Are the Stereotypes True About Mormons who have a Faith Crisis?

0:24 John Dehlin Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis podc. I am John Delin, one of your co hosts, and I am very pleased to be joined with Margie Delyn.

0:40 Margi Dehlin Nice to see you all.

0:41 Natasha Helfer And Natasha Helfer Parker. So happy to be here.

0:44 John Dehlin Hi, Natasha. Hello. So glad you're with us today.

0:48 Natasha Helfer I am very happy to be here. It's cold and sunny here in Wichita.

0:53 John Dehlin Yeah. We should probably tell people it's December 11, 2018. Just for history's sake. People can know when we recorded this stuff.

1:00 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

1:02 John Dehlin All right, so this is episode two. For those who didn't join us. We did an episode one last week. And what was the topic? Hello, everyone. Anyone remember Natasha?

1:16 Margi Dehlin Natasha, do you remember?

1:17 Natasha Helfer The topic was all the things that we found useful or of value.

1:24 John Dehlin Gratitude.

1:25 Natasha Helfer Mormonism.

1:26 John Dehlin Gratitude for a Mormon faith crisis. That was last week.

1:29 Natasha Helfer Yes. Which is a nice, positive way to start.

1:32 John Dehlin Yes. And now we're on episode two, and I am really happy to be here with you guys. I'll just really quickly, we'll talk about our mission. Margie, why don't you tell the audience what our mission is, just so they understand.

1:44 Margi Dehlin Sure. So our mission involves the three Ps. Positive, practical, and personal tips for navigating a Mormon faith crowd.

1:53 John Dehlin I love it. And one thing I want to add, and I want to make sure you guys are okay with this. I want this podcast not to be just for people in a faith crisis, a Mormon faith crisis, but also for people who want to understand others who are going through a faith crisis. Natasha, do you object or do you sustain?

2:10 Natasha Helfer No, I sustain. And also, I think just nuancing the word faith crisis, because I think a lot of times people think that that's just leaving the faith. I think there's. I mean, I'm still a member and happy to be a member and. But definitely have considered myself in transition. Right. To kind of a different type of Mormonism than maybe I would have practiced, you know, five, 10 years ago. So transition can mean a lot of different things. And so we're here to kind of address that. That wide spectrum that, you know, just whether it's nuancing, progressing, understanding yourself differently, or leaving, those are all different forms of transitions.

2:50 John Dehlin I love it.

2:51 Margi Dehlin Very important.

2:53 John Dehlin All right, so that's kind of what our mission is. And our message for everyone who wants to hear is that a faith crisis can be a huge gift. That's why we're calling this the Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. And that's why we have a logo that has sunshine and a seed sprouting up from the soil. We want to give people hope while still acknowledging that this can be super hard. This is a weekly podcast. Expect it once a week. And one of the main reasons we do this is because we want to help people through what they do. And part of that is each of us having a coaching practice and planning events that can go into more depth, because the podcast is only meant to sort of be an introduction to what's going on, but people often need more than that. So let's each talk about what we do in our professional life. Natasha, why don't you start this time?

3:54 Natasha Helfer Yeah. So I offer therapy and coaching services both in office and online. And you can reach me@Natashaparker.org so that will kind of let you know everything that I'm doing. And I do have an upcoming workshop in the Salt Lake City area during my Christmas break, which will be December 28th. And this is specifically for mixed faith couples. So marriages where one person is transitioning and one is not, and the many. And helping people with all the many challenges that they're facing kind of in those relationships. So I hope that you'll consider joining us. If that's a situation you're in, I love it.

4:34 John Dehlin It's great to have you, Natasha. And Natasha is one of the most experienced and best marriage and family therapists, sex therapists, and counselors for faith crises that I. That I know. And that's why I'm honored to partner with you.

4:47 Natasha Helfer Thank you, John. Likewise.

4:50 John Dehlin Absolutely. Margie, why don't you tell us about you?

4:52 Margi Dehlin Sure. So I am a certified life coach. So I see most of my clients are around life transition topics and how that impacts our lives. So things like identity, grief, relationships, those are some of the things that I deal with. I also do participate in select events with John and often Natasha, so I do that as well. And then I write some on my blog, beautyinthenow.org so that's kind of what I'm doing.

5:28 John Dehlin And I'm so thrilled to have you as our co host.

5:33 Margi Dehlin Thanks. Faith.

5:34 John Dehlin Yeah. And then My name is Dr. John Delin. I have a PhD in clinical and counseling psychology. My clinical and research interests have always been on the nexus of religion and mental health. And so I've been helping people for between one and two decades, depending on how you count, navigate a faith crisis. And this is my passion, what I've dedicated my life to. So I'm thrilled to be here. So. All right, well, that's the introduction.

6:04 Natasha Helfer Well, let's not Forget too, since we're mentioning what we're offering, February 15th through 17th is a intensive couples retreat. All three of us have done many retreats together that are weekend retreats that, you know, hold like 40 to 60 people. And we've gotten many requests from those types of retreats to have, you know, more in depth and also kind of smaller group opportunities. So that's a really great opportunity for again, couples who are transitioning together. So this would be specifically for those who are maybe facing a transition where they're both nuancing or leaving the faith. And we'll also probably be doing a mixed faith one in the fall.

