The Lord Forgives. The Computer Doesn't.

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. Jim Bennett and Ian Wilkes. I am Jim Bennett and I am here with Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir?

I am very good today. How are you, Jim?

I'm doing very well. I'm very excited about this episode because you have told me that you have some very sexy stuff, really gripping, exciting stuff to talk about. That may give the listeners a bit of a wrong impression because we're not going to be talking about literally sexy things, but something that's really kind of interesting, something that people have not discussed before. And that's the issue of the Lord forgives and forgets, but the computer doesn't. Is that an appropriate way to frame it?

It is. That's one angle to see this. And that term, that reference there was I heard many years ago, just before serving as a bishop.

I've heard this friend by a number of different people who talk about the idea that once you have gone through church discipline, you can say goodbye to any sort of significant leadership calling. I used to work at the Tuacán Center for the Arts for Hyrum Smith, not Hyrum Smith, the one that was martyred in Carthage Jail, but a descendant of that Hyrum Smith. He's passed away, but he was the first cousin of Elder M. Russell Ballard and, uh, was a very prominent speaker and leader in the church. He was a mission president at a very young age, served in a variety of leadership callings, and a lot of people presumed that he would end up, if not in the Quorum of the Twelve, at least as a General Authority. And it came to light that he had been conducting an 8-year affair while he was involved in all of these things in the church. And I don't feel like I'm violating any confidences because Hiram has spoken very publicly about all of these things. And in fact, when he was excommunicated, which he was it actually made the newspaper in St. George, Utah, which I think is inappropriate. But this is not a secret. This was all very public. And I remember having a conversation with him, and he said that when he was talking to his cousin Elder Ballard, Elder Ballard said, "You've got to figure out a way that you're going to be serving in the church now that you're no longer going to have any leadership callings." And Hiram said, "I don't understand that." If I've been forgiven, and I've been rebaptized, and I've been forgiven, and my blessings have been restored, why does the punishment continue? And Elder Ballard's comment was very similar to the way you described it. He says, oh, the Lord forgives, it's the Church that doesn't forgive. Yeah. And is that what you're talking about here, or is it even something more?

That is more than that. That's only one piece of this. That experience there with Hiram, it ties to the question I was asked by Elder Oaks when I was being called onto the Stake Presidency the very first question that he asked me privately. So it's just me in the room. Elder Cook, his junior trainee companion, as he put it, Elder Oaks. And he asked me, is there any— the first question was, is there anything in my history that could harm or hurt the church? And I was surprised, shocked by that question. But as he explained a little bit more about the question, it became clear that the, one of the primary objectives of the church is to protect the institution, protect the name, the brand. It takes years to build a brand and it doesn't take very long to destroy the brand. And so when Elder Oaks is asking this question, he was asking for a reason because the, you know, people's behavior, especially for a prominent name in the public eye, or you've got a prominent ancestry. And the person who's held a senior calling, then that is— that could harm and hurt the church on a local level, as well as a regional level, as well as a public level. So, you know, information on these individuals is maintained, is tracked.

I mean, I have heard stories. I don't know anything about— I mean, I haven't had firsthand experience, and it sounds like you have. If somebody's been involved in a same-sex relationship and they go and they talk to their bishop, they can be cleared of any kind of church discipline, but their records can be marked to say this person should never progress to, uh, to any kind of leadership calling, or this person should never be allowed to work with the youth. Yeah, and that mark can be placed by a bishop and it can't be removed unless a General Authority or somebody removes it. Is that accurate?

It is generally accurate, yeah. Elder Stephen Snow, a General Authority, uh, Seventy, a Tricia Soaren recorder, as you know, he produced an article called "The Sacred Duty of Record Keeping," and he says, "Beginning with the early church and continuing today, the Lord has instructed his people to preserve and cherish records and history." He says here, "The records and history of the church have been important to the Lord from the beginning." He taught Adam and Eve to keep a book of remembrance and counseled ancient prophets to keep records and checked to ensure that the Nephite records were complete. That's an audit. All right, they don't use that word, but that's an audit right there. In this dispensation, he taught Joseph Smith and other early leaders that there shall be, quote, there shall be a record kept among you, end quote, continually, and that doing so would be good for the church and for the rising generation. And then he goes on to say that the church is committed to maintaining these records. And in fact, there's an interesting quote here. He says— he talks about his privilege of working as a stenographer and recorder. And he says, when the saints gathered in Nauvoo, the work of the two offices were combined and assigned to Elder Willard Richards in 1854 at the call of the Twelve Apostles, during which Elder Richards' time of service Church members lived along the Mississippi River in Illinois and Iowa, throughout the eastern United States, Canada, British Isles, Isles of the Pacific. Joseph Smith instructed that it would be very difficult for one recorder to be present at all times and to do all the business. Thus, there can be a recorder appointed in each ward of the city. Then let there be a general recorder to whom these records can be handed, being attended with certificates over their own signatures certifying that the record they have made is true. So I, I'd break this down into two areas: information that's maintained on members, uh, and individuals internally, and what happens, what information is kept, and what happens with that information. How is that information used? And it is used strategically, tactically, and by and for other means. And what information does the church, uh, manage, control, or influence or track externally, because that's another part of this as well. The second piece I want to tie this to is the scope of the committee called the Strengthening the Church Members Committee, which you may be familiar with. I'm a little bit familiar with that, but the scope is to track and monitor publications of members for possible criticism of general or local church leaders, and if there is criticism found, the committee may forward information to local leaders who may bring charges of apostasy and in some cases excommunication. For example, people who are political activists who support policies or principles or doctrine or philosophies that oppose the church values or general church doctrine. The church does hold information and track information on those in— individuals. I suspect with your political aspirations, at some point that information will have reached some of the church leaders.

