The Church and Politics

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett. I'm here as always with my partner in crime, Mr. Ian Wilkes. Ian Bennett, how are you, sir?

I'm very good today, Jim Bennett.

How are you? I am doing very, very well. So you had suggested the topic here being the church and politics, and I'm very, very nervous about this because as I've shared this podcast with my wife particularly, she said it's good, but you, Jim Bennett, talk too much. I want to hear more from Ian. I, and I want to be mindful of that. And yet now you've suggested a topic where I could talk about this all day long and twice on Sundays. So, so can, can you help me make sure that I don't do that? I will. So rein me in. I'm interested in hearing your perspective from the outset, particularly from somebody who has not been involved in the church and American politics, because, you know, we've talked about this, the fact that we're perceived worldwide as an American church. We function in many ways as an American church. And when we talk about politics, we're usually talking about American politics. So as someone who is not an American, uh, What has that meant to you?

I joined the church when I was 16, and within a few weeks I was asked, what is my political persuasion? And I said, so this is, this is north of England, it's working class community in the north of England, coal mining community. There are 3 main parties in the UK. There is the Conservatives, which are more right-wing. You could argue maybe some Republican policies in there, et cetera. Then you have Labour, which is a party they claim for the people, the working class, which is the, in the communities I was raised in, it was Labour. This is working class. And you have now over the years, a developed third party. You have lots of other parties, but the main three parties in the UK the Liberal Democrats. Joining the church at 16 in a working-class coal mining community, I wasn't sure if I was Conservative or Labour at the age of 16. I think I was more Conservative. You know, Margaret Thatcher was the Prime Minister. Depending on who you talk to and where you live, she was either the devil or she was God. She promoted the concept of free enterprise, which I liked, getting an education, not necessarily expecting to go down the pits of the mines, which a lot of kids did back then, you know, where I was growing up, there was a lot of distrust towards her and her policies in the communities that I was raised in. And again, at that time, I wasn't sure if I was Labour or Conservative, but when I joined the church, within a few weeks I was asked what was my political position, and I said, I think I'm leaning towards Conservativism. And they said, this is good because the church is Conservative. And I was a bit confused by that. I didn't know what that meant. And they explained that a lot of the doctrines— this is the, I think, accounts from the branch presidency— explained that a lot of the doctrines and policies are very much geared towards the Republican conservative positions and principles around essentially what Margaret Thatcher was advocating at the time. Which a lot of that, not all of it, a lot of that thinking, a lot of those principles appealed to me 'cause that's how I felt and thought at the time. And by the way, Jim Bennett, my thinking, my leaning towards traditional conservative values, principles was quite unique, I think, in the communities I was raised. So it was very politically sensitive. There was a national strike which happened in 1985, I think, where Margaret Thatcher took on all the unions. It was a brutal battle between national government and the labour unions at the time. It was the miners' strike, the National Union of Miners. My brothers were on the picket lines trying to stop the coal trucks from entering the power station called Ferrybridge Power Station. I remember that. I was just a young kid at the time, but going into the church and meeting with people who at times advocated for, you know, quite openly, you know, for traditional conservative and Republican policies was quite interesting. And then being told that the church didn't have a position on politics. You could vote any way you want, in which direction you want. When you're 16 in the UK, you can get the vote. And so that was my first exposure to modern politics. I asked as I got older, what's that historical relationship? And as you know, there is a historical relationship between the church and the early church leaders. You know, Joseph Smith, I think, tried to run for being president. He was a Republican, felt that the church had a significant role to play in American politics. I've studied a little bit of that, not extensively. And then, of course, Brigham Young's position about, you know, American politics, etc. I think he was a governor. He had a number of other political positions. There was a, there's a quote attributed to Joseph Smith, that I think is worth just touching upon here. It's the associated with a prophecy called the White Horse Prophecy. And it's attributed to, or at least some of the claims attribute this to Joseph Smith, that Joseph Smith said in 1843, that the Saints would go up to the Rocky Mountains and become a great and mighty people. And he continued in the statement and he said that he predicted rather that the US Constitution would one day hang like a thread, end quote, and then would be saved by the Latter-day Saints. There's also frequent references, as you know, to where the leaders have made references to the Constitution of the United States and have said very clearly in other articles in the Ensign, his references to scriptures, lots of references what the church leaders believe, the Constitution is inspired of God. I remember reading a, a fascinating account in the Ensign. George Washington, I think Abraham Lincoln, some of the first presidents of the, of the United States appeared to Wilford Woodruff, I think it was. And there was an appearance, they appeared to Wilford Woodruff and were accepting the work that had been done on their behalf. And so all this, the reason why I'm sharing this with you is that there's a very unique and distinct and significant relationship between Mormonism and politics and Mormonism and the earlier mindset and thinking of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff and the relationship with the Constitution. This came through. American politics came through very strongly in the first few years when I was joining the church and never changed. And all the doctrines and policies and the principles that we learned about. I was told often that that was rooted in conservative, orthodox, traditional thinking through everything, through the programs, the scriptures. It's all there and it shapes and influences how members think, how they feel, and where their position is politically. So That's a long answer to your question.

