I grew up in the UK. I'm in Canada now. Bishop in the UK, state presidency in Canada, and the situation was very different. When I was on the state presidency, there were many people, many, quite a few individuals in the stake that had questions of policy and doctrine. And so quite a stark contrast, I think, between those two time points, you know, different cultures, different countries, different backgrounds. And different callings. You still had the, you know, the emotional and spiritual concerns, issues that you had with members, but many questions. And I, on that presidency, there were many questions I couldn't answer and did refer them to General Authorities. We often get referred— if anyone contacted the General Authorities, they would refer them back to the Stake Presidency. And we struggle, I certainly struggle to answer some of the questions about polygamy and Book of Mormon translation process and some of the policies to do with LGBTQ, et cetera, where you have a family in the stake who, that one of the children is gay, et cetera. And that was, you know, that was tough. I struggled to try to understand that and make sense of that. Is that where your experience fits in there? So where a bishop would make a referral to whoever, stake presidency, and then they would, uh, reach out to you and you would meet with them individually or meet them in small groups. Is that, was that your experience?

Uh, it was always a matter of group meetings and they were organized as, as faith firesides, I think is, is, uh, often how they were advertised. And it, as I, it, it often was instigated by a local member or a couple of local members. But as I said, it generally received some kind of approval endorsement from the local leaders. And that's what, you know, we all, we usually had them in church facilities. And the reasons, motivations have changed dramatically over the last 10, 12 years, right? Back in 2012, and many surveys were administered. So we have pretty good, I think, empirical data that shows that in 2012, 2014, Most of the questions were historical. What's going on with Joseph Smith's polygamy? Did he marry 15-year-old girls? What about the Book of Abraham? What about the seer stone? Well, I think that the church underwent a dramatic revolution in that decade that was just really a balm to many of these wounded hearts and minds that couldn't make sense of difficult aspects of our history. And that revolution included the Joseph Smith Papers Project, included the Gospel Topics Essays, it included an openness to church archives and materials, and just a much greater frankness in dealing with the past. I mean, look at the new Church History Saints. So what has happened is that anybody who has qualms or questions about these murky areas, these sticky wickets in the Mormon past, Resources are now readily available to get an unexpurgated, unmediated account of these historical details. And as a consequence, those just aren't uppermost, it seems to me, in the minds of most people wrestling with their faith today because it's all laid out in black and white. I think another really pivotal moment in the history of the modern church was 2016 when Elder Ballard gave his talk, to CES educators. I think it's the most underappreciated and under-viewed talk given in the last generation. I think it's the most important talk given in the last generation where he frankly admitted to the church, he said, we have failed to prepare our youth for the challenges of today. It is time to acknowledge that if we don't know the answers to tough questions, that we ask the experts and scholars and historians who do Uh, one of the most startling statements was he said to the, uh, something to the effect, a testimony is not an answer to a question. And yet we still have a lot of people who think that it is, right? So I, I'm deeply grieved that that talk did not become the new mandate for CES. It just, it, it, it had an impact and then it just kind of faded and disappeared. We're kind of back to the 1930s charted course of education. Approach. So I think that we had a revolution that kind of was aborted before it fully developed in what I think was the most effective way in which we could address faith challenges as a church. Today I find I teach institute, I teach a class or two at BYU, and in my interactions with young people, and this of course is just anecdotal, but But I'm finding that, as you suggested, the questions have much more to do with, with how do, how do we make sense of social, you know, changes in morality and sexuality and gender? How do we make sense of the family proclamation? Or even more fundamentally, young people want me to help them understand why do we need a church to begin with? Questions of authority, the true church. Those don't, they're not relevant to their concerns or their interests. And I feel like we haven't sufficiently retooled to create more rational and appealing and relevant foundations for young people's commitment to the temple or to an institution itself as having a net benefit.

Yeah, that's fascinating. In my experience, the issues that we were dealing with on the state presidency varied considerably between, you know, different age groups. You know, the youth have different perspective on, you know, I was over with youth for the state and I had a very different perspective. Their concerns weren't policy or history, it was whether, um, this was, you know, committed, going to church was actually important to them or they're interested in it. And, um, was it inclusive? Uh, it was a very different conversation interviewing, uh, youth. And working with you than maybe some of the, uh, you know, more, um, mature or senior folks in the church. The senior folks, um, were very established and very steady, and they may have concerns or issues, but they kept them to themselves. It was the, you know, the folks between maybe the 20s up to the 40s, I would say, who had, uh, quite a lot of questions on policy in history that the youth were, I think, wrestling with whether they need a church at all.

Yeah.

They even attended, some of the youth attended, some of them attended other churches with their friends, their friends from school or other community events. So it was a very interesting demographic depending on the age and people's background. And so that was my experience, which I think is could be indicative of other stake presidencies and other bishops. And again, a very stark difference between being a bishop, you know, 15 years before and all that right now. The, uh, for me, um, the, when the essays came out, uh, I was on the stake presidency and it was the Race and the Priesthood essay that came out in 2013.

Right.