I have met with Richard Turley, who was the church historian at one point, and he was the head of the church public relations department. And he said, oh yeah, you're the guy who wrote the CES letter reply. And I went, oh, well, yeah, have you read it? And he says, oh yeah, of course I've read it. And I've had conversations with other people who have made it very clear that the brethren are aware of my CES letter reply and overall, as far as I know, are pleased with it, are happy with it. So, so it's never, it's never, you know, blown up in my face, but it's been very clear that they are aware of me and they are aware of what I say publicly. And it's interesting that the way that you have described this, the Strengthening Members Committee, is really concerned about criticism. The threshold for tolerance of unorthodox positions is actually much, much higher than people realize. And the, the other side of that coin is the threshold for even mild criticism of the brethren is much, much lower. Than many people realize. I have a brother-in-law, for instance, his name is Nate Ullman, and he wrote a marvelous essay that described a theological framework for how same-sex marriage sealings could and should be conducted in the temple. And, you know, the hard-right people on Twitter and everybody else blew up and were very angry about this essay. It got a lot of traction. Nate is a good friend of Jeffrey R. Holland, who spoke at a worldwide youth devotional very recently and quoted a letter from Nate at length and used him as an example of a paragon of the faith. He not only did he not get any pushback for his unorthodox position, but he was still— an apostle was still willing to hold him up as a light. To the rest of the church. Now, where people get into trouble— I also have a friend who did a very good Thomas S. Monson impression. He would just sort of fall into it when he was teaching lessons or something else.

I like Truman Madsen impression.

My father's first cousin. And I remember right after I got home from my mission, I was sitting next to Truman Madsen at a family dinner, and I described how we used to I actually told him a story of how you went to McDonald's in Inverness and you walked up to the counter and you said, if you do not give me my McDonald's, I will send you and McDonald's to hell. And Truman got a really big kick out of that.

He thought, yes, I just want our listeners to know that I did tell the person at the counter that that was a joke and having fun.

But anyway. But the point is, this guy doing a Thomas Monson impression, and he, as far as I know, he wasn't doing it for a wide audience. I remember talking to him later and he said, yeah, the bishop said I need to knock it off if I want to keep my temple recommend. Right. And I'm like, well, that's ridiculous. Yeah, I mean, you weren't being mean, you weren't being nasty, it came from a place of affection. But nope, nope, even that was not acceptable. So, so as I have become more and more prominent in how I talk about the church and, and I am perceived, and I think rightly so, as somebody who is defending the church and loves the church and is inside the church. That said, I remember I posted a Facebook post where I took issue with the idea that there is conflict between the first great commandment and the second great commandment. The idea that if you love God, be careful not to love your neighbor too much if it takes away from your love of God. This is an idea that is starting to get traction at the highest levels of the church, and it's been the subject of a number of talks from a number of different General Authorities. And on this occasion, I posted a link to one of those talks but did not mention the General Authority's name in my comments and just said This is an idea that is getting traction in the church, and I, I reject this idea wholeheartedly. I think it flies in the face of everything Jesus has ever taught. And I went through that, and I, I got in a little bit of hot water. And I got in hot water not because of my position, but because I was perceived as criticizing the General Authority whose picture was prominently in that Facebook post because it was part of that link that I had posted. And I said, I didn't even mention the man's name. I'm not even going to mention the man's name here. That doesn't matter. That was perceived as criticism. And so I think in all of this, it's very interesting to me. That, I think, is where the sensitivity is. Yeah, the sensitivity is not, oh geez, you believe women should be ordained, you don't believe the Book of Mormon is historical, or you you have problems with polygamy or any of that, there is a high tolerance for a diversity of opinions like that. There is zero tolerance for anything, even mild criticism or mockery or teasing. A Thomas S. Monson impression is not acceptable. In my experience, that's where the line is. Have you seen something similar? Or do you—

or have I? I can get into some specifics. Again, I think of the Elder Oaks interview where we spent a good 5 minutes on screening and vetting, you know, my background and asking me some very, you know, personal questions in regards to my history. So just for a moment, put yourself in the position of the church. You have an individual who's, you know, a political leader, political aspirations, or a successful business person. I'll give you the a term that was used with General Authorities and ourselves in the Stake Presidency. They called them opinion leaders. So we had meetings with General Authorities for Canada, British Columbia, to talk about how we could advance, accelerate the missionary effort by engaging in developing relationships with opinion leaders. And they went into great length about what an opinion leader is. It's somebody who's, when they speak, people listen, large numbers of people listen. They've got general respect, they've got integrity, and they've got an influence. They've got an audience. The audience is growing. The audience is strategic, and they can advance, accelerate the missionary effort and the teachings of the church through these people, through this network of strategic opinion leaders.