It's always interesting to me to see the impact of politics outside of the United States, because I remember when we were missionaries, for instance, the Sunday Times did an insert about the church, particularly about the church welfare program, and the church reprinted copies of this and asked missionaries to distribute it. Do you remember this?

I do. It was the picture with the, the big guy, the big member who sat on a tin of beans, I think.

Yeah, sitting on this mountain of Grant tins. Grant, his son was a missionary with us.

That's right, Nick. Nick, yeah.

Yeah, so, but yeah, he's sitting on a tin of beans and he's showing the church welfare program. But the problem was you open it up in the first paragraph, it essentially endorsed Margaret Thatcher. She's trying to do is point for point what we're trying to do as a church. And I don't know if we were ever told not to stop, not to pass that out, but we stopped. I got that when I was up in Thurso, and everybody who read it read that paragraph and went, if you're Margaret Thatcher's church, then, you know, piss off.

Yeah.

And, and so it was a very, it was a very instructive thing to this American that aligning yourself with those kinds of values wasn't necessarily something that played well in the rest of the world. But when you, when you talk about the church as a conservative church or a Republican church, those two things were not necessarily synonymous back at the time of the church's founding. In fact, the Republican Party in the United States was founded on a specific platform to get rid of the twin relics of barbarism, and they were slavery and polygamy. The Republican Party was initially launched as an anti-polygamist party, and, and members of the church were uniformly Democrats. Now, 21st century Republicans versus 19th century Republicans It's kind of hard to see it, uh, ideological consistency there. It's really hard to apply sort of the modern interpretation of what those labels mean to those guys, particularly when Joseph Smith— when you talk about the White Horse Prophecy, and we're going to have to get into that because that still is one of the driving forces, if not of American politics, certainly of Utah politics. But, uh, Joseph Smith was a theocrat. Joe, there's a great book by Benjamin Park called Kingdom of Nauvoo that talks about the fact that Joseph Smith was crowned king of the world before his death and envisioned this political kingdom of God on Earth, uh, as well as the spiritual kingdom of God on Earth. And I, I actually think that that was fulfilled by Brigham Young, because when Brigham Young arrived in the Utah Territory, they named it the state of Deseret, and he was the territorial governor. He was the president of the church, and he had essentially absolute power. And Utah, some would say, is still a theocracy. I don't think that's true, but in the early days, that's exactly what it was. So when Utah tried to become a state, they absolutely had to repudiate polygamy, and that's where the Manifesto came from. The Manifesto initially was not presented as a revelation. It was, okay, we're just going to live according to the law of the land. If you read the language of the Manifesto that's in the Doctrine and Covenants, it's not spiritual language. It's, oh yes, we, we will comply with the law of land, and that's about it. There was a United States senator that was elected who was a monogamist Reed Smoot, and they refused to seat him in the Senate because they, they thought he was going to be an advocate for polygamy, and they thought that he was going to have more loyalty to the church than to the government. And they actually interviewed, um, they called before Congress— President of the church Joseph F. Smith went and testified in for Congress and had to admit in front of Congress that he had not seen Jesus Christ You know, he sat there and grilled him. So you're a prophet. Have you seen Jesus? Have you done all these things? Under oath. Under oath. Yeah. And so he had to admit, no, I haven't seen Jesus. So Utah's becoming a state shaped a lot of our politics, a lot of church politics for a very long time because we got rid of polygamy. We jettisoned polygamy and tried to become sort of mainstream Americans. All of that is kind of interesting from a historical perspective. I always like to tell this story. Every time I've run for office, I talk about the fact that the first person in my family to run for office was a man named Daniel H. Wells, who joined the church in Illinois at the time of Joseph Smith, was a counselor in the First Presidency, was the third mayor of Salt Lake City. His nephew, I think, was the first governor of Utah. But Daniel H. Wells was a practicing lawyer in Illinois at the same time as Abraham Lincoln. And the family story is that when he met Abraham Lincoln, he said to him, you are a dead man, for I swore to myself if I ever met a man who was uglier than I was, I would shoot him on sight. To which Abraham Lincoln replied, shoot away. If I'm uglier than you, I don't want to live. And, uh, I, I tell that story because I was told that story by my uncle telling me how much I look like Daniel H. Wells. And I do look quite a bit like him. But, uh, you know, so all that early history is kind of fun and interesting from a historical perspective, but in terms of what animates the Latter-day Saint political mind today, uh, we're still, I think, paying a price for Ezra Taft Benson. Because Ezra Taft Benson, he was called into the Twelve and used his office to try to shape political attitudes. He gave a number of conference talks that were blatantly political, not at all doctrinal. And he was obsessed with communism. He was obsessed with the communist conspiracy that was out to destroy the world and out to destroy the church. And he had aligned himself with the John Birch Society, which is a far-right, hard-right group. I don't know who John Birch is. I think he was like a soldier who died in World War II or something. But Ezra Taft Benson tried to align the church and get an actual formal alliance between the church and the John Birch Society and had David O. McKay's picture put on the John Birch Society newsletter. And my grandfather, David L. McKay, who went by his middle name Lawrence, Lawrence McKay went ballistic when that happened. And he went to his father and said, this is disgusting, this is a cancer on the church. You need to slap down Ezra Benson for doing this. This is not appropriate. We are not aligned with the John Birch Society. And the church never really slaps down anybody in that high of a leadership. But David O wrote, wow, I didn't realize how much Lawrence hates the John Birch Society. So I'm very proud of that, that in my family lineage, it was my grandfather that stood up to David O. McKay to say, we can't do this. But Ezra Taft Benson, his ideas about communism— and this is maybe a bit of a tangent, but, you know, he pushed the Book of Mormon when he was president of the church and everybody went, oh, he's mellowed, he's softened, he's not talking about politics anymore. He's just talking about the Book of Mormon. And okay, yeah, that was true. But what they don't realize is that he saw the Book of Mormon as a political tract. He saw the Book of Mormon as a metaphor for our current situation. It was written for our day. And it's warning us that the Gadianton robbers and the secret combinations, these are the communists. This is exactly— he saw a one-to-one relationship between Gadianton robbers and communists. And he had a whole following of people. And he was also— he got permission from the First Presidency to serve in President Eisenhower's cabinet. As the Secretary of Agriculture while he was an apostle. And I just thinking, wow, apostle must not be that damn demanding a job if you can also be a cabinet secretary at the same time. And, and after he left, he said that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist. Everybody was a communist except for Ezra Taft Benson. I mean, it's nuts. And he, he, he wanted to run for president or vice president, actually. He wanted to run on a ticket with Strom Thurmond. Does that name mean anything to anybody outside the United States?

