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Join Megan Conner and Lila Tueller for a vulnerable and eye opening conversation about the eye-opening transformation that takes places when Lila examines her faith after growing up as the daughter of a high-ranking  LDS General authority. Learn how she navigated the difficult transition from faithful LDS member to leaving religion all together. People of all faiths will resonate with her honest and relatable story as she shares her struggles and triumphs in finding her power and voice outside of a patriarchal structure. 

#faithjourney #ldsclips #interview 

Tags: faith journey, faith crisis, questioning belief, LDS faith crisis, ex-mormon, apostle, spirituality, spiritual abuse, religious abuse, doubt your doubts, sunstone, September 6, excommunication, mormon, mormon stories, megan conner, faith deconstruction

WEBVTT

hello beautiful humans

welcome to the midlife

revolution i'm your host

megan connor and today i am

joined by the lovely lila tuller

Hi, Lila.

Hello, Megan.

I'm so happy to have you here today.

I've really been looking forward to this.

I've been really excited about it, too.

Thank you for having me on.

Yeah, of course.

So I first came across Lila

during my faith

deconstruction when I was

going methodically through

every single episode of the

LDS discussion series on

Mormon Stories podcast.

And I wanted to know more

about the second anointing.

And Lila's interview came up in my search.

And so I listened to your

Mormon Stories interview.

I really resonated with so

much of what you said.

I think our stories are very

similar in a lot of ways.

And then I was delighted to

see you pop up on a Latter

Daily Digest panel the other night.

And so we decided to do this interview.

So I'm so glad to be

connected with you now.

And I want to talk about the

book that you're working on,

but can you just tell

people a little bit about

yourself and how you got to

where you are right now?

Okay.

Well, you know,

I was born and raised in the church.

I lived on the East Coast

until I was about eight.

And then my dad got called

when he was seven,

got called to be a general authority.

And so we moved to Salt Lake

City at that point.

And, you know,

I had the typical Mormon upbringing,

except for that, that my dad was kind of,

you know,

he was a well-loved speaker in

the Brethren.

You know,

he was a little bit more fun to

listen to.

Because he wasn't typical

and he was a convert.

So do you mind telling us

your dad's name and what

position he held?

Yes, his name was Hartman Rector Jr.

And he was just in the seventies,

first quorum of the seventies.

He never ascended any higher than that.

it's pretty high up in

mormon leadership sitting

on the stand during general

conference right and

getting to give conference

talks and what years did he

serve as a general

authority well he was

called in nineteen sixty

eight i believe i hope i'm

getting that right nineteen

sixty eight or nine

he was made

emeritus when he turned seventy two

which was in oh gosh now

you're asking me to do math

and stuff sorry about that

Much later,

he was made emeritus when he

was seventy two.

So he served for probably

twenty five years or so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

OK.

And emeritus, for those who don't know,

is just basically like it's

like retirement for general

authorities where they

still go around and speak sometimes,

but they don't have

official duties for the

church in general.

That's right.

Exactly.

He still spoke quite a bit,

but it wasn't official church.

And do you know if your dad

ever came to San Antonio by any chance?

Very possibly.

He traveled a lot.

He was always gone.

That's how I remember my

childhood with him was that

he just wasn't around, you know, serving.

Yeah.

He was he was speaking all

over the place and traveling.

He and my mom traveled a lot

more than they do now

because now they have the

temporary seventies that

are only called for a short

period of time and a lot of

that traveling.

But then they're done.

My parents did it for years

and years and years.

So they'd be gone for

usually their trips were about a month,

a month to six weeks long.

Yeah,

I remember you saying that in your

Mormon Stories interview,

and I'm just blown away by that.

So you kiddos,

while they were gone for a

month at a time,

who was taking care of you?

What was happening?

Well,

it started out where my mom would

kind of have us go to

different homes in the

neighborhood and in the ward for a month.

Like that's a lot to ask someone, Hey,

will you take my kid for a month?

You know, it's a lot.

Um, and I felt like I was a burden.

I really did.

Like I got the vibe from the parents.

So it's like, girl, you know,

we're going to try to be nice about this,

but this is really an imposition.

So that and then I think

they finally got to the

point where that was too hard.

And so they started bringing

in young married couples

that would stay and kind of, you know,

house sit, babysit.

They do all the things, you know,

they cook and do all the

things that my mom, you know,

should have been there doing.