Are you talking about people in the church or outside of the church?

Right. At that particular meeting, it was mostly focused on out. We talked about internal opinion leaders, lecturers at universities, prominent business leaders, and maintaining a relationship between the church and those people is really important to the church. Were the church, and again, going back to what I say, the church, look it through the lens of the church, look it from a corporation perspective for a moment because there's definitely element to that. What does an organization need to do to maintain and manage and advance, accelerate its brand and its position across issues? Well, it teams and partners with people that can help it. How do you get to A to B? Well, in business, you team with the right partners. Um, you research them, you check them out, you find out what other people think about them. There's a whole process of evaluating, determining who is a strategic partner. And the church is very sophisticated, very sophisticated, perhaps the most sophisticated organized religion in the modern world, and has got very sophisticated trained people that, uh, reviews, background searches, checks people internally in the church. But it also spends a lot of time and effort and millions of taxpayer, sorry, taxpayer tithing dollars on positioning itself with, you know, President Banks. I think President Banks was, one of his callings was to, it was, I think the affectionate term was the greeter.

Oh yeah, President Banks, after he was mission president and then he was general authority, he was in the Second Quorum of the Seventy, and then I think he was called into the First Quorum of the Seventy. And then he was released and he became the temple president of the Jordan River Temple. And then after that, he became the head of church hosting. And so his, his job became sucking up to my parents that my father was a United States senator. And so my parents, that's when they got to know President Banks. I mean, they, they knew him from a distance because he was my mission president. But they got personally acquainted with him and became very good friends with him because his job was to accommodate my father, who was an opinion leader in and out of the church.

Absolutely. That's a really good example of somebody who the church wants and needs to have a good relationship with. So President Bynum, I don't know the specific scope of his calling, but from talking to him and listening and understanding his calling there, and I think he termed it as the greeter, but he facilitated organized coordinated meetings with prime ministers, prime minister of New Zealand who just resigned, by the way, she was a former member. And there is an active and developing strategy to identify and engage opinion leaders, not with the idea of baby baptizing them necessarily, although I think they like that. I think there's a lot of marketing value when you baptize Gladys Knight of the Pips.

Yeah, that's very, very few and far between though. Sure.

Yes. Yes. So I think where it can and position itself to achieve favor, and again, I'm being a bit cynical here, but from a business perspective, I don't see anything wrong with that. I guess what I'm saying is I can see the reason why the church does this, and it makes sense to me. And I think from a church perspective, it's a good thing, it's a positive thing, it's an intelligent thing. To team up with good opinion leaders. Just going back to the Strength of the Church Members Committee, if I may, Fair Mormon issued this. He says here the Strength of the Church Members Committee is described— has been described as a clipping service. I disagree with that, by the way, profoundly. I'll explain why later. Which has kept track of public statements by church members who openly criticize church in the media. I guess include yourself there to some extent. Although a clipping service probably made sense back in '85, in the internet-rich world of 2030, it seems somewhat anachronistic. Critics to the church have accused the committee of spying on members in order to move forward with church discipline. Well, that has happened. I think Fair Mormon deliberately uses the emotive words like spy to make such activity sound ludicrous. It's done that before. It's doing that here. You can describe things in many different ways. When we use the word spying on members, it sounds like 007, but that activity does happen, can be described differently in a way that doesn't sound like it's far-fetched. And I think it's disingenuous of Fair Mormon and not appropriate to use the word spy. You know, words mean something. I would say track, monitors, The church does— I was writing this— the church tracks and monitors and acts against people that write negative stuff about the church. That's why we spend so much time with Elder Oaks on this.

Well, I would push back against the word spy only because I don't think the church actively spies on its members by trying to investigate their private lives or their private conversations. The things that the Strengthening Church Members Committee tracks and monitors are things that are said in the public sphere. Fair Mormon may be setting up a little bit of a straw man there, because when I hear the word spy, I don't hear that as somebody reading something that I posted publicly. You know, I posted my CES letter reply, and the fact that the church has read it and commented on it and is interested in it, um, I, I didn't do that in a corner. That isn't a secret. I did that publicly, and I expect it to be acknowledged publicly. And the fact that the church is tracking and monitoring that, uh, doesn't disturb me. Uh, it would disturb me if the church was, you know, had operatives that were asking my friends, does Jim Bennett secretly believe this? Is Jim Bennett secretly— you know, that, that's what I see a spy doing. And I don't necessarily see the church doing that.

I agree. I agree. That's a really good way of characterizing the situation. The church doesn't spy, hasn't got the resources, doesn't do that. I agree with what you just said.

I think it has the resources. If they wanted to spy, they could. And I don't think they do. Uh-huh. But, but they, but they track and monitor really quite aggressively.