No.

Strom Thurmond was in the United States Senate until he was about 106. My father served in the Senate at the same time Strom did and said that the Senate essentially became his nursing home. Um, he was just this doddering old man in the Senate, but he, he, uh, when, when The Democrats in 1964 passed the Civil Rights Act. Southern Democrats rebelled and were furious because they were all racists and they were all defenders of segregation and defenders of slavery from way back. It was the Republican Party that had gotten rid of slavery and the Democrats— and that all shifted in '64 when the Democrats backed the Civil Rights Act and Strom Thurmond left the Democratic Party and wanted to run for president on a segregation platform. He called himself a Dixiecrat, and he wanted Ezra Taft Benson as his running mate. And Ezra Taft Benson wanted to run, and David O. McKay said, absolutely not. No, you can't do that. That's, that's a bridge too far. But that did not stop this whole just kind of grotesque, really conspiratorial movement that Ezra Taft Benson's a big player in it. And another big player that still has relevance today is a name that many Latter-day Saints may not recognize, but a man by the name of Cleon Skousen. Does that name mean anything to you?

Oh yes.

Uh, well, his grandson actually served a mission with us. There was an Elder Skousen in the mission. He was Cleon's grandson. But Cleon Skousen ran for office. He was the police chief of Salt Lake City for a while. And Ezra Taft Benson kept trying to get him into the Twelve, and David O. wasn't having it. It wasn't going anywhere. But, but Cleon Skousen wrote a bunch of books about the Constitution hanging by a thread and how the communists were taking over. The Naked Communist is a book by Cleon Skousen. And just this conspiratorial mindset that really created this rancid mixture of religion and politics that still endures to this day, and it endures in the form of Glenn Beck. Does that name mean anything to you?

Yes.

Glenn Beck, uh, was counseling people in his program, read The 5,000-Year Leap by Cleon Skousen, this has all the answers. You know, he would go on, and Glenn Beck for a time was— he's a convert to the church, and he was what Tucker Carlson is today. He was the most prominent talk— talking head. He had a Fox News show where he'd get out a blackboard and draw all these lines and all these conspiracies, just huge conspiracy theories. And my father was running for reelection to the United States Senate in 2010 when this was all happening. And I was his campaign manager. And Glenn Beck was the de facto head of what we'd call the Tea Party movement, which was this huge backlash against President Obama and this idea, we're gonna start a new Tea Party, we're gonna start a new government. And the, the leader of this movement, the de facto leader of this movement is a Latter-day Saint. It's Glenn Beck. And we were terrified of what Glenn Beck might say about my father as he was running for reelection. And so my father, uh, he had just written a book about the Book of Mormon, and he gave a signed copy of it to John Huntsman Sr., who was a friend of Glenn Beck's. John Huntsman Sr., the billionaire guy, his son was the governor of Utah. I mean, a lot of players here, so I'm hoping you're not getting lost.

