Roadmap 2.0

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Inside Out. You know who I am, I'm Ian, and I'm with the indisputable Jim Bennett. Hello, Jim.

Hello, it's indisputably me. How are you?

I'm doing well, I'm doing well. And as always, I'm super excited to spend this time with you building and developing what is an exciting catalog in the Inside Out vision that we have for improving and changing the Mormon Church, perhaps the world, who knows. And Jim Bennett, we have a very special and regular guest with us today, and I want to welcome Greg Prince to Inside Out.

Hello and thank you. I would note for the listening audience, since they will not be able to see us, that Ian and I are functionally naked because only Jim is wearing the uniform of the priesthood.

Uh, yes, well, uh, that's, that, that's for professional reasons, not priesthood reasons.

Yeah, it's a special kind of Mormon wardrobe malfunction.

There you go. There we go. There we go.

So with that, and again, with that introduction, Greg, I want to say it's a, as always, is an honor and a privilege to have you back on Inside Out. You're such an important part of the Inside Out catalog. We've met now on Inside Out with Jim Bennett and I having some extraordinary conversations with you, discussing your Roadmap 1.0. Over, I think, about 20 episodes. I've done the count, including the live sessions, is about 20 or 22 episodes. We've been exploring and reviewing and discussing with great interest and excitement your Roadmap 1.0. We've gone into quite a bit of detail on some of the topics. And for our listeners and viewers, if you're interested in learning more about that, you can download that on Spotify and other major platforms. And we do recommend you go back and and listen to those because they're incredibly valuable and insightful. And we've also, uh, communicated often as we've got into the Roadmap the significance and the importance and the value of that document being reviewed and discussed by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. The Roadmap outlines and defines clear measures for improving the church in incredible ways that are insightful and inspirational, and the genesis of that is truly inspirational. Greg, you've also created a Roadmap 2.0 that we'd like to discuss with you today and get into some of that, if we may. Before we do that, would you mind reminding us and reminding our viewers and listeners of the genesis of Roadmap 1.0, its relationship with the Roadmap 2.0, and the inspirations behind this extraordinary work that you're doing, again, to identify really substantive measures and recommendations and suggestions and ideas for improving the Mormon Church. Can you give us a little bit of background and context as, as we move into these conversations about Roadmap 2.0?

Uh, 1.0 was basically because I had too much free time.

Okay.

And I reflected back on my 75+ years and thought, how could we make this thing better? 2.0 happened because of our conversations on Inside Out. That on each of the topics there was more depth than I had dug the first time around. So the second version is just nearly triple the length of the first. Now, quantity does not necessarily equal quality, so we'll see how that one pans out, right?

If you could summarize, you know, all of your experiences, 75 years, and if I may, I consider you a wise owl.

I've deliberately removed the word old because you look very young and handsome still.

But you're a wise owl, you have incredible insights. But as you are developing the 1.0 roadmap, and as you've got into developing the 2.0, could you summarize your vision from your hopes and aspirations for the church from those two documents? Could you summarize what your vision is? What is it you want to see by way of summary for the church?

I think regardless of what an organization calls itself, there is always room for improvement. If you invoke the name of Deity as we do in our formal title, that doesn't mean that you've got it all right. And I think that one of the strengths of Mormonism from the outset was that by having an all-lay priesthood, it opened up the reality that the best ideas came from the grassroots. That you didn't have a cadre of lifetime-tenured ecclesiastical authorities at the local level. There was constant change, and so you had constantly the possibility of fresh ideas, not just from the bishops and the stake presidents, but from the, the other people at the grassroots level. Having spent so much of my adult life looking at the lives of church leaders and looking at church history, particularly going through 40,000 pages of the David O. McKay Diaries, 20,000 pages of the Leonard Arrington Diaries, and having a very close relationship with Paul Dunn over the final 3 years of his life, including 60 hours of recorded conversation, I could see both the best of what was there and also that there was always room for improvement. Paul Dunn and I spent a lot of time talking about what if— what might the church look like if we were to make it better? I remember one fascinating conversation where he talked about how missionaries were called, the nuts and bolts of the process. But then I said, okay, if you were to start with a blank piece of paper, what would your missionary program look like? And without even pausing, the first thing that he said was I would understand that every area of the world is unique and that we in Salt Lake don't have all the answers. So I would go to the locals and say, "What's going to work in your area?" That's the spirit I would like to see. I understand there's a little bit of loosening up on that, that more line authority has been given to area presidencies. But I'll get back to what I think was the anchor concept in 1.0, and that was, wouldn't it be nice if we had Salt Lake One? If we had a convocation of people at all levels of the church, including angry youth and adults who nonetheless wanted to make it better? What would that look like, and what would emerge from it? So that's a long answer, Ian, to your question, but I've been stewing about some of these things for a long time. Another major influence on me for nearly 50 years was my close friendship with Lester Bush, who not only wrote that seminal article on Blacks and Priesthood that changed the church, but was the associate editor of Dialogue for about 6 years, and during his tenure, I think some of the most consequential articles besides his own earlier that were ever published by Dialogue were published. We used to meet every Sunday night. Jolene and I would go over to their home, uh, we would have dinner, they'd put their kids to bed, and then Lester and I would talk for sometimes 3 or 4 hours. Just going through everything. And it was a similar exercise to what's in the roadmap. How could we make this better? Where are we falling down? Does that address the question adequately?

It does. It does it really well. Um, I know Jim Bennett wants to, to ask his questions here and get into this. I've got a couple of questions for me. Um, Well, one question before we get into the conversation I think we need to have between the difference between 1.0 and 2.0, because there are quite significant differences. You know, the 2.0 is significantly enhanced and improved, you know, built on the original foundation of 1.0. But a question that I don't think we've asked on Inside Out, and I'm not sure if you've been asked this question, is why are you leading these conversations and not the church? Because in the Roadmap, it's clear that the ideas, and from the conversations we've had, those measures, those proposed changes, would undoubtedly improve the church in many, many ways, many significant ways, to improve the lives of members and, and make the experience in the Mormon Church much more meaningful and substantive. But why are you leading it? And primarily others are doing the same thing in some ways. And why— well, I guess the question is, why isn't the church leading these conversations?

