Episode Description: Embark on an intimate exploration with Megan Conner as she recounts the moment her faith in Mormonism unraveled, leading to a profound personal transformation. In this pivotal episode of "The Midlife Revolution," Megan delves deep into the emotional and spiritual upheaval she experienced upon discovering the Church's concealed history and the contradictions within its doctrine.

Listen as Megan narrates the story of a family trip that turned into a catalyst for change, where discussions with her sister and cousin about their shared Mormon background led her down a rabbit hole of research and introspection. She reveals how the church's own admissions in the Gospel Topic Essays and historical documents, like the controversial 1922 meetings, challenged her faith to its core, ultimately leading to her decision to step away from the LDS Church.

This episode isn't just about loss of faith; it's about finding joy in the vast expanse of "I don't know." Megan discusses the peace and empowerment she discovered in crafting her own values and morality, free from the confines of religious dogma. Learn how she navigated through feelings of betrayal and deception, to emerge with a renewed sense of self, celebrating each moment of life with newfound appreciation.

Whether you're on your own journey of faith deconstruction, seeking understanding, or simply curious about the personal impacts of religious transitions, this episode offers solace, insight, and a beacon of hope for those redefining their spiritual identity. Join us in this candid conversation that might just inspire you to question, explore, and redefine your own path to self-discovery.

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and that they've covered it

up this entire time.

All of that stuff just has

really disturbed me over

the last couple of days.

And I've kind of been in this rabbit hole.

I would really like to have

your opinion because I am,

I'm really having a hard time with this.

And I'm really upset about

just the entire dynamic of

Like it feels like the

church leaders have been

lying to us all along and

that they've covered it up

this entire time.

All of that stuff just has

really disturbed me over

the last couple of days.

And I've kind of been in this rabbit hole.

I would really like to have

your opinion because I am

I'm really having a hard time with it.

Hello, beautiful humans.

Welcome to the Midlife Revolution.

I'm your host, Megan Conner.

And what you just saw was

almost the exact moment

that I lost my faith in the

Mormon Church.

In the summer of twenty twenty two,

my sister and I went on a

girls trip to visit one of

my cousins and her family.

The three of us had been

exchanging video messages

in a group for a couple of

years at this point.

All three of us were raised

as members of the LDS church,

and we also have very

similar family dynamics.

So we would frequently

discuss the ways in which we

were struggling with family

and church issues and help

each other to come up with

solutions and just

generally support each other.

We had been in agreement for

a long time about the

problems with the culture

of the church and how

difficult it's been for

each of us for different

reasons at different times.

At the point the three of us

met for the trip,

I had been struggling with

my life as a Mormon for several years.

It was hard for me to

resolve the cognitive

dissonance that I felt

between the policies of the

church conflicting with

what I believed the

teachings of Jesus Christ were.

I was also struggling with

feeling isolated and

ostracized during my entire

time in the church,

but especially since my

divorce in twenty seventeen.

One night during dinner,

we were all discussing some

of the difficulties we had

with the church over the years,

and I came to an important conclusion.

I said,

I don't know how to make sense of

all these conflicting feelings I'm having,

and I don't know what to do about it.

All I know is that I want my

life to be acceptable to God.

And right now, as I'm living,

I believe it is.

I made that statement knowing that my life,

one in which I questioned

the teachings of the so-called prophets,

was not acceptable to the church.

Five months later,

I was in the process of

revising and editing my first book,

I Walked Through Fire to Get Here,

which is the story of my

journey healing from trauma.

In the book is a chapter

about being raised in the LDS church.

Informed by my healing from

other abusive systems,

my aim in writing the

chapter was to call out the

aspects of the church

culture which I found to be

abusive and oppressive.

I asked my partner Samuel to

read the chapter as someone

who's never been Mormon.

I wanted to make sure that I

was telling the full story

that would help lend

solidarity to others who

had experienced harm in the church.

His reply was that, no,

I had been too easy on the

church and I had held back from the truth,

which would hold leaders

accountable for what

Mormonism has always been.

Right maybe two months before this,

I had gone to a business

conference on investing and

we were talking about

different kinds of

investments and how to tell

if an investment is right

for you or profitable or whatever.

And we were in this

roundtable discussion and

we had been given a

prospectus by somebody who

wanted our money.

And our job was to go

through the prospectus and

determine if this was a

good investment or not and why.

And when it came to my turn

to talk about this investment prospectus,

I gave my reasons for why

or why not I thought it was good.

And then he said,

if you had to give your

money right now today, would you do it?

And I said, no.

And he said, why not?