I've met, I've met John Huntsman Sr. in Germany once at a at an event.

Well, John Huntsman Sr. was my stake president when I went on a mission, and he asked me 3 times about whether or not I masturbate. So that's really my— yeah, my, uh, my interaction.

Share that story. That's interesting.

That's, that's a, that's a story in and of itself. That's not a political story.

No.

John Huntsman Sr., obviously he's a huge deal. He's a very wealthy man, very prominent in Utah, and he was a stake president who called my father to be a bishop. So my father was very good friends with Jon Huntsman. Jon Huntsman was very good friends with Glenn Beck. So my father gave Jon Huntsman a copy of his book and said, can you give this to Glenn Beck and arrange a meeting? I would love to talk to Glenn Beck. I would love to have a conversation with him. Jon Huntsman came back to us and said, Glenn Beck says, thank you for the book. Don't worry, he's not going to get into the Utah race and you don't need to have a conversation with him. Don't worry about it. All right, so fade in, fade out. I'm still, if you could tell by the tone of my voice, I'm still a little bitter about this.

Okay.

Glenn Beck had Mike Lee on his program. Mike Lee, who was the sitting senator who, spoiler alert, defeated my father in 2010. And Mike Lee was running against my father and he had Mike Lee on the program and he said, oh, I hope you win. I'd vote for a mouse before I would vote for Bob Bennett. I just— Bob Bennett, and he just— and then he said, I will never forget it. There was a whole issue. There was a guy named Cass Sunstein. He doesn't matter really, but Glenn Beck was convinced he was a communist, and my father voted to confirm him in the Obama administration. He was a nominee for something. I can't even remember what it was, but Cass Sunstein was going to destroy the whole world. Because he's a communist and he's going to infiltrate the American government. And Bob Bennett voted for him. And so Glenn Beck gets on, he says, you have Bob Bennett, you have a man who looked me in the eye. He looked me in the eye and he said, Cass Sunstein's not a big deal. He won't be a problem. That's not a problem at all, Glenn. And I sat there and I went, he looked you in the eye? You've never— and I called dad, dad. Glen Beck is saying you looked him in the eye and told him that. He says, I never met Glenn Beck. I have no idea what he's talking about. He just made this up, right? Pulled it right out of his butt.

Mm-hmm.