Track, monitoring is the words that I would use. And it does that. We know for a fact that if you post something on Facebook, and I'm not referring to you, I'm referring to things I've seen, even myself, actually, on one occasion I posted something while I was a member of the state presidency, and I had a member in a ward say, you know, President, could you clarify? It looks like you're supporting this. So, you know, you've got members that flag things up to leaders, by the way, we'll talk about that. I'm not saying the spies, but there's certainly whether they're us or not. You've got people in the state that like to gossip and share information. And then you've got people's social media activity coming into a church court as evidence of their thinking, their behavior, and their beliefs. I'm aware of that as well. So finishing off the Fair Mormon thing here, they describe it as a clipping service. It's not. It's tracking and monitoring. And then they say here that the— from the Church News, August 2022, 992— First Presidency statement cites scriptural mandate for Church committee. Excuse me. And he says, generally, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not respond to criticism levied against its work, but in light of extensive publicity recently given to false accusations— and by the way, I must add, I've lost count how many times over the years as a stake presidency and as a bishop As the internet was coming online, you know, all the stuff on the internet, et cetera, internet was seen as the predominant medium, you know, for the next generation. The church repeatedly said, and I'll try to quote Elder Oaks, we're bringing the church into the light, and the internet is going to be the vehicle and the means by which we do that. There was a belief of church leaders that the internet would be the savior of the church. That it would be able to promote the narrative, the missionary efforts would advance, accelerate, the, the, the qualities of the church would finally be known to the world. The success, the, the qualities, the divinity, divinity of the church and the, um, the value of the church would finally be spread to all corners of the world in a way that hasn't been done before. And that the world would respond favorably. And openly and kindly towards the church's missionary effort, and we would see extraordinary success in terms of baptisms. There were the people at that time with the Emergency Internet that really believed that, Jim, and believed that the internet would be the savior of— in some respects, the technological savior of the church. The reality, they didn't expect the criticism to come against the church or to have information released to the extent that it has been on the internet. I know for a fact that those early conversations at that level about the internet was not fully understood and perhaps not understood by many or most people of how the internet would be used. But just going to finish up the quote here. But in light of extensive publicity recently given to false accusations of so-called secret church committees and files It says the First Presidency has issued the following statement: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in 1830 following the appearance of God the Father and Jesus Christ to the Prophet Joseph Smith in upstate New York. This sacred event heralded the onset of the promised restitution of all things. Many instructions were subsequently given to the Prophet, including Section 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants. Quote, and again, we would suggest you can, for your consideration, the proprietary of all saints gathering up a knowledge of all facts and sufferings and abuses put upon them, and also all the property and amount of damages which they have sustained, both of character and personal injury, and also the names of all persons that have had a hand in their oppressions, as far as they can get hold of them and find them out. Now perhaps a committee could be appointed to find out these things and take statements and affidavits and also to gather up libelous publications that are afloat and all that are in magazines and encyclopedias and all the libelous histories that are published. And so it goes on to say that leaders and members of the church strive to implement commandments of the Lord, including the direction received in 1839. Because the church has a non-professional clergy, its stake presidents and bishops have varied backgrounds and training. In order to assist their members who have questions, these local leaders are often often requests information from general authorities of the Church. Strengthening the Church Members Committee was appointed by the First Presidency to help fulfill this need and to comply with cited sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. This committee serves as a resource to priesthood leaders throughout the world who may desire assistance on a wide variety of topics. I don't think we know what those topics are. I don't think we know anywhere in writing what the scope of the committee is or, or some specific assignments or projects that it's got involved in. I'm not aware of that. I think for transparency, I think we need to know that. But it is a general authority committee, they say, currently comprised of Elder Faust, Elder Russell, and Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. I think this is out of date here. They work through established priesthood channels and neither impose nor direct Church discipline action. I think that's disingenuous as well. I don't think that's entirely correct. I think they do influence, and I've influenced stake decisions, local decision leaders, decisions that have happened recently as well. Members who have questions concerning church doctrine, policies, or procedures have been counseled to discuss those concerns confidentially with their social— with their local leaders. These leaders are deeply aware of the obligation to counsel members wisely in the spirit of love in order to strengthen their faith in the Lord and his great latter-day work. And so I think that is really important context. Let me give you a quick overview of what I've seen directly, indirectly. We said at the very beginning that the Lord does forgive and forget, but the computer doesn't. So we know— let's talk about what we know. We know that the church knows who owns a temple recommend, who has a current recommend. It knows who's the full or part tithe payer. It knows the individual's callings and the calling history. Okay, so on the MLS program, This program allows bishops and stake presidents who have got different access levels, by the way, to MLS. I don't know if you're aware of that. We talked earlier about annotating records. There's different types of information that these leaders have got different levels of authority to annotate members' records across certain issues. But we know that the MLS program maintains—

MLS stands for?

Member Leadership Services.

Member Leadership Services.

Yeah, there's a member records component to it as well as the finance, the tithing and donations.

Okay.

So it's an integrated software system program. There's also a member records component to MLS as well. And so we know that, you know, we know Jim Bennett's history of callings. We know whether you said yes or no to a calling. We know your temple attendance.

So once you go through a calling, there's a record of that.