6:48 John Dehlin Yeah. And for anyone who wants to see more detail about Natasha's event, the mixed faith workshop in Sandy, Utah or the mixed faith Transitions retreat in Salt Lake City that Margie, Natasha and I will all be involved in, you can go to mormonfaithcrisis.com events and we'll have information there. I should also add that we are planning to organize and host several workshops and retreats in the 2019 calendar. Look for us to be announcing those in the next few weeks. But you know, we want to. We know there's interest in Colorado. We know there's interest in Nevada. We know there's interest in Arizona. We know there's interest in Northern California and Southern California. There's a lot of interest in Europe and Western Europe. Chicago, what?

7:38 Natasha Helfer Where Seattle has mentioned things to me.

7:41 John Dehlin Yeah. So all you got to do is email us if you want to bring a workshop or retreat to where you are. You need to email us@mormonfaithcrisismail.com and we will get back with you and organize these events because these events are always rated 4.9 out of 5. They are highly valuable. People say they have changed their lives, they have transformed their experiences and we just know they are super helpful. So if you want to be at one of these events or help us plan or bring one of these events to your area, please email us@mormonfaithcrishismail.com and we'll, we'll get it going.

8:20 Natasha Helfer And don't forget that I'm in the Midwest so it's not that difficult for me to even do a one day event like in Nebraska, Oklahoma City, St. Louis. I'm willing to drive down to Texas. So just, you know, it's not that complicated to at least get one of us to come and host an event. Especially if you have people that you know that would be willing to come.

8:41 John Dehlin And I should have mentioned Ogden and Davis county. Have expressed interest. South Jordan has expressed an interest. Utah County, Provo. So that same here. We're always willing to organize events in Salt Lake City, of course, in Utah, and bring Natasha whenever there's enough demand to justify that expense. We always would rather do an event with Natasha than without. That's how we always have worked and feel. All right, so that's some of the info out of the way. I want to give a shout out to our first donor. Right now, we're launching this podcast without any donations. Really, we are doing this primarily because we just want to help people and believe in it. In addition, we are hoping that this could become sustainable at some point where at least we can get enough donations to cover our time. And we want to just shout out to Courtney Hill Edwards from Portland, Oregon, who is our first donor. She went up to mormonfaithcrisis.com clicked on the donate button, picked the level of donation that worked for her. And we just can't thank Courtney enough for her support. So thanks, Courtney.

9:57 Margi Dehlin Yeah, thank you.

10:01 John Dehlin And also, we want to just ask our listeners, as you listen to these episodes and value them, please consider supporting us just by signing up. $10 a month, $20 a month, whatever you can afford. Makes a huge difference to keep this sustainable. At some point we'll have to decide whether there's enough interest that we want to continue it. But we're committed to this for at least a few months before we kind of make that decision. But part of that is going to depend on you guys donating. So please consider supporting this. And also, I just want to say, not just for you, there's a lot of people that go through a faith crisis and kind of feel good, but who want to make this resource available to others. So think of it not just as how it might benefit you, but if you want to invest in a resource such that those who are going through a faith crisis can have something, a podcast, a podcast covering 50 to 100 topics at their disposal so they don't have to suffer the difficulty or pain or conflict that you did. Think of your contributions working in that way as well. Go ahead and add anything.

11:09 Margi Dehlin I don't think so, Natasha.

11:11 Natasha Helfer Wow, that's great. We so appreciate it. We love doing this work and we can only do it if, you know, if it's sustainable. So that'd be great.

11:20 John Dehlin We already mentioned this, but I'll just say it again. I do coaching at johndelin.com Margie does it at beautyinthenow.org and Natasha does her coaching at natashaparker.org and please feel free to reach out to any of us if you want personal coaching or support. All right, so the final thing that we have as business is just that we want to make sure people understand this is interactive. The reason why we live stream this, the reason why we're on social media, is because we really want this to be interactive. In other words, we want you to help us pick the topics that we cover. We want you to give us questions. We want you to give us stories, tips, tricks, problems. We want to have this be communicative. So if you're joining us on the live stream, we hope that you will put comments and questions in the live stream and we'll try to respond to them real time. If you want us to cover a specific topic, email us@mormonfaithcrisismail.com and say, hey, here's my question. Can you guys cover this in an episode coming up soon? And we'll actually take your questions and address them. And then also if you just want to share stories or tips or tricks, I would love to have a feature each week where we share tips or tricks offered by our listeners. So we just want to encourage interactivity and we'll keep your emails anonymous. If you just want us to use your fake name, if you want to use just your first name, give us a fake name. We would love to have this be interactive. And also you could always go up to the podcast afterwards on mormonfaithcrisis.com, find the episode and share comments in the blog post. So those are all the different ways that this can be more personal. And then also please share. If you can't donate but you do want to support this, please give us a positive review on our Mormon Faith Crisis Facebook page. Sometimes we have meanies who go up and just say mean things when they haven't even listened to the episode. And the only way to counteract that are for positive people to leave positive meanies reviews. No, if you don't like the episode, that's fine. Give us a critical review. But sometimes people go up there just to be mean and to try and, you know, damage what we're trying to do for whatever reason. So we need lots of positive reviews. It helps let people know this is valuable. Please share this with others. The more that you share this with social media, share it with friends, share it with family, the more it gets the word out. And that's a way to help us if you're not in a position to be able to support us financially. Yeah, okay. So I think it's time to dive in. And the first segment that we always like to cover is the segment on what's working. And so right now we're each going to share something that we're doing in our lives that's kind of working out for us. And Margie, how would you feel about going first?