And I said,

because I would never invest in

something where the only

information I had about it

came to me from the source

of the person who's asking

me for the money.

And this little distant bell

rang in my head.

Yeah.

I was like,

I have only ever read what the

church writes about the church.

I have only ever seen what

the church puts out about the church.

I've consumed all the propaganda.

I kept the council to read

only the best books.

All of my time was consumed

with the scriptures and the

conference talks and everything else.

And I had never once read

anything negative about the church.

Even when the CES letter came out,

I was like, I don't need to read it.

So I finally allowed myself

to do research that was not

put out officially by the church.

When I started my research,

I assumed I would be

confronting some of the

rumors I had heard since I was a child,

which were labeled as anti-Mormon lies.

I was shocked to discover

that what were classified

as lies in my childhood

were now being published on

the church's own website at

LDS.org as truthful,

apologetic claims now known

as the gospel topic essays.

was deeply disturbed by what

i read but i kept digging i

was determined to prove for

myself what i was beginning

to suspect i had been

deceived used lied to and

betrayed it was in this

state of alarm that i

recorded the video message

i have a little bit of a

heavy topic this morning so um if you

are not in the right frame

of mind for heavy stuff,

feel free to not listen to

this until later.

I have been, as you know,

getting my book ready for

publishing and looking for an agent.

And I started writing this

book like back in twenty

seventeen ish is when I

first started journaling

during my therapy stuff.

And a lot of that journaling

made it into the book.

So that's kind of why I put

that timeframe on it.

But I didn't really start

trying to turn it into a

book until twenty nineteen.

So there are a lot of

sections of the book that I

wrote a long time ago and

then either revised or

edited them and just left

them alone and haven't

looked at them since then.

And one of those one of the

chapters that I did that with was

the chapter on the church

and my relationship with

the church growing up and

where I was at that time with my faith,

which basically was, you know,

it was right after my

divorce and I was really

unhappy with the culture

and always had been like

for my entire life,

but especially after I got

divorced and I received no

help from my ward and, you know, granted,

the ward sucks.

and met with my bishop and

told him exactly what I

needed and exactly the kind

of help I needed.

I needed faithful home

teachers that were gonna be

there every single month.

And I needed the young men's

and the young women's

groups to really rally

around my children and help them.

And this was actually,

the meeting where he laughed at me.

I told him that I was really

struggling and I said,

I come to church every

Sunday and I fulfill my

callings and I bring my

kids with me and I pay my

tithing and I go to the

temple and I do all of these things.

And so I think people assume

that I'm just like out

there swimming along doing great,

but I'm actually drowning.

And he sort of like reclined

back in his chair and chuckled and said,

well,

what do you expect us to do for you?

And I was really taken aback

by that because

You know, first of all,

your bishop is supposed to

like be loving and kind about things.

And I just,

in my interactions with him

throughout the entire

divorce process and everything,

I just had to come to this

realization that he's just

a software designer and he

doesn't really know how to

handle mental health issues

or anything like that.

And he's not compassionate.

But it was it was really

like triggering for me for

him to react that way.

And the way the discussion

essentially went was like,

you made this choice to get divorced,

you know,

so it's like up to you to figure it out.

And I told him, like, look,

I don't have any family.

I don't speak with my parents.

My sister's in Utah.

you know,

I just don't have any family

around and it's a really

hard time for all of us.

We're having a hard time

navigating everything.

And he sort of like shamed

me for not talking to my parents and,

you know, basically said like,

you have to look to your

family first for help and all this stuff.

And I said, I did.

I told my parents I was

getting divorced and they

sent me a one line email back saying,

you know,

please let us know if we can help,

which is like the Mormon equivalent of,

That sucks, and I'm too busy.

So anyway,

I didn't really mean to get all

into the weeds with this,

but I guess that's what's happening.

So I just kind of need to

get some things out that I

haven't really talked about.

So anyway,

after that meeting with my bishop,

I still didn't get any home teachers.

The young men and young

women's presidencies really

did step up to help.

anyway i wrote a letter to

my state president and i

said you know if my husband

had died instead of

divorcing me um you know i

would be encumbered with

all kinds of help and

And it's just not that way.

And I just told him, you know,

we're really struggling and

I've asked the bishop for

help and he was not

compassionate and I still

haven't had any teachers.

And he did write me back and

give me some sympathy for

my situation and said that

he would do his very best

to make sure that, you know,

things got taken care of at

the board level.

and then literally nothing

happened i like i did not

have anybody come and visit

me in my home at all not

one single time for like at

least four years it wasn't

until well at christmas

time in one of the

bishopric members came by

and dropped off an envelope

of gift cards for us for christmas

And the same thing in twenty nineteen.