But and my dad.

so they would bring in

young couples from your

ward or or people they knew

in the neighborhood or it

wasn't usually from our

ward okay it was usually

people that I didn't even

know I got to know them

because they were there for

a month but it was

different like they didn't

want to burn anyone out so

they'd have to swap it out

and go to different and um

you know I just felt like

they were always desperately

trying to find someone they

could ask to come and do that.

It was a lot to ask.

It's a big family.

Um,

and just to walk in into a middle of a

family system and try to

handle the schedule and just all of it,

you know?

Yeah.

And I'm thinking young couples too.

So how many siblings did you have?

So my mom and dad had eight

children and they adopted one more.

So, um, nine total.

And where are you in that group?

I'm number six.

So yeah, there were three younger than me.

Actually, yeah, that's right.

One of them was the adopted one.

Yeah.

So I'm just imagining a

young couple who doesn't

have any children,

who probably doesn't have a

lot of experience dealing

with a range of ages,

which I'm sure that you

were at whatever time they

came in and having to

like you said,

come into a family system to

understand all of the

relational dynamics between the siblings,

get kids everywhere they had to go,

and not only that,

but to care for your

emotional needs and getting

you food and clothing and all.

It just seems I'm feeling

overwhelmed by that,

thinking of myself as a

young person with no

children coming into that

dynamic and being expected

to know how to handle all

of those things with the parents absent.

I can't imagine.

that was i'm sure it was

really difficult for them

and of course i'm thinking

more about myself like this

sucks but um you know i

mean they tried to make it

fun it depended on the

couple there was always a

different dynamic with them

but you know that was just

something that i don't

think other people realize

goes on or went on at the time

When they would be called on these trips,

you know, what happened to the kids?

Yeah,

so this wasn't vacation at the time

for your parents.

They were called on an

assignment to be gone for a month,

to go speak in different

areas and also to see how

the church was running, right?

It was your dad's

responsibility to check up on the leaders,

to see how things are being done.

Right.

And so...

this was the church taking

your parents away from your

family for a month at a

time and then how long

would they be home between

the visits they usually

went would come back and be

home for like three months

and then go again

OK, so it was a month on,

three months off.

And, you know, I'm thinking about you, too,

you know,

thinking about my own kids and

how I was as a kid also

wanting to have mom and dad

at home to have conversations,

to help solve problems,

to be involved in your

achievements and your, you know,

your growing up.

And that must have been so

incredibly difficult.

Yeah.

I mean, I just, I didn't,

my dad didn't baptize me.

Some random guy baptized me.

Um, you know,

things like I never with my

dad was never with me on

those daddy daughter dates

back in the day.

Like, um,

I got used to keeping my feelings

and thoughts to myself.

Like I wasn't going to tell

this random couple what

happened at school today.

Yeah.

My feelings of it was bad.

I would just keep it all inside.

Um,

I did journal a lot back then.

Um, but yeah, I mean, it was just,

it was a sacrifice and, and, you know,

we thought, well,

this is what people do for the church.

You know, this is the sacrifice you make.

And I think my parents

looked at it that way.

You know,

they were making sacrifice for

the church.

They were called to do it and,

and they probably thought

that's what they should do.

And I just, there's a lot,

there's a lot to ask.

Yeah.

So what age were you when he

became emeritus?

I was, let's see,

I was married and had

several children by then.

So, yeah.

So it was your entire growing up and,

and some of your young

married life as well that

your parents were absent.

Right.

For a lot of that time.

Wow.

And he served as a mission

president several times.

He did it three times while I was young.

So we would move and,

to that place for like two years,

two or three years,

depending on things they

pull them back out after two years.

But, um, you know,

so it was very back and forth,

back and forth.

We always came back to Utah,

back to salt Lake,

but not always to the same house.

Um,

sometimes a completely different

neighborhood, different schools, um,

in and out of schools a lot.

Um,

I had very weird friendships where it

was like,

I'll be your friend,

but I'm going to be moving in a year.

I, you know, I was going to be moving.

And so, yeah, I mean, it was just, I,

there are much worse.

I'm,

I'm complaining about something that I

know is like mild compared

to what a lot of people

have experienced in their childhood.

I didn't have, um, I wasn't,

I don't know if I can say essayed.

Um, or anything like that.

I think I did experience

other things that were hard.

Um, but you know, I know I,

I escaped a lot of heart,

really awful things in my childhood.

So I do too.

too sad about it, you know?

Well, yes.

