Mormon History Podcast – Gospel Tangents – Mormon History Podcast

This is a re-broadcast of my 2023 interview with Lynne Whitesides. She passed away from pneumonia/leukemia on July 7, 2025. We miss her.

Lynne Whitesides was the first person punished in the September Six. She shares her story of why she wasn’t excommunicated, who was involved, and where she is on her spiritual journey. Check out our conversation…

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

Interview

GT  00:34  Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m so excited to have one of the original members of the September Six. Could you go ahead and tell us who you are and where we are?

Lynne  00:45  I am Lynne Whitesides, and I was the first of the September Six.

GT  00:49  Okay.

Lynne  00:50  We are at the Utah Valley University in Provo.

GT  00:56  Right, Orem, actually.

Lynne  00:57  Are we in Provo? We’re in Orem.

GT  01:00  Well, very good. I’ve been doing this podcast for eight years now. And this is our first time talking. You’re hard to track down.

Lynne  01:11  I don’t know. I’m glad to be here.

GT  01:14  Well, thanks. Well, as we look back on this, can you talk about the events? I don’t know how far back it goes. Does it go back to the 80s? Or was it just really concentrated in the early 90s, that led you into trouble with Church authorities?

Lynne  01:30  Well, I can go back a little farther, even in my own [story.] But I don’t know that we want to go there. I’ll start with from when I moved from Chicago to Salt Lake City. And when I did that, my friend, Lorie Stromberg; do you know Lorie?

GT  01:48  A little bit. We’re Facebook friends.

Lynne  01:50  Lorie said, “Why don’t you volunteer for Sunstone?” And I had three little kids and my husband was doing his residency and he had gotten his residency here in Salt Lake. And I so I went down, and I volunteered to just be one of the people who helps at Sunstone. And at the end of that symposium, so that was ’84, or something like that.

GT  02:12  Okay.

Lynne  02:13  Then, I think Marti Bradley had a talk with Elbert Peck and said, “We think Lynne should be the new chair of the symposium.” So, they invited me to be the chair of the symposium for the next year, which I did. I mean, I did it for four years. So whatever the four years were.

GT  02:30  So, you were the leader of Sunstone?

Lynne  02:31  I was the chair of the symposium. Elbert was the editor and Daniel Rector was the publisher. And then there are [others.] At the time, her name was Marti Esplin and now her name is Marti Ashby now. She was an editor. There was a really cool crew that worked there, Connie Disney.

GT  02:49  So, this is after Peggy Fletcher’s Stack.

Lynne  02:51  Yes, just right after when Elbert took over. And it was so much fun working with Elbert and Daniel. Because I had no idea how to pull a Symposium together. But Elbert, in particular, was so gracious and helpful and just kind of showed me the ropes. And by the time I was done [with] four years, I could run a symposium, so it was great.

GT  03:16  Well, it sounds like Sunstone and correct me if I’m wrong. It seems like it used to be a magazine. And it seems like Peggy was trying to get people to write for the magazine. And she started the symposium and now the symposium is the whole thing.

Lynne  03:31  Yeah.

GT  03:31  There’s not that many people that read the magazine anymore.

Lynne  03:33  I don’t even know. I don’t follow the magazine anymore at all. I haven’t been to the symposium for years, since 10 years after, and then this year. Because I have been invited to speak. But, those four years were really kind of heady because Peggy, that’s what she was trying to do. And we were getting a lot of professors from BYU and the University of Utah, but also just all kinds of really interesting people.

GT  04:01  Mark Hofmann would have been one of those people.

Lynne  04:03  Yeah, that was the year before I took it over.

GT  04:07  Okay. That was the year he had made a big discovery that he announced at Sunstone, wasn’t it?

Lynne  04:13  I believe it was either two or one year before, because Steve Christensen was part of Sunstone, at the time, too. And, and I had just met Steve. And then all that stuff happened with Hofmann.

GT  04:29  Yeah, well, Steve was killed in ’87, I believe.[1] Right?

Lynne  04:32  Right. And by ’87, I was doing the symposium. I was chairing the symposium, 1987-88-89. So four years.

GT  04:38  Did you know Steve pretty well?

Lynne  04:40  No, I was just getting to know him a little bit. And then that happened. Yeah.

GT  04:43  That’s terrible. It was a terrible thing. So you didn’t really know Mark Hofmann, either.

Lynne  04:47  No, not at all. I mean, I probably went to his talk or something. I had lived in Salt Lake. Then, I moved to Mexico for two years because my husband did two years of med school in Guadalajara, then went to Chicago for two years. And I had gone to Sunstone a bunch before then and then didn’t during those four years, and that’s when all that was going on. Then [we] moved from Chicago to Salt Lake City. And that’s when I started working for them. So you see, I was in and out.

GT  05:19  Okay. And so you led Sunstone from like, ’85 to ’89 or so?

Lynne  05:26  Yeah, something like that. I wish I knew. I should have checked before I got here. But, yeah, I didn’t lead Sunstone, but I chaired the symposium.

GT  05:34  Okay. Because you were the Lindsay Hansen Park of the day, then. Right?

Lynne  05:39  I think so. But working so closely with Elbert and Dan was super. I mean, they had so much input.

GT  05:51  Dan Wotherspoon.

Lynne  05:52  No, Dan Rector.

GT  05:54  Oh, Dan Rector.

Lynne  05:54  Dan Rector knew a lot of people because of his dad, Hartmon Rector. He was the publisher, at the time.

GT  06:02  He [Hartman] was a former general authority.

Lynne  06:03  Yeah. Well, Hartman was [a general authority] at the time.

GT  06:06  Oh at the time?

Lynne  06:06  Yeah. And then Dan knew a lot of [people.] He knew Paul Dunn. He actually knew what was going on with Paul Dunn and he confronted Paul Dunn.

GT  06:17  Oh.

Lynne  06:18  That was an interesting story if you want to hear it.

GT  06:20  We haven’t gone into the Paul Dunn story.

Lynne  06:21  Yeah, we don’t need to.

GT  06:22  This is great. We do tangents here.

Lynne  06:24  But we can.

GT  06:26  Give them a little taste of Paul Dunn. I really want to get Lynn Packer, because he’s written a book on Paul Dunn.

Lynne  06:30  Oh, okay. So [here is] what happened. I think Lynn was part of this. I don’t know how much I knew Lynn. But I knew of him because we were doing all this stuff. So, we had begun to understand (Daniel in particular) that a lot of the stories Paul Dunn was telling were not true.

GT  06:47  And Paul Dunn was a former general authority.

Lynne  06:48  Yeah, he was a general authority. And he was the folksy general authority that everybody loved.

GT  06:52  He was a wonderful speaker.

Lynne  06:54  {He had] great stories. He talked about being in a foxhole and holding his best friend while he died.

GT  07:01  And he was a minor league baseball player.

Lynne  07:02  And he was a minor league baseball player. So we found out the name of his best friend who died. Daniel found him and said, “Do you know Paul Dunn?” And he said, “Yes.” And he said, “Were you in a foxhole with him?”

Lynne  07:14  And he said, “That never happened.”

GT  07:17  “And you’re still alive.”

Lynne  07:18  Yeah, “You’re still alive.” And I remember the story. If I can remember it correctly. Dan was at the Church Office Building. He was in an elevator with Paul Dunn and said to Paul, “Look. We know this is going on.” Paul was doing a lot of business bad stuff, too. But he said, “We know this is happening.”

Lynne  07:33  And Paul Dunn basically said, “Well, it was wasn’t an actual story. It was a metaphor kind of thing.”

Lynne  07:39  And Dan was like, “Yeah, I don’t think so.” So, all of that was going on. I mean, it was an interesting time with Hofmann, and then Packer, I mean, Dunn. And then, Packer being so angry and mean and going after anybody that didn’t agree with him.

GT  07:55  Boyd Packer.

Lynne  07:56  Yeah. Boyd.

GT  07:56  Yeah. I think Lynn Packer and Boyd [are related.] Boyd is Lynn’s uncle, I believe.

Lynne  08:01  I think so, too. Yeah. So, all that was going on. And I remember Dan would keep trying to get Paul Dunn a chance. “Look. Why don’t you come clean? And then we won’t have to do this.” But he didn’t. And then I can’t remember who broke the story. It might have been Sunstone. But it was so long ago.

GT  08:19  It was probably Lynn Packer.

Lynne  08:20  But he was talking to us. There was some kind of connection. And it came out. But Dan tried to give Paul an opportunity to come clean. Yeah. And then they made him emeritus instead of doing anything else.

GT  08:34  They retired him.

Lynne  08:35  Yeah, they retired him. You’d lied. Go away.

GT  08:40  Wow, you had quite the experiences there with Sunstone.

Lynne  08:43  Oh, it’s really [great.] It was really fun and exciting. I loved going to work. It was really great. Yeah.

GT  08:50  Was that like a full time job for you?

Lynne  08:52  It was full time, really, in the summer. But there was a lot of work before: preparation, getting papers, sending out the call, deciding which papers we wanted to do, and then doing all the stuff. Because at that time, we had maybe 1000 people coming, and we had several hundred concurrent sessions. I mean, it was a really interesting time because everyone wanted to be part of it. And then we would always bring in some sort of big name, outside of Mormonism, religious scholar. Those were fun, too. We brought in some really great guys and women, and it was fun to meet them and hang out with them.