And it wasn't until like the

spring of twenty nineteen

that a home teacher contacted me.

So anyway,

I just felt I was very bereft by my ward.

I was like really upset

because and I think it was

mostly because like

divorced people get

marginalized even more than

part member families do.

And nobody like nobody from my ward.

There was one person from my

ward who reached out to like

say if you need help i'm

here to talk and she would

write me letters and she

would you know show up and

just talk to me or whatever

but none of my other

friends from my ward even

ever called me to talk to

me about the divorce or to

ask me any questions or to

like see if i was okay or

any of that stuff so i

totally felt abandoned by

everybody and so like that

was really the beginning of

my disaffection with the

church and i i think i wrote

i wrote my chapter of the

book like around that time

and it was really about

like this three-pronged

thing like there's three

different parts to the

church there's the doctrine

there's the policies which

are not doctrine because

the apologies policies

change all the time and

then there's the culture

And so I wrote about how I

couldn't deal with the

culture and how I was

really upset about some of

the policies when they

first came out with the

policies about LGBTQ people.

The LDS Church reaffirms

doctrine of marriage,

updates policies on families and same-sex

Children of a parent living

in a same-gender relationship.

It states that a natural or

adopted child of a parent

living in a same-gender

relationship where the

couple is married or

cohabiting may not receive

a name and a blessing.

The handbook also states

that a natural or adopted

child of a parent living in

a same-gender relationship,

whether the couple is

married or cohabitating,

can only be baptized, confirmed,

ordained to the priesthood,

or serve a full-time

mission with approval from

the office of the First Presidency.

The child accepts and is

committed to live the

teachings and doctrine of

the church and specifically

disavows the practice of

same gender cohabitation in marriage.

And the child is of legal

age and does not live with

a parent who has lived or

currently lives in a same

gender cohabitation.

Their kids will be able to

get baptized and all that kind of stuff.

I had a really hard time with that.

And then they changed the policy,

but they still made it so that

Even if you are legally

married as a gay person,

you're still considered to

be committing a serious sin

by being in a gay relationship.

Then in the church reversed

the policy changes by

saying that children of

parents who identify

themselves as lesbian gay

bisexual or transgender may

now be blessed as infants

and baptized in the Church

of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints without

first presidency approval.

In addition,

the church will no longer

characterize same gender

marriage by a church member

as apostasy for purposes of

church discipline,

although it is still

considered a serious

transgression legally

married doesn't absolve you

from sexual sin.

And so they're still

treating gay people like criminal, well,

not criminals, but like sinners.

um who can't take the

sacrament can't hold a

calling can't you know go

to the temple or any of

that stuff even though

they're in a legal marriage

and i really had a hard time with that

And then going through all

of my therapy stuff about

sexuality and healing

through that and everything

came to realize,

or I guess be aware of how

toxic the culture is and

actually the teachings of

the church around sex and

sexuality and like how we

don't ever talk about it.

And when we do,

we use this very sterile

language and there's so much shame

around sex and sexuality.

And we don't talk about like

normative sexual behaviors.

We don't talk about healthy

sexual development.

And it just creates this

environment for abusers.

And it creates an environment where

you know,

young people feel ashamed to talk

about sex and sexuality.

And then when they get

married are all of a sudden

expected to be healthy

sexual individuals.

And I just think that's really toxic.

And as I was kind of, you know,

reading and researching

about what healthy sexual

development is and

comparing that with the way

that the church treats it

and all this stuff this was

in um so it's kind of

during the pandemic um i

actually emmy told me about

this mormon sex therapist

and i started following her

and um on instagram and

started listening to some

of the things that she was

teaching about healthy sexual development

So Natasha Helfer is a

certified sex therapist,

and she is a podcaster, speaker,

and author.

She has a wonderful

Instagram page that has a

lot of encouragement for

people going through faith transition,

but especially the LGBTQ

community who are either

adjacent to the Mormon

church or in the Mormon church.

She's done a lot of

supporting for healthy

sexuality and for the

unshaming of sex in the church culture.

Like how warped my own

sexual development had been

because of what I went through.

And shortly thereafter,

she started posting this

stuff about church

disciplinary councils and

that she was being excommunicated.

And so I followed that story

really closely because the

reason she was being

excommunicated is because

she was teaching that

masturbation is a normative

sexual practice.

that led her to be a sex

therapist twenty-five years ago.