And I just want to validate

the fact that having

parents who are absent from

your life creates a giant hole, you know,

and that's no different

than being betrayed in the

way of having SA or some

other type of thing.

So what you went through is

was absolutely as traumatic

as some of the things that

I went through in my

childhood because it was an

abandonment and a betrayal

by the people who were

supposed to love and care

for you and they just

weren't there yeah I mean

if when you put it that way

I can see um I mean we

can't compare of course

right yeah trauma is trauma

but um I do think there is

there are some that are

horrific.

Sure.

Sure.

Have you ever come across

the concept of childhood

emotional neglect?

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's kind of, you know, it's,

it's the concept that like, okay,

it's easy for me to say if

I was physically abused,

it's easy for me to point

to that and say that was abuse,

but childhood emotional

neglect is abusive.

It's just the absence of a

something rather than the

presence of a something, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I get that.

Yeah.

So just moving on from your

growing up parenting experience,

did you go to college and

when did you meet your

husband and take us through

that time in your life?

I went to college,

went to BYU because we had

free tuition there.

So when I did that,

I met the summer prior to

my first semester at BYU.

We were moving home from San Diego.

My dad is the mission president there.

And we went to Concord,

California to hang out with

my sister for a few days.

And she introduced me to

this boy in her ward.

And that's where I met my husband.

So that was, you know,

we had this brief little

whirlwind thing for like nine days.

And then I went back to salt

Lake and he stayed in

California and then we went

to BYU that fall.

And that's where we started

dating in earnest.

And, um, we kind of, we dated, let's see,

we got married the following April.

This was September.

So, you know, it was pretty quick.

I was still eighteen when we got married.

Oops, you're muted.

Was he a freshman also or

had he already been?

He'd been and he had served

a mission and was back and

had been back for a year.

OK.

He was twenty two.

I was eighteen,

almost nineteen when we got married.

Yeah.

So that's kind of typical of

a missionary coming back

from a mission to be

married within a year of

coming back from your mission.

That's sort of the expectation,

would you say?

It was then.

I think maybe it still is.

But definitely, yeah, they were told, okay,

guys, you've done your mission.

Now you're supposed to go

home and get married.

Yeah.

Waste any time.

Yeah.

So what were you studying at BYU?

I really all I did was GE

like just I didn't really

have a major picked or

anything and and then so I

only attended for three

semesters and then I

dropped out because I had

my first child and I was I

was really sick during that

pregnancy I get my head up

off the pillow so I didn't

I quit my job and school.

I just was sick as a dog.

So yeah,

that just began the whole next phase,

which was many years of

just raising kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So what,

what job did you have at the time

before you?

I worked at the little

grocery store on ninth East.

I don't know if you went to BYU.

I didn't, but my sister lives in the area.

So I know exactly which

store you're talking about.

Yeah.

It was Carter's, I think,

market or something back then.

Carson's.

Carson's market, I think.

Anyway, I had a job there as a checker.

I mean, that's the kind of stuff I was...

you know, capable of doing back then.

I was also after I got married,

I was a secretary to one of

the professors at BYU for a short time.

Okay.

So yeah, I mean, those kind of jobs.

So before going to BYU,

did you have some goals and

dreams and aspirations

about what you might want

to do career wise?

Or was that off the table

because of the expectation

to get married and be a mom

and have kids?

I would say it was pretty

much off the table.

I think, you know,

I have to give my mom credit.

Sorry.

I feel a little drink.

She tried to convince me to get a degree.

And I was like, no mom,

I just want to get married

and have babies.

That's what I want to do.

Just like my older sisters had done.

Some of them had gotten degrees,

but they didn't use them.

They just got married and

had kids and didn't work.

So that was, you know, that sounded fun.

Now I look back and think I

should have listened to my mom really,

really helped me later.

If I would have done that,

I was interested in science and art.

Those are my two.

And I still am.

Those are my two favorite topics.

I'm very interested.

I was really into biology, microbiology.

anything having to do with, um, geology.

I loved my, um, um, sorry,

I'm drawing a blank.

Um, my class on, um, not astrology,

astronomy, my astronomy class.

I was absolutely mesmerized by that.

I really,

really liked that whole science topic.

Um, if I could go back and get a degree,

it would probably be in that.

Hmm.

That's so cool.

And what are you doing now?

Now at the moment, um, I am focusing on,

um, self-publishing, but prior to that,

you know, I have, I,

I have done a lot with design and art.