When I was first looking into priesthood, that was a process that began in 1986 and culminated almost a decade later with my first book, which was a History of Early LDS Priesthood. I read a document in church that was a report by the Correlation Research Committee. I think I got that title. President McKay assigned Harold B. Lee, who was the senior apostle, to head the latest iteration of correlation. Which was a process that had gone back to 1906 but had never really fulfilled its mandate. So Lee turned around and commissioned a committee from BYU and said, I want you to go back and look at everything historically and then make recommendations for how this flavor of correlation could do the job better. So it was the right charge, and they responded very well. The report was about an inch thick. A lot of the pages of it were photocopies of earlier documents, but when they had finished their work, they made a presentation to the committee within the Quorum of the Twelve that included Harold B. Lee, and their main recommendation was that the auxiliary organizations of the church were no longer functioning the way they had in earlier years. I sense in part of it was because the organizations were tired, but part of it also was the church had changed. The the world has changed and the organizations had not. So it, their recommendation was that all the current auxiliary organizations be disbanded and that 3 new ones be created, one for the children, one for the youth, one for the adults. It was a coherent and I think well thought out plan When they presented it to this subcommittee of the Twelve, President Lee said, "Thank you, brethren. Now go back and this time don't get rid of anything." That's a long way of getting to the answer of your question, Ian. I think there is not just a reluctance but a fear to do substantive change, and I think that comes from either the misuse or the misunderstanding of words like revelation and inspiration, that once those words are used to describe anything within the church, everybody from that point forward thinks, hands off, we can't change that because that's inspired. I think that's at the crux of the problem. Sometimes if you're going to move forward, you have to cut the Gordian knot and just pay whatever price you have to pay for turning your back on history and trying to move forward. Yeah, it may be reluctance on the part of some leaders. I think really, if you were able to dig down to the depths of their souls, you would find out they are afraid. To do substantive change. And if you look at changes that we have seen during our lifetime, they didn't happen overnight. I can remember in the 1970s there were pilot programs to reduce the meeting schedule to 2 hours. So it took more than 40 years before they finally got around to pulling the lever and doing that. Uh, I, I don't think that that's the best model. I'm not leading a movement. I don't think I have any followers, and I would not want to have followers in terms of any organized movement. I'm just trying to think, what could I do that would make this thing better? And I take very seriously the scriptural admonition of magnifying one's calling. That doesn't come from outside you. That's once you have received a calling, it's within you. What are you going to do with what you now have been entrusted with?

Yeah, Jim, that— as I listen to that, Jim, that's one of the most significant things I've ever heard. This barrier, this reluctance, this reticence to progress and improve and to, and to make substantive, meaningful change is driven, at least in part, by fear, which is so sad, so disappointing, such a letdown. Jim Bennett, do you agree with what Greg said? Do you have a similar perspective? And the other question I want to ask you, Jim, is How has your vision of the church improved or changed from learning and studying the two roadmaps that Greg Prince has provided?

Well, I'll answer the second question first because I want to answer the first question by asking Greg a question and get— because I think his perspective is really valuable on this and I want to give him as much time as possible. The roadmap has been very helpful in terms of helping me. One of the things that has been so wonderful about this is that Greg, by sort of just putting it on paper and giving it structure, giving it just some kind of a— it's a whole lot easier, I found, to write, to rewrite than it is to write. Coming up with the initial idea is where all the heavy lifting is. And I think that the roadmap comes up with all of these ideas and we can sort of disagree with it in spots or try to refine it in spots. But just having that map laid out as a basis for discussion has been extraordinarily helpful in clarifying my own thinking. About what kind of changes need to be made. So the question I have, Greg, and we've talked about this a little bit, mostly offline, not necessarily in the podcast, but the question always comes up— the church does not appreciate advice. And the church actually sees it as somewhat hostile, any kind of correction, any kind of suggestion. You know, this is sort of codified in my experience with the choir. One of the first things that happens when you join the Tabernacle Choir is that Mack Wilberg stands up and he says literally these words. He doesn't sugarcoat it. He says, "We don't want your suggestions." If you've thought of something and we're not doing it, it means that we thought about it before and chose not to do it. And good choir members show up, sing, and go home. Uh, I'm not paraphrasing. I mean, he says some variation of those exact words. I mean, I, I haven't memorized it, but That seems to be the attitude in the Church as well. And if you offer suggestions, uh, it's taken as criticism, it's taken as faithlessness, uh, because of the temple covenant not to speak ill of the Lord's anointed. We know that President Oaks has said that it is wrong to criticize the leaders of the Church, even if the criticism is true. And so there doesn't seem to be any avenue for a faithful, compassionate, productive way to offer any sort of a suggestion to the church that isn't perceived as some kind of attack. So with all of that background, well, first of all, do you agree with that assessment, or is that— am I being too cynical? And second of all, uh, how do you respond to the accusation that your suggestions are not welcome and are a sign of faithlessness rather than the kind of loving offering that you've described it as?