And later on I've had people, I've never been able to talk to Glenn Beck. Other people have talked to him. And later on he's saying, oh, I was mistaking him for Orrin Hatch. And it's like, dude, you went on the most powerful political platform and skewered my father based on a conversation you never had. You lied. You, the least you could do was say it publicly that you mistook him for Orrin Hatch, but you didn't do that, Glenn. And anyway, I mean, this went on, this campaign. Mike Lee was leaning into all this Cleon Skousen, Ezra Taft Benson junk and was hinting to everybody. That, oh golly, I'm the guy, I'm the guy that's going to save the Constitution as it's hanging by a thread. And he would never overtly say that, but he'd always quote the Doctrine and Covenants. He'd always talk about the wise men who were raised up unto this very purpose to create the, the, the Constitution, and just, just all this stuff. And Utah politics Utah politics just devoured it. And the interesting thing was, so you have a convention where delegates vote on who the two primary candidates are going to be. And going into that convention, we had all kinds of polling that showed that my father was dead in the water, wasn't going anywhere, and that Mike Lee was just, if you get 70% in the convention, I'm 60%, I'm sorry, there is no primary and you go straight to a general election. And Mike Lee was pushing the envelope and was probably gonna get 60% and my dad was gonna lose and Mike Lee was gonna go straight to the Senate without even having to go through a primary. Well, right before the convention, Somebody, not us, but somebody sent out a postcard that put a name on everything Mike Lee had been doing. The postcard showed Mike Lee standing in front of— so my father, it was two pictures on the front, showed my father standing in front of the U.S. Capitol, and then it showed Mike Lee standing in front of the Salt Lake Temple. And the headline was, which one really represents Utah values? And on the back, it just slathered on the Mike Lee is the guy who's going to save the Constitution as it was hanging by a thread and all this kind of stuff. And when you put a name on it, when you said, this is what you are doing, this is what Mike Lee was dog whistling and hinting at. But when you overtly put a name on it, it really turned people off. And they were really disgusted. And, and Mike Lee barely scraped his way out of that convention. The bad news for us is that it didn't send any votes to us. It sent votes to Mike Lee's other competitor, but a guy named Tim Bridgewater, who no one remembers anymore. He almost got 60% because everybody left Mike Lee, but my father, uh, still, he didn't get anywhere and we lost. But you look at now how what animates Republican politics, what animates church politics, uh, it's all still rooted in that Ezra Taft Benson anti-communist conspiracy theory garbage, which is one of the reasons why so many American Mormons have embraced Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the natural extension of all of that bile, of all of this sort of paranoia, conspiracy, everything else. Donald Trump opens his mouth and all he does is spew nonsense conspiracies. And that's all— it's the natural language of so many Latter-day Saints. And I've got to tell you, Ian, it's one of the biggest trials of my faith. But I mean, we are the church that says we follow We have the gift of the Holy Ghost. We have the gift of discernment. We can tell truth from evil. We can, we know what's right and what's wrong. What are we doing embracing Donald Trump? What are, I mean, the most vile, you know, it's just, it's just repugnant to me. I tell this story and a lot of people have come to me and they said, okay, your dad would be so disappointed in you. Because I have very publicly left the Republican Party. I started our new party. I'm one of the founders of the United Utah Party. I ran for Congress as their first candidate and broke all records for third-party candidates in the state of Utah. And I'm very proud of all of that. And people come to me and say, well, your dad, he was a Republican, and he'd be really ashamed of you. And I said, no, I think Dad and I are good., and I tell the story that I was asked to tell. I actually went on MSNBC and told this to Andrea Mitchell and Lawrence O'Donnell. Uh, I've been on national television discussing this. When my father died, he, well, he suffered a stroke that left him incapacitated and he passed away 3 weeks later. And we all rushed to his bedside and we were all there. And at one point he turned in his, my mother and I were standing there and he turned in his, in his his hospital bed to us, and he asked us, are there any Muslims in this hospital? Which was a bizarre question, right? We— and I just kind of went, this is the stroke, this is the stroke talking. And I said, I'm sure there are, Dad. We were in Washington, D.C. And he said, well, I want to go up to every one of them and apologize on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump. And it was just heartbreaking. He spent the last few days just in tears about what the Republican Party that he had devoted his life to and what had it become, what had it devolved into. And, you know, politically, the Republican Party ideologically bears no resemblance to the party that I remember from my youth. I was a I was a proud Reagan Republican for, you know, very long time. And, you know, I believed in free markets and free trade. Donald Trump doesn't believe in free markets and free trade. So now the Republican Party doesn't believe in free markets and free trade. You know, it was Ronald Reagan who called the Soviet Union an evil empire. And Donald Trump was a huge apologist for Putin. And Republicans in Congress are calling on us to stop giving aid to Ukraine against Russia. And I'm like, so what does it mean to be a Republican anymore? It doesn't. I mean, the ideology has just gone so many different directions that now it's just all about the tribe. It's just all about, okay, well, I'm a Republican because I'm a Republican, and it doesn't matter what the Republicans believe, uh, it just matters that I'm a Republican. And we tied our tribal identity as, as Mormons to the church in such a way that there are so many members of the church who are Republicans first, so many American members, they're Republicans first and they're Latter-day Saints a distant second. And one last quick story before I let you— sorry, this is what I was afraid of, but, uh, I interviewed for a position with the church, the director of church governmental relations, essentially the church's lobbyist. The guy holding the position at the time was a guy named Bill Evans, and the interviews went very well, but then Bill Evans decided he wasn't going to retire for a few more years, so I didn't get the position, but I had some very interesting conversations with him. And he said, look, as the church's lobbyist, I know that I can walk into the state legislature and tell them to do something, and they will do it at the drop of a hat. He says, and that's why I don't tell them to do anything. Uh, we know we have the biggest stick in the state and we choose not to use it. He said, however, the flip side to that is when we choose to use it, it's a very deliberate decision. We know how significant it is and it's gone all the way to the top. You know, it's, it's, it's when we do that, the First Presidency is the one making that decision. And the church decided to back what was called the Utah Compact, which was a very liberal approach to immigration. You know, Republicans, the build the wall Trump Republicans are, you know, the illegal immigrants are destroying our country and build the wall, build the wall, build the wall. And the church's position is, exactly the opposite of that. It's very much more in line with the Democrats than with the Republicans. And he said, and then when we issued that and we backed it, every single elected Republican in Utah ran away from it and said, oh, this is just the church, they're just speaking as men, they're just, oh, this is the, the, and he said, they think we went rogue. I think they think that the government relations group just was pulling something out of their rear and they don't realize it came all the way from the top. And so it was very clear. And you saw that during COVID right? The church said you need to get vaccinated and you need to wear masks. And you had this huge rebellion from all of these people who call me a cafeteria Mormon. They're like, oh, President Nelson is a fallen prophet. Oh, you know, I can't do that. I mean, the political venom that has infected the church is really toxic, and I think really problematic, particularly if we want this church to survive for generations to come, because the rising generation has no patience for Ezra Taft Benson conspiracy theory looniness. And has no patience for Donald Trump. And that's where we are and we need to be somewhere else. So that end, the end of rant. I hope it wasn't too long a rant. I'll turn it back over to you.