And it was for me an extraordinary breakthrough because I always felt that, Beryl, that privately, personally, didn't talk about it openly, that the church had made a grave mistake in regards to excluding Blacks from the priesthood and from the temple blessings. It never sat right with me ever. Naturally, instinctively, it felt wrong. You know, I converted to the church at the age of 16, and when I heard about it, it even being taught by the missionaries, it just didn't feel right to me. I read the history in the background and a little bit about the context in 1978 with Spencer W. Kimball, but it never felt right. And so when the church came out with the first essay, I think it was November, um, Elder Uchtdorf gave this amazing talk about, uh, some leaders in the church in the past had made mistakes. Um, and when I read, when I heard that, I thought it was an amazing talk, and I thought it was talking about some rogue stake president or bishop who'd made mistakes. I never saw it in the context of past prophets that had perhaps made mistakes. And then I think shortly after, the Race and the Priesthood essay came out, and it was extraordinary for me personally. And then I read it, it was helpful. I thought it was very long overdue, much needed. And then at the end, when it said that it basically rejected racism in all of its forms. And that statement, that paragraph at the end, it was a, some form of admission, I think, on behalf of the church, on the part of the church, that it perhaps had made a grave error. And for me, that was the beginning of asking many questions. That essay, although very helpful and constructive in many ways, it actually triggered a whole series of investigations on my part. And then as you know, following that, we had another, what, 12, 13 or so essays that came out, which was more, more honest, I think. And the church had been, I guess the church from my perspective had been struggling and wrestling with how to communicate, you know, a difficult history. You know, our history is complex and like so many, I just wanted the church to be open and honest about stuff. I know the church was probably worried about people like me and others, of course, who it might lead to more questions. They may leave, they may stay, who knows? Um, and they might think, you know, if they shared too much information, it would cause people to leave. And there's always that risk. But for me, it's always been about honesty. The reason why I joined the church is that I came from a, you know, a dysfunctional family, frankly, that weren't always honest. And, and the, you know, and the kind of area that I grew up in, you know, working class, um, roots, if you like. Not that's nothing to do with honesty, but very, um, an interesting, um, experience growing up where frankly people close to me were not honest about certain things. And so when I was taught by the missionaries and taught about the principle of honesty and, and read the lessons, It was wonderful to be part of an organization that was honest and open. And then I read the essay. I found it very constructive and very helpful, but at the same time, um, uh, you know, the essays were difficult to find. And since that time, since the essays and prior to that, I've seen a pattern of what appears to be covering up, um, maybe misdirection, maybe not wanting to talk about these things. Any reticence to, um, provide too much information because the church is concerned that people might leave. And I get that. I can understand that if you give too much information to someone, there's always that risk. I get that. I understand. I think I understand why the church should do that. Um, but I've always felt that in certain things, the church hasn't been open enough. And I think you've, you kind of alluded to that. I want to put words in your mouth, but It sounds like this talk from Elder Ballard, uh, which I would love to go back and learn more about, is acknowledging that there's been errors, there's been mistakes, because we do have, you know, we do have a complex history. It's not all black and white. People made mistakes. We're human, for goodness sake. We make mistakes, right? We all make mistakes. I'm okay with people making mistakes, but don't cover it up. Let's be honest about it. Say, hey, we made a mistake. We got this wrong. And we'll do better, we'll try to do better. And that to me is, um, that's, that's, that's what I think organizations should do. I think the challenge there is that the concern perhaps, um, and again, I'm looking at this from a member, former member perspective, which I think is fairly common thinking. I think it is that if the church does admit mistakes openly, directly, that people will lose confidence in the prophet because the prophet said, we will never lead you astray. I mean, I, I, I feel confident these things that you're hearing right now, you know, from me, from my perspective, you've probably heard many, many, many times, many times. I'm sure you have. But for me, the church, um, is at its best when it's, uh, functioning at its best. It's been open and honest. So the essay, that essay was, um, when I, when I tried to read it and had questions about it and I tried to talk about it in the state presidency, so that was probably not the best time to talk about that openly. I was shut down pretty quickly, not just by my peers, but others, even members coming to me and saying, Ian, you should know better. You're on the state presidency. These are questions that you shouldn't be asking. And I just felt this natural, I'm quite, I try to be natural. This, natural desire to ask questions. Perhaps I was too open, but it led to more questions, which I won't get into that detail. But you've probably heard this experience many times, what I've gone through. Can you relate to that? Can you connect those dots? Can you make sense of that experience?

Yeah, I think I can, or hope I can. To some extent. First of all, I'll just say a couple of things. First of all, I don't think I disagree with anything you've said, Ian. I don't think transparency is ever a mistake, and I think subterfuge always is. Second of all, I think a problem, and I'm not saying this is a problem where I'm laying blame at anyone's feet, but the very expression the church is, it's an infinitely malleable concept. And so when we say the church does this, or I, this, the church, the church, it, how do we aggregate into one word, right? The multitude of personalities, bishops, even general authorities over time, across culture, and And so it's inevitable in a human, and this is clichéd, but it's inevitable that in an institution staffed by humans, we're going to get people who just didn't get the memo. And it sounds like that is what happened in your case. And that's how I see a lot of these problems is people just aren't getting the memo. It's like the brethren give us a new direction. Look, I wrote one of the Gospel Topics Essays. I was an editor on the Joseph Smith Papers. I was involved in the project. To write Saints from the beginning. I interacted with brethren, and I never, from my experience dating to 2012 on, I never heard one of the brethren or one of the Church's administrators say anything other than, as one apostle said, quote, "Get it all out." Get it all out. So I think there was a revolution coming from the top, and this was largely a result of one of the most inspired Church historians we've ever had, Marvin Jensen, with the full support of President Hinckley. It all green light, let's go. But you know, there are a lot of areas of the church, I think England is one of them, where some figures from the 1970s and '80s, their influence still predominates. And that influence is very doctrinaire and dogmatic and authoritarian and ultra-orthodox. And these influences linger in many, many corners of the church. And so a lot of times it's Bishop Roulette, it's personality roulette, who we, you know, who we get. And that's why in my work, I, I always try to, to ground my optimism in what I think are official statements and decisions that have been made that show there is a definite trajectory that is unquestionably in the direction of greater transparency, greater honesty. Um, it— we move forward with fits and starts. Um, Many of us were distressed that after those Gospel Topics Essays came out, they were so hard to find. And it was almost as if they were deliberately hidden. And I think it's clear that a number of administrators didn't want to revisit the priesthood ban, didn't want to revisit underage polygamy. And so we're always going to have those residual obstacles, people who function as obstacles. I am I just try to be optimistic about the, the general tendency. Now, I think you also hit the nail on the head when it comes to one of the concerns that works against the interests of the church, and that is the fear of addressing infallibility more directly. And it's, it's not hard to go back in the prophetic record from Joseph Smith to the present and see how frequently and insistently Joseph and Brigham and others would say, look, we're human, we make mistakes, we acknowledge that. Elder Christofferson gave a landmark talk 10 years ago in which he said, right, mistakes have been made. We're not hearing that kind of language very much because I think there is a fear in many corners that, well, we're going to undermine faith in the prophet. Um, I like to point to what I think was one of the, one of the two most important General Conference addresses ever given in the history of the church, which took place in October of 1894. I taught a class last week where I talked about this. Not one student in that class was aware of this episode when in 1894 President Wilford Woodruff stands up in general conference and says, for 51 years, effectively paraphrasing, we've been doing temple work wrong. He's— why? Because until 1894, if you went to the temple you had to be sealed to a prophet. You weren't sealed to your parents or your grandparents. You were sealed to a prophet. It was dynastic sealing, right? You probably know this, but most members of the church don't. And President Woodruff said, it seemed, right, it seemed to me that, and the members of the First Presidency, that the prophecy of Malachi said, the fathers' hearts will be turned to the children, children of the fathers, not to the prophets. I sought a revelation, and the word of the Lord came unto me saying, henceforth, let every child be sealed to his father, every father to was a child. Revolution in temple work. 51 years of temple work. Suddenly we effectively have to redo it all. I've tracked a couple of responses. I wanted to know, how did people sitting in the pews respond to that? Did they say, I can't be, I can't belong to a church that can get something that wrong? I haven't found traces of that. I did find two letters, one from a Warren Foote and one from a Darius Clement, and they both said the same thing. They both said, yeah, I always felt this was wrong. But I knew that if I persevered, the Lord would correct the ark, would redirect it. And I just rejoice now that we've got it right. And so I think, and then you can track, and I've done this, people, General Authorities referring back to that moment, the next generation, and they will frequently say things like, yeah, we've had many fits and starts. We hit some cul-de-sacs. We hit some dead ends, but we always get it right. There wasn't this sense in Mormon culture of infallibility. And, you know, the prophets are taking down dictation and God is giving them verbatim directions. You know, B.H. Roberts once said, I believe revelation occurs infrequently and in times of extreme need. As a general rule, God calls men and he delegates to them his authority and hopes for the best, effectively. Um, so I think, um, you know, they're, they're— the problem I think is being fed at both ends, right? Um, that we want an infallible standard, and sometimes, um, those in the institution don't want to acknowledge readily their infallibility.