I think if my suggestions or those of anybody else who wants to improve the organization are not good, then they'll wind up in the dustbin of history. That's okay. But I think there is not just an opportunity but an obligation for members of this church to give it their best, and that includes trying to improve it. There are enough layers of insulation that the brethren, for the most part, don't have to pay attention to any of this. But if the ideas are good, then there's a much greater possibility that they will begin to disseminate through the grassroots. And eventually you wind up with trickle-up revelation because people realize, hey, here's something fresh. And it's not saying that my ideas are fresh and essential. It's saying, I'm putting my best effort there, and if my ideas or anybody else's ideas gain traction, then that's a good thing. And if Lester Bush had waited for the Brethren to ask him to write about blacks and priesthood, it never would have happened. And in fact, Boyd Tracker leaned very heavily on him, trying to stop him from publishing that. And fortunately, Lester had the strength. Uh, basically what he said to him in meeting pers— meeting one-on-one with him was, if there are factual errors in my manuscript, tell me and I will fix them. But there were no factual errors. And what Packer really wanted was, don't publish this. But he wouldn't come right out and say it. Nor do I think subsequent leaders would come out with that same statement. Now, Jim, as I recall, a few weeks ago, you're— one of the members of your area presidency had signaled that he would have a Q&A session with stake members. How'd that go?

Uh, I did not go because it happened during tab choir hours. So I did not hear, I have not heard any report on it. We do have a new stake president, but I don't have the answer to that. I think that would be really interesting to find out how that went. But you know, you cite Lester Bush though, and I think that's really kind of compelling because at the time The admission that Spencer Kimball had read Lester Bush was not something that the Church was willing to make. The Church kind of— I mean, that's come out after the fact. We now know that President Kimball was wrestling with this issue and was reading voraciously about it, and that the Lester Bush essay had tremendous influence in his thinking. But that is not something they would have ever admitted contemporaneous with the event, correct? I mean, that's correct.

If you want credit for good ideas, you're in the wrong organization. They are never going to say, we are grateful for so-and-so in the so-and-so ward for coming up with this new idea that we're now implementing church-wide. Yeah, I've talked before about being part of that process though. I was not the initiator of it, but in the early 1970s in Long Beach California Stake, they started a program without getting permission from anybody that was designed for single young adults. The world had changed, and whereas previously most church members got married in their early 20s, The thing had shifted, and now we had more and more who were into their mid and late 20s who were not married, and we had nothing for them organizationally. So the Long Beach Stake started their own program. We picked up on it within a couple of months and started doing it in Los Angeles Stake and got a visit by Junior Apostle Thomas Monson. Followed up a few weeks later by a trio of bureaucrats from Salt Lake who went around the room and said, please tell us what you're doing. And at the end, the trio said, thank you, keep doing what you're doing. Uh, the following year, the young adult program, the same in concept and name that we had already been doing, was launched. So that's the closest I came to seeing attribution, but they never said that. They never said, we're grateful to the Long Beach stake for coming up with this great idea. So if you want attribution, you're on the wrong boat. If you want change and it doesn't matter to you who gets the credit, then this is a good boat to be on.

Well, I think I agree, and I think that's the reason why we're all here and we're all having conversations like this. But how do you get— have you personally ever run into sort of institutional pushback? You know, there are a lot of people, you know, we're going to be talking to Sam Younge, who I think— I mean, if you want to give credit to anybody, you have to give credit to Sam Younge for the church's change in policy where they now allow parents to sit in on interviews with children, but the church excommunicated Sam Young for his troubles on that.

Yep.

And, you know, so you've got Ahmed Corbett who gave that talk about activism towards the church, gave it an acronym, ATC, and this is a terrible thing. And, you know, so, so, uh, have you ever gotten any sort of institutional pushback, on any of this kind of stuff? And if not, how did you avoid it?

I have not had any overt action. I have written a 50-page essay that nobody else has read that documents all of the subterfuge going back to the 1980s around things that I have written either for articles or books where the church, usually in a fairly clumsy fashion, tried to subvert what I was doing. I think more often than not it backfired, and it never slowed me down. I've spoken before on this podcast about my two major role models in anything that I've written about the church. Juanita Brooks and Lester Bush. I don't know that there are better role models for what we're talking about. They didn't worry about pushback either, but they both got into—

well, I don't know Lester Bush did, but Juanita Brooks paid a huge price for that, didn't she?

It was an informal price, meaning she was never excommunicated, she was never disfellowshipped. She was told politely there's no need for you to send manuscripts to the church magazines anymore because we will not publish them. And her sweet husband Will, who was my home teacher, was quietly put on the sidelines and not given any substantive callings for the remainder of his life.

That's, that's so sad, so disappointing. As I listen to you both, I— when I was serving as a bishop I did things without permission, good things and insightful things with support from the, the councillors in the ward. We opened the building up to a blood drive event. We had 4 a year. That had never been done before. We opened it to a young drivers challenge. This is the Dalkeith ward, Jim Bennett in the Edinburgh Stake. We had 3, 4 young driver national police-sponsored events in the building. Never been done before. So the whole building was opened up. I got mixed responses. There was a bit of a fight inside the state presidency level and the general authority level about Bishop Wilkes doing this stuff, which was pretty innovative and quite progressive, never been done before in Scotland, certainly. And then the other thing is, you know, Ian's working well outside of the, um, you know, the approved traditional methods of, of proselyting and missionary work. It had a significant positive impact on local community who saw the Mormon Church in a very different light when they came to those events. In contrast, fast forward to when I was on the stake presidency, when the Elder President Uchtdorf's talk was released in October 2013, titled— help me on the title, Jim Bennett—

