Mormon Stories’ New Campaign

[Kishkumen]

Putting the Mormon Stories angle to one side for a moment...

If a doubting Mormon has a troubling question, to the extent they are considering exiting the church, then of course the answer matters. Givens response seems to be an admission that either a. he didn't know the answer, or b. he knew the answer was problematic with regards to the claims of the church or the claims of the Joseph Smith being a prophet. Here's why answers matter...because being truthful matters. Not answering questions, avoiding answering questions, is avoiding the truth. Givens basically told the sister missionary to stick her questions on a shelf. It really was a glib response (assuming it's been relayed accurately) and the sister missionary who had just devoted 18 months of her important youthful years at her own cost to promote the church, deserved a much better response than she got.

What is also telling is that the Mission President couldn't handle the question either. He had to bring in a church spin doctor, who likewise avoided answering the question in an attempt to keep the young woman active, rather than attempting to genuinely answer her question.

I think I understand where you are coming from IHAQ, but let's be careful in how we read Givens' account:

"I was fortunate that there was a mission president in our area who knew us and our work. And there was a sister missionary who decided that she was going to leave the church. She was finishing her mission the next week and she'd made the decision to go home and leave. And her companion of course deeply distraught over this and asked the mission president "Could we go talk to brother Givens?" And he gave them permission to come and stay as long as they needed so they stayed long into the night. And I listened to one after another question and then finally it occurred to me to ask this one question. And I said to her in regard to one question in particular about Joseph Smith, and I said "Sister" I said, "Why does the answer to that question matter?" And it changed everything. It just caught her up short. And she thought for a minute and she said, "I don't know" (Terryl chuckles). "I don't know."

What I am interpreting him to be saying is that he actually answered a lot of questions and he spent a long time doing it because he did care about her issues and he took them seriously. One question, however, prompted him to respond with a question of his own: "Why does the answer to that question matter?" This in reference to a particular question, not the whole lot of them.

It sometimes happens that people get so wrapped up in the powerful emotions of being disappointed, shocked, thrown for a loop, and what have you, in the midst of a faith crisis of this kind that almost every question on the topic seems to have the potential of leading to the same terrifying conclusion. But the truth of the matter is, whether she is right to disbelieve or not, not every question has the same weight, and some questions actually do get blown out of proportion because of the emotional nature of this process.

[pistolero]

The Givens example seems like a red herring. Bizarre.

He's having a go at the more liberal apologists of late, not sure this is the way forward. I suspect Givens and Bushman have brought many unto Dehlin.

I think there is an argument for better educating new recruits. The discussions aren't really there to educate people. It's all about helping people feel elevation emotion the spirit and then make and keep commitments.

And again, depends what it is that you want to get out of organised religion. Some people don't mind not knowing all of the details.

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

And, once again, Kish articulates what I was thinking, but couldn't put into words. I guess I was too distracted by how Dehlin's latest approach of in absentia "interviews" with big name people who refuse to appear on his show reminds me of Clint Eastwood at the RNC arguing with an empty chair.

My only quibble is that I might have titled this thread: "Has Mormon Stories jumped the shark?"

I guess that's assuming (never a good idea) that most of the Mormon Stories audience is like me, popping in and out depending on the topic or the guest. When the guest is an empty chair, that's just not very interesting. Get the REAL Richard Bushman and I'd probably pay to watch that.

I was just asking myself the other day why I do this. Why do I hang around even the fringes of Mormonism? And now some wise-ass is going to say, "Sister....why does that question matter?" It doesn't, really, except it made me sad to realize that my kids will never have any connection to their Mormon heritage. It IS their birthright in some sense, but the church and its culture don't allow for them to have any connection to that. You're either in or you're out. I'm not hoping they go and join up, but it does make me sad that it's so completely irrelevant to their lives, when at their age, it was so central to mine.

But I digress.... There does seem to be this other Mormon Stories audience, who have left the church recently or are right in the process of leaving it. I question the ethics of putting people on the air when they're actively in the midst of such a huge and emotional transition. But they're all adults. I'm just glad I left the church before there was any way of making such a public and permanent record of my experience at the time.

Dehlin certainly seems to be playing to that audience right now, but I would assume they're a transitional group. Most will resolve the crisis and move on with their lives, replaced by someone else who just discovered the Rosetta Stone and Helen Mar Kimball.

I suppose there are enough disillusioned children of Gen X TBMs to keep Dehlin going till retirement. He's just ironically facing the same question that Bushman pointed out the church is facing: Should he give up the grandmothers of Sanpete County (the ones with disposable income to tithe/donate) in order to play to the grandsons on TikTok?

Or maybe Dehlin's just been doing this so long now that he's drunk his own koolaid and thinks people watch the show TO WATCH HIM. The only people who seem to think he's that sort of cult of personality are the people who despise him, and maybe Dehlin himself.

[Tavares Standfield]

Dehlin is not careful. He does not hit pause and think things through. His haste is his Kryptonite.

Maybe Givens was being cavalier (I doubt it, but I suppose it is possible). Maybe, however, he was not, and in that case John Dehlin is being pretty unfair to him.

As Ronald Reagan once said, "there you go again."

John has a nearly two-decade history of raising important issues and enabling his listeners/students to take action. If haste is John's Kryptonite, I'd like to have some.

And these claims that John Dehlin is being "unfair", unethical, a tax cheat, a sexual predator, a charlatan .. are getting pretty tiresome. But keep throwing dirt. It won't stick.

[Kishkumen]

As Ronald Reagan once said, "there you go again."

John has a nearly two-decade history of raising important issues and enabling his listeners/students to take action. If haste is John's Kryptonite, I'd like to have some.

And these claims that John Dehlin is being "unfair", unethical, a tax cheat, a sexual predator, a charlatan .. are getting pretty tiresome. But keep throwing dirt. It won't stick.

I love this post.

[DrStakhanovite]

Is there a video or audio presentation of this fireside online somewhere?

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

Is there a video or audio presentation of this fireside online somewhere?

The full Bushman fireside is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=MA0YS8LWWX4

[DrStakhanovite]

Is there a video or audio presentation of this fireside online somewhere?

The full Bushman fireside is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=MA0YS8LWWX4

Thank you very much! You don't happen to have a timestamp what Givens speaks do you?

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

The full Bushman fireside is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=MA0YS8LWWX4

Thank you very much! You don't happen to have a timestamp what Givens speaks do you?

I don't. It may be in the Mormon Stories episode, which I only half-listened to part of.

[Lem]

This part sounds okay to me.

I said, "Why does the answer to that question matter?"

That might well have been a sensitive and insightful question to ask. It's the next part that bugs me.

And it changed everything. It just caught her up short. And she thought for a minute and she said, "I don't know" (Terryl chuckles). "I don't know."

This sounds way too much like the smug apologist chuckling about how silly the doubter was to have all those doubts when the apologist's brilliant one-line silver bullet brings her up short because she just doesn't know....

That's what it sounds like to me, also. Why all the focus on this one question, if that wasn't the point to be made? He says asking that question "changed everything." Obviously the focus is not on all the other questions asked and answered, but that he was able to catch her off guard with that one. The whole story focuses on her inability to have a comeback, which, as Physics Guy pointed out, is really kind of a crappy move to make.