I really appreciate those remarks, that context. I'm okay with prophets not being perfect. I really am. I have no problem with that at all. You know, we're all imperfect. We're trying to move forward. We're trying to believe, have faith, and serve, and be good, and be honest, and be kind, and live those universal principles. And, you know, when the we've said often on that podcast, the greatness of the church is the members. Members are extraordinary people. They give and sacrifice so much. And there is a perception, I think, that— and I'm not sure where it comes from— that the prophets are infallible. They don't make mistakes, not on the big stuff. Yeah, big stuff, right? The important stuff, the big stuff. They don't make mistakes.

Mistakes.

And they do, they do make mistakes. They won't maybe come out and say, or maybe they have in a kind of an indirect way, but they won't come out and throw a past prophet under the bus. Like, they won't do that. And I, I understand that why they wouldn't do that. I know that they need to retain faith from the members that they doing the right thing and making the right decisions. And I think they get a lot of decisions right. Uh, but they make mistakes and I'm all right with that. I'm okay with someone not being perfect and with someone making a mistake, admitting it and say, hey, we, we, we learned from that. Um, I have a, a friend of mine who, um, is, is a former CEO of a billion-dollar engineering company and he, uh, retired or semi-retired and wanted to set up a consulting firm to, uh, teach, educate other CEOs of other large companies and, uh, had his first, uh, seminar with about 100 CEOs in the room. And towards the end, or just towards the end, he was sharing some of the mistakes that he's made. He noticed that they're all writing down these, uh, these responses. And, uh, uh, he got a lot of questions at the end about his mistakes that he'd made while he was a CEO at this $2 billion engineering company. And he was a bit shocked by that because that's all they wanted to hear is his mistakes. And so, and somebody came to him and said, look, why don't you do your program, your consulting around the errors and mistakes that he's made? He was, why would I do that? Because I've had all these successes. He said, no, no, no, people want to know what you got wrong so they can avoid that. And he's built this successful consulting business sharing mistakes that he's made and his events are sold out and people want to know, you know, we learn from our mistakes, right?. And I think there's strength in vulnerability. If we put a hand up and say, you know, look, we got that wrong. We're sorry. We made a mistake. I'm okay with that. Maybe some are not. Go ahead.

I just want to give an amen to what you're saying. I just wanted to relate one of the most beautiful experiences I've had in a religious setting. I was in Bristol last beautiful. And I can't remember if it's a cathedral or if it's just a really large church, the Bristol, Bristol Church, but it's the size of a cathedral and just this magnificent, beautiful building. And you walk in and in the main entryway, this wall-sized display, and it effectively says, we are publicly atoning for slavery. This cathedral was built with the blood of slaves. Bristol was one of the largest slave markets in the world. We want to acknowledge that, we repent of that, and this is our public contrition. And you just move to tears that this church is essentially asking the forgiveness of the parishioners and the public.

Yeah.

For their complicity in this. And I just thought this is one of the most magnificent, beautiful performances of true religiosity. So yeah, amen to what you're saying. I think we love those figures and individuals who are willing to just fully acknowledge and beseech our charity and let us move forward together. Um, I, I, well, if you have more, I don't want to interrupt because I did, I think I did.

You continue. Yeah, you can add any more thoughts.

But what's just, and this is just kind of a tangential, but this is, this is what in my mind kind of redirects my attention in ways that have been healthier for my faith and testimony is in John chapter 6 when we have those disaffections. Many walked no more with him. And just that language of the original doesn't say they broke with the institution. They withdrew. They walked no more with him. My discipleship and faith journey has been rewarding and effective to the extent that I keep that paradigm in mind. I'm trying to walk with Christ. In the 1960s and '70s, Hugh B. Brown and others found at least 3 apostles, general authorities, who referred to the church as a scaffold. And I wish we used that language more. It's a scaffold that just creates the parameters and the structure that lets us maximize our opportunities for an encounter with the divine. And so I try to see the institution in that way. It provides the resources of what I think is the, the truest depiction of the nature of God that we get in Moses 7, and powers in, in the temple that I think are not attainable, available in any other setting. That's my focus. And together those help me to foster a relationship with God to which I aspire. And so I try to just not have expectations of the institution and recognize that. And here's just one more point that I want to make, because you raised this earlier about the problem with church itself. And, you know, in the late 18th century, a catastrophe occurred in Western civilization. It was a catastrophe by which, and it's a long detailed process that explains it, but it was the process by which spirituality displaced religiosity. And I think that was a tragedy. I think it's wrongheaded. I think it's a sentimentalizing of religion in dangerous ways, but it's still with us today. Religion at its core, I think, as I understand it, has to be about social engagement, has to be about ministering to others. And spirituality in many cases becomes this false surrogate where, no, it's just me and God. I'm gonna go into the mountains and experience God. I don't think you experience God as a general rule in isolation in the mountaintop. And that's why you have to be part of an institution. Doesn't have to be this one,, but I think we have to be part of something that forces us to confront each other's humanity and learn to love in spite of that.