GT  09:32  They still do that, too, today.

Lynne  09:33  They do. I don’t know what they do today. But at the time, that was part of the real fun for me was meeting some of those people.

GT  09:42  Can you think of any big names?

Lynne  09:43  Well, Hubert Cousins was one. I don’t know if you know who he is. And then, I’m getting old. I can’t remember his name.  He’s a big Jungian guy now. Thomas. I have to think about it. I mean, we tried to get Elaine Pagels. I remember that I actually talked to her.

GT  10:03  I would love to get Elaine Pagels on.

Lynne  10:04  But she had had some kind of tragedy in her life and we couldn’t get her. I’d have to go back and look, but we had pretty wonderful scholars coming and chatting. And then we’d go out to dinner.  Anne and Barry Ulyanov, who were very big union, they were authors out of the New York Theological Union School, stuff like that, which was up right up my alley, stuff I was really interested in.

GT  10:27  John Dominic Crossan was there just a couple of years. Do you know John?

Lynne  10:29  Oh really? I just know the name.

GT  10:31  Yeah, he’s fantastic.

Lynne  10:32  But, it was fun, because I got to help choose. This is what I’m interested in. Let’s get these people. So yeah, it was great.

GT  10:40  Very cool. Yeah. I didn’t realize you were the head of Sunstone.

Lynne  10:43  You keep saying that, but I don’t want that out there that I was…

GT  10:47  The symposium is everything, now, it seems like.

Lynne  10:49  Really, I chaired it. But to be really clear, Elbert and Dan were [in charge.] We were just always in meetings together and figuring out things together. But I got to bring in a lot of women’s study stuff at the time. When I started chairing it, I was also really understanding feminism and that sort of thing. So, I was bringing in people talking about feminism, at least, almost every concurrent session, there was a session on women. There was also a session on being gay in Mormonism, and oftentimes, sessions about the temple. So, that stuff started coming in, it became really fun, but controversial.

GT  11:28  Well, and the temple stuff led to a statement against symposia. Was that during your tenure or right after?

Lynne  11:34  It was during–well, right after, I can’t remember if it was when we got kicked out or right before. But, right around then, they put out a statement that people at BYU couldn’t speak at the symposium anymore.

GT  11:48  Okay.

Lynne  11:49  Because of Packer, because Packers wrote that…

GT  11:53  Boyd Packer.

Lynne  11:54  Boyd, he gave that talk that said that there were three evils facing the Church, feminists, intellectuals and homosexuals. And that’s part of the reason that was that for me, for him, the last straw, because I was on television. And they asked me what I thought about that. And I said, “Well, if Boyd would get a relationship with Jesus Christ, we might get a Christ-like talk out of him.” And then the next day, I got a letter for my court.

GT  12:19  For your court.

Lynne  12:19  Yeah, I was on Chris Vanocur’s Sunday morning show or something.

GT  12:22  So, this is 1993.

Lynne  12:24  Yes, 1993.

GT  12:26  Was it August, September, when you got that letter?

Lynne  12:28  I got the letter in August, because it was during the symposium that I gave that talk, that I gave that interview. And because I was also the president of Mormon Women’s Forum at that time, which was the feminist group in town. Right. So I was doing that. And I was also the chair of the BH Roberts society. So, I was kind of doing all three of those at the time. So that’s why I was invited to go on that, to get on that talk show.

GT  12:58  And so the key issue was the interview. It wasn’t some of your writings?

Lynne  13:04  Well, there was probably more than that, because I had begun speaking and saying how I felt. And I’d been, we’d been in the LA Times, and I did a thing with Margaret Toscano and Marti Ashby. But at the time, she was Marti Esplin. I think it was just the three of us. We did a performance piece, where at the end, because Gordon Hinckley had said that we don’t pray to a mother in heaven, that he’d written a letter, “Hey, Virginia, we don’t pray to a mother in heaven.” And I had said at the end, that he needed to understand that answers to prayers were not given by a man behind the pulpit, and that he wasn’t more powerful than the Gpd that made him, and then if we were praying to a female deity, it was because we felt drawn to do that, and that he had to understand that, and that made him a little irritated.

GT  13:56  So I was just talking with Janice Allred, and she had said that Gordon Hinckley had come after her because she’d given a talk, also, about the Prophet can’t lead the church astray. And she disagreed with that.

Lynne  14:15  They don’t like that.

GT  14:18  Well, and Margaret Toscano, it seems like Boyd K. Packer was very involved with her excommunication.

Lynne  14:24  Oh, yeah.

GT  14:26  So, do you know who was involved in yours?

Lynne  14:27  Oh, Packer. Here’s what happened after. So, do you want to hear what led up to it?

GT  14:31  Yeah.

Lynne  14:36  The whole story is really interesting. So, I wasn’t feeling really comfortable in my ward, at this point.

GT  14:44  Because you were so outspoken?

Lynne  14:46  Yeah, that was going on. And I was trying to understand some things and I’m a convert. I joined the Church when I was 18. And so, I didn’t I just didn’t know the culture, first of all. So, when I went to BYU in the 70s, it was, like, 1970. That was a weird thing, anyway, because I realized it was actually 1950 in Provo, in a strange experience. So, I didn’t know the culture. And I didn’t understand–I just didn’t know the rules in a lot of ways. They just aren’t my rules from growing up. And I’m Italian. And that makes a difference. One time Paul Toscano said, “Yeah, they don’t like anyone who’s got vowels in their last name,” the last letter of their name is a vowel. Anyway, my home teachers had come to see me. And I told them, “You know, I just don’t feel like going to church anymore.” And so, about a week later, I got a call from my bishop, that he wanted me to come and see him. And I thought, “Isn’t that great? Look it’s working, my home teachers went, and he now wants me to come.” Actually, I was taking some classes up at the U and I had left the class early, and I went down, and then he and the counselors were there. And they were in their suits. And I thought, “Wow!” Honest to God, I was like, “This is so great.” So, I sit down and they say, this was what he said, “Elder Lorin C. Dunn has asked us to call you in to see if we need to take some ecclesiastical action.”

GT  16:10  This is at BYU?

Lynne  16:11  No, this is up here in Salt Lake in 1993, in May of 1993. And I started. I couldn’t. I just started laughing. And I was just like, you guys, you’ve got to give me a minute. I thought you called me in here because you cared about me. And then something switched. They all kind of were like, like, oh, and so we have this lovely conversation. It was really lovely. And I remember the bishop saying, “I’m going to tell Elder Dunn that you’re fine. You’re a lovely person.” And so that happened. And so = then in September, I mean, in August, when I did that talk, I went and I called him Boyd and said, What I felt about that if he would have a relationship with Jesus, we might have a grace, like, talk out of him. I got that letter. And so when I was when my church had my court happened, I was the first and I was disfellowshipped. And two weeks later, the first and second counselors’ wives came over to me and said, “We need to tell you something. They those guys, the bishop and his counselors, were getting so much pressure from Packer to excommunicate you, and they couldn’t, because they liked you too much. And that is why you were disfellowshipped. They were they actually were told to excommunicate you.” So it was an interesting experience for me. And I was like, so packer and Dunn were sort of in they were, they were doing stuff together. And they just were after anyone that they didn’t feel like, I don’t know, understood obedience, or authority or something. Yeah.

GT  17:49  Okay. And so Loren Dunn and Boyd Packer were deeply involved. And then you were the first. So did that affect your church attendance?

Lynne  18:03  Oh, yeah. I mean, yes.

GT  18:07  Why would you come? Because the interesting thing is, I’ve talked to Janice Allred and I know Lavina Anderson, for 30 years have continued to go to church every week, not so with Margaret and Paul. I don’t think you go to church.

Lynne  18:22  No.

GT  18:22  So, tell us more about that.

Lynne  18:23  I’ll tell you a little bit about that. So, I was just disfellowshipped. And I got a letter from them saying, from the stake president, or the bishop or something saying [that] these were the things that I had to do to get back in the Church. I couldn’t speak in church. I couldn’t teach. I could wear my garments. I could pay tithing. But I had to be really quiet. And I couldn’t speak ill of the Lord’s anointed, that kind of thing. But they had said they had followed the handbook, which is really interesting, because the handbook said, at the time, that if you’re going to do this, you’re going to take a church action, you have to meet with someone a few times before. So, I wrote back and said, “You guys didn’t follow the handbook, first of all.” And I got a letter back saying, “Well, actually, the bishop did. He met with you two times. One, that one in May, and the other was at my church court.” So I thought that was really interesting. So they wrote me this letter and I wrote them back and said, “Just so you know, I have absolutely no intention of following your admonitions. I’m not going to stop speaking out. I’m not going to do that.”

GT  19:31  So, they didn’t want you, not just to speak at church, but [not] to speak at Sunstone or anything like that.

Lynne  19:35  Yeah, that would have been the thing and I was like, nah. That’s not my way. So, I just started doing something else, which is what I talked about in that talk that I gave it. But that’s what I said.  They told me to go find something else to do and I did.

GT  19:50  {Chuckling}  So, you’ve continued to speak out. I know Janice, they put her on probation, and she said it was, even though it was probation, it was the same as disfellowshipment.

Lynne  20:05  Oh, yeah.

GT  20:06  And then they went after her about a year later, but they’ve never gone after you.  Why do you think that is?