Race and Priesthood. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm sorry, I was thinking of the essay. Yeah, you'd come join with us is—

and then that relationship, I saw a relationship between the race and the priesthood and come join us. I personally saw that relationship. So when that talk was delivered, I think in October, and I think the essay came out about the same time, and I read that essay as a member of the Stake Presidency and actually presiding at a meeting, read it in front of the priesthood and said, what an amazing, you know, opportunity this is to talk about these things. And then fast forward, and I've got these documents, Jim. These are like, in my life, historical documents that go back to 2009, where I put a plan together for our state presidency, me being a member of the state presidency, to help to create workshops and a special class back in '09 for members who have questions about historical and policy and other things that I initiated because I'd, I had issues, I had questions. And I know other people in the stake had questions as well. And I proposed the idea of creating a special class to talk about these essays that were coming out. I was summarily dismissed and shut down and rebuked actually and cautioned that, you know, I had to stop these conversations. And that was the beginning of my unraveling of my confidence in the church where I could no longer— I was told to not ask questions. I should know better. President Wilson, the stake president, said, you of all people should know better than to talk about these things because this could be, you know, damage people's faith. And I was shut down, uh, in a very, very direct way. And I, I think there was an implicit threat to release me. I didn't care about that. I didn't care about getting released bishopric. I, I wasn't bothered. Release me, go get someone else. I'm not bothered. And I didn't care about getting released as a stake presidency. Uh, fast forward a bit, um, I did get released, but it wasn't to do with the, uh, those issues. Uh, it was to do with my scheduling and my work, etc. I think that was the reason. But I could no longer talk about those things freely, openly, in a safe place. I was controlled, oppressed, suppressed. It was just the worst. And I'm quite expressive as an individual. And I live on the importance of being able to freely express myself, whether my opinions are right or wrong, but the right to to, to, to, to talk, the right to ask questions. That basic liberty, freedom was completely suppressed and oppressed. And, and that was the beginning of an unraveling of my relationship with, with the church. So I think this, uh, conversation in the context of the two roadmaps is so important. And what, what's the way through this then, uh, Greg, Jim, what's the solution? How do we break these barriers then? What do we do?

Well, if your goal is to please the brethren, then go for it. We've got a church full of that kind of men mostly, because that's the priesthood track that's available to them. That attitude will greatly enhance the likelihood that you'll be called as a bishop or a stake president, or maybe that even one day you'll sit in one of the red chairs. Uh, that's never been my goal, ever. And fortunately, I was born into a family of like-minded people who never aspired to any church calling, ever. I would like to see that as the template for the entire church, but I'm not that naive. If your goal is to magnify whatever opportunity you have to make it better, then my response is the Lord be with you. I hope that you will succeed. If there are those who criticize, I remember a homecoming talk at Dixie College given by a classmate of my father who remarked about some type of criticism, and he said, 'I'm content to take it up with the Lord on appeal.' Do you think these conversations, the one that we're having right now included, making any difference?

Are we wasting our time? Are we making even any difference at all, you think?

I think that there are two levels of looking at this, and I will sidestep a little bit. I've talked in the past about a book that several of us are putting together It's an anthology. Volume 1 will have 5 chapters about LGBTQ issues in the church. The one that I wrote, along with the late Bill Bradshaw, who sadly died a week or so ago, uh, is on the biology of homosexuality. Um, we don't have any self-delusion that this is going to reach very high into the hierarchy. Wish it would, but it's written more for LGBTQ individuals and their families and their friends. If it puts them in a better position— and clearly a lot of those folks are not in a good position, and they're not in a good position because of how the Church has treated them, if it makes them get to a better place, then that's all the reward we need. So I think conversations like this, if they were to reach into the hierarchy, that would be wonderful, but that's not my aspiration. It's not my expectation. If they help your listeners and maybe cause more ripples on the pond that can move outward and affect other people beneficially, then to me that's worth all the effort that you and I are putting into this. Just helping the folks at the grassroots to get through life a little bit better because of what we're doing. Yeah, we're not out to destroy the church. We're not out to attack the character of church leaders. Were saying, hey, this is our church too. I paid for that pew. I'm going to sit in it.

Yeah, no, I think that's exactly the right perspective. Uh, I mean, I— even, even when— so when I first— I, I pointed out yesterday that yesterday was the 10th anniversary of my release of the CES letter reply. I guess when people hear this, uh, this is coming out on Saturday and we're recording it on Thursday, uh, but, uh, I— all the messages that I get from people who say it's been helpful to them are, are reason enough to do it. Just even if it's onesie-twosie, if it's somebody who says, oh geez, you, you helped me hold on to my faith, or you helped me understand all of this Uh, one of the reasons why, uh, I jumped at the chance when Ian suggested this podcast, doing this podcast initially, is that there are so many people, uh, who are sort of on the fringes or on the edges of the church, whether they're on the edge of the inside or the edge of the outside, uh, that the church institutionally and culturally almost completely ignores. Uh, and, and so I, I don't— Ian, I don't know if, if you, uh, have sort of a grand aspiration that we're going to, uh, get Dallin Oaks to listen to our podcast and change according to our suggestions. Uh, that would be lovely if that were to happen, but at the same time, I, I think the beauty of it and the effectiveness of it is something that only happens on a grassroots level. And given the structure of the church hierarchy, I think long-term, that really is the only way that you're going to affect long-term change. And it's going to be slow, and it's going to be completely unacknowledged because the church doesn't, not only does the church are they slow to change, but they refuse to admit that they've changed. I, I quoted Greg— I've quoted you many times without your knowledge, uh, in An Inconvenient Faith. I don't know if this made it into the actual documentary, but when you were filming it, you were asked what would happen if the church were to accept LGBTQ people, and you began your response by saying, well, they're going to begin their response by saying, "Well, as we've always taught," you know, that they will frame it as if, "Oh yeah, this is something we've been doing all along. We aren't really making a change." And that's the thing that I find almost more maddening than anything else at this point, is the refusal to even admit change has taken place.