For me, since I was five years old,

when the missionaries came

and knocked on our door and

taught my family how to pray.

That was the beginning of

many spiritual experiences.

Now the ASEC certified

therapist feels the church

is rejecting her for counseling.

Masturbation is not a transgression.

Pornography should not be

treated as an addiction and

publicly affirming the LGBTQ community.

Helfer traveled to Kansas

ahead of a disciplinary

hearing Sunday where she

lived prior to moving to

Utah in late twenty nineteen.

I'm supposed to be scared.

for my eternal salvation.

When my ministry is about

reaching to the least among us,

I have no qualms over every

single thing I have said.

Helfer's frankness on sexual issues,

positions she says is in

line with current licensed

medical health practices,

has received wide attention

from current and former church members.

While the spokesperson for

the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints declined to comment,

letters sent to Helfer by

local leadership says the

state presidency will, quote,

consider Helfer's repeated

clear and public opposition to the church,

its doctrine, its policies,

and its leaders in the meeting.

I am very fearful and very

distressed that the

decision in some ways has

already been made.

They would not let Natasha go in.

She had her notes on her cell phone.

They wanted to take her phone away.

So she refused.

And anyway,

then they wouldn't let the

witnesses go in.

So we're basically done here.

They've asked the police to

escort us off the property.

So you can see the police

cars are showing up.

So anyway, they can tell us.

So they've canceled, uh,

they've canceled the

disciplinary council.

There are at least three police cars, um,

on the property.

Here's the police and they're now,

they're now escorting us

off the property.

Uh, there's the third police car.

There's the policeman.

And what we'll do is when we

convene with Natasha later,

we are going to hear her

story and kind of hear

what's been going on.

Maybe before we end,

we'll just kind of show the

crowd one more time and

show everybody here.

People are kind of disappointed.

And sorry things didn't turn

out quite like we thought,

but we all love you, Natasha.

She talked in one of her

podcasts about how her

licensing requires her to

teach the scientific truth

about sexual health but her

membership in the church

requires her to lie about

scientific information on

sexual health and it was

really at odds you know

with she felt like if she

stuck to the church um

the church's line of

reasoning about sexual

health and sexual development,

that she was in danger of

losing her licensure.

And if she stuck with what

her licensure told her that

she needed to do,

that she was in danger of

losing her church membership.

So she was really at odds with what to do.

And she struggled with it,

but she ultimately came to

the conclusion that like,

she can't teach lies.

And the church is

promulgating these lies

about sexual health.

And they told her initially

that she was allowed to

have some witnesses who

could speak for her,

but then they wouldn't let

her witnesses come in.

And they also wouldn't even

let her witnesses use the

bathroom at the stake center

They were just really,

really cold and horrible to her.

She said it was very obvious

from the beginning of the

proceedings that they had

already decided to

excommunicate her and it

didn't really matter what she said,

that she felt her voice was

being silenced and she was

not allowed to speak.

She was not allowed to

really stand up for herself.

And I've always hated church

disciplinary hearings.

I've always felt that they

were like really, I don't know,

you've got this entity

that's incredibly powerful

and you've got an

individual who doesn't

really have any say in the matter.

And it's like once they've

decided that you've done something wrong,

It doesn't really matter

what you say or how you

defend yourself because

they're not going to listen to you.

I've kind of seen that

pattern happen to people

who've been excommunicated.

And I think it's just a

really violent process and

a very abusive dynamic.

So I was really disappointed about that.

Between that and the LGBTQ policies.

the way that the church

refers to LGBTQ people and

the way that they treat them,

I just had been really

disaffected by all of that stuff,

by the policies and everything.

And that's kind of where I

was when we got together last year.

In August of twenty twenty one.

Jeffrey Holland,

who is an apostle or one of

the main leaders of the

Church of Jesus Christ of

Latter-day Saints,

gave a speech at Brigham

Young University where he

urged the faculty, staff,

and students to remain set

apart from the world and

uphold the standards of the

Marriage and Family Proclamation,

which states that marriage

should only be between a man and a woman.

At a time when violence

against the LGBTQ community

was escalating,

He quoted another church

official who literally

called for musket fire.

He quoted our colleague,

Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who had said,

and I quote, In a way,

Latter-day Saint scholars

at BYU and elsewhere are a

little bit like the

builders of the temple in Nauvoo,

who worked with a trowel in

one hand and a musket in the other.

Today's scholars building

the temple of learning must

also pause on occasion to

defend the kingdom.

I personally think,

Elder Maxwell went on to say,

this is one of the reasons

the Lord established and

maintains this university.