14:21 Margi Dehlin Okay, so do you know what's working for me, John and Natasha?

14:26 John Dehlin And our audience.

14:27 Margi Dehlin And our audience is with the time change, I feel like, and how it gets dark so much earlier in the evening, I feel like I get tired earlier in the evening and I've decided to go with that a little bit. So lately I've been heading to bed closer to. I would say we're heading to bed more like 10, 1030 range, which is good because we get up at around 6 in the morning. But that's been really working for me lately, just getting to bed as opposed to. It feels really early and very dark when we wake up in the morning. So kind of going with that natural instinct, we have a kind of. Don't we have a little bit of a bedtime routine now, babe, where we kind of. We hit a bath, get to take a little bath.

15:19 John Dehlin I bathe in Margie's bathwater. So Margie bathes first and then I bathe in her bathwater, as it should be.

15:27 Natasha Helfer And then TMI.

15:34 Margi Dehlin And then Mrs. Maisel.

15:35 John Dehlin We watch the show. Right now we're watching the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon.

15:39 Margi Dehlin Yeah. And by then we're kind of tired

15:42 John Dehlin and we cuddle and I do your back and then we go to bed.

15:45 Margi Dehlin Yeah, it's working. It's working for me.

15:48 John Dehlin Shout out to Lacey, who's joined us, Jennifer who's joined us. David, Billy, Kara, all of you, thanks for joining us. It's great to have you here. Natasha, what's working for you this week?

15:59 Natasha Helfer All right, what I chose to focus on this week is aromatherapy. So I have my little show and tell candle and it's all about forests and Christmas type scents. Very nostalgic for me. But just in general, I just like to have scents around me. Not everybody's like that. Some people are super sensitive to scents and it actually can be nauseating or difficult. But for me, I really enjoy having either like a fresh scent in the spring, kind of a cozy cinnamon or earthy scent in the fall and winter and things like that. So it just helps me feel cozy and calm.

16:39 John Dehlin Great. Self care is a critical part, and self nurturing is a critical part of navigating a faith crisis.

16:45 Margi Dehlin Yeah. And I am with you, Natasha. So, so, so with you, with senses and that kind of smell.

16:53 Natasha Helfer Yeah. There can be, like, little satchels you put in your clothing. Like some people like incense. Incense is a little strong for me sometimes, depending on the type. But, yeah, never float your boat.

17:04 Margi Dehlin Yeah, they do. Also essential oil diffusers.

17:07 Natasha Helfer Yeah, essential oils. Yep, yep.

17:09 John Dehlin Hey, I just noticed Courtney joined us. So, Courtney, we just gave you a big shout out, so go back and listen because we love you. Hi, Courtney. Okay, what's working for me? Okay, this is going to be a little bit controversial in some crowds.

17:25 Natasha Helfer Oh, no.

17:26 John Dehlin I'm going to say what I'm giving up. And something I'm giving up is something that, you know, people are going to kind of be shocked about. People feel really strongly about food and beverages. And so I'm just going to say that for a long, you know, for my whole life, I never drank coffee, tea, or alcohol. Alcohol. But once I stopped attending church, once I was no longer a member of the church, in my case, I occasionally would drink coffee. And I got to where I loved coffee, and I got to where I wanted coffee every single day. And that was working for me. But I noticed that what accompanied my coffee drinking was a cough. I would just have. It irritated my throat. And believe me, I went on and off. I tried different creamers. I tried different temperatures. I tried every possible thing I could try because he loves it. Soy, almond, regular milk, you know, decaf, cold, hot. I tried it all. And no matter what I could do, coffee made me cough and hack and wheeze. And so I'm going through the very difficult phase of giving up something that I added after my faith crisis, which

18:36 Margi Dehlin is coffee that you enjoyed. And it was.

18:38 John Dehlin And I still crave it every day for you. Yeah. So I am trying to replace it. Sometimes I have a chai latte, which works for me, but I don't drink coffee. At least not for now.

18:52 Natasha Helfer And why is this controversial?

18:55 John Dehlin Well, you know, I once said, I'm giving up coffee on Facebook. And it was like the whole Internet, Mormon Internet unraveled. It's like people were offended and angry or they were just like, don't give it up, John. You can't Give it up 20 things you need to do because you can't give up coffee. And believe me, I didn't want to give it up. So I tried everything. Everybody told me you did. And I'm just saying coffee isn't working for me. You know what?

19:20 Natasha Helfer I think this is about why it's controversial. I'M gonna pick on all of our Mormonism. Like, this is where I think, like, regardless of where you are in your belief, we're all still very Mormon. Is that we tend to, like, think about things. Like if we say something, it has to apply to everybody. And I think we need to all get a lot better about the. For me, you know, like for John, coffee isn't working out great. Okay. But he's not imposing that. He's not saying in that statement that everybody should stop drinking coffee. Right. And I think that we come from that culture where, you know, remember back, you know, when somebody would stand up in testimony meeting and say yes for, you know, on Sunday, we don't, we don't ever, you know, take off our Sunday attire. Now all of a sudden it felt like this pressure that everybody was supposed to not take off their Sunday attire. Right. And so I think we need to practice at just letting us all be wherever we're at with all these things.