They can make a record of that. I think the upside of this is that many of the leaders don't have time. I mean, this is like a calling of this nature is like another full-time job. Being on the stake president or bishop is, honestly, if you haven't had that calling, don't aspire to it. I don't know if you know what you're getting into. From a time perspective, it could take over your life. You could throw as many hours into these columns as you can. It will suck every minute of the day. And that's without annotating or updating members' records. There's certain basics in the leadership scope of leadership column, like a state presidency, that you have to do. For example, when you issue a temple recommend, so issue the bishopric or the bishop issues the temple recommend at the unit level. At the ward level. If it's a— if it's the bishop with the recommend, only the state president is the one that can interview the bishop. Counselor can interview under the authority of a state president. A counselor can interview a bishop, but it's usually bishop, keyholder to keyholder. And so when the temple recommend is issued by state president or member of the state presidency, that you then have to activate the recommend. So that person I got in trouble once that after the long night session, and by the way, these meetings ended Thursday nights, I think it was, at midnight sometimes. I'm not kidding.

I'm not sure.

You meet at 6, 5, 6 o'clock after work and you go right through to every week. And you honestly, there's another conversation around how much time these people commit. It's extraordinary. It really takes over your life and to the point where you neglect your family. And I think that's another conversation. And so if you don't activate the recommend immediately and they go to the temple, you know, I met with somebody on a Friday. It was last minute. You get these quite a bit actually, present last minute, go to the temple. Sorry, I left it so late. It's Friday, Friday night, 8 o'clock, go to the temple on the Saturday. Could we do the tempo recommend interview and, uh, the president, could we meet with you at 8, 9 o'clock? I said yes. Again, that takes out your personal time, right?

Sure.

Um, and the half an hour, these conversations are half an hour at least. You then issue the recommend. You then got to go online from your house or whatever. If you're at the, well, not your house, at the building, you gotta go to the building, do the interview, or to the house. Sometimes come to the house if it's an emergency. You then gotta go online. You then gotta activate the recommend. So you go onto the MLS, the other church programs, and you put Jim Bennett in. And, and because you've got this pass, you click it, you put the information in. It's a form you fill out with the information, your number, your temple recommend number. You've got a number assigned to you, by the way. And then I activate that. I'm, I'm authorized to activate that. So when you arrive at the temple in the morning, 8 o'clock in the morning, and you hand your recommend over the counter and they scan it, the barcode, It's been activated. I, one time on the Friday, uh, I forgot and I got a call from the temple president saying, President, uh, so-and-so has just arrived at the temple. He said he had a recommended view last night. It's not in the system. I apologize. I said, President, I just haven't got around to it. It's a good 15 minutes to put it in. And they didn't ask, you know, is this person in good standing? I said yes. And they were fine, right? So things like that where you have to do, there's certain things that you have to do, which are basic to the calling. But the scope of the system there allows leaders, members to maintain, monitor, track if they want. And I was finishing off a point earlier. I think the reason why they don't do it to the extent that they can, the technology is more than capable. Is that these people don't have the time. Um, you know, whether you take the sacrament or not, uh, can be recorded. Uh, so, you know, if you don't take the sacrament, uh, the bishop knows. He looks. He is trained— and, and not trained, instructed to look at his members. No, I've never done that. I'd never come across that. But they can, you know, they can profile a member. They can, you know, Jim's not taking the sacrament for 3 weeks. You'll get the exec secretary make an interview with you, and you'll probably wonder why, and he'll say, Jim, how are you? How's your family? How's life? How's work, et cetera? Is there anything I can do to help you? Try to get you to open up. And then if you're not forthcoming, he'll say, I noticed you haven't taken the sacrament in the last 3, 4 weeks. So these things are tracked positivistically, means there's a hard system. MLS is a means by which they're doing that. But phenomenologically, from a soft system of people, you know, leaders see things, they track and they remember things, right? And I think for good reason. I think there's a lot of— we said at the very beginning of the podcast, there's really good reasons, good qualities the church has. And like any tool, this tool is used for good things. I'll get into that right now. For example, if somebody's had a criminal history or a history, for example, in Scotland they have what they call Disclosure Scotland background checks, and they've got them in England now, or I don't know how, and they're about to do that. The church, by the way, the church doesn't uniformly encourage or instruct leaders to do background checks on people who work with youth or children where the law doesn't require it. I think that's a mistake.

The United States used to require that of Boy Scout leaders. Right. But that wasn't because of a church requirement. That was a Boy Scout requirement.

And as the only true church upon the face of the earth who have advanced knowledge, spiritual knowledge, eternal knowledge, a perspective on life here and life beyond, You think that we will be leading by far light years ahead of implementing the many, many, many talks given in priesthood and General Conference, how the church, in strongest terms, is committed to protecting children and protecting youth. You think that we'd be at the forefront of doing background checks internally using the information that we've got on the MLS system or using criminal checks where we can. 'Cause those countries where it's not required, there is still a process and system to identify if somebody is a predator, a sexual predator. You know, the police may have a record of somebody, right?