So, no, I, I appreciate it. It's interesting. I, you've made, you've made some very interesting points and I wanna respond to them if I may. Um, and, uh, I wanna be just, um, direct.

If you want me, Ian, Well, Ian, can I jump in here for just a second?

Yeah, just go ahead, Jim.

Oh, well, I'm sorry. I've had some technical difficulties here. And Terryl, I'm so grateful you're with us, and I need to fanboy a little bit. I am such a huge Terryl and Fiona Gibbons fan, particularly of the kind of theology that you outline in both The Crucible of Doubt and The God Who Keeps. Because as I'm listening to this conversation about fallibility and infallibility, I think you have laid out principles that allow for a theology, a Latter-day Saint theology, that cannot just acknowledge fallibility but can embrace fallibility, embrace the reality that mistakes are the reason we're here. I mean, one of the things that I get from your work is this understanding of the purpose of mortality being, uh, the kinds of things that make a God weep, the kinds of things that put us in the crucible of doubt and give us the kinds of experiences from which we learn. You know, the Doctrine and Covenants, we're told, all these things shall give us experience, it shall be for thy Uh, but I think we have a better framework. I love that analogy of a scaffolding connecting to the divine, but I think we have a better framework as Latter-day Saints to sort of understand and embrace that fallibility in a way that a lot of the Christian world does not have. And I want to— I, I, I just wanted to dive in there. And Ian, I don't want to interrupt your conversations, but I'm terrified my phone might drop off again. But have you ever thought about it in those terms, in terms of embracing fallibility, not just acknowledging it or recognizing it, but saying, hey, this is the plan and this is the purpose? Is that Is that something that you've, uh, you've talked about in the, in those terms?

Uh, I have, but I want to acknowledge that to the extent I have, it's largely been derivative of Gene England's historic essay. I think he gave the most powerful articulation of that principle when he wrote his book.

Yeah, The Church Is As True as the Gospel. Is that the one?

That's the one. That's the one. And, uh, I, I think that, um, we have to begin with that. We have to start with that premise, and then our expectations are in the right place. I think we haven't, you know, we point this out sometimes, but we don't fully appreciate the genius of organizing our wards geographically. And we are the only major church denomination that observes geographic demarcations. And the consequence of that is that we create relationships which you don't choose. Just like siblings. Most people in their moments of honesty would say, yeah, I probably wouldn't have chosen him for a brother, but I learned to love him because we grew up in the same house. And it's the same principle and it's genius. So yeah, wards exploit that that unevenness of character and disposition and personality and force us to work through it. Yeah.

Uh, Jim, you feel free to jump in at any point, um, you know, while we've got you for sure. Um, uh, Tara, I just wanna kind of connect back to some interesting points that you made. Um, you talk about, um, spirituality versus religion. My you describe, uh, spirituality as a, as a, how do you describe again in relation to religion?

Well, spirituality, and this goes all the way back to foundations of Christianity. It was a problem in the monastic system where it's like, we're going to just completely abdicate our responsibility to one another in under the illusion that I can have a, an encounter with God that is unitary and personal and individual.

Okay.

My experience is that, so I have a personal relationship with my heavenly father. I, you know, I hike, I cycle, I sail, I love sailing, and I speak with God when I'm out in the mountains, uh, in opposition to what you just said. And it's, to me, it's very real, very personal. I've had some profound experiences. You know, I don't go to church anymore, but I'm still connected to the community. You know, the, the people side of it is really important. I mean, I, the reaction from many members towards me has been quite negative. Um, that's something I'd like you to, if you can address that as well later on in the conversation where, uh, there's been very negative, awful comments that are in because I've, I've left the church and I should have known better and I've fallen from this height of the stake presidency and, and Satan's got me and and I'm lost, I'm now lazy or sinning or, um, or whatever, some apostate as it's been, you know, as I've been labeled, quite hurtful. People that I've worked with and served with many for many years, that's, I find that, um, that's been quite painful to, to hear, but I get my spirituality from serving in the community. I, I don't go attend the church on a regular basis, but I have attended other churches. I get a lot from that. I connect with a lot of events, local, some events locally where I'm connected to the community, working with people, you know, side by side and seeing the amazing work that they do for the homeless and the food banks, etc. So I'm connected in that way. And yes, I find nature very spiritual. So for me, that, that I don't need to go to church to feel spirituality. Okay. I know you talk about, you need, you said you need an institution. For me, I don't, I don't need an institution. And you talk about the scaffolding and the scaffolding is important. And I would say that scaffolding works or scaffold works if it's organized and structured and put together properly. Okay, you know, if you're talking about scaffolding in construction, as we work in, you've got to get the scaffolding right, you've got to get the foundations right. And I think part of the foundations of the church are probably not put together. I repeat, haven't been put together properly, were put together by people that may or may not have known better, you know, mistakes that were made, et cetera. Errors in the design and construction from the very foundations of it, like blacks in the priesthood and polygamy. I, I never, polygamy never made sense to me. I, I read it, I studied it, you know, I've read quite a few books on it and it just didn't. It just didn't make sense. And I'm coming from a very limited perspective. What I'm suggesting is that some of the basic pieces, the basic foundations of the church during the Restoration, I'm suggesting that there were mistakes made even at the scaffolding level. And I'm pretty sure that's not the first time you've heard that. I think the church has got stronger and better, more organized, better structured. It's completely different in many ways, Terrell, I'm sure, compared to the early church. I mean, it's one of the most well-organized institutions on the planet. You know, I've served in these callings as you have. It's incredibly organized. Let's face it, very well structured. It works really well. The capacity to serve and to help the community and to work together in the way you described, it functions extremely well. And of course, it's evolved quite significantly. The other two points I want to just kind of highlight, you talk about didn't get the memo at the beginning. Um, if you can address that, because the concerns and questions I had about certain things like blacks in the priesthood, well, I don't know what you mean by I didn't get the memo because I read this, I read the material, attended the lessons, taught seminary. Um, there was stuff that we now talk about now in a very different, uh, way, in much more detail, in much more complexity that were never in the lesson material growing up. Okay. And I'm sure you've heard that. That's not the first time you'll heard that. You had these standard gospel lessons, you know, the old books that we used to, you know, back in the '80s, where I joined the church. And none of this, any of the summary stuff there, none of these complexities and the details that we now see in the essays and Joseph Smith Papers Project, et cetera, were not in there. So could you address, um, those two points. That, that's— what do you think about my comments about my spirituality? Uh, you know, did you see people getting, you know, having that, some genuine experience in that? Secondly, can you— do you, do you accept or not that maybe the church gets some of the foundational pieces wrong in terms of scaffolding? Yeah. And, and, uh, yeah, if you— and, and that last point, if you would be kind enough to, uh, respond to that. So I'm kind of, uh, in hopefully a respectful way, kind of pushing back a little bit on—