Lynne  20:13  Well, partly because when I left, I was like, you guys go do your thing. That’s fine. I really went down a different path. I wrote him a letter. I wrote him a letter two years after, I sent it to whoever was the president of the Church at the time. And it was a letter of apology actually just saying [that] I just wanted to apologize to you because…”  I had read a book and it had said when there’s been a lot of energy around, you might want to clean it up. So, this had seemed like a bigger thing than I thought it was going to be. The September 6 got really big in a way that I did not expect. So, I wrote him a letter, and I just said, “I am so sorry, because I was so angry, you couldn’t have heard what I was saying. So, please forgive me for that. And also, please forgive me, because I was asking you to give me something that I already had, which is power as a woman. So please forgive me.” So I sent that letter. And then they sent a letter back saying, “Come back to the Church.” And I just thought, yeah, right. And then I thought about it for a while. And I thought, you know, maybe I would want to get back into the Church, and then leave quietly, because I was I was done. But there was this energetic thing out there. And so I went to my bishop, and I told him what I was doing and the work I was doing and how I was being, my life, and he actually said, “You know, I think the Church could use someone like you, but I have talked to the General Authorities, I’ll get back with you. I would love for you to come back.” And then I never heard from again, so that wasn’t ever going to happen. And that was that was it for me right there.

GT  21:49  Well, because I’m interested to hear more of your background. I think convert to the Church looks at the Church a lot differently than a lifelong member.

Lynne  21:59  So differently, yeah.

GT  22:00  And it’s interesting, because Margaret and Janice are lifelong members of the Church. Paul, on the other hand, is still a believer, and a convert. And so, you said you have Italian ancestry?

Lynne  22:13  Yeah.

GT  22:14  That’s why you get along so well with Paul?

Lynne  22:15  Well, we, yeah, I think maybe. But I just, I adore all [of them,] Margaret, Paul, Janice. Paul, he’s got that Italian humor and it’s great. It’s really great.

GT  22:27  I love Paul, too.

{End of Part 1}

Interview

GT  00:25  So let’s, go back and talk about you growing up. So, you grew up Italian Catholic or?

Lynne  00:30  No, actually, my grandmother’s from Italy. My grandfather was from Germany. And my mom grew up with basically immigrants. My grandmother, I think, was either pregnant, or she was born here. But she spoke only Italian until she was in eighth grade. So I grew up with those people. They were my grandparents, I hung out with them. So. My grandmother made really just one, what’s the word, concession to my grandfather. She became a Lutheran and let go of Catholicism. So, I was raised Lutheran, actually. And it’s a long story, but my parents moved a lot when I was kid. I moved in 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grade. And at some point, I didn’t want to do that anymore. And I started investigating the Mormon Church. And I thought that there was something about it that felt stable, to me, I think, at 17. And they were totally against me becoming Mormon, completely, because they just thought it was the weirdest church. And so, I started investigating, and I’ve got to also say the missionaries were very cute, and I was 17. {Rick laughing} So I was in Florida, and then they moved back up to Pennsylvania. I went from Pennsylvania to Florida a bunch of times. So, they moved back to Pennsylvania, and that’s where I became a Mormon. I was baptized in New Jersey. And then my parents went to my baptism, and two months later, they became Mormon.

GT  01:54  Oh, wow.

Lynne  01:55  And then all of my Italian family became Mormon.

GT  01:58  No way!

Lynne  01:58  Yeah, I don’t know. There’s like [about] 30 of them that [joined:] my aunts, my uncles, my cousins, my brother.

GT  02:03  Is that because of you?

Lynne  02:05  I wasn’t. It was my parents [who] were going around doing it all. I was at BYU by this point.

GT  02:10  Okay.

Lynne  02:10  So everybody just became Mormon.

GT  02:14  Wow.

Lynne  02:15  Like, maybe 20, something like that, became Mormon. That changed everything, too. Because by this time I was at BYU. At BYU, I was becoming a little clearer, because the Church in Pennsylvania is very different.

GT  02:30  Very different.

Lynne  02:31  Yeah. And then I went to BYU.

GT  02:31  Okay. {chuckling}

Lynne  02:31  Than the Church in Provo, Utah. And I remember thinking, “Oh, man, this is–now all these people are joining. What am I going to do?” Like, this is not the way they said, they didn’t– when I joined, they didn’t talk about racism. They didn’t talk about misogyny. They didn’t talk about–they didn’t talk about much, really. They just like, “Come in. It’s this lovely family thing.” So, when you’re 17, you’re not investigating too much because the missionaries are cute. So that’s how I got into the Church. So, I went to BYU.

GT  02:42  So you went to BYU. You were kind of a fish out of water at BYU?

Lynne  03:06  Totally a fish out of water.

GT  03:08  Okay.

Lynne  03:08  My second year at BYU, I got called in and they said, “We think another university might be better for you.” I think it may have been because I was hitchhiking to church, and I was wearing–it just wasn’t a match. It just wasn’t a match. And I realized it wasn’t. So that’s what happened.

GT  03:25  You were hitchhiking. Don’t you just go to your classes to go to church?

Lynne  03:29  No, actually, because the wards were all over the place back in ’70’s. I mean, they were all over Provo. But, anyway, the whole thing is they said [that] we think another university would be better for you.

GT  03:40  You should have come down the road to Utah Tech at the time, right?

Lynne  03:42  Yeah, I should have, right? I don’t even know if it was there, or gone up to the U of U.  So that started my entrance into being a Mormon in the Wasatch Front.

GT  03:52  But, still did you graduate from BYU?

Lynne  03:55  No, I never did graduate. I didn’t. I started working.  Part of it is, I grew up pretty poor, and there was not a lot of money. So, I started working. And when I started working, I had to work and then I just didn’t go to school, I was paying for my life. And then got married when I was 26, because I continued to work. And then I actually put him through med school, and then I went back to school right after I stopped working for Sunstone. And I was in school for a couple of years. I loved it, I was doing really well. But then I got kicked out of the Church.  Getting kicked out of the Church created a whole, like talks, like there’s a whole bunch of stuff that went along with being kicked out of the Church as a part of the September Six. I was doing newspaper stuff and talks and all of that and then my marriage fell apart. And then I just didn’t go back to school. And then I opened up a practice. I’m a life coach. I have read a lot of stuff around the psyche and Jung and Freud. From the time I was 17, I had spent a lot of time really investigating the way the mind works. And then, in 1990, let’s see. It was 1993 when I got kicked out, I found a fantastic therapist who saw something in me, and I started attending a group that teaches people how to do a particular kind of counseling. So in the group, there are therapists and psychiatrists and psychologists. We’ve been in that group for 23 years, every Thursday night, and he helped me open a practice and now I’m a life coach.

Interview

GT  05:36  Okay, so did you, for lack of a better word, did you lose your testimony in 1993, when they kicked you out?

Lynne  05:48  No, by 1993, I think I was a little more aware of things, like that the Church actually believed that God lived on a planet next to Kolob, and had body parts and passions in a way that I hadn’t understood before. But mostly the misogyny and the homophobia and the racism, to me, that was like, I couldn’t understand why everybody wasn’t up in arms with Packer giving that talk, for instance, like he was saying, “We are misogynists.” He was saying, “We are homophobic.” He was saying, “We are anti-intellectual.”

GT  06:27  In 1993, that would have been pretty common for most of the United States to be homophobic, though. Wouldn’t it?

Lynne  06:33  But don’t say that you’re a church that [loves.] Don’t say that this is a church that isn’t about love. Because that’s not about love. I don’t give a crap what everybody was saying at the time.

GT  06:45  I’m trying to remember the political situation, it seems like that was when they passed the Defense of Marriage Act in the US Congress.

Lynne  06:56  But also the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) didn’t pass.

GT  06:58  Well, that was back in the 70’s.

Lynne  07:00  But that was also the misogyny part.

GT  07:03  Okay.

Lynne  07:03  That which, by the way, the Church did everything it could to not pass that, ERA.

GT  07:07  Right.

Lynne  07:07  And then the marriage defense…

GT  07:09  So there’s a lot, it seems like we’re condensing a lot of stuff. So you’ve got the ERA.

Lynne  07:14  You’re asking me why what helped me…

GT  07:15  That was in 1976, roughly.

Lynne  07:17  [It was] 1978 .

GT  07:17  So, in 1978, the Church puts a big push to shut down the Equal Rights Amendment.

Lynne  07:25  To keep women in their place.

GT  07:27  Keep women in their place, as you say. And so I mean, 1978, it sounds like you joined the Church, probably, in 1970 or so?

Lynne  07:36  [In] 1970.

GT  07:38  Oh, in 1970. So you probably recognized the racism between 70 and 78.

Lynne  07:45  Yeah, well, here’s what’s interesting. I left and went to BYU. At BYU, there was no color.

GT  07:52  Right.

Lynne  07:53  So, it didn’t really hit me…

GT  07:55  Right.

Lynne  07:55  …until a little while later, when I started really reading stuff and understanding. To me, let me just say this, let me think, so that I can be clear. To say; “Wasn’t that the way the world was, anyway?” To me, is the Church, is it really a part of the world? It’s the old, is it a hospital or is it a social club? And the fact that the Church that touts itself as Jesus is the head of the Church, and it’s all love and that and then to have one of the authorities actually blatantly say that. Not just that, but when I was reading the John Birchers, all of that stuff, too. All of a sudden, it was like, this is not the church I thought it was. This church is not this loving, kind, wonderful church. It’s as big of a mess as the rest of the world. And I know that’s a little naive to think that it wouldn’t be, but it woke me up.