I have kind of a flair for that.

So I've been designing

fabric for several years now,

since twenty ten, twenty,

two thousand eight,

two thousand eight is when

I first started my first collection.

Um, and I love,

I love doing my fabric design.

That's like a whole side of

me that a creative thing

that I just have to have.

I don't,

I'm just not happy unless I'm

creating something.

Yeah.

So, um, where do you, where,

where can your fabrics be found?

Um, they're,

they're sold by a company

called Riley Blake designs.

That's the manufacturer.

They're located in Salt Lake,

but they're sold worldwide.

So it's kind of online stores.

Mostly there are some brick

and mortar stores,

but like it's everywhere.

It's in lots of different countries.

You can't just get it at

like a Joanne's fabric.

Okay.

Like quilting quality fabrics.

So there, and it's a little more,

I don't know.

It's a higher quality and designer.

So, you know, the price tag's higher.

Yeah.

Do they market it under your name?

Like would somebody know

that it's a Lila Tuller pattern?

Yeah, they'll, they market,

use my name on the selvedge, you know,

and they'll say,

this is her collection for, you know,

the spring or I usually do

two collections a year with Riley Blake.

I'm trying to bump that up.

But that's, yeah,

I've been doing that for quite a while.

And my designs are usually

floral inspired.

I love flowers.

And I've been doing flowers

for a long time.

I tried to move out of it for a while.

And they're like, no, no, no, no,

you stay right there.

No, you're not going anywhere.

You don't understand.

It's sort of like, you know,

Barnes and Noble building

their business model around

selling the Harry Potter books.

They're like, no,

you're going to continue to...

Yeah,

don't think about retiring anytime soon.

Well,

I would be willing to bet that my

mother and probably also my

oldest daughter has your

fabric in her collection.

My mom was a huge, huge quilter.

She goes to Houston to the

quilt show with her sisters every year.

And she worked at a quilting

store in the San Antonio area.

It's actually, I want to say in Kerrville.

um texas and so she knew all

of the designer names and

she was always talking

about different designers i

think i heard the name kay

facet more more times

growing up than i heard my

own name um i'm

exaggerating but you know

just the fact that i have a

fabric designer's name in

my head at all tells you

how much of a quilter my

mom is yep i yeah kay facet

is a famous british

designer and his fabrics are

amazing yeah no i i get it beautiful

Yeah,

so I actually had a very brief stint

with quilting.

My mom enrolled me in IV-H

when I was a little girl

and immediately wanted me

to make my own clothes.

And she would make dresses

for my sister and I,

so she really wanted me to

be a seamstress.

And I think because of the

fact that our relationship

was very problematic all my

growing up years,

I developed a distaste for sewing.

Yeah.

Of course, I can see that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And my my young womanhood

medallion project,

my last one was to make a

quilt because I think I

chose that because I knew if I did that,

my mom would like me better.

I just remember being in the

middle of that project and thinking,

this is nuts.

I just took all this fabric

and I cut it up into little

pieces and now I'm going to

sew it all back together.

This is insane.

Why am I doing this?

I wasn't enjoying it.

So I never finished it.

That's kind of a rabbit hole

for another time.

I've still told that story other places.

But the good thing is that

my oldest daughter has a

good relationship with my

mom and she picked up sewing.

She's actually quite a

talented seamstress.

She makes a lot of her own clothes.

She's made clothes for me before.

And she kind of has

aspirations to open a

fabric shop at some point.

So we'll have to I'll have

to introduce the two of you.

I'm sure you could geek out about fabric.

Probably.

Yeah, that's funny.

I did a lot of sewing and all of that my,

you know, my whole life.

I've kind of backed off of it lately.

Just because I'm interested

in doing some other things now.

Yeah, yeah.

Through stages.

But I still love to design.

So I just finished a collection,

just barely turned it in yesterday.

So it's an ongoing thing for me.

That's super exciting.

Have you ever done any

designs with ranunculus flowers?

Oh, I love ranunculus.

They're my favorite.

All the time.

i love them yeah they're my

favorite too they're just

the cutest little bundle of

petals yeah they're just

cute yeah it seems like

they never stop blooming

they just keep blooming and

blooming and blooming yeah

it will have such dense heads with petals

Yeah.

Well,

we kind of skipped over all of your

marriage and child rearing

years and everything.

Is there anything that you

want to go back and revisit

about that or just

particular aspects of your

journey from where you are,

how you ended up where you

are and what you're doing now?