I hope you would. I would hate to live the kind of life where nobody ever disagreed or was outraged by something I said. Um, uh, first of all, it was a memo thing as well.

I didn't get the memo.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I'll do that.

So look, I know that it's a provocative thing for me to say spirituality is, can be a false cover for religion. I don't, look, first of all, let me just acknowledge from the get-go, you may be infinitely closer to God than I am. I can't judge of anyone else's spiritual standing or experiences. All I am trying to suggest is that there, I believe, scripturally, historically, personally, there is it is imperative to recognize that from a Christian perspective, Christ was all about the community, not the individual. It was about washing the disciples' feet. It was about the only test of discipleship is if you love one another. At no point did he set down a standard or a metric that was about retreating from society and having a personal encounter with God. Now, I believe that, that communal engagement is supplemented by our personal interaction with the divine and that we can and should seek for a personal relationship. But what I mean is that we cannot use personal experiences as an excuse to, uh, abdicate our primary responsibility to our fellow human beings. However, that— and you said, you know, you found other avenues to do that in the community, and, and that's, that's all I'm saying. Um, about the memo, let me just give you a couple specific examples of what I meant about people that don't get the memo. Look, we had seen the, the president of the Quorum of the Twelve giving a, uh, a worldwide address in which he said a testimony is not an adequate substitute for an answer. And yet people like you still get shut down or criticized when you want an explanation rather than a testimony. So the people responding that way didn't get the memo. That's what I meant.

Oh, I see. I see what you're saying. Right.

Okay.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Yeah. Negative experiences. And, you know, let me apologize on behalf of my, my people and my culture and my church for those insensitive and self-righteous individuals who, who think that your personal faith journey is a— it should be subject to their judgment, um, or, or your questions. I'm sorry that that continues to happen, uh, but it, but it does. Um, when you, when you talk about manuals and, and what you learned growing up and what we've learned now, that kind of was my point, is that there has been a revolution, right? And the fact that, that seminary students now are reading a history of the Church that deals with all the difficulties and complexities and unpleasantness of Joseph Smith's practice of polygamy and how it was practiced. So I think we have made progress there, and I think we have moved in very, very healthy directions. In terms of whether some of the scaffolding was put in place incorrectly, well, I think I've I've already given you examples of where I think, yeah, that's— I think that's true. I think, for example, in the way that heavenly organization was conceived and structured and temple practice, right, took place for 50 years within a framework that was erroneous. So yeah, I think some of those things have gotten wrong. I have a view of the church as itself moving along a spiritual path. I mean, we're told in the Doctrine and Covenants that in the first creation, things were spiritual and then physical, but in the latter creation, they'll be physical and then spiritual. One way I think that can be read is to say we've got this actual institution in place, but we're a long way from putting it into perfect harmony with God's will and designs. So I would hope that this is a work in progress. I think, I'd like to think that's what President Nelson, when he said the restoration is a process, not an event. So that, I think we still have a lot that has to be corrected and improved and added upon. Right.

This is really good. And Jim, if you're still there, you feel free to jump in. I do have a few more questions for Jim. We'll lock in. Terence, thank you so much. This is so helpful for me personally as well. I'm sure for many of our listeners. If we take a lot of the key points here from this conversation, we kind of connect those points, those dots. Is it accurate to say that instead of saying this is the only true and living church upon the face of the earth, Section 130 of the Doctrine and Covenants, shouldn't we be saying that this is a good church? Okay, so where I'm going with this is that if, if we have made these mistakes, we've got some foundational things wrong. We've learned from them, we've been more open, there's been a revolution, et cetera. Young people now are learning about the complexity, et cetera. Um, notwithstanding the church's concern, which I get, by the way, I get that the church is trying to, um, maintain people's faith. I understand that. But is it more accurate to say that it's a good church, a really good church, instead of saying the only true church? Because When you think about the only true church, you know, I was taught like this from the missionaries that taught me. I went to the YSA, the youth. It was the only true church upon the face of the earth. We hear that frequently from the members, of course, even now. The church leaders don't really talk about that so much now, that we're the only true church upon the earth. They used to. On a mission, you know, I served a mission in Scotland with Jim Bennett, um, and we taught that was the only true church. This is the only way to God. The only way to get back to God is to Join the Mormon Church, essentially, you know, pay tithing, go to the temple, serve in the church, that's, and receive the eternal blessings from the temple. Notwithstanding the infallibility imperfections, some of the foundational pieces got wrong. Is the church not like any other church, established church, semi-established church where it is inspired? Yes., man-made in, in parts, man, uh, constructed. It is in terms of its function, its organizational structure, of course, just to some extent. I think the Lord says, you know, look, uh, organize things in a certain way, but the rest, you know, like scaffolding, the rest you kind of do your best you can and make, and make sense of it in order to fulfill the purpose and, uh, goals of the church. But is it fair to say from this conversation that the church isn't perfect, has made mistakes, hasn't got it all right, still learning, uh, is at least partly man-made, and in some ways not any different to any other church. Instead of being the only true church, it's one of the good churches. And I'm being, um, you know, devil's advocate in the middle there. I'm trying to, you know, See, you see that different line, that middle bit?

Yeah, yeah, I'll go with you about 95% of the way there.

Okay, okay.