The dual role of builder and

defender is unique and ongoing.

I'm grateful we have

scholars today who can handle, as it were,

both trowel and musket.

Then Elder Oaks said, challengingly,

I'd like to hear a little

more musket fire from the

Temple of Learning.

He said this in a way that

could have applied to a

host of topics in various departments,

but the one he specifically

mentioned was the doctrine

of the family and defending

marriage as the union of a

man and a woman.

We have to be careful that

love and empathy do not get

interpreted as condoning and advocacy,

or that orthodoxy and

loyalty to principle not be

interpreted as unkindness

or disloyalty to people.

as near as i can tell christ

never once withheld his

love from anyone but he

also never once said to

anyone because i love you

you are exempt from keeping

my commandment we will

always need defenders of

the faith but friendly fire

is a tragedy and from time

to time the church

Its leaders and some of our

colleagues within the

university community have

taken such fire on this campus.

And sometimes it isn't friendly.

Wounding students and the

parents of students.

So many who are confused

about what so much recent

flag waving and parade

holding on this issue means.

My beloved friends,

this kind of confusion and

conflict ought not to be not here.

My brethren have made the

case for the metaphor of musket fire,

which I have endorsed yet again today.

There will continue to be

those who oppose our teachings,

and that will continue the need to define,

document, and defend the faith.

But we all look forward to

the day when we can beat

our swords into plowshares

and our spears into pruning hooks.

Yeah, I look forward to that day too,

and I think that day starts

with not using metaphors

and rhetoric that reinforce violence.

I just was very disappointed in the church,

and I think...

You know, I did, I did,

I started doing some

research because I remember

when I was teaching gospel doctrine,

that there were some black

people and women who were

ordained to the priesthood.

And I went back and looked

through these documents and sure enough,

um,

there were some black people and some

women who were ordained to

the priesthood.

Elijah Abel.

was one of the earliest

African-American members of

the Church of Jesus Christ

of Latter-day Saints and

was the church's first

African-American elder and Seventy.

The Quorum of the Seventy

was one of the governing

bodies of the church that

had a little bit more power

back in the early church.

He was the first and one of

the few Black members in

the early history of the

church to have received

priesthood ordination,

later becoming the faith's

first Black missionary.

Abel did not have his

ordination revoked when the

LDS Church officially announced its new

its now obsolete

restrictions on priesthood ordination,

but was denied a chance to

receive his temple

endowment by Third Church

President John Taylor.

On June twenty fifth, eighteen forty three,

a regional conference

occurred in Cincinnati,

presided over by LDS Church

Apostles John E. Page, Orson Pratt,

Eber Kimball and future

Apostle Lorenzo Snow.

During the conference,

questions regarding Abel

and his membership were addressed,

including the

acknowledgment of recent

complaints about Abel's

public preaching activity.

Page stated that while he

respected a colored brother,

wisdom forbid that we

should introduce him before the public.

Pratt and Kimball supported

Page's statements,

and the leaders resolved to

restrict Abel's activities

as a member of the church.

This was after seven years

of faithful service in the priesthood.

In eighteen forty nine,

Brigham Young issued a

church wide ban on black

men from being ordained to

the priesthood.

The policy's initial reveal

by Young to the Twelve may

have occurred up to two

years earlier at Winter Quarters,

Nebraska.

Young's pronouncements in

eighteen forty nine

constitute the earliest

known statements which

officially exclude those of

African descent from a

temple endowment or the

wielding of priesthood power.

The decision may have been

brought about in part by

the actions of William McCary,

an African-American convert

to the church living in

Cincinnati who believed he was a prophet.

and claimed on various

occasions to be Jesus and Adam,

father of the human race.

In eighteen forty seven,

as the saints resided at winter quarters,

McCary was excommunicated

following the discovery of

various unauthorized

polygamous ceilings performed in his home,

keeping in mind that at

this time Joseph Smith had

already performed many

polygamous ceilings.

As members of the LDS Church

continued to migrate to the West,

Mormons were exposed to a

larger population of Black people,

and anti-Black political

attitudes continued to

increase among church members.

Other Black members of the church,

such as Q. Walker Lewis,

also found themselves in

their church membership

under scrutiny during this period.

By eighteen forty-seven,

Abel's priesthood authority

had begun to be challenged

despite his well-respected

status within the church community.

Even after the eighteen

forty-nine official

prohibition for all

Latter-day Saint brethren of color,

Abel remained involved in the church.