GT  08:51  Okay.

Lynne  08:51  And I was like, I’m going to go find something else, because I don’t want to be part of that.

GT  08:57  So can you talk about your feelings of June 1978 when the revelation came to allow blacks to have the priesthood? Was that a good day? Was that a bad day?

Lynne  09:06  Well, it was a great day. I mean, don’t get me wrong. But what I found out from Mike Quinn, was that it was at the same time when they were doing temples in Brazil, and no one knew who was black or white. And so, they didn’t know what to do. And so, this revelation came. And so do I believe it was a revelation? Probably not. I think it was convenient. And they had to do that. The Church is a growing church. It’s a proselytizing church. So, it was too convenient.

GT  09:41  When you say too convenient, were those your thoughts in ’78? Or did that come later?

Lynne  09:48  Well, in 1978, I wondered. That’s an interesting thing that now this is coming out?

GT  09:55  The reason why I asked you, Matt Harris is a professor at Colorado State, in Pueblo, Colorado.

Lynne  10:01  Yeah.

GT  10:01  And he’s got a new book coming out, that I cannot wait [to read.][2] One of the thesis that’s going to come out is; there were some apostles that were hard liners that believed in the race ban. And so, President Kimball purposely announced the temple in ’74, I think it was, to get apostles to say, “There’s a big race problem in Brazil. What are we going to do?” And so, Matt’s…

Lynne  10:36  That’s one way. I mean, it’s possible. You know, it’s possible. Of course, he wrote that lovely book, The Miracle of Forgiveness, Kimball.

GT  10:43  Kimball.

Lynne  10:43  So, I mean, I just, I don’t have a lot of faith in them. I guess that’s the bottom line, you know? Well, the fact that, that was even a question, that they were hard liners about race in this church. It just doesn’t work in the way that I see the world. It just doesn’t work. Like, why wouldn’t whoever was the President of the Church or the Prophet of the Church say, “This is ridiculous. We’re not going to do this. This is not okay.”

GT  11:13  Okay.

Lynne  11:14  And, I mean, it’s still a problem.

GT  11:18  So, because we’ve also got the Equal Rights Amendment. President Kimball was against that. Did you know Sonia Johnson?

Lynne  11:27  No, but I was influenced by Sonia Johnson. I gave a talk at Sunstone saying, “We’re standing on her shoulders, as feminists, and she was standing on other feminists. We all stand on each other’s shoulders.” She was a real wake up for a lot of us. That was a wake up. Do you want to know what the actually big wake up was, although Sonia was part of it.  But it was, who was it? I think it was, it wasn’t Kimball. It was in the ’80s, whoever was the President of the Church might have been…

GT  12:00  Benson.

Lynne  12:01  Benson gave a talk. And he quoted Kimball, I think, saying; “Women come home from the typewriter. Come home from the office. Come home and make beds and clean house for your family. Because that’s what you’re here to do”. And for a ton of us, that’s how Mormon Women’s Forum got formed, out of that talk.

GT  12:25  Oh.

Lynne  12:26  Because everyone watched it. And we’re like, wow. That’s actually the way you see women. That’s what this church sees for women. But it was also, like, don’t come home from the attorney’s office or anything, but come home from the typewriter. Come home from the– as if women were here just to serve. And I think that was—it’s a culmination of things. I think it builds on things.

GT  12:26  Because what I’m hearing is, so late ’70s, early ’80s, the priesthood ban was removed, which was good. You were like, why did it exist in the first place?

Lynne  13:03  Yeah.

GT  13:03  ERA’s going and you’re like, women’s rights, I believe in that. It sounds like you were ahead of the nation, I’ll say, as far as gay rights. Because,= Defensive Marriage Act was early ’90s. Bill Clinton, I remember signed that into law. And so we’ve got this bubbling up of– Elder Packer would say the three threats of the Church, gays, intellectuals, and feminists.

Lynne  13:32  Yeah, feminism, intellectuals and homosexuals, which is an interesting thing to say.

GT  13:38  And so those were causing you a lot of personal anguish, I guess, with the Church?

Lynne  13:44  Well, partly with the Church. You know what, also, women weren’t giving prayers in sacrament [meeting] until ’78. They had taken a lot. There was one other thing that happened, too, which I think is okay to talk about now. So, at the time, I’m trying to remember who was the Relief Society President in the Church? Chieko was one of the counselors and there was Aileen Clyde who was a counselor and…

GT  14:12  Sherry Dew?

Lynne  14:12  No,  Jack?

GT  14:14  Elaine Jack.

Lynne  14:14  Elaine Jack, yeah. So we had a Mormon Women’s Forum meeting at my house, and Aileen Clyde came to that meeting, and said, this to us. This is when everybody was waking up. She said, they’d been in the Relief Society presidency for like three or four years or something. And Mrs. America, who was a Mormon had just met with whoever the Prophet was, which was…

GT  14:42  Miss America?

Lynne  14:42  Mrs. America.

GT  14:43  Ah, Mrs America.

Lynne  14:44  [She] met with, was it Hinckley at that time? Maybe Hinckley or Benson, Hinckley one of them.

GT  14:48  In the 80’s it would have either been Kimball or Benson.

Lynne  14:49  No, no Kimball, Kimball was gone.

GT  14:51  So Benson?

Lynne  14:52  It was the ’90s.

GT  14:54   Oh.

Lynne  14:54  It was the 90’s.

GT  14:56  That would have been after Benson was Hunter.

Lynne  14:59  Yeah, but he didn’t last long. It was Hinckley, I think.

GT  15:01  Hinckley, okay.

Lynne  15:03  I’m not sure, but whoever it was, she said “Mrs. America had just met with the Prophet. How often do you think the Relief Society President has met with this prophet? We’ve been in there for five years or something?” We said once a year? She said, “Zero!”

GT  15:19  Really?

Lynne  15:20  She said, we don’t get to do that. We don’t get to meet with him. In fact, they had been set aside, you know, the things when they set people aside.

GT  15:32  Do you mean set apart?

Lynne  15:36  Yeah, set apart, set aside, whatever. But and I’m telling the story, but it was so long ago, I don’t think it’ll matter. Because those guys aren’t even around anymore. But they had been set apart as being in charge of all the women. And then whoever did that went out and another General Authority came in and said, “That was the wrong setting apart.” And he set them apart to be only over them. So that in the past, if there was a problem in Ohio, the women could decide they could go do that. But now, if there was a woman in Ohio, who are having a problem, they had to go to the general authority and go through them in order to go out there. So they had lost a lot of their power.

GT  16:18  The Relief Society.

Lynne  16:19  The Relief Society. And so, this was also really interesting for us. And I know that what they were hoping, because they were really wonderful women, Aileen and Chieko are wonderful women. I mean Chieko just said, “Hey, these people at Sunstone are just like, kids in the program for smart kids. Why don’t you just leave them alone?” But I think they we’re hoping that we would push the envelope out a little bit for them. So, they had some movement. In fact, the day of my court, I got a call from Aileen Clyde saying, “Please don’t get excommunicated. We need you guys to do this thing. We want you to move out the envelope, so we have more room to move.”

GT  17:04  This is Aileen Clyde?

Lynne  17:06  Clyde.

GT  17:07  From the Relief Society General presidency?

Lynne  17:09  Yes. And I also got a call from Connie Chung’s people asking me if I would take in a hidden camera, which I said no. Because remember, Connie Chung had a news report thing at that time. She had called me the same day.

GT  17:22  Oh, wow. She was CBS news.

Lynne  17:25  Yeah, she was CBS News. It was interesting. But I said no. But it was interesting, because I could tell how much they love the women of the Church, these women. Every power was getting taken away from them. And so that was coming into us, too. We understood that Mormon Women’s Forum was becoming more and more aware of the limits of what was happening and taking away instead of giving women more and more room to actually be who they are. So that pushed us on, as well.

GT  18:02  Okay. So I think I get a better sense of the things that were bothering you from probably the late ’70s, because it sounds so when you’re first baptized, you came in. You didn’t know anything. And then I mean, when did you first notice that racism or sexism was a problem?  Was it ’78 when the Church  announced the rescission of the ban and they were against ERA?

Lynne  18:32  Well, let me also say this. When I became a Mormon, I was 17 when I was investigating, 18 when I joined, I looked very young. And so I went for my interviews, and no one asked me any sexual questions, at all. None.

GT  18:49  Well, those aren’t typical baptism questions.

Lynne  18:53  Yeah, they are. Have you had sex?

GT  18:55  Oh, do you obey the law of chastity, I guess, yeah.

Lynne  18:58  Yeah, not a word.

GT  18:59  Really?

Lynne  18:59  Not a word. So when I went in for my patriarchal blessing, my bishop asked me those questions. And I looked at him and I said, “I think you’re a lecherous old man. This is none of your business.”  And he did not know, he said, “No one’s asked you these questions?” And I said, “No!” So, I came in not knowing a lot of this stuff.

GT  19:18  Okay.

Lynne  19:19  So it was really like shock after shock. I was like; “Really? You think that’s your business? That is really weird.” So I was reeling from that, as well, just kind of like, okay, this is really different. The race thing, I’ve always been aware of race issues. But because I was in Provo and there were no people of color at all, really…

GT  19:46  They didn’t even have any on the football team back then.