Um, uh, and I don't want to sound like a lawyer parsing the document, but sometimes— look, one of, one of my half dozen most important underlying bedrock framing principles is God God speaks through human understanding. And he uses language and concepts that are part of the conceptual universe of the person he's speaking to. The Church has said this officially now for the first time that I can remember in one of the most recent Gospel Topics Essays about Revelation when it says, God speaks according to the language and concepts and understanding of those peoples. Section 19 tells us this. God sometimes uses language to get our attention. He doesn't really mean it literally. The expression true and living, only true and living, that's a phrase we find in 19th century rhetoric. Joseph Smith used it in a letter to Emma. He said, I am your only true and living friend. Well, he certainly didn't believe he was the only friend she had. So there was a rhetorical emphasis that that gave to that sentiment. President Hinckley, I think, was the first prophet who said, you know, we need to be more sensitive in the way that we use that expression. You're right to to note that we don't use it as much, and I think we don't use it as much because it carries a different resonance today. We tend to parse it literally, and, and it is offensive to others when we use it literally. So yeah, I would be much happier if, if we said today we believe that the church has certain irreplaceable, indispensable things that we can contribute to the mosaic of religions in the world. I think we do some things that most churches don't do as well, like community building, like temple work, and like understanding the nature of God. I think there are other things other churches do far better than we do. I would give anything if my culture loved learning as much as Jewish members do, or if we had the same— we perform sacraments with the same sensitivity and reverence and awe that Catholics do. So Yeah, I want to be at the front of the line when it comes to pointing to the superiority or at least the beauty that other traditions have that we have yet to emulate.

Yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah, we have, you know, even on the outside, I recognize, acknowledge, and will never deny the greatness that exists in the church on areas that we excel at, like mission work and temple work and serving the community and like you, I've been at the forefront in leadership, working with members, seeing the extraordinary commitment and devotion that members give to each other and to help each other in the community. It really is the most extraordinary organization. It really is. And I think about it a lot, even though I don't go, I think about it. I do miss it. I've had to, you know, with the difficult that I've experienced and rejection from some, sadly, some people that I thought I was close to, I've now found, you know, my community elsewhere. And so I really appreciate that, that comment. I, and by the way, I want to say that I, and I'm not alone, Farrah, when I say this, I know that I took that scripture literally because I was taught by the missionaries that this is the only way back to God. This is it. We've got the fullness of the gospel. We have the priesthood authority. We have a living prophet. We have Joseph Smith. We have a, we had an apostasy and we had restored gospel. The fullness of the keys through Elijah and other prophets have been fully restored to the earth. And that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the only organization, period, on the planet that acts on behalf, uh, of, of the Lord, is the, my, is the, is the mouthpiece for the Lord. And the prophet is the only person that has that revelation between him and the Lord. Um, that's what I was taught. I'm pretty sure that's what you were taught at some point, or you heard at some point. I taught that. I, I took it literally. I taught it literally. It wasn't rhetoric to me. And, and I put a lot of, um, faith and trust in that, uh, notwithstanding you know, the weaknesses. And so I think a lot of, is that your experience? Do you see, do you agree with that? Do you see in your association that people have taken it literally?

Yeah, I, yeah, I do. But I think there are other ways of softening the, uh, mitigating the, the, the detrimental aspects of that phrasing. One, for example, is, is, you know, in, in the, the Revelation on the Spirit World that Joseph F. Smith received, uh, 1918, Section 138. We're told that the gospel is preached to those who rejected Christ. We always say it's preached to those who didn't get the chance, but our scripture says it's preached to those who rejected Christ. That's an interesting scenario. So when we say this church, which— what church are we talking about? And Do you see where I'm going with this? In other words, I'm suggesting that if we read that not in terms of, you know, this particular incarnation at this moment is the end-all and be-all, but the Christian gospel in its eternal nature. And I think sometimes, because I don't want to retreat into a position where I'm unwilling to say some things that may be hard to say, In other words, I think one might ask the exact same question you're asking of Christianity itself. Buddhism has beautiful things, Hinduism, Islam. Is Christianity the only true religion? Well, I as a Christian believe that only Christ provided an atonement that allows us to be resurrected and that will give us immortality. So I think there is something irreplaceable in Christianity that is not just on a par with the others. In the same sense, I think that the, that the, the gospel of Jesus Christ provides the mechanisms by which relationships can be created that are eternal. I just don't think right now, today, at this moment is the only time in world history that Ian is going to have the opportunity to avail himself of those opportunities and powers and privileges. So I don't read it in that exclusivist kind of way.

Right. I appreciate that. Jim, you've rejoined us. Can you hear us okay?

Yeah, I can hear you fine. I, I, I mean, I, I very much appreciate all of this. I, I, Carol, I watched a conversation you had recently with Jared Halverson at BYU where you talked about a lot of the things you've talked about here. But one of the things that Jared Halverson said that I thought was really interesting that I'd love to get your perspective on is he talked about people leaving the church and the fact that a lot of them now are no longer leaving the church, not because it's not true, not good, or they think it's not good. And I thought that was really an interesting insight that people aren't leaving the church over polygamy or the Kinderhook plates or some other kind of historical issue. They're leaving the church because they have LGBTQ family members. They, you know, I had a conversation with a young woman who said, why would I want to go to church where an 11-year-old boy has more authority than I do? I mean, more and more, the millennials and Generation Z are looking at— that they're having the kind of faith crisis that is common among people of Generation X, my generation, and older. I mean, people who lead the church that are my contemporaries, and I mean, Ian had his experience. It's an excruciating experience. They go through this massive faith crisis, and they doubt everything they've ever been taught, and and the whole world crumbled. What I'm seeing among millennials and Generation Z, my children's generation, is they're just throwing the church off like an ill-fitting suit. It's that they reach their 18th birthday and say, "Ah, this isn't for me," and off they go. And they leave the church and they leave it alone. You know the old adage, "You can leave the church, but you can't leave it alone." They're leaving the church and they're leaving it alone. And that, that's that tide. So I'd love to get your perspective on that.

