We saw the fruits of some of the spying on John in Greg Smith's mammoth hit pieces on John Dehlin, which were published on the Interpreter's website. it seems that Smith (or some of his friends in the apologetic community) was combing John's Facebook feed to gather any little bit that could be taken out of context and twisted in a way to make Dehlin look bad. Our own Rollo Tomasi did a thorough analysis of this dirty pool here at MDB. I recommend it highly.
Now John has done a lengthy miniseries of interviews with folks like Dan Wotherspoon and Gina Colvin that go into great depth on where John is today and how he got there. One bit from part 3 of the Gina Colvin interview that I found especially interesting was John's report of the spying that occurred within his ward. I quote:
John Dehlin wrote:My EQP and some other members of my ward had started to spy on me and investigate me.. and attempted to gain entrance into some of the private forums I was entering. And, this all came out, and I became furious, and I felt like I was being spied on. And so, at that point I didn't feel welcome to go to Elders Quorum because these guys who had been spying on me without telling me were in the leadership there. And so, I would just go to sacrament meeting with my family. And that was true up through June of 2014. I was still actively attending sacrament meeting with my family and letting my kids be raised in the church.
Then Dehlin skips back a bit in time:
John Dehlin wrote:So, but, it was that fall, that, so going back... it was the fall of 2013... where L. Whitney Clayton reorganized my stake and called Brian King um, and, where Oaks gave that talk, and where I realized I could not just be silent anymore about the harm being done to LGBT people, and women and minorities, etc., and so I gave my TED Talk that November. I wrote my Ordain Women profile that December, I think, and then I got called into the bishop that January, February of 2014.
Gina Colvin wrote:OK, and we're going to talk really quickly about the charges against you for your disciplinary council. What were they exactly?
John Dehlin wrote:Uh, man, I am not prepared... let me just see. So when Brian Hunt my bishop called me in in late January early February of 2014, he specifically mentioned my Ordain Women profile and my work on Progressive Mormonism which was a website I had created. Um, you know, trying to encourage a brand of Progressive Mormonism. And he basically just said, "Those things are a problem, and I am going to start an investigation." And by that point, I was just, I didn't have patience for another investigation, and I said, "You, Brian Hunt, can investigate me, but I will not be participating in that investigation." So, this is when I wrote him and said, "I will be attending sacrament meeting with my children, and I'll still remain a member of your ward, but for ecclesiastical reasons, you can just as well not consider me a member of the ward, because I won't be interacting with you anymore as my ecclesiastical leader, if you're going to conduct yet another investigation after all of the investigations I had already had.
Gina Colvin wrote:So, you were pissed off.
John Dehlin wrote:Yeah. Just tired. Just tired, and, yeah, I was angry. But the crazy thing is I was still committed to activity, so I was still raising my kids in the church and I was still attending sacrament meeting. But I just, the investigations really just got to me, you know. You know, a member... a guy who lives on my street, who was EQP, would be home-teaching me and acting like he loved me and my family and then he would be secretly gathering, you know, Tweets and Facebook comments and trying to get into secret forums and then turning all that information in to try and get me excommunicated.
Gina Colvin wrote:Right.
John Dehlin wrote:So it was...and that same EQP told me his grandpa had been excommunicated and that it was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that if he ever had to excommunicate me, or had to help contribute to my excommunication, he would consider it an honor to have played a part in that because he would feel like excommunication at that point would have been God's will and he would have been helping, you know, perform God's will. And he told me that himself! You know, and that was just a really twisted, sick way to be my EQP, and my, you know, ecclesiastical leader, from my point of view.
From what I am able to piece together of this interview, it appears that L. Whitney Clayton reorganized John's stake, placed King in as stake president (the man who would ultimately excommunicate John), and John's bishop called John in to tell him that he was going to investigate John. John declined to participate. Then his EQP, a neighbor, started gathering information from John's Tweets and Facebook page, and tried to get into different private online forums under false pretenses to gather yet more information about John. At the same time, this EQP is home-teaching John's family, acting compassionate toward John, and yet telling him it will be an honor to participate in John's excommunication should it come to that.
Wow.