20:17 John Dehlin Totally. And I get this a lot when I go to parties with a lot of progressive or post Mormons and sometimes there's alcoholic beverages. People really want me to drink for some reason. And I have just decided for personally right now, I'm not going to drink alcohol. And sometimes it feels like that makes people uncomfortable and they, they want to ask me why and they want to try and tell me why I should consider it. And everyone always means well. But I think it's okay as going through a faith crisis or even leaving a religion if you end up doing that to just say some of these things, I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep these good things. And so I love it.

20:58 Natasha Helfer What's differentiation skills? It's like if you don't want to drink alcohol, I can deal with the. That's not a projection on me. That doesn't mean anything about me. And whether or not I'm going to drink alcohol. Right. Or coffee.

21:11 John Dehlin I love hanging around people who drink alcohol. When people are using marijuana responsibly, I've got no problem with that. I have fun with them. It's great. It's just a personal choice for now. Right. Maybe I'll change. Jana's joined us. Jane has always been a really great supporter. So shout out to Jaina.

21:30 Margi Dehlin Yes.

21:31 John Dehlin Thanks for joining us, Jayna. If you guys want to share some things that are working for you, we'll integrate them into the episode. So listeners feel free to make comments and share with us what's working. Okay, well, today the main topic is what are the common Causes of a faith crisis. And again, those of you who are going through a faith crisis will know it probably will know what your causes are. But we still want to normalize what we've found to be many of the main causes. In addition, for those who are either brand new to a faith crisis or who are trying to understand or empathize with others who are going through a faith crisis, we want to cover the territory in this episode. So this is sort of an introduction to the many reasons why people have a Mormon faith crisis. Is that all right?

22:24 Margi Dehlin Yep.

22:25 John Dehlin You ready to roll, Natasha?

22:26 Natasha Helfer Ready to roll.

22:27 John Dehlin Okay. And listeners, if you want to share in the comments, what caused you to have a faith crisis, we would love to incorporate that. We're willing to use only your first names or pseudonyms if you want, but we'd love to incorporate your comments and experiences into this episode. All right, so I wanted to begin with some qualifiers. Is that okay? Okay. So one thing that's important for everyone to understand, and this is going to sound a little bit controversial, is that leaving Mormonism or leaving orthodox Mormonism is actually the norm. And I don't there are qualifiers to that. But I guess it's important to understand from a normalization standpoint that two thirds of the people in the world who were baptized Mormon are not active in Mormonism, and half of those don't identify as Mormon at all. And the people that we're talking about there, you know, especially in the third world developing world, you know, you have these super high baptism rates where missions are baptizing, sometimes 3, 4, 5, 6, 700amonth. A lot of those, you know, Latin American countries, Filipino countries, even African countries have activity rates of like 10%. And so, you know, there's a huge chunk of people baptized all over the world that are included in the church's 16 million number who just don't identify as Mormon anymore. And the church has lost track of them. So you could sort of say a third of all people ever baptized Mormon. A third of that. Sixteen million. The church doesn't know where they are, and they don't identify as Mormon. Now, that's not some condemnation of Mormonism or the church. That's just the statistics. Right. You can sort of say roughly another third are people who are baptized Mormon, but they're inactive. They're on the church's rolls. The church has their addresses. The missionaries kind of know where they are, but for one reason or another, they just don't choose to attend and. Or they don't identify as Mormon anymore. It's also probably important to note there that the church, this is just an aside. The church, in their statistical record keeps. If they've lost somebody, they keep them on the rolls until they would have been 120 years old. And that's not with any pernicious motive. That's just they want to make sure they're not scrubbing people from the rolls until they're sure that they don't live anymore. And I think they just decided on 120 because most people are dead by 120. Pretty much everybody's dead by 120. And so I guess I'm saying there's a decent percentage of people in that 16 million who are dead, but the church just doesn't know they've died and they've stayed on the record. So anyway, the point is only about a third of that 16 million are people who are active. And when I say active, the church defines an active member as someone who attends church once a month as a minimum. And so again, even when we're talking about active church members, there's a pretty low bar for that. So there's about 5 to 6 million active Mormons in the world, and that's somewhere between 30 and 40% of that 16 million.

25:48 Natasha Helfer Well, and I would say a low bar for Mormonism because in Catholicism and in a lot of these other churches, going to church once a month is actually seen as fairly robustly active.

25:59 John Dehlin Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Natasha, I've heard you talk about some training you received that segments different types of religions as more or less what fundamentalist or orthodox is that?

26:08 Margi Dehlin Right.

26:09 John Dehlin And Mormonism tends to be on the more orthodox side, along with Orthodox Judaism, Jehovah's Witness, Seventh Day Adventists, you know.

26:19 Natasha Helfer Right. So our markers are going to be stricter.

26:22 John Dehlin Yeah. Than say a Lutheran or Presbyterian or.

26:25 Natasha Helfer Right.