Well, we're getting better at that. Almost in spite of ourselves, because there have been so many scandals recently. There was the big AP article about a sexual predator in Arizona, and the bishop never reported it to the authorities and just told this— he, the bishop, called the church hotline. You know, the church has a hotline the leaders call and it, it, the hotline, it became very clear that the hotline was far more interested in protecting the church from liability claims than it was in terms of protecting the abuse victim. And so the, this Bishop called the hotline, the hotline says you don't need to report it and you shouldn't report it, we'll handle it internally. And that eventually came out and was a huge embarrassment to the church. The church issued a statement that I think made things worse because they accused the AP of, of slandering them while at the same time acknowledging all of the facts that the AP unearthed that were in the article. It didn't dispute any of the facts, but it just got indignant and, and made things worse. Uh, there's, there's a case right now. Uh, there's a man in Enoch, Utah, a wife, 5 children. Uh, he came home and took a gun and murdered his entire family, murdered his mother-in-law, and then turned the gun on himself. And, and, and the reaction to that has been bizarre as people that— so They published an obituary of the murderer that talked about what a great leader he was in the church and, oh, he was wonderful here and always. And this is a man who murdered all of his children. And it's come out now that his daughter went to talk about this abuse, went to the authorities, and the authorities said— I mean, the man strangled his daughter and the authorities said that's close to assaultive, but it's not quite assaultive because you could still breathe. And let it go, right? But it's— what's come out is that, is that this kind of abuse, uh, there were at least 4 bishops who heard complaints from the wife and complaints from the children that this man was abusive, and nothing was ever done. And, and now he's murdered his family, and even now there are some members of the church who aren't willing to sort of front the horror of what that really is. Uh, and I think these kinds of things embarrass the church. I mean, you talked initially that the church is very concerned about being embarrassed, and I, I think that it, it can have the positive consequence, maybe unintended consequence, of getting the church— forcing the church to get its act together. I don't think we do the church any favors by defending systematic problems that lead to abuse and lead to suffering and lead to death. In this case, it led to death. There were so many red flags about this guy, but the church took no action and the law took no action. So it wasn't just the church that failed here. Joseph Smith talks about in the 121st section of Doctrine and Covenants, we learn by sad experience and he's talking about unrighteous dominion and other things. But I think sad experience becomes a great teacher for the church as well. And unfortunately, it takes terrible, terrible things to prompt the church to fix serious systemic problems.

Thank you for that. That's a really important point because my expectation— I'm not alone here— is that as the only true and living church upon the earth, um, with extraordinary knowledge and insight, a prophet, you know, 2 Nephi talks about the qualities of a prophet, can see things before they happen, right, can know things, right? Um, where's the leadership in protecting vulnerable children and youth, right? Where's the leadership in using information, which I want to get into a few more specifics, in using that information to protect, you know, members and youth and children. Where's the— and I'm talking about, we should be right out there leading beyond any other organization. The reason why is because we have a profound understanding of the nature of human spirit in a way that no, no others understand or know. A knowledge of the plan of salvation, where we came from, why we're here, the nature of our spirits, the nature of God, our relationship with God, the nature of the eternities, the whole eternal perspective, the value of the human spirit, the value of children. We talk frequently about 3 Nephi 17, where Christ blessed the children. You know, the church materials replete with talks, references, lessons on the importance of children and families and, and youth and the need to protect. And that Christ saves his worst wrath, I think, a quote for those who abuse the abused children. Again, we must understand that the most important thing for the church is protecting its reputation because it ties to everything. It ties to membership retention, credibility, intelligence. It ties to the financial status of the organization. It ties to risk, legal risk. When I was bishop, by the way, in Dalkeith in Scotland, The police station was right next to the building, and we had a good relationship with the police. And so one day, an individual walked into the building and sat down at the back of the congregation. My counselor leaned over to me and said, Bishop, you need to know that this person we think, we know locally, is a predator and has a criminal record of sexual assault and is a risk to the congregation. Immediately, I Asked during the meeting to speak with a brother in the elders quorum who was a security guy. He had a security background. I just had a word with him. Had the counselor, sorry, have a word with him. That was my instruction just to keep an eye on this individual. And then once the sacrament meeting had finished, I met with this individual and made sure that they stayed at the front of the building. There's no way I was going to let this person near the youth or the children. This person turned out to be— had assaulted a child in the past, and that had gone to court, and it was on the— it was on a register or something and shouldn't have been in the building. During that conversation in the foyer, I had one of my counselors get the local police station on the phone and I spoke to them, I knew them, and they came and they asked this person to leave. And so, um, and by the way, it was at that time where primary was at the front of the building. When you walked in, the primary, uh, uh, classes were on the left immediately. Um, and this is relatively new into the calling. What I did, I, I moved the entire primary and youth right to the back of the building where you couldn't get in unless it— you can only get out through the exit door. You couldn't get in through the emergency door. You had to go through the building right to the back, through all the corridor and all past the bishop's office to get to the primary and youth. So I physically moved all primary and kids right to the back, and I put the adults classes right to the front because I didn't want anything to happen to the kids or to the youth. So, you know, knowing this information is really important and required, but I don't think the church does that in countries where it's not required legally. And for a church to be the only true church on the earth, that's the point I'm trying to make, we should be at the forefront. Look what we've said about this. We should be doing everything in our power, throwing all the resources we can to protect, you know, vulnerable people from predators. Other things are, you know, predatory behavior. If someone's been predatory, like, for example, help me on this, let me pronounce this properly, affinity crimes. I think the church is affinity. That's a whole conversation podcast I'd like to do if you're interested, where you've got this relationships between members and they get into business with each other, where a member will come to me and say someone in the ward had ripped them off or promised a service and they didn't deliver or took some money for an investment. I know about that one. And basically robbed them blind. Right. So you've got this relationship in the church, and I think it's an organization. The church Globally, from a study I saw a while back, I think if it's reliable, is one of the organizations most at risk because we call each other brother and sister, right?