As one who already held the priesthood,

he continued to serve as a

Seventy in Cincinnati from

eighteen forty-two to

eighteen fifty-three,

and in the autumn of

eighteen eighty-three

served another mission to

Cincinnati shortly before his death.

After Abel's death,

LDS Church President Joseph

F. Smith on multiple

occasions declared Abel's

ordination to priesthood as

null and void by Joseph

Smith himself because of his blackness,

suggesting based on

Coltrane's previous

testimony that Joseph Smith

before his death had indeed

repented of his initial

decision that Abel receive

the priesthood.

Scarcely a few years had

passed since Joseph F.

Smith had himself been the

one to ordain Abel and set

him apart to serve his

final church mission.

Apostle Joseph Fielding Smith,

who later became president of the church,

went so far as to suggest

that there had been two Elijah Abels,

one white and one black.

I also want to point out

that long before the priesthood ban,

which was lifted in

Abel's son and grandson, Enoch and Elijah,

had both been ordained to

the Melchizedek Priesthood,

Enoch in and Elijah in .

When Joseph Smith died and

Brigham Young took over, those

policies were changed or or

at least it was like it

became a policy that we

didn't ordain black people

at that point you know it

seems like oh it didn't

come from the prophet

joseph smith and nobody

ever received a revelation

that said black people and

women should not receive

the priesthood it was just

what was culturally

acceptable at the time

And so I started to kind of

blame Brigham Young for that and just say,

like,

that's not what Joseph Smith did and

maybe we need to revisit this stuff.

And so I started doing some

more digging about church

history and priesthood stuff.

And I came across this

scholarly article where

there was a meeting in

nineteen twenty two where B.H.

Roberts was a church historian and he

brought up to the church

leadership at the time like

the entirety of the church

leadership met at that time

and he brought up to them

um these problems with the

book of mormon and they

completely ignored it

basically that you have on

record um members of the

presidency of the church

saying that like if the

papers ever got out it

would be the end of mormonism

In her graduate thesis at

the University of Nevada, Reno,

Shannon Caldwell Montez

wrote a paper called The

Secret Mormon Meetings of

Nineteen Twenty Two.

H. Roberts presented

information to the

leadership of the Church of

Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints in January of

nineteen twenty two that

fundamentally challenged

the entire premise of their

religious beliefs.

New research shows that in

addition to church leadership,

this information was also

presented during the next

few months to a select

group of highly educated

Mormon men and women

outside of church hierarchy.

This group represented many

aspects of Mormon belief,

different areas of expertise,

and varying approaches to

dealing with challenging information.

In her graduate studies at

the University of Nevada, Reno,

Shannon Caldwell Montez

reports on the secret

Mormon meetings of nineteen twenty two.

B.H.

Roberts was a church

historian and a member of

the presidency of the Forum

of the Seventies.

So he was very close with

the church leadership and

the prophets and apostles of the time.

Shannon Caldwell Montez writes.

B.H.

Robert's Book of Mormon Studies,

written in nineteen

twenty-one and nineteen twenty-two,

used scientific discovery

and literary analysis to

examine problems relating

to the authenticity and

historicity of the Book of Mormon.

At least some of Robert's

papers were presented to

select groups of people in

nineteen twenty-two,

and almost all were kept

private until they were

discovered and published in

nineteen eighty-five.

The controversial papers

consisted of three main documents.

The first

Book of Mormon Difficulties,

a study consisted of one

hundred and forty one

typewritten pages and

discussed issues relating

to scientific external difficulties.

External issues included the

unfeasibility of the

proliferation of Native

American languages from a

single Hebrew source in too short a time,

a lack of archaeological

proof to support

anachronisms such as horses

and other domestic plants and animals,

chariots, steel and silk,

unknown in the Americas

prior to European contact,

but mentioned in the Book of Mormon.

and archaeological evidence

that conflicted with the

Book of Mormon narrative,

such as evidence that

people migrated from Asia

and populations were more

ancient and less Christian

than the Book of Mormon allows.

The document was presented

to church officials in January,

as evidenced by journal

entries and letters by

those in attendance.

These meetings did not

result in the answers or

attention Roberts was hoping for.

His disappointment in the

results of these meetings

led to a second series of

meetings held in the home of James Moyle.

In these meetings,

a now-identified group of

highly educated Mormons

discussed the issues raised

by Roberts' Book of Mormon

Difficulties study.

Roberts' continued

investigations resulted in

a second document,

a Book of Mormon study.

It is unknown whether the

assembled intellectuals

were aware of or helped

with the creation of the second document.

Roberts was writing it

during the period of the

Moyle meetings with the intelligentsia.

subsequent to his

disappointing meetings with

the leadership.