26:27 John Dehlin All right. So, and then finally, I want to make sure we understand that we're going to be focusing our discussion today primarily in sort of a US Centric, North America centric, Western European centric perspective. I cannot say I've spent much time, if any, with, you know, Latin Americans and, you know, truly Latin Americans in faith crisis, people living in Brazil or Peru or Argentina, people living in China or East Asia. We certainly have a small percentage of them as listeners on Mormon Stories podcast and in our practices. But 99% of the people I've worked with as a coach or my listeners on Mormon stories are people from either the United States, Canada, kind of North America or Western Europe. So that's going to, I'M just acknowledging that's going to shape how we talk about things today. Natasha, do you want to add anything to that? These qualifiers that have already said no,

27:31 Natasha Helfer I would say that's true. I mean, I'm a Spanish speaker, so every now and then I do get Latin American people coming. And my husband, you know, served his mission in Brazil, and he's kept in touch with several people, which is interesting that some of those have faith transitions as well. So we don't necessarily, you know, in my lived experience, which is minimal, I don't necessarily see the reasons Latin Americans in particular are transitioning as being that different from European and United States Americans. But I agree with you that I don't know that we have enough data to really speak with it with, you know, with confidence.

28:07 John Dehlin Excellent. I didn't realize you did coaching in Spanish. That's super cool. I know Spanish, but I can't. That's beyond my competence.

28:13 Natasha Helfer Yeah, I do both coaching and therapy in Spanish. Yep.

28:16 John Dehlin That's so cool. Very cool. All right. Okay. So with those qualifiers out of the way, I think the next thing I wanted to start with is a discussion about the harmful stereotypes about why people have a faith crisis. And it's important to start with this because it's so triggering. If you are in a faith crisis, you're going to immediately connect with this and relate to it. And if you're not in a faith crisis but you're trying to understand people who are, these are stereotypes you generally want to always avoid. And so let's go through them one by one. Natasha, do you want to hit the first one? What's.

28:57 Natasha Helfer Yeah, so a very classic one is that somebody has been offended. Somebody, you know, something happened where there were hurt feelings. My kids call this butthurt. It's probably not very polite. And so something has happened and you're offended, easily offended. And therefore you stop coming to church or you allow your testimony to be affected by these hurt feelings. And it implies this idea that you're not big enough or mature enough or, you know, kind of you're not able to take the higher road, because if you were able to do those things and these little minor offenses wouldn't have such an impact on your testimony. That's kind of how it comes across. And we even have stories that are usually shared and Sunday school, like the classic milk story. That's Thomas Marsh, where balls got the

29:55 John Dehlin disproportionately small amount of the milk strippings from a cow, which, number one, isn't

30:02 Natasha Helfer even a true story.

30:02 John Dehlin Historically true. That Thomas Marsh story about the milk strippings is actually historically inaccurate. There were other things, significant, credible things that led to Thomas Marsh and I guess his wife leaving the church. But it's also just, you know, a trope.

30:19 Natasha Helfer Yeah. So it's a way to kind of poo poo or minimalize. And my main two issues with this one. One is I've been offended a lot. I don't know how you can't be in a church family and not be offended and still attended for, you know, many, many years. And secondly, the other thing that I think is harmful about this is being offended and having hurt feelings and putting boundaries up when an offense is actually legitimate and valid is an important thing for mental health and relational health. So by kind of touting this idea, it's not very helpful for people to kind of feel this pressure to ignore pain or significant offense. Like, I shouldn't even pay attention to that and I should just push through and go to church no matter what. That's not necessarily a very healthy mental health, I guess, standard of care.

31:15 John Dehlin Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you said, it's just sort of like used to minimize. Diminish, credible reasons for leaving and. Yeah. To minimize the importance of us taking care of each other, frankly, and to imply that we're weak or feeble and that we didn't, you know, that we. We were just fragile. I love that. Thank you, Natasha.

31:40 Natasha Helfer Well, and I'll just add to, like, a lot of times in the process of a faith transition, there are things that are very offensive that are done to people, whether it's discipline or taking away of callings or discrediting them in the ward or to their own family members. And so it becomes very difficult to have a sustainable relationship in some ward communities.

32:02 John Dehlin Absolutely. Yeah. And I think we'll talk about the more severe cases of that in one of the upcoming bullets.

32:11 Natasha Helfer Yeah.

32:12 John Dehlin Okay. Margie, do you want to tackle the second one?

32:15 Margi Dehlin Sure. So another harmful stereotype would be that you are weak or you never really had a testimony to begin with. And something that just kind of comes up for me with that is it strikes at that unworthy, you're not good enough, you didn't do the work, you didn't try hard enough, that something is lacking in you to begin with that made this kind of come to you. And that's something that I feel like is deeply problematic, especially for, you know, people that I see and have experienced who are transitioning. If there's anything, it's like the opposite is true. How. How Hard they work, how committed they are. And so that's another really harmful stereotype.

33:05 Natasha Helfer It's very victim blaming. It doesn't allow the institution to take any responsibility. And where's the measurement tool? Can I put my finger up on the weakness tool and see where. I mean, these are all very subjective concepts that are just used. How do you measure how strong a testimony is, how weak or strong people are? So it sets it up as a false, difficult, problematic process to begin with,

33:35 Margi Dehlin and it always brings it back to the person.

33:38 Natasha Helfer Right. It's a victim blaming process. Yep.