Right.

You're my brother, right? So why wouldn't I trust my brother on an investment or a service or whatever, right? And I had a few problems like that. And so I didn't write this down in the MLS. You can if you want to. And I think there's some There's probably some value to that, but I certainly kept an eye on one particular individual that had promised services to some members and hadn't delivered some technical computer services. And so there's things like that which you can track. You can profile members, members who are politically active. I've talked about that. Members who support certain policies that are opposed to the church. The church should attract that if you are prominent enough. And you're an influencer, opinion leader at that level, the church certainly tracks and monitors that. And why wouldn't it, right? You look at the financial performance of members in a graph, typically the leaders in the callings often, not always, are the faithful tithe payers. So there's a relationship in my opinion between tithe, well, yeah, between tithe payers and holding a senior calling. Uh, I, I don't think that's completely, uh, set in stone or strict. I think you've got leaders who don't pay tithing or can't pay tithing or, um, are only part tithe payers who are leaders. But generally speaking, and, and some people might push back on this, I don't know, but if you're not a full tithe payer, generally you, you might not be considered for— well, you won't be considered for a bishop. That's for sure. Sure, of course. Uh, or stake president, right? So if you, if you're only a part-time payer, I'm saying there's a correlation between tithe paying and leadership callings for sure.

Well, if you're a part-time payer, you can't hold temple recommend, which means you can't be a bishop and you can't be a stake president.

If you're part-time payer, you can. You can hold recommend if you're a part-time payer.

Can you? I didn't know that.

Yeah, you can. So I've issued temple recommends of members who are part-time payers who have pleaded— they didn't have to, but they pleaded, uh, with me. They're desperate to go to the temple. They're going to an event in the temple, uh, an experience. They, they can't pay for tithing. There's no way I'm not gonna let them go to the temple. Why wouldn't I do that, right?

But my—

at the time when I was, um, um, devout at the time, my counsel was to do what you can to become a full tithe payer. I didn't look at the records or income statements, or etc., some people might do, um, you know, to really vet them, scrutinize them. I think that's, that's a bit overzealous and a bit extreme. But in terms of counseling to do what they can, do the best they can, no pressure— there's no way I was gonna let this, uh, this poor sister, this, this, uh, brother not go participate in a temple audience because he he can't pay tithing. I think a lot of it's down to the discretion of the bishop. In the end, it's the bishop that signs it, right?

There are plenty of bishops out there that wouldn't have done what you did, that would have said, you're not a full tithe payer, I'm sorry, my hands are tied, but you can't go to the temple. Right, right. There are plenty of stories where that kind of thing happens. The church, it's fascinating to me with regard to tithing, The handbook says that you have to accept the member's declaration as to whether or not they are full tithe payer. They don't conduct tithing audits. They don't look at your tax returns and make sure that you're paying 10%, and they don't, they don't say it has to be gross or it has to be net. I mean, you hear that from individual bishops, individual leaders, or individual members. You know, I've been in, in, in classes where members say, if you're not paying tithing on your gross income, you are robbing the Lord. But that is not the church's position. I've also talked to members of stake presidencies who said, oh, I pay my tithing on my net income. I don't pay my tithing on my gross income. And, and they are members because so, so if I walk into my my tithing declaration, which is what they call it now. They used to call it tithing settlement, and just last year they changed it to tithing declaration. Uh, they haven't changed what happens, so I don't know why the change in the terminology is important. But you walk into your tithing declaration, your bishop is sitting there with a piece of paper that has all the money you've donated to the church that year, and the bottom line is $0. And the bishop asks you, are you a full tithe payer? And you say yes, the bishop has to take your word for it. I think to their credit, most bishops do, but the handful of bishops that don't and the handful of bishops that police that in ways beyond what the handbook allows do real damage to the church, I think.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I know we're going to wrap up here soon. I'm like the Mr. Incredible guy who The lady comes, she's got an insurance claim and he says, "Yeah." And his boss comes and says, "She's penetrating the bureaucracy." And I'm the guy that helps people penetrate the bureaucracy. There's no way I'm not going to help somebody. Why am I there? What's my point in being there if I'm not going to help somebody? How can I say no to somebody who wants to go into the temple and witness their grandson's marriage? How, how can you do that? I, I, I, I don't give a crap about whether I got the calling or not. Um, there's no way I'm going to be part of something like that. So, and no one checks upon me. No one checks on the bishops about your signature, right? They don't— oh, got a signature there. Well, has the bishop done the job right? Has he checked all the— has he done all the background checks and all the questions, right? Are you honest in your dealings with fellow men? There's 15 yes or no questions. So I can memorize them. I memorize them word for word. I was criticized by a member for not looking down and reading the questions. You've got to read the questions, by the way. You can't do them by memorization like I could. And just to kind of close off for a little bit, we didn't get into too much of the external stuff, but in terms of information that the Church captures and maintains, monitors, tracks, and uses, et cetera, there's a whole social media component around the missionary proselyting efforts. I've lost count how many times I've seen an advert of a missionary locally here, uh, saying we've got a free Book of Mormon that we'd like to deliver, or we can do cut your, cut your, cut your hedge, or, uh, trim me bush, uh, was one missionary, uh, trim your bush Facebook. Yeah, trim your bush. And, uh, some of the comments I, I won't share here, but, um, sheesh. So, you know, but, but anything to, I mean, think about it, you know, the knocking on doors didn't work, hasn't worked. Referrals are terrible. They were terrible in Scotland in terms of performance. President Breen's— he probably still listens to our podcast today. If you're still listening, President Breen's— the pressure on members to generate referrals was extraordinary. It never succeeded. And now the church has got the internet, and so it trains missionaries to— and you can speak to this more than I can— to be very active on social media, post adverts of Bibles, of Book of Mormon services, et cetera. It tracks the emails of missionaries. I know that for a fact. Uh, you know, there's a, uh, there's an email, uh, server that the church uses for missionaries, et cetera. It can read your letters and your emails, and, and it has done at times. And, um, and everything's electronically now. So there's a record, there's a, there's a, uh, electronic footprint of everything that the missionaries do. They're restricted about what they can look at. And again, I think for good reason. I think it can be, it can be dangerous for a missionary to go too far, too deep into the internet. So the church will use information technology. It's not unique to the church. You know, organizations have been doing this for, you know, long, long, a long time. It's part of human nature, control and manage information. Look what's happened with the Ukraine war, propaganda, right? And so it is a church has a propaganda machine. It's very sophisticated. I think it shoots itself in its foot. It seems to be its own worst enemy. You could just sit back and watch it destroy itself. It's doing a pretty good job of that, I think.