The second document was two

hundred and eighty four

typewritten pages dealing

with internal difficulties

and literary criticism.

This document examined the

likelihood that Joseph

Smith was actually the

author of the foundational

text rather than the

translator of an ancient

record written by ancient

Americans on gold plates,

as Smith claimed.

In addition to considering

Smith's active imagination

and interest in ancient Americans,

Roberts cited possible

source material such as the

Bible and A View of the Hebrews,

a popular and widely

distributed book published

in a county adjacent to

Smith's in eighteen twenty three,

seven years before the Book

of Mormon was published.

In this second document,

Roberts criticized the Book

of Mormon stories as being

overly miraculous and that

the characters as

archetypal and overly simplistic.

He questioned,

do we have here a great

historical document or only

a wonder tale told by an

undeveloped mind living in

a period and an environment

where the miraculous in history

is accepted without

limitations and is supposed

to account for all

inconsistencies and lapses

that challenge human

credulity in the thought

and in the easy philosophy

that all things are possible with God.

The record is mixed on

whether or not a copy of

this document was presented

to church authorities and

is unlikely that he

presented the material orally.

Related to the second

document was a third one

called A Parallel.

It was created by Roberts in

as a way to summarize a

portion of the second paper

as he wrestled with whether

or not to present his

second study to church officials.

It was eighteen typed pages

showing the uncanny

similarities between the

Book of Mormon and a view of the Hebrews.

A few of the mentioned

similarities include the

migration of a group of

Jewish people from

Jerusalem to the

uninhabited American continent by boat,

a single common Hebrew

linguistic and ancestral

origin for all Native Americans,

a division of those people

into civilized and uncivilized groups,

inspired prophets teaching

a monotheistic religion,

wars between the two groups

resulting in the total

annihilation of the civilized portion,

and a buried book telling

their history written in a

form of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

This third document was

known to have been given to

at least one apostle, Richard R. Lyman,

and it was copied and

surreptitiously passed

around intellectual circles

between nineteen twenty

seven and nineteen eighty

five when the D.H.

Roberts papers were

published in their entirety.

Through the years,

there were whispers of the

document's information, pieces of B.H.

Roberts' studies circulated among students,

with readers being told to

destroy them and to keep

their mouths shut.

As one grandson of a general

authority recalled,

there were rumors of a book

written by Roberts that,

if it's ever published,

will just blow things sky high.

But Robert's findings stayed

in the realm of rumor for fifty years,

and apparently most people

complied with the order to

keep quiet about it.

Yet,

those rumors ensured that the

dangerous secret retained its power.

The three documents found

new life in the nineteen seventies,

when the somewhat

disillusioned son of one of

the apostles who attended the meetings

went searching and found the papers,

which the Roberts family

eventually allowed to be published.

That background, the meetings, who knew,

who kept quiet,

who privately struggled

with the knowledge of what

Roberts had written,

and who kept those rumors

alive has never been

examined until the subject

of this thesis.

So anyway,

that's where I was when I met with,

when we visited last summer

and I was just kind of like,

I'm done with the church culture.

I don't think that I can go

back to church.

I just never did go back to

church after the pandemic.

They asked me to be a Relief

Society teacher again

I'm not going to teach that

the policies of how we

treat LGBTQ people are not right.

I think you guys are on the

wrong side of history.

You got it wrong.

I think the church got it

wrong when they denied

priesthood to black people and women.

I think they're getting it

wrong now about LGBTQ people.

And you're not going to like

what I have to teach.

So I'm not going to accept the calling.

And I just never went back

after the pandemic was over.

And I just kind of had made

this decision that I wasn't

going to go back.

So anyway,

that's where I was when I

finished that chapter.

And I had Samuel read it the other day.

And I said, you know,

the entire point of this

book is to help people

identify abusive systems

and help to learn how to

break abusive cycles.

Have I done that with this chapter?

And after he read it, first of all,

it made him really angry to

read it because of, number one,

the way that the church has

treated me and my family over the years.

And number two,

the toxicity of their policies.

He said to answer your question.

No, I think he said,

I think you've been way too sterile.

You've been way too easy on

the church and its impact on your life.

And this is a toxic system.

And I said, yes,

the culture is very toxic.

And he said to me,

the doctrine creates the culture.

And that was kind of a

watershed moment for me

because he's right.

I realized that he is right.

It is the doctrine of the

church that creates this

culture of perfectionism

and spiritual abuse and

shame and manipulation and

control where they tell us

not to go asking questions

and not to go doing our own

research and not to go

you know, questioning the official story.