Yeah, let me give you a trivial example, but it probably was the first time that I saw that I could make a difference in this organization. I was very limited. It's when I was a missionary in Brazil. I spent 8 months as the financial secretary. That's a job now that is only handled by adult couples, usually somebody, adult missionary who has experience in accounting, but in those years it was just us green elders who were thrust into that position, and I had the finances not just of the missionaries but the entire mission because we had no stakes in our mission. So the mission president was over all the districts and stakes and all the missionaries, and all the financial dealings came through my office. Brasil, at that time— it wasn't the only time when they had this— had hyperinflation. We were not running a tithing excess at that time, and for many, many years after that, the U.S. and Canada were carrying the entire church throughout the world. None of the other countries were self-sufficient. So to make up the deficit between what we took in in tithing and what it cost to to run the church organization there. They would send us a check every so often, and we would convert that dollar check into cruzeiros. But with the amount of inflation that we had, I wrote a letter back to the church financial department, whatever it was called, and said, you know, rather than you sending me a $5,000 check me cashing it now and having many of those dollars deflated in value by the time we get around to spending them. Why don't you send me 5 $1,000 checks? And the next time they sent something down, it was 5 $1,000 checks. There was never any attribution. You'll find no record of that anywhere. But it showed me that good ideas actually can make a difference, even if only in a minuscule fashion.

Yeah, I, I, I like that. I agree with that. Uh, going back to what Jim Bennett was saying earlier, uh, talked about this, um, you know, do we make a difference? And have you had any, you know, pushback, etc., etc.? You've addressed that, these barriers and these We talked about accessibility earlier and difficulty reaching some of the leaders. You talked about grassroots extensively in the Roadmap. I see a lot of your thinking in the Roadmap operating quite well, to an extent, at the state level, where the state presidencies and the bishoprics invite input and feedback into ideas. And some of those ideas are carried through, you know, they happen in the auxiliaries, and there's certain things you can do at the ward level as a bishop. You know, I was kind of outside of that traditional bishop role, which I, I didn't care about, you know, I'm just the person who I am. But usually bishops operate within a certain sphere, stake presidents operate within a certain sphere, and any ideas that are developed within that, uh, state guideline is, is good and often, uh, invited and accepted. Beyond that, the, the higher— the more senior people I dealt with in the church, including the apostle level and the general authority level, the more prescriptive those conversations were, the more controlling, the more prescriptive, more traditional. And, you know, Bishop Wilson, President Wilson, stay within the lane. 'Your ideas are outside the lane, you know, stay within the lane.' And I just found that just enormously difficult. Could we spend the next 20 minutes or so just kind of getting at transitioning from the 1.0 roadmap into the 2.0? And then as we go forward and have hopefully further conversations with you, Greg, we can use this part of the conversation as a bit of a foundational conversation, and a precursor to get into more details of Roadmap 2.0, which is a significantly developed, um, roadmap compared to the, uh, you know, the first one, you know, the number of pages and the content and the, the detail is much more significant, I think, in 2.0. Yeah. Could you just highlight the, the primary differences between Roadmap 1.0 and 2.0?

Well, there are two differences. One is that I revisited the chapters of 1.0 and dug deeper. The other is that on reflection, I decided, you know, there are some other areas that I did not mention at all in 1.0, and let's put them in the mix as well. I don't have the table of contents in front of me, uh, to see which ones are different than in the first edition. But, um, that's the course that we can take in the future, either digging deeper on subjects we already treated or getting into new subjects, and I'm game for either one.

Right, right.

I, I think, uh, another thing, as I look back on my life, many of the important inflection points in our lives go unnoticed at the time. And in many cases, I think they go unnoticed forever. That's one of the main reasons I see for keeping a diary, because you can look back and see in retrospect what you couldn't see in real time. I had a mentor in dental school. He was an oral pathologist. Really took me under his wing And it's one of the reasons I gravitated towards pathology as a career. But we used to have sessions on a two-headed microscope, so we'd sit on opposite sides of a little table and we would both be looking through the eyepieces at the same slide. Uh, these were pieces of tissue from various types of disease. And I would try to describe the tissue. And he said, "I don't want a description, I want a diagnosis." That's key. Later, an, an iteration of that was I had written what I thought was a splendid grant application to NIH, and the study section, which is the name of the committee that scores the applications and decides which ones get funded, gave it a horrible score. It didn't get funded. I talked to the program officer and I said, "It seems to me that the study section is more interested in studying the virus than curing the disease." And she said, "Unfortunately, you're exactly right." So the reason that I have those chapters or sections, whatever, in that document is that I'm diagnosing what I think is wrong, what could be fixed. I'm not just describing it. And so the format there throughout is the first section within each topic is— I think it's called The Challenge, isn't it, Ian? You've got it in front of you. And the second section is the response. So I'm not just complaining, I'm saying this is a problem and here is how we could address it, right? I do that all the way through.

You do, you do.

That's responsible way to do it. Don't just go out there and complain. If you want to make it better, then fine, put something out there. Now that puts you in a more vulnerable position because now you're subject to criticism. That's okay, I can deal with that. One example though is Christ-centered boredom. You don't have to reach very far to find church members who not only would acknowledge that, they would probably jump for joy that that's the label you've given it because that's what they feel. That's describing it. But the question really is, what are we gonna do about it?

Right.

And that's my approach all the way through that. I don't just take potshots and then leave the field.

I think this— go ahead, Jim Bennett.

It's, it's so, it's, I mean, it's fascinating to hear you talk about this. Uh, so just this last weekend, or, um, I guess it was after the weekend, but when they announced the change that they're going to do, um, you know, they're going to have priesthood and Sunday school on same Sundays and they're going to do it for 25 minutes apiece and whatever, uh, I posted on Twitter. All I said was, hmm, not sure how I feel about this, which was exactly how I felt. I mean, I just wasn't sure. I wasn't trying to attack it. I wasn't upset about it. And then I had multiple accounts say, Jim Bennett thinks that the church cares what he thinks, and Jim Bennett is attacking the church. Because, I mean, something that innocuous got that sort of level of pushback in the screechy online world we live in And it's, it's so when you start talking about this, uh, and particularly the whole idea of Christ-centered boredom, uh, one of the things I've started saying, uh, I don't know if I'm saying publicly as much as I've been saying it privately, but the church is aggressively boring in a way that other things are not. Like if you were to go to a boring lecture at a university, and just kind of sit there and noodle on your phone and look as bored as you could possibly look, um, you'd be in great company. I mean, there, two-thirds of the people in the room would be doing the same thing, and nobody would cast any sort of judgment on them. The church doesn't really allow you to do that. If you sit in the back of a Sunday school class and you're just noodling on your phone because you're not interested in the lesson, you are demonstrating that you are not particularly righteous and that you are not seeking the Spirit. And going back, way back, to Spencer Kimball saying when he was asked, "What do you do during a boring sacrament meeting?" and he said, "I've never been to one." Because the expectation is that if you are bored, that you have to sort of role-play being engaged, because otherwise you are pegging yourself as somewhat unrighteous. So there is this performative expectation of engagement even when we are bored, and so that makes the problem even worse as far as I'm concerned.