Yeah. Um, in, in simply put, yes, I, I agree with Jared's take. I think that's a good way of articulating, uh, some of the shifts. Uh, I'll give you a quick example. I, I hosted an interfaith group from an evangelical college. A few weeks ago. Their last question was, what is the greatest challenge facing your young people? And I had a research assistant with me. I said, let's let him answer that. And without a pause, he said, oh, the temple. He said, most of the kids I know in my generation would much rather be down at the soup kitchen where we know we're having an impact on suffering people than doing these ordinances where we don't actually see anything. I think that was a beautiful, honest expression of a problem that these young people are trying to work through. And in other words, he wasn't seeing the church doing the good that it's capable of doing. It's doing stuff, but it's not the good that he wants to see being done. I think there are really good reasons, really bad reasons for disaffiliating. But some of the good reasons are that people can be justly disappointed 'cause they love the church, they want it to do all the good it can do. They want it to be a steward over the earth and they want to see it putting poverty at the forefront of humanitarian concerns. And they want to see transparency at every level. These are good desires. And so I think the way we respond is not to criticize or say, here's where you've got it wrong. But to say, okay, well, let's see what kind of an influence can we have in our culture to move us in those directions? And how can we work with patience while we wait to see our hopes and dreams fulfilled in all of these other ways? Can we just respect and regard and dignify legitimate hurts and disappointments that people have in an institution that isn't perfect.

I'm really grateful to hear that from someone who's left the church. I don't want the church to disappear. I want the church to get better, improve. I really do. I want it to be more inclusive. I'm not alone in thinking that. I suspect you're in semi-regular contact with leaders of the church in some form or other, I'm sure. And a message I would want to share with the leaders, there's many messages, but certainly one, going, speaking of the greatness of the church and those areas where it excels at, I would, um, humbly, respectfully suggest that if the church was more involved in the community, much more than it is, frankly. Church has extraordinary resources. We have other churches locally who are very involved in the community, frankly, far more than the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's just a fact, locally. That's been my experience in serving in England and Scotland, uh, you know, as a leader, and certainly my experience here. And considering the extraordinary organization that the church is, we could do much more terral in the community, helping across a whole range of issues, homelessness and, and a whole other bunch of, um, things that we could do to help the community locally. I see churches working together, different faiths, different religions, working together harmoniously, mostly doing extraordinary good with other charities locally. And I think the— if the church wants to progress and advance, accelerate, it's cause with all the missionary effort that it's got, the members, volunteerism, et cetera. Frankly, it could do a lot more. And I was talking about this when I was in the church. It could do a lot more by engaging in local projects, local community. Um, that might vary from stake to stake or from, uh, ward to ward. I know that when the church is involved in the community on these projects, it does extremely well., and makes a huge difference. I know that I've been involved in the Helping Hands program, which is unbelievably wonderful, and I personally would like to see more of that. I really would. And I think that is another area of, of opportunity, I think, for the church. So if we do speak to leaders of the church, I'm sure they, you know, who's this Ian Wilkes? What does he know? But, you know, I'm, I'm, um, Speaking from my own experience and others that I've, you know, worked with and keeping in touch with, and I think that's an area where the church, if it could do more with the resources that it's got and perhaps less on meetings, Terrell, less meetings internally. If you look at what Christ's life was, he was in the community. He was on the hills, he was in the streets, he knocked on people's doors, he was out there all the time in the community. Doing extraordinary things and probably quite rarely in meetings, talking about meetings. I found my experience was a lot of meetings taking place. And I think that would help the youth, as you said, if they're involved in these local projects and they're connecting with other youth on other, you know, projects, et cetera. That is something that is very physical, you know, shoulder to shoulder, side by side. So, you know, I don't have any direct hotline, of course, to any leaders of the church, but if you do, and I'm sure you do, Well, if you do, and you— I just think it's such an, um, yeah, a very timely opportunity to start focusing resources in that area because that's what transforms lives. And you can deal with issues like history and, and politics or policies or, um, you know, doctrine. Uh, it's— I think it's easier to help people if they've had this community spiritual experience together. Um, I just think it's, the church is still not fully realized its full potential in the areas of where I'm talking about.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. There are, there are 3 things that give me cautious optimism in this regard. One is, um, I, Fionnuala and I have charted this. There's been a 500% increase in the use of the word healing over the word saving in General Conference. That may seem like a trivial thing, but saving is an abstract theological Healing is a hands-on— I just, I think that that portends good things when we emphasize, no, Christ was healing. He was touching. He was moving. He was feeding. As I see it, Charlene, the amount of humanitarian aid resources invested in international relief efforts is increasing, not as dramatically as some of us would like to see. And third, I think there've been great shifts under Sharon Harris when she was running the humanitarian efforts to incorporate, to work in synchrony with other faith groups, other organizations. So there's this sense that now we're part of this collective global thing. So I'm hopeful that there can be really some really dramatic developments in the next coming years. I hope there will be. I think there will be.

Good. Good. I'm encouraged by that. We are coming to the end of our podcast, so we're going to wrap this up. I just want to sincerely thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to be with us today. It means an awful lot. I know it will to many of our listeners as well. Jim Bennett's not with us. He's still getting these connection issues there. But I just wanted to ask you in a closing question, what— I could spend all day with you and learn from you, and I would love to, you know, have that experience with you. We could learn so much. What advice, with all your experience and all your, um, insights dealing with all these issues and many others that we've not discussed, what's your advice, if any, to a stake presidency or a bishopric who are dealing with members who've got questions, who are doubting, who have got concerns, honest, uh, legitimate questions about doctrine. Doctrine, not policy, and they're struggling and are thinking of leaving. What's your advice to them?

There have been a large number of leaders around the world that Fiona and I have personally encountered, interacted with, who have— some in this area, some in Switzerland, some in England— who use a Time and Gospel Doctrine class where they call rotating groups to come in and work through the Gospel Topics Essays. And, and I, I think that's a fantastic idea. So they systematically, in a church setting, work through these difficult topics and areas, and the class knows this is to ask, this is, this is to wrestle and struggle. That's, that's something concrete that can be done. Second, um, you know, if you find somebody in the ward or, or ask somebody, um, that you know in, in church history or the Maxwell Institute to come and give a fireside in which they can ask the kinds of questions they don't feel comfortable asking in gospel doctrine classes. So it's not about just, you know, saying, yeah, I understand, and I, you know, um, I feel for you. Take concrete steps to actually formally address those people who have questions. It seems to me there are simple remedies or simple ways of addressing that problem.

I appreciate that. We weren't doing that, but when I talked about the essays, I was shut down very quickly.