Anything you want to go back over?

I would just say that my

experience with the church

was very fraught.

I had, I had a firm,

what I thought was a firm

testimony that it was true.

I believed all of the things

that we were taught,

but I had a lot of questions.

And so I'm kind of a, um,

what do you call it?

A inquisitive person.

I had a lot of things on my shelf.

You know,

we talk about the proverbial shelf.

mine was really heavy

because I would keep saying,

this doesn't make sense.

I can't deal with this right now.

I got to raise my kids and I

got to do this,

but this doesn't make sense.

And I don't like it.

I didn't like the way women were treated.

I didn't like that.

We,

the temple ceremony where we promised

to obey because I had to do

the obey part and I had to do, you know,

with the,

penalties and everything.

And I didn't like that.

I didn't like any of it, that stuff.

And I thought,

I'm going to talk to God someday.

We're going to have a sit

down chat and say,

why did you set it up like this?

This just, this is horrible.

But I still wasn't making

room for maybe it's not true.

You know, it was like,

I had to believe that it

was true of my parents.

believed it so heartily.

My dad, you know, he was a convert.

My mom was too.

And they were so such

missionaries in their, their soul.

They just felt so strongly

that they had found the

truth that I just believed them.

but there were things that I did not,

that didn't sit well.

So I fought against a lot of it.

Um,

I had a hard time being submissive to

my husband.

I'll just put it that way.

You know, we just didn't, we,

it was Rocky because he was

raised both sides of his

family were died in the

wool Mormons and very

traditional trad wives on all sides.

And his mother was very traditional.

Um,

And so she didn't put on a

pair of pants until like,

or something like that.

Wow.

And little slippers all day long.

Wow.

She was Betty Crocker.

A lovely woman.

Please don't get me wrong.

A beautiful woman and a wonderful person.

I adored her in so many ways.

But she was so undaunted.

And so they had her speak

all the time to the young

women and to the Relief Society.

She was just a stalwart.

And even more than my mother.

Because my mom was a little bit...

She was like me.

She would push back on things and say, no,

leave that.

No, I won't.

So I think there is that

aspect of when you're

raised by your parents to

believe a certain way,

there is that aspect of like, well,

these are my parents.

They know everything.

Until you reach a certain age,

you know until you get to be

a teenager you go along

with a lot of what they

teach you because of that

dynamic of like well my

parents have been around

longer than me they know

they know things they've

chosen this life over other

possibilities so this must

be the right way to do

things yeah you trust them

yeah plus that they know better than you

right there's sort of this

tacit understanding that

like if there was a better

way to do things my parents

surely would know right

yeah i know so we didn't

realize that they could

possibly just be a victim

of um brainwashing or any

you know messaging or

conditioning so we ended up

all of us that are you know

on the other side now

We were all conditioned to go along,

even if it didn't feel right.

There was no room for boundary drawing.

I was never taught about boundaries.

Were you?

Nope, absolutely not.

That wasn't even a word.

That wasn't a concept.

And nor was consent really, right?

Because there was just the

expectation of the things

that the boxes that you

check along the Mormon path,

the expectation is that

you're going to be on this

path and you're going to do

all of those things.

So there was never a conversation about,

do you want to do this?

no and even now that they've

sort of changed the

language around baptisms i

thought it was so hilarious

when they started saying my

child is choosing to be

baptized rather than my

child is getting baptized

and i was like you know

eight-year-old kid doesn't

have the capacity to make a

choice that differentiates

them so much from their

family so it's still not

really a choice even at the

age of eight no they're

still conditioned to make

that choice exactly yeah

So you're right about that.

There really isn't consent for minors.

That's not a real thing.

Right.

So even though I have a

nephew who absolutely would

not be baptized,

which I'm really proud of him for that.

But, you know, for him,

most kids are going to go

along with what they're

told and what their friends

are doing and what their

parents tell them is right.

Right.

So yeah, we,

I was a victim of all of that.

The conditioning,

my parents bought the whole

thing pretty much, um, without con well,

My dad would push back on some things,

but really he just would do

it his own way.

He still believed a hundred percent.

Um, he was a true believer.

This is before the internet, you know,

this is my,

my parents joined back in the

fifties at one, I believe.

So they, uh,

my mom was pregnant with her

third baby and the

missionaries attracted them out.

Um, but.

They, you know,

they didn't know about polygamy.