I'm not that pessimistic, right? I don't think I'm quite as pessimistic as you are with regard to the church shooting itself in the foot doing I, I think when the church gets something wrong and, uh, it, it explodes across social media, it ripples through, you know, traditional media, uh, but I, I, I still believe that the vast majority of bishops and stake presidents are doing everything in their power to do the right thing. And, and I believe that the church institutionally wants to do the right thing and sometimes trips itself up. It's the old, you know, when a plane crashes, you get people say, well, nobody ever talks about when all the planes land safely. They only single out the one time it crashes. And so, well, yeah, because when a plane crashes, it's a tremendous, terrible, awful loss of life. But, but I think there is a danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater when we talk about these kinds of problems in the church. We've talked about problems with reporting systems. We talk about problems with the church being more interested in preserving its reputation than in helping abuse victims. I think those are largely anomalous and that for the most part, the church is trying to do the right thing. But I think there is tremendous room for improvement, and I don't think that there is— that we do the church any favors by trying to pretend otherwise. You know, when a plane crashes, you deal with the systemic problem that led to the plane crash. You don't just throw your hands up and say, well, 99% of our planes don't crash, so what's your problem?

Uh, I struggle with that. I'll tell you why. You're you're speaking from a perspective of a member, a rank and file member, right? You don't have the experience of a bishop. You don't have the experience of sitting on a stake presidency. You don't see and feel and understand and know what they know, right? They know more than you know. Okay? The General Authorities, apostles know more than you know. They see things from a very different vantage point than you do, right? Same with bishops, same with stake presidents. And when you're at that level, when you're at a leader level, and certainly it got worse the higher got, in my view. You see what members do in the stake. It's extraordinary. Um, they stand up and they say these things, and, and many of them are wonderful and great. Absolutely, the majority are. But you also, you have a window into their life. You see some crazy, awful stuff that they do on a personal level. It come— it, it, it sometimes, uh, comes into the conversation or through a confession or whatever. And you have to take those things to the grave, by the way. You can't ever discuss those things, ever. And you see personal preferences of leaders over certain individuals for no reason other than they like them, right? God is no respecter of persons. It's just human nature, Jim Bennett. The members are simply an extension or a section of human life. We hire people because we like them. We don't hire them because we don't like them. They might have credentials coming through the yin-yang, right? But for whatever reason, we don't want to choose them.

Right.

All those personal prejudices and preferences which are ingrained into the human psyche, nature. I do agree that most leaders, members are either doing or at least trying to do the right thing. But I've also seen mistakes made by bishops. I train bishops. My job was to, with the state presidency, to train bishops, and they made mistakes. And they did things deliberately and like, why are you doing that? There was a bishop that was a rogue bishop.

We had a rogue bishop.

It's somewhere in the middle, I think. I think yes, generally trying to do the basic good.

And generally church leaders are trying to do the right thing.

That's the key word. Okay.

Well, with that, let's, let's, let's wrap this up. If you enjoyed this, please be sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Next time. Thank you very much, Ian.

Thank you, Jim Bennett.