Okay.

So, you know, it would be wonderful if stakes and wards could do that. That's real tangible effort where you physically addressing the issues and creating hopefully a safe space where people can ask questions without being labeled an apostate. I mean, who wants that for goodness sake, right? Jim's reconnected with us. Jim Bennett, we're gonna close the podcast here. Any closing comments or remarks from you?

No, I'm just listening to this last little exchange and I think you're absolutely right, Ian, that it would be wonderful to have those kind of outlets. And, you know, I think I said in our last podcast that I'm kind of unusual in that I felt like throughout my life I did have those outlets. And it's been really stunning to me how many people do not, that how many of these conversations don't have a place to be able to flourish. And Carol, I would love to have a Carol and a Fiona Gibbons in every ward and in every stake to have that kind of a resource available to people where they could have frank and open conversations about difficult topics with somebody who has examined these topics and, uh, been able to, uh, come out with a testimony on the other side. I mean, that's the thing. When I went through my own faith crisis long, long ago, uh, the thing that saved me was not, uh, the fact that somebody had all of the answers at their fingertips. It's that intelligent people like you, uh, were able to sit down and talk to me about them and were willing to respect my questions. And so it was able to sort of put a brake on my panic and say, well, no, I don't have all the answers, but my uncle and my father have looked at these issues and they have been able to maintain faith as a result. Uh, maybe I shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater just yet. And, you know, I mean, that's the kind of resource that, uh, that I think you provide so wonderfully. I mean, and I think people can, I, I would recommend your work. I would recommend your books. Your articles, your discussions in podcasts and everywhere else to anybody, because I think people who listen to and read Carol Givens are able to see a sort of a grown-up approach to a lot of these difficult issues and recognize that you don't have to sacrifice your intellectual integrity to be a believer. But I think those resources They're a lot scarcer than I would like them to be. And I don't, I mean, Ian's questions and all of these kinds of things, I think demonstrate a reality that this is a problem in the church at large. I think this is a problem for a lot of the members of the church who, when they have difficult questions. Uh, I mean, very often the first reaction they get— I mean, just very quickly, uh, I had a real problem in 2015 that almost drove me out of the church. I was so shocked and frustrated with the policy that the children of gay parents could no longer be baptized, uh, that I didn't know what to do. And the minute I started to articulate that publicly, the first response from so many people was, "Well, then leave. We don't want you here anymore. If you can't be faithful, if you can't just accept that this is the way the church is, then get lost." And I was stunned by that. I was stunned that the first time I'd ever had any kind of problem with this, that the only tools available to some members were Well, then just go, just get lost because I don't want to work through this with you. Uh, if you can't, uh, and I think part of that too is that so many of these bishops and stake presidents aren't Terrell Gibbons. They don't have the kind of background that you have. They don't have the kind of understanding of these issues. And so they're terrified when these issues are raised. You come to a stake president who doesn't know about the Kinderhook plates, for instance. And you bring it up and I think they're just as scared as the person bringing it up. I just, I don't know how we get from here to the vision you're articulating. I mean, can you give me any hope that we can get there or maybe a roadmap for how to get there?

Yeah, I mean, I could tell you a very specific instance where we were in United Kingdom. I was addressing a large group of CES educators, and we weren't even 10 minutes into our presentation when we were shut down. And, uh, church authority said, this isn't appropriate. I don't like these questions. I don't like where we're going. I'm shutting this down. And we were, we were just stunned. And so we're escorted out to our car in the parking lot and we we drove away and we were told that this church leader would be at a fireside we were giving a few weeks down the road. And so we anticipated he would shut us down there too. And he showed up late and gave this stirring little address about the importance of asking good questions. Then he asked to meet with us after the stake fireside. So he went to his office and he said, uh, I didn't treat you very well, did I, back in Oxford? He said, no, you didn't. And he said, that's because I was frightened by the questions. He said, and I, I realize now that, that these need to be addressed and I just want to apologize and ask God's blessings on, on what you're doing. So I'd like to think that that is kind of emblematic of a lot of people, and, and a lot of the people that Ian has encountered and that you encountered, that, that are unsettled themselves. And so they react with fear and they lash out and they try to distance the source of that unsettling. And I think as the church grows and matures, as we do as a body and as we do as individuals, I think, I think I think this movement toward openness, transparency, honesty, and inclusiveness is going to continue. And I think we just have to persevere and endure and be able to take some of the hard knocks along the way.

Now, can I just say how much I appreciate you fighting the good fight here? I think your work is of such great benefit to so many people. It has been a great benefit to me, and I'm grateful to have had this conversation, and I'm grateful that you've been able to spend this time with us, and I just can't say enough, and I, I happy to be a Carol Givens advocate out there and tell everybody, if you want more of this, I would recommend you go and I'd start with The Crucible Doubt and go from there. So. Anyway, thank you very much for being here with us.

You bet.

And Terrell, I want to thank you for your thoughtful, intelligent responses, conversations. In particular, that last response meant a lot to me personally. Jim and I want the church to succeed. It's a great organization. We want it to get better and improve. And your advice and counsel and direction, I think if it could continue to go in that direction, I think it will be a place of where people feel safe to ask questions and, and just be open and honest about things. Um, and in, in such an organization that's got that safe environment, it's a better organization. So you describe something, a direction, a vision of what the church can and should and probably will be. Which I find, um, very encouraging. So I, I just wanted to sincerely thank you so much for, uh, you know, uh, taking time to meet with us. It's been an honor meeting with you for the first time. I, I would love the honor of, of meeting with you again on a podcast in, in person, ideally. I'm not sure if I ever will ever get to the east side of America, but who knows? If you're in British Columbia and you, you need a place to stay, then, um, then we'll, uh, open up our home to you. But I sincerely thank you for for your time and your insightfulness. It means so much to myself personally, I know to Jim, and I'm sure to many of our listeners.

Great. Happy to be here. Thanks, Ian. Good getting to know you and hope to talk with you again.

Thank you. And so Terrell, Jim, thank you for joining us on this week's Inside Out Podcast. We want to thank all of our listeners. I know you've enjoyed this conversation as much as I have, and any comments feedback. We welcome that. So, uh, Carol, thank you. Jim Bennett, thank you.

God bless. Bye-bye.