I mean, yeah, there's an antidote to that, and that is in whatever community you live in Find out where the churches are that cause excitement in their congregants and go to one of their services and then say, hmm, how do we do by comparison? And if the answer is yikes, then there's room for improvement. If the answer is, hey, we're way ahead of where they are, uh, so be it. Good for you, but I haven't seen that. And I've been to many congregations, uh, Catholic and Protestant, where I come out thinking, wow, I feel rejuvenated, I feel lifted up, I feel more enthusiastic, not just in being in the world, but in being part of God's people. We used to go to Duck United Methodist Church in North Carolina, a very quaint small congregation on the Outer Banks, and the printed program would always begin with the words, "God's people congregate to worship him." and at the end of the program it said, God's people dispersed to do his work. I thought, wow, that captures exactly what we should all aspire to. And not only should we disperse to do his work, we should do so with a sense of enthusiasm.

I love your thinking, your mindset, your approach. I love the approach to the roadmaps. You know, it's not just describing, you're diagnosing, you're providing solutions, you're providing remedies that are really carefully thought out. I think that's a fantastic approach and definitely resonates with, with, with Jim Bennett.

Well, also reflects what my— one of my professions was. I practiced dentistry for over 20 years, right? You don't go to a dentist to have him describe what's wrong with you. You go to a dentist to have him fix whatever it is.

Yes.

And so when I look at a problem, uh, that's where my mind goes. How do we fix this?

Yeah. And, and, and I put so much weight on that and struggle and are frustrated why the leadership doesn't, you know, get a— they may have already read it and seen the document, but if they haven't, it's so important, I think, for the First Presidency and the Apostles to at least read the roadmaps and get the input and feedback from grassroots. There's some wonderful, wonderful ideas and thoughts and concerns and feelings. I think it's a sign of respect, it's a sign of love, a sign of a real relationship between the church leaders and the members, to listen to what the members are saying and the questions and concerns, and to really take on board the wonderful, faithful, constructive thoughts and ideas that come from the members without— to what Jim was saying— taking it personally and taking as a threat. It's so much driven on fear. I just can't understand why they just don't, um, have this kind of thinking that we've got on the, um, on the podcast.

Well, the only way they would have seen the document is if they had hacked one of our 3 computers.

There we go. There we go. Yeah, and that's an interesting point. Yeah, there's these archive computers. Um, You talked about developing the Roadmap 2 in terms of content and quality, and you also talked about, I think, adding some items that perhaps haven't been addressed or identified yet, which again, I think is a very methodical and very intelligent approach to developing, developing that. Is that— did I interpret that correctly? So more detail in some areas, building on Roadmap 1.0, and then maybe adding some other key things that you've kind of picked up along the way. Is that—

yeah, right, that's exactly what it is. And whether it's 3.0 or somebody else weighing in with their own document, it should be a living document because we will constantly have change, right?

I want to throw something else into the mix here, which I think is really relevant in getting your comments and feedback. You know, you talked earlier about going to Catholic to Methodist Church and and having a different experience. My wife and I had this experience a few weeks ago in other part of British Columbia. We were walking near this lake. We heard this beautiful sound from this orchestra, some musicians, violin, guitars in the distance. We went, it was a little quaint church there, like a log cabin church. We went in, it was filled with just the welcome we got, Greg, was just amazing. You know, people dressed in jeans and, you know, just kind of casual clothes. We sat down. And we experienced a spirit that I'd not felt in quite some time. It was a very different experience. So in the context of the church learning, or at least listening to others' experiences in other churches and how they gain interest and avoid boredom— by the way, there's not one second in that experience that I had that we were bored. The half an hour we were there, 45 minutes we were there, it went so quickly. We felt so nourished and uplifted. Compared to almost total boredom at the Mormon Church. But where I'm going with this is that last night on Inside Out Live, towards the end, we talked about what appears to be evidence or signs that the Mormon Church is moving more towards mainstream Christianity. You know, Jim Bennett talked last night about the, um, the statue of the crucifixion being, uh, um, built—

it's not a statue of the crucifixion, it's Jesus carrying his cross.

Sorry, thank you. I've seen the picture. It's it. I apologize. It's Jesus carrying the cross, not Jesus on the cross, right? And other conversations on, on social media and comments that I'm seeing where it appears that the church is moving more towards, uh, or trying to become recognized and respected as a mainstream Christian organization. Jim Bennett and I spoke about that in very positive terms. I see that as being very, very positive. What are your thoughts on that, Greg? Are you seeing the same thing? And you see this, what might be a transition by the Mormon Church to more mainstream Christian, um, uh, outlook and perspective, as supporting your vision and your roadmap for improving Mormonism? Do you see any connections or correlations there?