Lynne  19:47  I don’t think so. Nobody was. It didn’t sink into my consciousness until probably, maybe a couple of years before, understanding wait a minute. There’s a ban? You can’t even have a drop of blood and be Mormon, a drop of blood that they consider black.

GT  20:08  Well, we would baptize them. We just wouldn’t give him the priesthood.

Lynne  20:10  But, you couldn’t go to the temple.

GT  20:11  Right.

Lynne  20:12  Yeah, you couldn’t do anything. It was ridiculous. It was just ridiculous. And so that stuff was really bubbling up to me as well. I’d spent my childhood reading about, well, reading about everything that I could possibly read, beginning with the Holocaust, and then racism and then the Native Americans and understanding the problems. And for some reason, I don’t know why. But because of the way the Church presented itself, I thought it was a different, I thought it’d be different. So it shocked me, just a little bit, that it wasn’t. And that’s how it started.

GT  20:45  Okay. So, you’re wrestling in the ’80s with feminism, racism, even gay rights?

Lynne  20:52  Even gay rights. Because I had a lot of gay friends by then.

GT  20:54  Okay.

Lynne  20:55  It’s BYU. I have a lot of gay friends, even back then. So yeah, I had gay friends. I had gay friends who killed themselves, actually, because of the Church and the standard. So, all that stuff was, it was pretty tumultuous time with racism and misogyny and homophobia. All of that was part of what we were doing at Sunstone, trying to raise the consciousness of how do we do this? And at that point, I really was hopeful that the Church would want to shift the way it was responding to people. And so, when we were doing it, and we were having all these sessions, I kind of thought, well, this is great. This is kind of working, right? This is, people are coming, we’re talking about it, all of that. And then they went after anybody who was a professor at BYU, which was trying to shut down Sunstone.

GT  21:51  Yeah. Which they never did. {chuckling}

Lynne  21:53  Which they never did, but they tried.

GT  21:57  So, they told the BYU professors, “You can’t go to Sunstone anymore.”

Lynne  22:00  Well, who got also kicked out? Cecilia.

GT  22:05  Farr?

Lynne  22:05  Cecilia Farr and David Knowlton. Right after us, they were also kicked out of BYU. There’s a lot of stuff. It was almost like a it was a purge. It was a purge going after anyone who wasn’t really towing the line.

GT  22:20  Okay.

Lynne  22:20  Yeah. And that was also–we were, I was shocked. First of all, we were stay at home moms, a lot of us. So, I couldn’t figure out what they were so all worked up about. We were just doing stuff. Right? I was raising kids and putting people through, through his residency and all that stuff. And what was the big deal? But apparently, it was a big deal.

GT  22:47  And so basically, when your church court happened, did you attend?

Lynne  22:52  Oh, yeah.

GT  22:52  Okay, so you attended, met in the bishops office, he said…

Lynne  22:55  No, because I was the first. I didn’t know what, nobody knew what was happening. I was the first.

GT  23:01  You were the first one.

Lynne  23:02  Yes.

GT  23:03  And so then the dominoes started falling after you.

Lynne  23:05  Yeah. Here’s what’s really funny. So, I go to the church. I don’t know what’s going to happen there. A couple hundred people [are] singing hymns outside with signs that say” Lynne is not a heretic.” First of all, that was an interesting moment. And then two of my witnesses, Margaret and Lavina were witnesses.

GT  23:23  Margaret Toscano?

Lynne  23:24  Margaret Toscano and Lavina were my witnesses.

GT  23:25  Uh-oh! {chuckling}

Lynne  23:26  These people who I adore beyond belief, right? But then they’re in there, too. So, the here’s the people who are standing up for me. It was just after, when everybody [got disciplined,] when it started happening. [It] was just amusing. Like, well, there you go. There you go. {Rick laughing} That’s not going to hold any water. But I was so happy that they did it. We had, like, five witnesses. My father at one point looked at the bishop and said, “If you excommunicate my daughter,” because he was a very big Mormon believer by that time. But anyway, so when I look back and see that, it’s pretty funny.

GT  24:04  Ok, so you had the church court. The bishop didn’t have the heard to excommunicate you so they disfellowshipped you.

Lynne  24:12  Disfellowshipped me, yeah.

GT  24:13  But at that point, you were like, if you don’t like me, I don’t like you. I’m done with this?

Lynne  24:25  Well, other things happened. Things began happening. Part of it was I found this amazing therapist, and I started really working with that, and then my marriage fell apart.

GT  24:37  Was because of your excommunication? Well you weren’t excommunicated, but because of the punishment?

Lynne  24:41  I think it was more because we got married after knowing each other for months, and had three kids really fast and went to med school. And then, all of that was really, when you look at that, we were in our twenties. We were stupid, putting so much on your plate. That’s part of it. He was an introvert and that was a pretty extroverted experience. And so I think that was difficult for him because the phone was ringing constantly and I was running the symposium.  There were always people at our house.  So, yeah, it was partly that. But you can’t blame it. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t ever blame it just on that. It was the perfect storm of: this is what’s going to happen. So when that fell apart, I was supposed to have alimony till I was 65. But he got Parkinson’s a few years after we got a divorce. And so I ended up not having alimony and I had to figure out a way to financially take care of myself.  And I have a natural gift of working with people. And so, I started a practice and that’s what happened.

Interview

GT  00:34  Well, that’s what I want to get into a little bit, because it sounds very interesting to me. So, a few years later, it sounds like you sent a letter where you were forgiving. You’re asking for forgiveness because of your own anger. But you had no intention, really, of coming back.

Lynne  00:54  I wasn’t coming back. I never said I was coming back. That wasn’t the point of that letter.

GT  00:59  Okay.

Lynne  01:00  The point of that letter was: I see that I was asking you to hear me and you couldn’t, because it’s hard to hear someone who’s really pissed about the way things are. Not that it’s a problem to be pissed, but I was pretty pissed. I was saying things, like, I can do sound bites, and that was part of the problem. I was doing talk shows and that kind of stuff. But the other thing is, I really wanted to say, “You can’t give me what I already have. And that is my own authority, my own power as a human being, as a woman. And I was somehow asking you for that.” So, I began to realize that, because I wanted their approval, I was dancing around the patriarchy, instead of going to do something that I really wanted to do. And so when I realized that, I sent them that letter, and then I moved into the direction. I was already in the direction of going in that direction where I am now, because of things that had shown up in my life and the work that I do that has a lot to do with going to Peru, and some of the stuff that I talked about in my talk at Sunstone. But, no, I was never [coming back.] I never even had a moment of thinking of coming back when that happened.

GT  02:15  Okay, so was this was, for lack of a better word, a way to get forgiveness with the Church, where you were forgiving the Church?

Lynne  02:28  Yeah.

GT  02:28  So this is your own personal forgiveness.

Lynne  02:30  Absolutely. The only reason to do forgiveness is for yourself really. Tight? To let yourself off the hook; I really wanted to let all that go. I have come to this conclusion: The Church is doing exactly what it needs to do. Well, whatever that is, for me, was the perfect amount of patriarchal authority that I needed to find myself and to go, okay. I don’t believe that. That is not good for the world. Patriarchy, in my opinion, is what is crushing the world at this point. And so, I don’t want that. I want something else. And so that sent me on my way. And without the Church, I don’t think I would have become who I am, really.

GT  03:13  So do you regret being baptized? Or was that just part of your journey?

Lynne  03:17  Nope, I actually think every single step was exactly what I needed.

Interview

GT  03:23  Okay. And so, as you’re looking at this, you basically forgave the Church, and then said, I’m moving in this other direction. Can you talk about your spirituality now? Because it sounds like you’ve just got a different kind of spirituality.

Lynne  03:39  Yeah, Let me also say, I mean, I still work on the Church. Sometimes I hear stories, and I’m just like [ugh.] People will come and talk to me because of my background. Being part of the September Six has got a shadow and a light. You never know. My own spirituality comes out of working with the medicines I work with. I go to Peru every year. And I work with Ayahuasca down there, which if you are aware of the psychedelics that are coming into the country right now, there’s a book called How to Change Your Mind. Have you read that? Or do you know about it?

GT  03:40  [No]

Lynne  03:40  So anyway, it’s been a really interesting thing, although I don’t like the way the culture is taking in psychedelics right now. But 30 years ago, I was introduced to them right after I got kicked out of the Church, and I started doing ceremonies with people and feeling more connected to the earth and to myself and understanding what it means to be human in a different way than through Mormonism, or Christianity really. [It is] just a whole different way of feeling connected to what I call the divine and I am nuts about The Creator and what that energy is that created the universe and all it contains. And so, I’ve had a lot of experiences working out, especially in Peru, working with medicine people and medicine work, to understand what my connection is, and how my belief–not even belief, my feelings of being completely connected to a loving God that is so nuts about all of us that it just keeps loving and loving and loving. And it doesn’t matter if you’re Mormon or not Mormon, but your path is going to take you, life will take you somewhere. And it’s the most interesting, amazing ride that I could have ever imagined. Does that make sense?

GT  05:48  Could you characterize it as new age religion?

Lynne  05:52  No, no, no, no. I work with people who have been working–their lineage is thousands of years old.

GT  05:57  Is it more like Native American religion?