Yes.

Get your reaction or, or other insights.

No, thank you. I listened intently and I just want Alyssa to know that it was my idea to talk about this. It wasn't your idea, it was my idea. Notwithstanding your history with and relationship with politics, which the folks that know you know you've got this, this passion for politics— politics runs in your family, church politics runs in your family— I think it's quite distinct, quite unique, uh, in many ways. Just going back to, um, the Alistair Benson thing, when I was on a mission, on a mission with you, and I President Benson was pushing the Book of Mormon. And just listening or hearing some of the quotes as a missionary from the UK without the experience of being in the US or living a US life or seeing US politics, certainly not at that age and not ever to the extent that you have or you guys have in the US. I saw Ezra Benson as an anti-communist, which appealed to me. Antisocialist, having grown up in a socialist community, which didn't appeal to me, frankly. And having teachings or thoughts or principles around free enterprise, hard work. At the time, I thought his position was less government interference in people's lives, more autonomy to the people. That's what I took from his talks. There are elements of Margaret Thatcher's principles that I actually subscribe to. But there were many of the things that she did which I certainly didn't. As you know, in Scotland, when we were on our missions, Thatcher introduced what they called the poll tax.

Oh, I remember that.

1988, I think we were on our missions at the time. And she used Scotland as a testing ground for that policy. It was pretty awful, the poll tax.

Well, and missionaries were being asked to pay it.

Yes.

And we were told, okay, don't worry about it, you don't need to pay it. But then they came back and said, no, you absolutely do. And so I think maybe I still owe poll tax from the '80s. I never paid anything.

I think you do. And when you die, Margaret Thatcher's gonna come up. She's quite a very forthright lady. She's gonna be chasing you down. I think there's a lineup of people that wanna see you is probably Margaret Thatcher first and then Satan second. But I think Satan would be scared of Margaret Thatcher. But the policies of Thatcher did not go down well in Scotland. And still to this day, there's a lot of strong negative feeling towards Margaret Thatcher. So Ezra Pennison, I thought, was like a Thatcher-type person in some respects. A lot of this thinking that you're talking about permeates American politics. Permeates the church across the world. A couple of quick comments. The church states that it's apolitical, yet it's been involved. I think it's very selective in terms of what it, you know, the kind of issues it wants to get involved in. If you look at Prop 8, which is the, you know, that California ballot proposition, a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage, passed in November 2008. The church was very concerned about that, and I think it was involved providing funding to influence that. And so there are a number of topics or issues that the church chooses or selects to get involved in. I think that's one of them. You know, our listeners will know that the church has got limited influence, if any, outside of the US. The church is not dominant outside the US in terms of politics whatsoever. It's mostly Utah-centric. Well, that's how I think— that's how it's viewed.