33:42 John Dehlin And I'm just going to reiterate something you said, Natasha. When we did the survey for Marlon Jensen and church headquarters on why people leave Mormonism, we found, at least in the United States, for people who left over historical reasons primarily, or social justice issues, we found they were higher than average educated, higher than average socioeconomic status, higher than average levels of service of church calling. So these were APs on the mission. These were Relief Society presidents at the byu. These were Relief Society presidents in adulthood. These were elders, quorum presidents, bishops, bishopric members, stake presidency members, stake high councilmen, stake women's leaders, even area authorities and the like. And so, if anything, that's a stereotype is a problem because at least when it comes to the Western world, in sort of educated, moderate to high socioeconomic status Mormonism, it's the best. It's, in Marlon Jensen's words, often the best and the brightest who have a faith crisis, not the weak and the feeble people. Okay, I'll take the third. Is that all right? And this is one that I don't personally resonate with much because my behavior, this ties into my coffee thing. My behavior hasn't changed a lot as someone who went through a faith crisis. But the third harmful stereotype about people and why they leave the church is that they wanted to sin. So it's sort of like you really had to have that beer and you left the church because you wanted beer or you looked at porn. Oh, my gosh. Well, of course he left the church. He looked at porn. Right. Or, you know, there was this sort of decades ago, this immediate assumption that if someone left the church, they must have committed adultery with somebody, they must have cheated on their spouse or, you know, any other things, drug use or tea or whatever. It is immediately associating a desire to sin with leaving the church. And this is really tricky. And I'm just going to say my take on why I don't like it and why it's not often accurate the first is kind of what we said before. Most of the people that I deal with in my practice, coaching, practice around faith crisis did not leave the church after some sort of sin. They, again, were in the elders quorum presidency, they were in the bishopric, they were in a stake high council. And it was more. They were serving in seminary or serving in some calling and stumbled on something and wanted to learn more or they cared so much, they had a child come out as LGBT or, you know, they had. They experienced some trauma or abuse. That was what it was. It was. It was not just, you know, needed a beer or looked at porn. Another problem with this idea, the stereotype is the idea that Mormons don't sin. So, like, we know, for example, that masturbation is considered a sin. We know that Mormon men masturbate as high as 90% or greater, and that women have significant, you know, rates as well, that pornography is rampant within Mormon culture. You know, we know that there are active Mormons who drink coffee or drink tea or who disobey the Sabbath by Mormon standards or whatever it is Mormons, you know, and divorce rates are just as high within Mormonism as outside. And so this, this. This stereotype that people left because they sinned just ignores the fact that Mormons are sinners too.

37:36 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

37:37 John Dehlin Did you want to add anything to that? Natasha? Do we lose Natasha? Do you want to add anything to that?

37:44 Natasha Helfer Margie, you didn't lose me. I'm sorry. I muted myself because my dog was barking. Sorry. I would just say that I think sometimes when people are going through a difficult time, such as a faith transition, sometimes they might have behavior that is, whatever you want to call it, problematic, like maybe have an affair or,

38:11 Margi Dehlin you

38:11 Natasha Helfer know, abusing alcohol or, you know, things like that. And so whether. Whether that's, you know, like, to your point, it's not just that Mormons don't sin and transition or sin. People just in general in transition sometimes can get into habits or into problematic behavior just because they're trying to cope with something that's very difficult. And so people outside might be looking at that, going, oh, well, see, that's because of the faith transition. It's not so much because of that. It's because it could be any difficult thing. And that's why we see problematic behavior, regardless of your status within Mormonism.

38:48 Margi Dehlin Huge. That's huge. Yeah.

38:51 John Dehlin I also want to add that there were you to say something. I also want to add that there are people who, after they've experienced a faith crisis, they bring back their sense of Moral authority, and they do an inventory on their own morality. And, you know, I did this with coffee. You know, they just make a conscious decision, okay, coffee used to be viewed as a sin, but now I've done the research, I've looked up science, I've investigated, and I've decided that coffee is actually going to be healthy for me because maybe I have indigestion problems or constipation or whatever it is, or maybe it gives me a boost, or maybe I've read scientific journals that say people who drink coffee live longer, whatever it is. Or they decide, I'm going to have a beer every once in a while or a glass of wine with dinner or whatever the sin may be. Or on Sunday they may decide, I'm going to go skiing. It's easy for a believing Mormon to point at a change in behavior as the reason for their faith crisis, when oftentimes somebody has the faith crisis and then thoughtfully and deliberately makes a behavior change.

40:01 Natasha Helfer Right. Which is not problematic in their view.

40:05 Margi Dehlin Yeah. It's almost like an inevitability on some level in switching from external to internal is that you're actually exploring a bit on your own to kind of figure some of these things out.

40:20 Natasha Helfer Right.

40:20 Margi Dehlin Yeah.

40:21 John Dehlin And then this, you know, this is also a sensitive matter. And I'm just thinking of lots of things as I go, but there are. Let's. There are people who have a faith crisis and then commit adultery. Right. But we have to be careful about that for two reasons. One, again is because there are faithful Mormons who commit adultery and are unfaithful. But also there could be this situation where somebody's in a devout, faithful marriage, one of them loses their faith, they either try to talk to their believing partner about it and then they can't, or they're not able to effectively communicate, or they're so scared that they keep it to themselves. And so then maybe they make friends on the Internet and find other people that they feel more safe confiding in. And so because they don't have a healthy foundation in their relationship, and then because their relationship experiences some significant change or trauma that can lead to infidelities within a relationship. But that might be more a symptom of an unhealthy or an immature relationship and bad choices than it would be to blame it on the faith crisis itself. As if, you know, people who, you know, people who have faith crisis cheat. That's. It's not that simple. It's a sensitive topic. Would you add anything to that?