Lynne  05:59  South American, more South American.

GT  06:02  South American.

Lynne  06:00  There’s more than just South America. I can talk about that, because it’s out of the country. I work with a woman down there, that is phenomenal. And she does ceremonies. And so, I take groups twice a year to her place. And we stay for two weeks. And what happens when you’re there is you have this connection with stuff about yourself that you need to connect to. But also, you can see this Garden of Eden that she’s created out of a deforested place, through just the information that gets downloaded when you do this sort of stuff, and the connection she has to the Creator that we all have really. I don’t know how else to say this. But it is this beautiful experience of knowing that you’re loved and that everything, everyone is loved. And everyone’s doing the best they know how. Being human is very difficult. It’s very difficult. And we have a lot of stuff passed down to us. I talked about this in that [Sunstone] talk. But also, we have a lot of limiting beliefs that have been passed down from generation to generation: racism, homophobia, misogyny, all those things have been passed down. And so it’s not like you can get angry at the people who pass down. I’m really not. But you understand that all of those are out of fear. And that fear has kept people from really connecting. And the work that I do with medicine work connects you back into the real person, the real essence of who we really are. And that has been priceless to me.

GT  07:43  You said medicine work. And that sounds [Native American.] We always hear about the medicine man. It’s kind of a Native American [leader.]

Lynne  07:48  Yeah.

GT  07:49  Are you kind of a shaman?

Lynne  07:50  Oh, no, no, no, no, no. But I work with this woman down in Peru. She would never call herself a shaman either. She’s an Ayahuasca. But she holds this place for people to come and heal. And it’s the most healing. Not everybody should do it by the way. This is not like, oh, everyone should go out and do any of Ayahuasca or peyote or any of those things. But for people that it works for, it is a beautiful experience and helps them to heal from the generations that they come from. Does that make sense?

GT  08:28  Okay. Yeah, it sounds very Native American.

Lynne  08:31  I know it does. I am not Native American. And I’m not South American. I’ve worked with the Huichols out of Mexico. And I’ve worked with some of the Quechua tribes, a guy out of Machu Picchu, and this woman has Quechua. But it’s not Native American. I don’t even know how to explain it. Native American is one way but it’s more than that. It’s the way of connecting and caring for the earth and loving the Earth. It’s very feminine. Let me put it that way. It’s a very feminine process, as opposed to the patriarchal process. I don’t think it should all be feminine, or all masculine by the way. I think there needs to be this marriage of both, so that there’s a balance between them. But the work with medicine work is often a very feminine connecting, to watch a mama to the earth and understanding that. In fact, it’s really interesting. There’s a new documentary called Living to 100 on Netflix; The Secrets of the Blue Zone. Basically they found these places in the world where people live to 100. And they’ve done this documentary on what makes these people, where lots and lots of people live that long and they thrive. They’re not stuck. They’re not just surviving. And a lot of it is they’re connected to the earth, their land, they eat the right kinds of food. They have community. They have dance. They have song, all that stuff that we don’t have it, because we’re so separated. COVID really did a thing for us where we are just so isolated. And the isolation is a damaging thing for people, because we need community. And one of the things that has happened for me is finding community and being able to hold space for more and more community. And so, I work with communities.

Interview

GT  10:24  Okay. Can you talk a little bit about your family? Because you said that, after you joined the Church, your parents did, and then your extended family did. How did they react to your disfellowshipment?

Lynne  10:36  Not so good. {both laughing} Actually, it was really difficult for me, because my parents did not have my back. They said that I probably never believed the Church in the first place and that they sided with the Church, which was very difficult for me. And then my father had a near-death experience. And when he had his near-death experience, everything changed. And from the moment that happened, we had a real connection and a real understanding of each other. And he no longer was, like all church. He was more on love. And that was an absolutely beautiful thing with my dad and I. But so yeah, it was really difficult. The extended family, I had hardly ever talked to them after that. My brother left the Church before I did. And my mom is still in. She’s 93, but she is still very Mormon, and really believes the Mormon Church.

GT  11:37  Okay. So your family has continued to attend?

Lynne  11:40  Yeah.

GT  11:42  Do they view you kind of as a black sheep?

Lynne  11:45  Probably, like my uncle, my uncle has passed, my great aunts and uncles all died, they all became Mormons. My father, people are dying off, right. So that’s part of it, but some of them are still very active. And I mean, I probably am this sort of black sheep of the family, in that area.

GT  12:06  Do they still invite you to like church events, baptisms, things like that?

Lynne  12:11  I have some that live here in Utah. And, no, I don’t get invited to those things. It’s not, I mean, I don’t even feel like they’re, like, not inviting me. They just know I’m not interested. I think that’s more than, I don’t feel ostracized.

GT  12:24  Okay.

Lynne  12:24  But I also don’t have much in common with them. You know, once you leave the Church, and then you hang out with people who are in the Church, and they’re mainly talking about their church callings and all that stuff. You’re just like, okay. But can we talk about the climate? Can we talk about something? Yeah, so I don’t feel hurt by that at all. By my family doing their thing, no. They went that direction, and I’m this direction.

GT  12:50  They still love you and you still love them.

Lynne  12:52  Yeah, I don’t feel unloved at all. I felt a little disappointed by my parents not having my back. That was painful.

GT  12:59  I’m sure that was. Can you talk about the evolution of Sunstone over, I guess it’s been 30 years?

Lynne  13:10  Over 30 years? Yeah.

GT  13:11  I mean, I guess you haven’t really checked in a lot.

Lynne  13:13  I don’t know. I go when they bring us out and say, here, it’s been 10 years. Now it’s been 30 years. So, I don’t know if we’ll ever do it again. Because we’re getting old. But I just went to that one session. And it was lovely. I was surprised that there were so many people there, actually, that people even remembered, was quite surprising to me that the September Six happened.

GT  13:35  People are still interested in it. I’m talking to you on podcast.

Lynne  13:37  I know, right? This was just really surprising to me. But, yeah, I can’t really speak to the evolution since Elbert left.

GT  13:45  Because you’ve just left it behind, basically.

Lynne  13:48  I mean, I really have gone to, I have this really amazingly wonderful, fun life. And that’s where my focus is.

GT  13:56  Okay. Can you talk, since you were the first to get disciplined, can you talk about the dominoes that fell after you and your reaction?

Lynne  14:04  Well, everybody went to all the courts. It was this very, it was like, so mine comes, this is great. I called Lavina. “Lavina, I got this letter.” This was at night, on a Sunday night. She’s like, “I’ll be over tomorrow.” She comes over the next day. She’s got homemade bread and jam, calls every newspaper and every news thing. I mean, she called everybody. So that’s how the alert went out. And so, but at that point, it was only me.  But soon after, I think even before my court, I can’t remember. I think it was September 14 or something. I think she might have gotten [word.] People were beginning to get letters. So, that’s why I was like, and Lavina liked the sound of the September Six better than the September five. So, she included Avraham in that. She thought it sounded better.

GT  14:58  Well it should have been, I think it was in your session. There was another author that said it really should be the September Eight, because we should include Janice and Margaret.[3]

Lynne  15:07  But that didn’t happen for another couple of years.

GT  15:10  Right.

Lynne  15:10  Well, Janice, a year later. And that’s the other thing, I wrote a letter. Let me talk about Janice. Janice getting excommunicated was so strange to me.

GT  15:18  Oh.

Lynne  15:19  Because she was a believing Mormon. And she has nine kids. The thing is that Janice writes papers that are so intellectual that most people can’t even understand them. {Rick chuckling} And I wrote a letter to the editor about her, which was really, it was so much fun to write, because I wrote about who she was. She’s this believing Mormon. She’s got all these kids. I basically said that “Maybe the General Authorities needed to stop pretending that there was a Victorian era where women stayed home and were happy and men went to work. But embrace their true brothers in the Middle Ages, who went on a witch hunt, throwing women into pools of water to see if they were a witch. In fact, from now on, when women come into the waters of baptism add one step. See if they float. It’ll save us all a lot of time in the end.” And that went all over the Wasatch Front. It got picked up all over. So, that’s probably part of why they don’t want me back. But when Janice got [excommunicated,] I mean that was really shocking to me, because I went to both of her courts or something.

GT  16:20  Okay. She had two.

Lynne  16:22  And she had two, and it was just like, What are you? It was like a purge. This is Janice! What are you doing?

GT  16:30  Well, I wonder if that’s the difference. Janice was still going to church, whereas you just…

Lynne  16:36  I had barely stopped.

GT  16:39  Okay.

Lynne  16:40  I had just stopped, so in May I stopped going.

GT  16:44  Okay.

Lynne  16:45  Because I was just like, this isn’t right.

GT  16:49  So because you basically stepped away from the Church and quit going. That made you not a target. But because Janice was still going?

Lynne  16:57  Well, I was still a target. I mean, I was targeted. What do you mean?

GT  17:01  Well, it’s funny to me that Janice got put on probation, which she says was the same as disfellowshipment. And then a year later…

Lynne  17:13  Oh, right, then they excommunicated her. But didn’t do anything [to me.]

GT  17:15  They’ve never done that with you.

Lynne  17:16  I don’t know why. Honestly, I don’t know why. Because in the handbook, it says, if someone’s disfellowshipped, you need to do something within like a year or two, or something like that. And it’s been 30 years. I don’t hear a word from anybody, which is fine. I mean, and I haven’t taken my name off the records, partly because I keep forgetting. I might sometime. I don’t know. But yeah, I don’t know. Isn’t that weird, right?