No, I think you're right. And it's interesting, this is just conjuring up all kinds of wild memories for me. When I was an intern on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. for Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming, Elder Ballard came to Washington and wanted to have a meeting with all of the congressional staffers who were members of the church. And there was a sizable number of us. There was probably 200 or so, and we all met in a room in the Capitol, and it was just a nice little lunch, and he opened it up for a Q&A, and I asked a Q that I— still rankles me to this day. So this was around 1995, And 1995 was the year the church issued the proclamation on the family, largely because they were responding to a ballot initiative in Hawaii that would have made same-sex marriage legal in Hawaii. And the proclamation was filed as part of an amicus brief to give the church sort of standing to be able to weigh in. On legal challenges to, to this proposition. I'm sure I fumbled that from a legal perspective. But anyway, that's the environment we were in, and we were in Washington, D.C., and so politics was on my mind, and I asked what I thought was a perfectly reasonable question. And it was, you know, the church has weighed in on political issues in the United States, in Hawaii most recently, Does the church, as a worldwide church, does the church have plans to weigh in on political issues in other countries? And Elder Ballard just lost it. He got angry, visibly angry. I mean, I was a 20— what was 26, 26-year-old intern, you know? I mean, I'm a kid essentially. I'd just been newly married, but I didn't have the kind of confidence to withstand an apostle yelling at me in front of 200 people. But he just, he just, we, that's absolutely wrong. We never get involved in political issues. We've never gotten involved in political issues before, and we're not going to get involved. But what's happened in Hawaii, that's a moral issue. And so it's not, so it doesn't count, I guess. But it was, how dare I even think that the church would ever get involved in political issues. There are legal financial reasons why the church can't endorse candidates. The church because then they'll lose their tax-exempt status, but they can advocate for positions, and clearly they got involved in all of the gay marriage initiatives and lost every single one of those in every way it is possible to lose. You know, it's just so funny when anybody brings up gay marriage as if it's a going political concern. It's like, yes, we've had that fight. We've lost. The church's position lost. And that's just the reality that we're living in. But one other story, we're coming up close to the end here. I used to write editorials for the Deseret News, which is the church's newspaper. The church owns that newspaper. And usually at editorials for the Deseret News, I used to say the goal is to write something, uh, that will offend the least amount of people. You end up writing just bland stuff. I had to write 450 words about how human trafficking is bad. You know, what's the flip side to that? Is there a pro-human trafficking argument that I have to refute? I mean, what do you say? Yes, we know it's bad. You have to make sure that it's not going to be offensive to the church. You can take a strong position where the church is taking a strong position, like on immigration, for instance. But, uh, for the most part, you, you absolutely, and you absolutely could not endorse a candidate one way or the other. Well, I left the Deseret News when I ran for Congress. I left the Deseret News when I ran for Congress. Oh geez, I have my do not disturb on. I'll put it back on. I left the Deseret News when I ran for Congress because they weren't going to allow me to be a candidate and write for the newspaper. But, uh, you know, um, no, that's not right. I ran— I left before that. Anyway, oh, I left the Deseret News when I started working for a presidential candidate. I was working for the Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson in 2016, and not long after I left, they wrote an editorial calling upon Donald Trump to drop out of the race. And you know, this was when the Access Hollywood tape came out. We talked about grabbing women by the you-know-what and and all of that kind of thing. And they, they called upon him to drop out of the race, and they insisted, oh no, no, we did this on our own, the church had nothing to do with this. And I went, oh, come on, I used to write editorials for you. Of course that— I mean, there's no way that you could take that strong a position to call on a candidate to leave if you didn't get approval from the First Presidency. I don't think the current leadership of the church are Trumpers. I know that Dieter Uchtdorf got in trouble because he donated money to Joe Biden's campaign and it became public. So I, I think that the, the leadership of the church are as concerned as anyone about the influence of this far-right politics and of Trumpy politics. And in fact, when I worked for Democrats running for office. At one point, Elder Steve Snow said he was going to be our unofficial advisor because the church wants to see Democrats do well in Utah. They're really concerned about the fact that in Utah it's a one-party state and Democrats can't go anywhere. I mean, I don't think that— I mean, Azertab Benson was a minority voice in the 12, but had an outsized influence because he was willing to speak up. You know, you had members in highest leadership. Hubie Brown was a very liberal Democrat. James E. Faust was a Democrat. You know, Dieter Uchtdorf clearly is a Democrat now. But, you know, the The beast has gotten away from them. You know, the membership has decided this is where we're going, and I think it's a really destructive road. I think hitching our star to Donald Trump as a church is going to cost us so much in terms of membership, in terms of integrity. You know, when the Tabernacle Choir— I was not a member at the time— remember the Tabernacle Choir decided to go sing at Trump's inauguration, the outcry. Was huge, and I believe justified. And we just need to be careful and recognize that the principles of the restored gospel are nonpartisan, and that when we, when we make ourselves Republicans first and Latter-day Saints second, uh, we render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and we don't render unto God that which is God's.