They didn't know all the problems.

Oh, wow.

And they couldn't find out for many,

many years, any of that.

So your parents were young

married people with their

first child when, or did you say third?

Third, yeah.

Yeah.

So they had three young

children and the

missionaries tracked them out.

And I'm sure the

missionaries didn't teach

them about polygamy or polygamy.

about any of the problematic

things that even back in

the fifties that people

knew were somewhat problematic.

And, you know,

I can identify with that

somewhat because my grandmother,

my dad's mom,

was tracted out here in San Antonio

Probably it was more like

the sixties ish or so.

But again,

not the internet wasn't available.

There wasn't, you know,

there weren't anti-Mormon literature.

There wasn't anti-Mormon

literature out there for

people to read any opposing view.

So what the missionaries did

was they came in and shared

this faithful experience

and probably told an

emotional story or their testimony.

And I think back then

probably people were a lot

more trusting of those

types of experiences,

that someone is being genuine with you,

they feel this very deeply.

So I can't imagine there

being a lot of pushback

unless you were raised in

another tradition or you

know taught that mormonism

was false or something like

that right right and i

think back then i mean we

didn't have brene brown we

didn't have we didn't have

you know uh the people that

are speaking out about um

systems that control and

they weren't talking about

um being self-aware they weren't

talking about how emotion

can affect your judgment

none of these ideas if they

were out there they weren't

there was no internet so

you had to go out and buy a

book somewhere about it

right why a library it just

wasn't widely um accepted

or taught at all there so

what you had were like

Oral Roberts televangelists

out there that were using

emotion to get back,

get people to join their church.

And so the church did the same thing.

They said, are you feeling something?

You know, they tell this emotional story.

If you feel something,

that's the spirit telling you it's true.

Well, people just would buy that.

They didn't even question it.

Now people will go, wait a minute.

Are you trying to control me?

Is this some, you know, because we're,

we're taught at least I

feel like there it's more available now.

yeah and back then people

weren't talking about their

emotions and so for someone

to to call attention to a

feeling that you were

having during a missionary

lesson that was that was a

new thing yeah yeah i think

people would resonate and

go oh my gosh i am feeling

something you know it's

probably just told me a

really heartwarming story

And the music,

like when I watch something now, I'm like,

this is so manipulative.

They've got this swelling music playing.

There's this, you know, the, the voice,

the way that it it's,

there's just so much now

that I'm more aware of.

Whereas back then, I think this was,

you know, there,

this is when all the cults were thriving,

like the Mooneys and all these cults were,

were,

really thriving people were

joining right and left um

it was kind of a time where

mormonism was just it was

growing by leaps and bounds

yeah joining um yeah and

people didn't know the cult

word back then really they

didn't really know what a

cult was or that it was

harmful right no yeah it

wasn't even really talked

about um there wasn't the

the app you know the after

what happened after, you know,

and all these people died,

that's when people were like,

hold on a sec,

maybe we need to take a look at this.

But up until then, you know,

people just lived in kind of

rose colored glass world, you know?

And so, um, I think my parents got,

my dad was always seeking for truth.

That was his mantra.

He wanted to find the truth.

Um,

and so when the missionaries came and

they gave him the book of

Mormon and they told him their stories,

um,

He just bought it.

And so we, as his kids,

we're not allowed to

question it because he paid the price.

He had found it for us.

Right.

So we were just to go along.

And I believe that I believed him.

That makes a lot of sense, actually,

to have, you know, at that time,

the patriarch of the home

has found the truth that he

searched for his whole life.

He made this life altering

decision and expected his

kids to go along with it.

And it actually it really

resonates with me, too,

because that's how my

ancestors joined the church as well.

And that's how it got passed

down through generations.

My fifth great grandfather

joined the church in

Missouri in eighteen thirty.

He was one of the first

people to be baptized in Missouri.

And.

He experienced the hardship

of leaving his home,

selling his farm at a loss

or at less than market

value because he had to do

it quickly to then give the

money to the church,

move with the saints to

their next location.

And that happened several

times over the course of

just a few years.

And then finally,

when the extermination

order was put out in Missouri,

where all the Mormons had

to leave the state, he went with them,

him and his small family.

And because of their

trudging around in the snow and the cold,

trying to find a place to

live or a place to stay,

he got sick and died of

exposure eventually.