GT  17:41  Even Margaret, because she didn’t get excommunicated until 2000. Yeah.

Lynne  17:45  So that’s why the September Eight makes sense. Except for this was years later.

GT  17:50  Yeah, well, I mean, both Janice and Margaret were in trouble. And I think, [regarding] Paul, Margaret said, “Paul waved the red flag in front of the bull.”

Lynne  18:01  Yeah, well, it’s Paul.

GT  18:03  They went after Paul instead of Margaret.

Lynne  18:05  Yeah, instead of Margaret. But you know, I mean, Margaret is the same thing. She is so lovely, and so wonderful. And the fact that they would—it’s just, like, it’s just small minded and mean, to me. That’s what Paul says, you know, that Margaret’s court was like being raped by the Care Bears.

GT  18:26  Yeah, he said that.

Lynne  18:29  Because it was the way that, she’s just, yeah. Painful, because these are believing Mormons. To go after them because of who knows why? Petty.

GT  18:40  Well, I think Margaret was still speaking in public and you’ve just disappeared off the radar. And Mormonism is in your past, and you don’t care about anymore. And so, there’s no reason to go after you. Is that it?

Lynne  18:52  Maybe, I mean, I just went, like I said, when they asked me to do something else, go find something else to do. I did. So. And it’s been really good. So, yeah. {Rick laughing}

GT  19:04  And so what do you think of these anniversaries that we keep having? Oh, it’s been 30 years. There’s a new book coming out. Actually, I think it just came out this month.

GT  19:11  Got those intellectual juices going?

Lynne  19:11  Oh, did it? I should read it. first of all, it was a really interesting experience for me to come and write a paper to give at Sunstone because it brought up all kinds of stuff that I hadn’t thought about for, really, for 30 years. Being there with people that I hadn’t seen for [a long time.] Like it was really kind of lovely, actually. I loved what it took to write it again, because it was something I needed to do. It let me know where I was, in a way that was really good.

Lynne  19:20  Yeah, well, there was I didn’t write a very intellectual [paper,] I wrote a really feeling paper because the question was, where are you spiritually after 30 years. So, I actually talked about where I was spiritually after 30 years. And so it was great. But, every once in a while, there’s an article in the paper that–they never tell me and it just shows up and I’ll get people saying, “Hey, you were in the paper again.} It’s just kind of amusing in a way, like, really because it was long time ago.

GT  20:11  For you, it’s just totally in the rearview. And so probably these anniversaries, you’re like, oh, what?

Lynne  20:16  Yeah, it was just kind of, well we’re aware. And plus, what I have loved about this time is it reconnected me with Margaret and Paul in particular. Because we have been [busy.] Margaret has been busy. I’ve been busy. And I’m seeing them more often, which makes me so happy and love seeing Janice, who I adore. I mean, it’s just those things have been really worth the let’s have this 30 year reunion and I don’t want to lose touch with them again, because they’re fantastic human beings, you know, so, yeah. {Rick chuckling}

GT  20:47  Well, Margaret and Paul, both of them have been on twice. They’re just, they’re fun people.

Lynne  20:53  They’re great. They’re really great. And Mike and Lavina. I mean, Lavina, she came with warm bread and jam to my house. And so anyway, so it was good. It was good doing that after 30 years. Yeah, but I don’t think we are going to do it in another 30 years.

GT  21:11  You won’t be here in 30 years. Well, your mother’s still here.

Lynne  21:14  My mom is still here. She’s 93. So we’ll see. {Rick chuckling} Yeah,.

GT  21:19  Well, cool. Well, I’m trying to think. Is there anything else we need to cover?

Lynne  21:26  Do you have any questions?

GT  21:31  I think that’s it then, so, Lynne Whitesides. I really appreciate you for being here on Gospel Tangents and thanks for being on the show

Lynne  21:40  Well, thank you. It’s been really fun.

[1] Steve was actually killed October 15, 1985. Mark Hofmann entered prison in 1987.

[2] The book is called Second Class Saints and can be purchased at https://amzn.to/3Aemyb3 . See our interview about the book: https://gospeltangents.com/mormon_history/2nd-class-saints/

[3] See our interview with Sara Patterson: https://gospeltangents.com/people/sara-patterson/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

Join us on a fascinating journey to Voree/Burlington, Wisconsin, to explore the unique history and beliefs of a Latter-day Saint group often referred to as the Strangites. This isn’t the commonly known LDS Church; rather, it’s a distinct branch founded by James Strang. He started a rival Mormon Church in Voree/Burlington, Wisconsin back in 1844 and the church still exists! We’ll tour around the Trust Farm and see historic sites, including the Hill of Promise & the home where James Strang died. Gary Weber is a Strangite. He’s our tour guide and we’ll discuss their church and theology. You don’t want to miss this conversation…

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

The Strangite Church, formally known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Strangite), was founded in 1844. James Strang, who had been sent on a mission to Wisconsin by Joseph Smith, claimed that an angel ordained him on June 27, 1844, the very day Joseph Smith died. This divine ordination, he asserted, made him the rightful successor to the church’s leadership.

The journey to this lesser-known Latter-day Saint community in Wisconsin involved a mix of trains, planes, and automobiles. Landing in Milwaukee, the trip continued towards Burlington, Wisconsin, where the Church is located. The group believes they are the original Mormon Church and refer to themselves as Mormons. The area around Burlington, known as Voree is the setting for much of Strangite history, especially concerning the “Voree record”. The weather in Burlington on June 12th was surprisingly mild for summer, with a high of just 63 and low around 56 degrees Fahrenheit, a notable difference from Utah’s typical June temperatures.

The current Strangite church building, located on Spring Valley Road near what’s called “Mormon Road,” is smaller than I expected. According to Bill Shepard, a long-time resident & member, this building was constructed around 1965-1967 and marks the first time the Strangites have had a dedicated church building, as they were previously scattered. The lawn around the chapel is nicely manicured, and visitors are always welcome.

Inside, or in their collections, the Strangites possess a wealth of historical documents, including 26 volumes of the Journal of Discourses, Times and Seasons, and Millennial Star. They also have Strang Manuscripts, which are copies of letters, and a publication called The Northern Islander, which was published at Beaver Island. Notably, the Strangites do use the Doctrine and Covenants.

One of the most significant sites for Strangites is the Hill of Promise. This is where James Strang is believed to have found his “Voree plates. The discovery was found under a small tree on the hill, under which Strang claimed a buried record lay. He gathered respected men from the town to witness the excavation, ensuring no prior disturbance of the soil. An angel reportedly appeared to Strang, revealing the record’s location.

Upon opening the stone casing, the ancient record crumbled due to exposure to air, a common occurrence with ancient artifacts according to Weber. Strang translated this record using the Urim and Thummim, which he said he received from the angel Moroni. The “Voree record” was a short account of a people named “Raja Ramor” who lived in the area and, similar to the Nephites on the Hill Cumorah, were largely destroyed in a great war. The record also depicted the priesthood structure, aligning precisely with the priesthood under Joseph Smith and James Strang, including prophet, viceroy, twelve apostles, and seventies.

Beyond its historical significance, the Hill of Promise holds prophetic importance: James Strang’s revelations indicate that Daniel from the Bible will someday appear on this hill to teach the saints and announce the imminent second coming of Christ. Meetings are sometimes held there to commemorate this.

The tour also covered several other historically rich locations:

◦ The “Mormon House”: An old building from the early 1800s, it was once home to a member of James Strang’s church.

◦ Wingfield Watson’s House: Wingfield Watson was a significant leader in the church after James Strang. He lived in Voree, went to Beaver Island, and returned after the saints were run off the island. Born in Ireland, Watson was converted to Mormonism by Parley P. Pratt’s pamphlet, Voice of Warning, and later to Strangism by a Strangite elder. He lived a long life (1828-1922) and was a loyal disciple and stalwart leader who helped the scattered saints. His home is now occupied by David August’s son. A memorial to Wingfield Watson stands outside an old church, erected in 1984 by the Wingfield Watson Trust.

◦ The Old Church House: An earlier church building from the early 1900s, still stands today. It was used from  at least 1940 to around 1965, now serves as storage.

Another old building behind the church, It previously was used to print the Gospel Herald.

◦ The Stone Quarry: Located across the street from the trust farm, this quarry provided rock for many homes in Burlington that still stand, including James Strang’s parents’ house. The quarry is still actively mined.

The Strangite Church faced a significant challenge when a treasurer absconded with tithing money. Because the church was not legally registered with the government, the bank account was in the treasurer’s name, making recovery impossible. This incident prompted the church to obtain a charter and register as a legal entity to hold property, despite objections from some who felt it changed the church. However, registering with the government for legal recognition and property ownership was a common practice in church history.

This tour offered an incredible glimpse into the enduring legacy of James Strang and the Strangite community in Wisconsin. There is clearly much more to learn about their theology and continued existence.

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

I’ve visited some temples recently! “Gospel Tangents” recently hosted a surprise live session, a “late night unannounced edition,” much to the delight of its “night owl” viewers. I shared a whirlwind of Temples, Travels, updates, upcoming content, and even some breaking news from various Restorationist traditions.