Yeah, I do. What I am experiencing is a microcosm, and I've spoken about it before. My relationship with Wesley Seminary has been enormously beneficial to me, but it's also in several instances been very helpful to the church. They're not going to talk about that And I don't think many of the church leaders even have any idea of what has happened because of that relationship. But what I have found is there is a two-way street there. In the earlier years of the 8 years I've been on their board of governors, I was the primary recipient of just being able to meet with these amazing people. Sit around the table with them and mostly be in a position of envy because they were walking a walk that appealed to me. But it's also been a two-way street, and I've seen subtly how Mormonism— and not just Greg Prince as a governor— is gradually becoming socially acceptable, if I can put it in those terms, that we're not looked down upon in a way that I think we were not many years ago. And I think a lot of it is that if you learn the language, and that's not difficult, and if you have good table manners, and that shouldn't be difficult, then everybody pretty quickly decides this is good. Now, will that reach to a higher level? We'll see. But the president of the seminary in 2009 met with the First Presidency and some of the apostles and the Department of Religion at BYU. All of those meetings were very positive on both ends, and there have been other encounters since then. Uh, Jim, your father was involved in one of them. There was a 2-day symposium at Wesley on the campus, and he was one of the speakers.

Oh, very cool.

Yeah.

So you don't know what the ripple effect of that will be. I hope that there are similar grassroots initiatives happening. I'm not the only one in the world that's got this kind of opportunity. I don't know what the others are, but I know they're out there. And again, it's, it's trickle up. It's good things happening because somebody at the grassroots level either allowed them to happen or maybe nudged them to happen. And as that process occurs, then it opens doors farther up the hierarchy if they choose to go through those doors.

Right.

And on that, Greg, again, re— understanding the roadmaps. Remind me, didn't the church used to have that grassroots model? If you go back far enough, you know, to the Restoration of the church, wasn't there a time where, uh, people felt free and open to share ideas and thoughts and, and they were encouraged to do that? And, and I might be wrong, please help me.

No, you're not wrong at all. Most of the programs that we grew up with were started at the grassroots level, right? Even something that you would think would have come from the top, which is early morning seminary— and that's how most seminary classes in the church are now, they're not release time as they have been in Utah and some of the surrounding states— that started as a grassroots initiative. And I think Marion Hanks was involved in the initiation of that. It caught hold and it later became the church-wide standard. Ja.

So over the years then, as the church has had that model of grassroots and important relationship between members and leaders, looking outside the organization to look where it can improve and benchmark, etc., all those wonderful ideas is now part of the structure, the organization of the church. Again, a lot of it from grassroots. And the church is what it is because of that experience, because of the grassroots. When did it change and why has it changed to become not so much grassroots then? I think you've touched upon that a little bit in the Roadmap to some extent.

It was correlation 2.0. Correlation 1.0 in my book was 1960 when President McKay empowered Harold B. Lee to reopen correlation. But after McKay's death, Lee took it in a different direction where it wasn't just to coordinate the church, it was to control. And that's where the not invented here syndrome started, right? We don't want your feedback. Uh, it's where you had instructional manuals written by committees rather than finding the best writers out there who were outside the hierarchy and commissioning them to write lesson manuals that even today are challenging and refreshing, as opposed to what we got now, right, which is not just a rehash. Very often it's a reprint of what we saw last year or 4 years ago, right?

That, that's what drove my Uncle David out of the church. Um, my father's brother David Bennett, uh, he, he was a philosophy professor at the University of Utah. Brilliant man. He wrote his entire thesis— he wrote a joint PhD thesis about mathematics and philosophy that was a philosophical treatise written entirely in mathematical symbols. And the only requests he got from his— what's the term— the people who review your thesis. Uh, they— the philosophy guys wanted to know what the math symbols meant, and the math guys wanted to know what the philosophy symbols meant. And he was tasked with writing priesthood manuals, and his, his, um, contact was Richard L. Evans, who would read them and say, oh, this is brilliant. And he would take it to Harold B. Lee, and Harold B. Lee would say, this is garbage. And it just drove him nuts. And Harold B. Lee tried very, very hard to sort of water it down and make it as pablum as possible. And that ended up driving him out of the church. And when, you know, that was the basis for that story that you've told about Dad talking to Harold B. Lee saying, doesn't he know we're just men? I want to take a different angle of that story to the idea that, uh, that isn't welcome anymore, even in draft form. You know, the idea of some kind of— I mean, we used to have, uh, this is before our time, Ian, but you probably remember this, Greg, uh, Hugh Nibley, uh, would write sort of— except you've written about this in your book. Well, yeah, he would write the Sunday school curriculum, and they went to President McKay and said, this is, this is too esoteric for the general membership. And he said, we'll make them reach for it. Or what's the exact quote on that?

Yep, that was 1957 Priesthood Manual, An Approach to the Book of Mormon, which I've read that as a book.

It's been published as a standalone book now. Yeah, but what, but what was the exact quote from President McKay on that?

Let them reach.

Let them reach.

Now, that came from Nibley when I interviewed him, so I, I can trust the source.

You can trust the source on that. And Nibley's also the one who said that President McKay does not believe in a historical Book of Mormon.

Yes, he didn't put it in those words, but that was the sentiment, and that worried a lot of people later on, one of whom cross-checked with me to see if indeed Nibley had told me that, and he was very crestfallen when I said yes, not only did he tell me, but it's on tape.

Yeah, my mother— my— I told that to my mother, and she absolutely insists that it can't possibly be true, uh, but I— my mother's also 85 years old, and I don't know if getting her to change her paradigm on that is going to be possible. But— or worthwhile, or worthwhile.