And on his deathbed,

he said to his children,

promise me that you will

stay faithful and that you

will marry someone in the

faith and so they took up

that legacy and carried it

with them and then when his

son died on his deathbed he

said tell my children that

if they don't pay their

tithing they cannot come where I'm going

And that's the legacy that

got passed down.

And so this is how it, this is how it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's how it happens.

You're right.

It just perpetuates itself

through the generations.

And the less somebody is

really gutsy to step away

from that and break that chain.

And that person will be loved and hated,

you know, problem.

My oldest brother,

left the church first and he

had been all in i mean it

was a such a shock when

that happened i was married

i had i think one or two

kids no maybe three kids by

that time so in your

twenties late twenties

maybe yeah yeah it would

have been late twenties um

He,

he and his wife first moved to Hawaii

and kind of stopped going to church.

And then he completely went

off the rails and he moved away,

left his family.

He moved to Russia.

Wow.

Started a whole new life and

basically married a girl

that was the same age as his daughter.

Wow.

Lived a open marriage.

And now he's seventy five.

And she's moved on to a

younger guy because she's so young.

Yeah.

He's by himself now.

So, you know, do you look at that and go,

Hmm, that didn't work out so well for you,

but you know,

he was the first one to break away.

And then, you know, one by one,

we still have out of all those kids,

nine kids,

there's still three sisters

that are in the church.

Okay.

Is I would say,

allegedly in the church i'm

not even sure she's a

prepper but i don't know so

when your brother left the

church did you initially

see it as a cautionary tale

of like look like life is

falling apart oh yes we all

thought of it that way yeah

yeah and it did fall apart

and he just went off on his

own and you know really

like we were all like don't

ever do that.

You know, that's a horrible thing to do.

And I do think he probably

could have handled it better.

Like don't just up and leave

your whole family.

They did four children

because he was sterile.

They were adopted and he

left in the middle of the

last one coming over from

Czechoslovakia.

He hadn't even met the kid and he left.

And you don't have to answer

this if it's too personal,

but was it sort of a faith

crisis that caused him to

leave his family or were

there other problems that were going on?

I think it was definitely a faith crisis.

Okay.

And so his wife wanted to

stay in the church and

maybe that's the reason they split up.

Yeah.

She just didn't want,

he wanted to have an open

marriage and she was going to go down,

be down for that.

That's what happened.

They had already kind of

moved away from the church,

but then she came back.

She is a full believer,

but she feels that it's better than,

you know, the alternatives.

yeah so it sounds like they

moved to hawaii sort of

became inactive you know

maybe stopped living it for

a while he has a faith

crisis and wants an open

marriage because now he

doesn't believe in all of

these restrictions right

right and she doesn't want

an open marriage and so

once he leaves her she kind

of goes back to the church

as comfort solace

protection kind of thing all that okay

and remarry a guy you know a

member and you know she

seems to be doing well now

but that was a rough go for her um yeah

it sort of has echoes to me

of Joseph Smith, you know,

coming to Emma and saying,

but just for me.

Yeah.

Not you.

And you,

you will be destroyed if you don't agree.

Right.

Right.

Oh goodness.

Well, we could go down that rabbit hole,

but I think we will not.

So I just, what,

what made you so gutsy then?

Cause you said, you know,

it's kind of gutsy to,

to break that cycle.

Yeah.

And you saw your brother as

a cautionary tale leaving the church.

So you can share as much or

as little about that as you

as you would like to.

Well, I think, you know,

that was the first thing.

And then we saw it as a cautionary tale.

Then I had another brother

who was he was involved

with Sunstone and he was a

editor of Sunstone and was

involved in the September six event.

all his friends were

excommunicated okay so for

my sorry for my listeners a

lot of my mission listeners

are not mormon have never

been mormon so can you

explain a little bit about

what sunstone is and a

little bit about the

september six yeah so

sunstone was at the time a

magazine that was um

a controversial Mormon magazine.

They would talk about, um,

historical issues.

This is prior to the internet.

Okay.

They would talk about, you know, they,

they had access.

They had a lot of, um, uh, apologists,

no historians that were

professors were very, very intellectual.

And these people would get

together and have

symposiums and they would

write and put articles in

the Sunstone magazine.

None of this was church approved.

In fact, the church didn't like it.

The church was very worried

about this whole Sunstone

movement because they were

bringing up issues that

they really wanted to keep quiet.

So he was the editor.

He was finding out all kinds of things.

And I would listen to him talk to my dad.