That is how abusers talk.

They tell you not to go

outside of the system

Abusers try to keep you quiet.

They try to keep you contained.

They try to feed you one

line of questioning,

one line of the story.

They tell half truths.

I mean,

just through like even listening to

the entire Joseph Smith Papers podcast,

there's a bunch of stuff in

there where the church only

tells part of the story.

They don't tell the whole story.

like they talk about um in

the joseph smith papers

like that the church

produces okay this is a

church produced thing it's

not like an outside thing

they talk about how there

are all these different

versions of the first

vision and the first

version of the first vision

the eighteen thirty two

version joseph smith never

mentions seeing two beings

he only mentions one being and

he doesn't talk about there

being a religious fervor

around where he lived.

It just talks about him seeing

Jesus, and that's it.

I've shared this before,

but I think it bears

repeating because in the

context of this conversation,

where we're talking about

all of the lies that the

church has told and all of

the ways in which they

deceived the membership

here in the gospel topic

essays at churchofjesuschrist.org,

we have a compilation of

all of the first vision accounts.

You can read the eighteen

thirty two account here,

which is the earliest account,

the only account written in

Joseph Smith's own hand.

It was found in a short,

unpublished autobiography

Joseph Smith produced in

the second half of eighteen thirty two.

And here is that account.

At about the age of twelve years,

my mind became seriously

impressed with regard to

the all important concerns

for the welfare of my immortal soul,

which led me to searching the scriptures,

believing as I was taught

that they contain the word

of God and thus applying myself to them.

My intimate acquaintance

with those of different

denominations led me to

marvel exceedingly,

for I discovered that they

did not adorn their

profession by a holy walk

and godly conversation

agreeable to what I found

contained in that sacred depository.

This was grief to my soul.

Thus,

from the age of twelve years to fifteen,

I pondered many things in

my heart concerning the

situation of the world of mankind.

contentions and divisions

the wickedness and

abominations the darkness

which pervaded the minds of

mankind my mind became

exceedingly distressed for

i became convicted of my

sins and by searching the

scriptures i found that

mankind did not come unto

the lord but that they had

apostatized from the true

and living faith and there

was no society or

denomination that was built

upon the gospel of jesus

christ as recorded in the new testament

I felt to mourn for my own

sins and for the sins of the world,

for I learned in the

scriptures that God was the

same yesterday, today, and forever.

that he was no respecter of persons,

for he was God.

For I looked upon the sun,

the glorious luminary of the earth,

and also the moon,

rolling in their majesty

through the heavens,

and also the stars shining

in their courses,

and the earth also upon which I stood,

and the beasts of the field,

and the fowls of the heaven,

and the fish of the waters,

and also man walking forth

upon the face of the earth

in majesty and in the strength of beauty,

whose power and

intelligence in governing

the things which are so

exceedingly great and marvelous,

even in the likeness of him

who created them.

And when I considered upon these things,

my heart exclaimed,

well hath the wise man said,

it is a fool that saith in his heart,

there is no God.

My heart exclaimed,

all these bear testimony

and bespeak an omnipotent

and omnipresent power,

a being who maketh the laws

and decreeth and bindeth

all things in their bounds,

who filleth eternity,

who was and is and will be

from all eternity to eternity.

And I considered all these things,

and that that being seeketh

such

Amen.

a pillar of light above the

brightness of the sun at

noonday came down from

above and rested upon me.

I was filled with the spirit

of God and the Lord opened

the heavens and upon me.

And I saw the Lord.

And he spake unto me, saying, Joseph,

my son, thy sins are forgiven thee.

Go thy way, walk in my statutes,

and keep my commandments.

Behold, I am the Lord of glory.

I was crucified for the world,

that all those who believe

on my name may have eternal life.

Behold,

the world lieth in sin at this time,

and none doeth good, no, not one.

They have turned aside from the gospel,

and keep not my commandments.

They draw near unto me with their lips,

while their hearts are far from me,

and mine anger is kindling.

against the inhabitants of the earth,

to visit them according to

their ungodliness,

and to bring to pass that

which hath been spoken by

the mouth of the prophets and apostles.

Behold, and lo, I come quickly,

as is written of me in the cloud,

clothed in the glory of my Father.

My soul was filled with love,

and for many days I could

rejoice with great joy.

The Lord was with me,

but I could find none that

would believe the heavenly vision.

Nevertheless,

I pondered these things in my heart.

Distinctly important about

this particular account is

that the language,

the manner of writing is

very much in the same voice