It's a really excellent point. I know we're almost out of time. I just want to highlight one key thing, if I may. The church's position on church and state, you know, Mormons believe that the separation of church and state is essential in You know, modern societies prior to the millennium, as it said, I've mentioned that the scriptures teach that, um, you know, the civic laws, um, the relationship between scriptures and the civic laws and that they shouldn't interfere with religious practices or should religious institutions manipulate governments to their advantage. You know, that separation with church and state. My strong feeling on this, Jim, is that the churches selective, deliberate in regards to which topics it wants to talk about that interests itself. You know, what is that political safe position to be in? I think it screws up a lot. I think it, it comes down the wrong side, like the Trump position. Uh, I think it's pretty grotesque actually, the church thoughts and position and A lot of members subscribe to the Trump doctrine. It's very, very concerning, very worrying. And it's difficult to get into a, a debate, a discussion on that because the, it quickly spirals into, you know, a lack of civility or lack of respectful discourse. It's difficult to have a conversation with certain people on politics for reasons that we've, uh, we've, we've touched upon. And at the same time, on the other side of that coin, there's topics and issues in the world, problems in the world, with all the church power, all the money, all the influence that it's got, is silent, absolutely silent. And I think it's— there's an element of hypocrisy, there's an element of self-serving, protect the institution, protect the brethren. It will come down on certain topics that it feels is not in the interest of the church, Sometimes it's right, sometimes it's wrong, but it's silent on a lot of stuff. And a lot of that stuff happening, you know, in, in the world, like Ukraine and, and, and other politics, you know. Where's the church on, you know, the humanitarian crisis that happening, you know, outside of America and, and around the world? It, it does touch upon that. It does talk or try to get involved, but in a very, very small way. As you know, this recent 60 Minutes interview with this fund hedge fund manager regarding the, uh, ruling of the Securities Exchange Commission and the discovery that the church is sat on, quote, significant resources in the region of $150 billion. You know, it's very powerful, it's extremely, uh, resourceful in terms of access to, to, to, to cash. Uh, it, uh, uses those resources to protect its position fight on certain topics that is, is of interest to it, try to walk that political balance between the different parties, often gets it wrong, certainly picked the wrong horse in my opinion in regards to Trump. We'll see what happens there. And, and I think it's, I think it's very sad, very tragic. People are entitled to their own views and opinions, but what is the church's position on church and state? It, it claims officially that there should be separation What's the rule around that? When should it get involved? When should it not? You know, when is— can we not have a conversation at General Conference or in some material or a discussion about what the church's role is in politics? You can't get away from it. It's always been there. It will always be there. It'll never go away. There's that history of politics. Neither should it go away. I think it's that, you know, the Republican elephant in the room is the fact that people don't talk about politics in the church. I think the issue that people got is that it spirals into arguments and heated arguments and can even get worse than that. I think the time is now to have civil discourse on this, to talk about this in the church. I think priesthood lessons discussions, Sunday school, church talks at the pulpit, talks at General Conference, material in the Ensign should make it clear what the church position is on politics. I think that's got foggy. I think it's been lost. I think the church is lost on lots of topics. But what is the church position on getting involved in politics as a church institution? Where does it stand on that? When should it get involved? When shouldn't it get involved? What's its direction? It's, uh, you know, 21st century message to the rank-and-file members about its position on politics. It claims to be apolitical. What's its message to the members about the members having the freedom to choose what they want to do, not to be influenced by church politics in regards to voting for Democrat or Republican or UK Labour, Liberal Democrat, or whatever, et cetera. Where's that line or some guidance, some track where we can actually use as a direction, as a benchmark to guide us so we can have these conversations with respect and respect each other's political differences? It seems to have be, extremely complex and, you know, politically motivated depending on who you speak to in terms of church leaders. And as I say, you know, my experience of church politics, I experienced that quite early on, and people in the church have tried to influence me towards voting locally on certain positions, on certain political positions and certain people. And I find that reprehensible. You know, church politics is very private, it's very personal. You know, I don't want to tell people where I voted. I could talk about policies and principles and values, and you can get where I am on politics by having those conversations. But these are very private, personal things in terms of trying to, you know, it's wrong to influence somebody to vote in a certain way., and, and to apply pressure. And I've seen that, uh, in the church, unfortunately. So it, it's a very complex, foggy picture in church politics. I think there's an opportunity for church leaders to, to step up, to address these issues, and to deliver some very clear, defined messages on what the church position on politics, and to remind the members that they're free to vote In fact, the scriptures are very clear, the doctrine is very clear that we vote with our conscience, you know, for the best governments, you know, the best people are going to lead us. And I think that needs to be retaught and, and we need to be reminded that we, we have our agency to, to vote according to our conscience and according to, uh, we believe is the best people to lead us. So this conversation was always going to be Um, interesting. Again, it was my idea to talk about it. We could talk about it forever. There's so many other things that I— we've not had a chance to talk about. And again, it's important for our listeners to understand and know that your background, uh, in particular is rooted in, in politics, rooted in the church. And it shouldn't be a surprise that you feel so strongly, so passionately about certain topics, certain things, and, uh, on the subject of politics. I think we need to have more of these conversations. And again, I think there's an opportunity for the church to provide some direction, very constructive direction, on how we go forward together in civil unity, positive civil discourse, to talk about these things, respect each other's differences, vote according to our conscience, etc., and still have that respect and, and, uh, um, relationship with each other that we can still continue to remain friends and still to continue to have good relationships. You know, opinions vary from person to person, and that's what makes life very interesting.

Well, that's why I want to use this occasion to announce my campaign to run for president of the church, and I'd like you to be my running mate, Ian, if you would.

Okay.

Are you in? Our campaign begins in earnest after the Apostolic Midterms.

Okay.

But, uh, anyway, I'm in.

I'm in. I'll do it. I'll do it.

All right, sounds good. Uh, with that, we will leave you until the next time. Please be sure to, uh, like and subscribe to us wherever you find our— find your podcasts. And until next time, we'll see you on Inside Out. Thank you, Ian.

Thank you, Jim Bennett.