41:45 Margi Dehlin Yeah, just that there's a tendency with all of these stereotypes to be greatly oversimplified. Right. And quite. It creates distance. So it comes back to that kind of control dynamic where it creates distance, distance from those who leave and those who stay. It makes them kind of scary or dangerous or. And that protects inevitably the church on some level.

42:13 John Dehlin And you jump to it. But I'm going to. Kara makes a really great comment. Shout out to Kara Adams. She's our friend in St. George. I saw her at the excommunication of Bill Real. She's been on Mormon stories once. She's a social worker in St. George, if I'm remembering right. But she says, I believe these stereotypes help make believing members feel safe telling themselves that it won't happen to them or their loved ones if they have a strong enough testimony. So much of the blaming is based on fear. And we still have one more point to cover. But Mark, you jump to it and we're gonna just thank Kara for that comment. Oftentimes these stereotypes are either projections of the believing people or self defense mechanisms to help them either protect themselves or other the people who have left so that they can not have their own faith be threatened. Is that insulting, Natasha, to say that? No.

43:12 Natasha Helfer And I do think we do this with a lot of different things. Like the way I would may say it is that it's not. Yeah. Faith transition. You can't blame faith transition for things. You have to really look underlyingly I say this a lot about, for instance, pornography. It's not pornography's fault that you have that you're watching it for three hours a night or something. Right. Because a lot of people don't watch it for three hours a night.

43:37 John Dehlin Most people don't.

43:39 Natasha Helfer Yeah. Is that depression's fault? Is that social anxiety's fault? Is that a relational issue's fault?

43:44 Margi Dehlin Right.

43:45 Natasha Helfer And so all of these things, whether it's problematic behavior or a reworking of behavior that's no longer seen as problematic, it's easy. Like I like the language Margie used of oversimplifying which it's much more complex than that. You really have to dig deeper, like what's at the heart. Because just blaming it on that is an easy out that's not really accurate anyway. And it's going to leave you dissatisfied in the end. It might make you feel comfortable in the beginning to be able to blame it on something. We are creatures that like explanations. Right. We like to be able to say, oh, I understand why this is happening. So it's a very natural human tendency. Right. To just simplify the narrative, know what's causing something, and therefore feel safe in that. In that construct. But it's gonna disappoint you because that's not really what. What the real problem is.

44:35 Margi Dehlin Yeah, yeah, yeah.

44:36 John Dehlin And sometimes, just to be fair to believing Mormons, they're so scared about their worldview falling apart, they don't want to know. And it's not because they don't love somebody or don't care, hate others or mean. It's just they. They're either comfortable and they don't want to move, or they're terrified about the implications of really digging deep. And that's why when most members lose their faith and leave the church, the most common response is what I call the cricket effect, which is no response at all. That's a symptom of people just being scared, not wanting to go there and talk about it, because they don't.

45:12 Natasha Helfer I think that response is highly subconscious. Like, you know, when I was in more believing days and people wanted to share a bunch of, like, what I would consider anti Mormon literature or anti Mormon kind of ideas, I wouldn't have said, oh, I'm scared to lose my testimony. I was very confident in my testimony. I would have just said, I don't want negativity in my life. I don't necessarily want to spend time or energy on something that makes me uncomfortable and sad. You know, and so I think that even though you're right, that I think fear does play a role. It's. It's somewhat subconscious, and I don't think that believers are scared people. Right. Does that make sense?

45:50 John Dehlin Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. All right, so the last harmful stereotype is that. Do you want to do this one, Natasha?

46:02 Natasha Helfer Yeah. So it's that they were exposed to anti Mormon literature, anti Mormons. Right. So we. We have this idea that there's this information out there that's meant to, you know, downgrade people's testimonies, and if you access that type of information, that then it will, you know, completely desecrate your beliefs or that you at least will be influenced by those beliefs. And this is, you know, I. It's. It's an interesting dichotomy because having lived in the Midwest for so long, having seen some of the types of literature that are out there, there's definitely things that are spun in a way that are really weird and creepy. Like, even me now, as a more transitioned Mormon that is very aware of my history, I would read some of those documents and go, oh, my goodness, like, they're Totally.

46:56 John Dehlin You're talking about, like, evangelical.

46:59 Natasha Helfer Yeah, like that literature. Right. Like it exists. But a lot of. I think what has been misunderstood in the history of Mormonism prior to the Internet, which is really only about 15 or 20 years old, as far as most of us accessing it, is that actual history has been seen as anti Mormon because our, you know, our way of. We kind of have the Santa Claus version instead of the, you know, St. Nicholas version of our history presented to us on a regular Sunday basis. And so this is a very complex cultural construct in our Mormon history where a lot of people consider anti Mormon literature things that really now are available on the Mormon essays. Right. But that's a fairly new development in our. In our history as a Mormon people. So. But there are. There are. There is stuff out there that I would consider just kind of spun in a way to. That really is trying to, you know, make people leave or things of that nature.