As I visualize this conversation, Greg, Jim Bennett, listening to you both, it appears from the last comment there, Greg Bennett, the one before the last one, where you talk about, you know, the evolution of the grassroots experience, and it used to be really effective and good, and it worked, and the church is built and developed from got wonderful, extraordinary input and feedback from a whole range of different people to become what it is today, a truly great, in many ways, organization that it is today. And then at some point, there's that Correlation 2.0 kicked in. Does that bring us full cycle now to what you said at the beginning? And I'm trying to make the connection here. Well, I make the connection. I'm wondering if you make the same connection. Both of you, where at the beginning of this conversation, you talked about the fear, the reticence, the concern that the brethren have around describing something as inspiration or revelation. So what I mean by that is that any changes or improvements that the church makes come exclusively from their own internal closed-camera meetings that they have with the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles exclusively. Um, and that's the only primary source of change and improvement that, uh, you know, for the church. And they've cut off completely— maybe not completely, but almost entirely— any input or feedback from any individuals outside of those organizations. And is that, is that connected, do you think, to this fear, this reticence, this concern about having revelation and inspiration, describing it as such, or making changes where it's not necessarily a revelation? And also, is it the position that the church doesn't believe or accept anymore that it can get revelation from its members? Does it see input or feedback from the members as not being revelation, because the members aren't entitled to that. And the only source of revelation, inspiration that will facilitate change, would come from the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

I'll go back to what Jim Bennett said earlier, but I'll give attribution. The statement, "As we have always taught," came from a Catholic priest who I sat next to at a Mormon History Association meeting. The question I asked him was, Do you think the Catholic Church will ever ordain women? His response was, I doubt that it would happen in my lifetime, but if it were to happen, the encyclical announcing it would begin with these words. There is a resistance to change. Part of that was baked in, I think, maybe midway in the 20th century. It's ripe ground for a good historian to look at. Correlation sounds like a really boring thing, but it was a really, really important thing. It still is, even though it has a dark side. When I went out on my mission, we had the 6 missionary discussions that I think were different than what you had later, because we had this structure on our flannel board that had the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and then the other church offices were built on top of that. I don't think you guys had that, did you?

No. Did you have the "Good evening, Mr. Brown" lessons?

Yeah, we did, we did.

I think that went out the window just a few years before we got out.

Yeah, but the old group— we have the perfect organization. This is the perfect church. And there are still some who cling to that with, I think, the mistaken notion that therefore we don't have to change anything because we are already there. Those two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Whatever— well, Jim, to go back to your friend Harold B. Lee, there was a low-level raging debate about whether a Seventy could be ordained to the office of high priest. This was in the late 1960s because President McKay decided that he would ordain the 7 presidents of the Seventy to the office of high priest because he felt it would give them more credibility as they carried out their assignments, not because it would give them more authority. Well, a lot of people, including my grandfather, who was a bigot, really rode that horse. And President Lee, responding to their saying, well, in 1835, Joseph Smith, upon realizing that Seventies had been ordained high priests, released them from the Seventies and said, that's not according to the order of heaven. Lee's response was, "Has it occurred to you that perhaps what was not according to the order of heaven in 1835 might be according to the order of heaven today?" But that said, he was averse to change himself. I think we still suffer from the idea that everything we do is right, and therefore If we change anything, it's admitting that we're not right, and we can't go down that road. I think that may be the underlying cause of this angst at that level, why they are so reluctant to pull the trigger on something that is so obviously an improvement, like abandoning the 3-hour meeting schedule and having that take 40 years from the time you set it up until the time you do it. You've got to get past that paradigm. And rather than saying, as we have always taught, you say, we are a forward-looking church, and we will continually seek the Lord's guidance to change in order to meet a changing world's needs. And to meet the changing needs of our members. If you bake in the idea that nothing is fixed, that's a better position to be in. Now, granted, there's some of the bedrock things that are not going to change, although they did change in the earliest years of the church. I think I've spoken before about Grant McMurray. He was the president of the Community of Christ, formerly the RLDS Church. And he had a stone on his desk in which was engraved the words, nothing is engraved in stone.

Well, that's another just extraordinary conversation. I've learned so much from you both. I really appreciate these insights, these conversations. Really excited and looking forward to transitioning into ongoing conversations about Roadmap 2.0. I remain hopeful that the church will improve, that the rate of improvement will accelerate. I have great hopes for this weekend at General Conference. I'm looking for leadership and boldness in a world of so much division. And again, I see this as an opportunity for the church to take the initiative. Everything I've heard today just makes sense. It just feels right. It sounds right. And it just sounds very intelligent and very logical. Any final comments?

On a high note too, Ian, understand that even if these things don't go to the top, they don't go unnoticed. Jim Bennett, you've commented on that, that you have an acquaintance in the communications department or somewhere in the bureaucracy. Who has complimented you on the content of Inside Out. So they're not going to tell you what they're monitoring. They're monitoring everything. They have a sophisticated organization that monitors publications inside the church and outside the church. They're constantly looking at news reports from all over the world trying to get a feel for how is the church being portrayed.

Right.

So this is not— it's not as invented.

Well, and this is one of the things that frustrates me to no end, because it is very clear that the church knows what the problems are and that the church has more data on what the problems are and more research on it, and they've got volumes and volumes and volumes of is, and yet they still are paralyzed with inaction. They're not, they're not willing to do anything about them.

I think that could change if you get a certain personality type into the president's chair. I'll leave it at that.

Right, right. I concur. Uh, I want to take this opportunity to thank you both. It's been just a wonderful, insightful, valuable conversation. Again, I grateful to spend this time with you both. I have so much admiration and respect for you both. I learned so much. It's very humbling for me. And I still hope that the church will improve and become a place of safety and inclusion and respect. And interested in developing a meaningful and substantial relationship with its members because the members are really what make the church. The work that the members do, the service, the kindness, the love— without the members, the church wouldn't exist, it wouldn't function. And so there's so much value in listening to what the members have to say and listen to what the world has to say in terms of, you know, improving and then, you know, taking a stand on some of these key issues impacting people across the world. Thank you, Thibault, so much. So grateful. Any final quick comments before we close?

Yeah, ignore the messenger, listen to the message.

I'll let that be the last word. I think that's excellent, excellent counsel.

I agree. And on that, I want to thank you both. Greg, as always, is such an important part of Inside Out, a permanent fixture, I hope, of our program. Jim Bennett, it's always a delight to spend time with you, and grateful to you both. And again, grateful to our listeners and followers. So thank you for listening and enjoy the rest of your week.

Thank you.

Thank you.