And my older brother, before he left,

they would have these

all-nighters at the house,

at my parents' house.

And Paul Toscano was there all the time.

And they were talking about, you know,

polygamy.

They were talking about Joseph's polygamy.

They were talking about scandals.

Um,

all kinds of the white salamander scandal,

all of that was,

they were topics that I was listening to,

um, kind of sneakily.

Like I was just there

listening and absorbing all

of it and thinking, what is going on?

What are we talking about?

Getting really nervous

inside thinking the things

they were talking about were,

were controversial and kind

of scary for me, for my testimony.

So when my brother, so,

so that group of intellectuals, um,

that were involved in

Sunstone and the symposiums

that they would hold came

under fire by the brethren, the leaders,

the top leaders, the top.

And they systematically

within a very short period

of time in the month of September,

of nineteen ninety three

excommunicated six of them

like all at once.

But they didn't do it as

coming down from the top.

They just had the stake,

the individual stake

leadership do this so that

it couldn't really be

traced back to leadership.

But it was very much a kind

of a smackdown on intellectual

Yeah.

So and this is this is so

typical of the way that the

church operates for my listeners,

viewers who don't know that the brethren,

the fifteen who control the

church will hear of a movement like this.

They will not like it.

And so they will direct the

local leaders to conduct an investigation,

a disciplinary council and

excommunication.

So they're getting pressure

from Salt Lake.

to excommunicate someone.

And I saw this just recently

with Nemo the Mormon.

Nemo had a good relationship

with his state president

and with his Bishop.

They both knew what he was

talking about online and

that he was critical of the

church and they were okay

with it for the most part.

And then the idea is there

was some pressure from Salt

Lake to silence him.

And so they gave him this ultimatum,

but they never really told

him what he was doing wrong.

So the local leadership, I don't think,

really wanted to excommunicate him,

but they were getting

pressure from from above.

So it sounds like that's

what happened with the

September six as well.

Very much.

Yeah.

And these were really highly

intelligent people.

They were they were

everything they were saying

was documented.

It wasn't they were they

weren't making up anything.

Right.

Which is stuff that church

did not want known.

Right.

They had been hiding it for a reason.

They did not want the

archives to be unfolded in

front of the eyes of all of

the membership.

Right.

So they were causing a

little bit of a rift there.

So that they,

they really did just shut down.

In fact,

they were talks in conference

afterwards saying that

intellectuals

intellectualism was like a bad thing.

Right.

I remember my parents when

we moved from South Dakota

to Connecticut and my

parents were trying to find

a place to live.

I remember them specifically

saying that they had

visited a couple of wards

and they consciously made a

decision not to buy a house

in this ward's boundaries

because it was an intellectual ward.

And I remember my parents saying, no,

thank you.

And that was nineteen eighty six.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that is actually all

those years building up to

the September six when they

were all excommunicated,

those were the years where, you know,

Sunstone was rolling on and

things were there,

there was dialogue magazine that,

that brought up some

controversial things.

And between those two, um,

it was causing a lot of people to doubt,

Um, you know,

and just to kind of push back on, on the,

uh, the correlated material and say,

you know, you're,

this isn't really right.

What you're teaching isn't really, uh,

substantiated by,

by what we're seeing in the archives.

So yeah,

it was causing a little bit of a problem.

So it's just like anything

else you've heard of where, you know,

somebody starts to tell the truth.

And the people that are in

charge want to shut that up.

And that's what happened.

Because it threatens their position,

right?

And it sounds like what

started to happen is that

some of the scholars and

historians were uncovering

information that was

harmful to the church's

truth claims and the church's narrative.

And they all started to kind

of get together and share information.

And that's kind of what Sunstone was.

It was like,

I know this thing about polygamy.

Well,

I know this thing about Joseph

Smith's past.

And so they were getting together,

sharing information.

I'm sure that felt really

threatening to the church

because it's like, well,

we don't want this.

We don't want the general

membership to know all of

these things because it's threatening to,

you know, to their official narrative.

And so they try to silence

all of these people.

And then what ends up

happening is that the truth

gets out anyway.

And now it's published on

the church website as the

gospel topic essay.

Right.

So can you maybe say and I

don't the reason I don't

know is because in nineteen

ninety three I was in the

middle of a ridiculously

crazy time leaving home for

the first time and I had

stepped away from the

church for a couple of

years during that time.

So I didn't really know any

of this stuff was going on.

Not that I would have anyway,

because I was in Texas and