48:07 John Dehlin And I'm just gonna. I'll just add my 2 cents on this because I. This is probably one of the ones I feel most strongly about. For those of you who are trying to understand your believing, your doubting or disbelieving family and friends, you. You should know that the term anti Mormon is generally viewed as offensive by people who are questioning or leaving the church. And it's for these reasons that Natasha started to talk about. There is factual, credible history about Mormonism that is that the church, the Mormon Church fully acknowledges that is deeply problematic. We'll be getting into those in just a minute. That's different from just lies that are intended to take people out of the faith and that are. That are meant to mislead and deceive people. But, but historically, within Mormonism, we. We had the tendency, as a social and a psychological defense, to label it all anti Mormonism. So if somebody. It could be as innocuous as someone asking an innocent question in a Sunday school class, they might get labeled. That's an anti Mormon question. Or somebody reads a book by, I don't know, Richard Bushman, a state president, a patriarch, don't read that. That's anti Mormon literature, even though it's written by a very faithful, devout member. And of course, if someone's left the church and they are just expressing sadness or pain at what they experienced instead of looking at them as someone who's been hurt and has been struggling. Many people who have left the church have been labeled as anti Mormons just because they wanted to express sadness or discomfort or disagreement, even polite disagreement. And so the vast majority of people who have left the church over historical or doctrinal reasons or social justice reasons do it because of factual history that the Mormon Church now acknowledges. Maybe 20, 30 years ago, like Natasha, you said they wanted to whitewash or hide or obscure the problems, but in the modern Internet age, they realize they can't do that anymore. And so they've acknowledged so many of these problems that we're going to talk about in just a second.

50:30 Natasha Helfer Well, our history is difficult on this because people who wrote about these historical issues once upon a time got excommunicated. And now these same issues are being posted on LDS.org written by the current LDS historians. So we have a complicated history with the word anti Mormon. And I think oftentimes it's used as a way to monitor conformity. And so we want to be, you know, and to your point, John, that's why people are going to be very offended by that word. Because most of us who are transitioning, or especially in this, in this kind of world where they were once very devout and are transitioning to a less devout stance, most people care very deeply about Mormonism. It's not that they're anti Mormon. They're wanting to be honest, they're wanting to have conversations, they're wanting to talk to their families, they're wanting to have relationship around some of these issues. So to label it anti Mormon is devastating for so many people.

51:31 John Dehlin Yeah, if we were to look at all of these again, it's just this tendency to other, to minimalize, to marginalize, to invalidate. And it's natural. Nobody's bad here. These are all natural, healthy reactions on the part of believers. But it's something just to be aware of, for us to feel validated and for orthodox members to just become informed about so that they can communicate effectively with their loved ones who are struggling. A quick shout out to Amy Germer, who we love and who's awesome and who says that her shelf broke after an interview with her stake president. Certainly that was an anti Mormon literature. Thank you, Amy, for sharing something personal. We want to encourage all our listeners to feel free to share, you know, their perspectives as we go, because that makes for a more rich podcast. Victoria writes, these stereotypes can also harm the people who are experiencing a faith crisis. When I first went less active and was struggling, I was scared. I thought because I wasn't taking the sacrament that God wasn't with me anymore, that something bad might happen to me. I was left feeling scared and confused. It was only when I found out many things about the church history and current issues and lost my testimony. I then could see what was happening to me and why I felt that way. That is really fascinating, Victoria, that these stereotypes can harm believing faithful members.

52:58 Margi Dehlin Absolutely true.

52:59 Natasha Helfer Wow.

52:59 John Dehlin Thank you, Victoria. Lisa writes, they are wanting to find their true self. And that's Lisa's speaking to the fact that for many it's a journey of authenticity that their faith crisis, like we tried to touch on in our first episode. You like to talk about this, Natasha. It's a healthy, normal developmental process to deconstruct your faith at some point and then rebuild a worldview.

53:23 Natasha Helfer Right.

53:24 John Dehlin That doesn't need to be pathologized. Right. It can just be shamed or it could be celebrated.

53:30 Natasha Helfer And many people do that within their faith, religious tradition. You know, I don't think that any 50 year old would say Mormonism was the same understanding as when they were 19. You know, they've grown and developed within their own construct.

53:45 John Dehlin Chantel writes she loves it when Margie makes an appearance. Well, Chantel, we have good news for you. Margie is a regular co host on this podcast, so she'll be making lots of appearances. She's the regular. And then Sherry writes, I was told I had a problem with authority when I disagreed with church history. Yeah, that's. Thank you, Sherry, for sharing that. That's also very common is people are going to just grasp for straws to try and control or, you know, limit your behavior, your thoughts, your feelings, the information. That's a normal reaction for a very orthodox religion that just wants to protect itself and stay safe. It's not that everybody's mean or trying to hurt anyone. It's just people trying to protect either their beliefs or the organization. And so it's common for people to be invalidated in all sorts of ways. So, Sherry, thank you so much for sharing.

54:42 Natasha Helfer And the common thread here with all of these is that it does put the onus of responsibility on the person who's having an issue. Again, none of these, you know, there's never like, well, maybe there's really an issue we should look at, you know, or maybe there is a problem with our history or oh, maybe we should look at our policies or oh, that's a good thought. You know, I never thought about it that way. These are, these are all putting the onus of responsibility for the issues within our church history and our church social justice issues on the person bringing up the complaint or the concern. And so anytime you have, that's a systemic problem because anytime you have like an interaction where only one person is going to be held responsible or one entity is going to be held responsible, then it's off balance to begin with.

55:33 Margi Dehlin Absolutely.

55:34 John Dehlin I love it. We have some comments coming in about people sharing what caused their faith crisis. We are going to get to those. We're going to slot them into the category that comes up. So Jayna and M. Hold on. We're going to be covering yours very soon. And we want to encourage listeners to share what caused their faith crisis. And we'll slot them into the category that we discuss.

55:56 Natasha Helfer Is that all.