I’ve been traveling extensively, leading to a “boatload of pictures” and a significant backlog of videos waiting to be edited. Despite the busy schedule, i’m eager to share my experiences:

◦ A key stop was the Hill of Promise, which the Strangites consider akin to the Hill Cumorah. It’s believed to be where James J. Strang found the Voree record, a “short record of the people of Raja Ramor.” This record described a people similar to those in the Book of Mormon, with a priesthood structure mirroring Joseph and James’s. The Hill of Promise also holds future significance, as Strangite revelations state that Daniel from the Bible will appear there to announce Christ’s approaching second coming.

◦ I also visited the site of the unbuilt Strangite temple in Burlington, which was planned to be “quite significant” in size.

◦ Rick also drove by James Strang’s house in Burlington, where Strang died three weeks after his assassination on the dock of Lake Michiga.

◦ A fascinating piece of news is that David Boice is moving to Utah at the end of July. Rick plans to visit Beaver Island (Strangite Island) in July or August, noting that while Gary Weber says there’s “not a lot to see,” one can rent a golf cart for getting around. He also mentioned Vicki Speek is working on a census of the island.

◦ For those unfamiliar, James J. Strang claimed an angelic ordination on the day Joseph Smith died (June 27, 1844). He translated the Voree plates and later the “plates of Laban” (published as the Book of the Law of the Lord). He settled in Burlington, then moved to Beaver Island, where he was crowned king and even served in the Michigan legislature. His efforts to stop Gentiles from selling liquor to Native Americans reportedly led to his assassination with the help of the U.S. Navy.

The live session included a book giveaway for “Joseph Fielding Smith a Mormon Theologian,” won by Mark Francis. Looking ahead, the channel is celebrating the release of John Turner’s new book, “Joseph Smith The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet,” which launched in June on Amazon. (The contest is over now.) Rick gave away an autographed copy of this book.

I discovered some surprising news regarding the Temple Lot Church: they are “going to quit selling the Book of Commandments.” I was “shocked” to learn that they might be preparing to de-canonize it, based on hints from Randy Sheldon.

I want to express my gratitude to my viewers, particularly the “night owls” who joined the spontaneous live session. There will be many exciting videos in the pipeline, despite my ongoing travel and editing challenges.

Matt Harris told me that only 30% of his research went into his book “2nd Class Saints” due to space restrictions. What was left out? We’ll find out and also get a preview of his upcoming biography of Hugh B Brown. Check out our conversation…

Don’t miss our other conversations with Matt: https://gospeltangents.com/people/matt-harris/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

GT  00:30  I think I’ve only asked you 1/20 of what I wanted to ask. I need to let you go, but the last question that I want to hit you on, I remember we had a conversation one time, and you said that when you write a book, you only put in about 30% of your research. Usually it’s because of page limitations and that sort of a thing. Can you share a story or two of the 70% that’s not in this book?

Matt  01:07  Yeah.

GT  01:09  I mean, I guess the Brown stuff, that’s for your new book. But what are some things that due to space restrictions you just couldn’t get in?

Matt  01:21  Well, just a quick thought, the Brown stuff is in there, his activism and speaking to the press and getting Monroe Fleming ordained or trying to get him ordained, that’s all in there in great detail. But the later stuff in the 1970s…

GT  01:34  Daddy, the recording, I don’t think that was in there.

Matt  01:38  No, no, no. That will be in my Brown biography. And in full disclosure, I found some of this stuff after, later.

GT  01:53  A book is never finished. Right?

Matt  01:58  Oh, my goodness. Well, there are other details that I’ll include about Brown and the ban, in particular, because it’s so pivotal to his story, as is polygamy, weirdly enough. And also, the other story I’ll just start with a teaser, is that Brown was told that he would be an apostle at the age of 15, if he lived righteous enough. He wasn’t called in the Quorum of the Twelve until he was 78 years of age.

GT  02:19 Wow.

Matt  02:20 That is a problem, especially if you’ve been told…

GT  02:24. We could have gotten rid of the ban sooner. Right? If he was only 20…

Matt  02:29. The teaser I’ll give you is it wasn’t the ban that kept him out. It was something else. He was accused of doing something he did not do.

GT  02:36  Did Newell Bringhurst share that story, or maybe you did. Was it with alcohol?

Matt  02:43  Newell wouldn’t have known this. Well, Newell knows it only for me. This is all new stuff that nobody knows about. And I’ve shared it with a few people.

GT  02:47  Was it with the alcohol commission or something?

Matt  02:52  Yeah. Some other time, I’ll tell you more about the details of that. It’s a fascinating thing. He was accused of taking bribes that he didn’t take. But perception can be reality.

GT  03:02. It doesn’t matter when it’s politics.

Matt  03:04  That’s right.

GT  03:04. Accusation is good enough.

Matt  03:05  That’s right, and especially when people’s income is at stake. So there’s a lot of things I didn’t talk about in this book. I couldn’t because of space constraints, but some of it was–I’ll give you a couple of examples. One deals with the activism. I talk a lot about the Church Education System and the BYU religion faculty and CES/Institute people, those who teach the young men and women of the Church, college age. I was shocked at the level of pushback from people who are paid to teach religion to the college-aged kids, how much they opposed the ban.

GT  03:51 Oh wow.

Matt  03:52 And you definitely get that in this book. You see it. I mean, I name some names, just the more high profile people like Lowell Bennion. But because of the length of the book, and they wanted to keep the price down, the press and all of that, I had to cut out a lot of details on that.

GT  04:10. Can we get a sequel?

Matt  04:14. And so I name names. I one of those people I go into, I talk about Hugh Nibley in this book, and he doesn’t agree with the ban. But I go into a lot more detail about Nibley’s views on the ban, that didn’t make it into this book. For example, let me tell you what…

GT  04:31. Can I get–you know, with Lengthen Your Stride, Edward Kimball had that. It’s one of my favorite books, the $150 book, from Benchmark.

Matt  04:41  The working draft.

GT  04:41  Yeah, from Benchmark, yes, because that is incredible. Can you do one of those?

Matt  04:47. Well, they asked me to recently. It’s funny, you say that. The Benchmark people asked me to. But I talk about Hugh Nibley’s views in more detail. Let’s just take a pause for a moment with Nibley. He’s the Church’s apologist. He’s trained at the University of California, at Berkeley. His field is ancient history. He’s written some really big, important articles in the 1950s dealing with the ancient world. Then at some point in his career, in the ‘50s, he turns to Mormon apologetics. He’s trying to put the Book of Mormon in its larger, ancient Near East context. He’s less concerned about linguistics and more concerned about the history, and to a lesser extent, even the theology. Other people will pick up on those strands through the years. John Sorensen, the anthropologist, will try to build on Nibley, in his area of expertise.

GT  05:43. Unfortunately, he just passed away, too.

Matt  05:45. He just passed away in his early 90s. Yeah, so Nibley influenced a lot of people, apologists, but Nibley never believed in the ban. I talk about this in my book, again, for a couple of paragraphs. But in the larger one, I go in to more space. Nibley never believed in the ban.   couple things; one is, he taught that God cursed land, not people. Number two, he never believed in this one-drop nonsense. Nibley was an astute reader of history, world languages. You know, he knew that the world was in motion, constant motion that different people from different cultures are mixing and intermarrying and having mixed race children. I mean, the whole race thing is just bogus. He knows this. I might tell your listeners something that Americans in general didn’t know about race construction up until an anthropologist at Columbia University named Franz Boas started writing about it in the early 20th century. Franz Boas is really pushing back on this idea that race is something that’s fixed, that we’re born black, we’re born white. He’s like, “This is nuts. This is just a construction.” If you look at how race is conceived in the United States in the early 20th century, if you live in Georgia, you could be classified as 1/16 black. You know, one of your great grand ancestors was black, or 1/32 in North Carolina, or 1/4 in South Carolina. I mean, think about that. They’re trying to figure out who’s black, based on a fraction that lawmakers had sat around a table arguing. It’s possible that you could be considered black in one state and move over to the next state and you’re considered white. And yet they’re creating these racial markers. It’s just driven by racism, that’s all it is. Because if the state identifies you as black, that means you can’t go to the white school. You can’t go to the restaurant that caters to white people. So the stakes are high. This is why you get people crossing below the color line, light skinned people crossing below the color line, identifying as white, when the fact is their great, great grandfather’s black. They’re not going to reveal this. And why would they? They want to be able to vote. They want to be able to go to the best schools, go to the restaurants of their choice.

Matt  08:08  Franz Boas is just puncturing a hole in all of this white supremacy stuff that is really, really strong in the first couple of decades in the 20th century. This is where lynchings are taking place, all of this stuff. In high schools, American schools, they’re teaching white supremacy everywhere. You look at the textbooks that they offer, and you look at best selling books from the day, that are predicated upon white supremacy. “Immigrants coming to this country,” one of the authors writes, in the 1920s, “they’re going to dilute the white race.” This is what Americans are buying. This is the context in which Joseph Fielding Smith writes his seminal book, The Way to Perfection. This is when the eugenics movement’s really flourishing. This is when Adolf Hitler’s coming to power with his views of race, some of which he learns from Americans, by the way. So white supremacy is just so endemic in the early 20th century. Protestants and Catholics are preaching all of this stuff from the pulpit. Some are even members of the Ku Klux Klan. So Franz Boas is writing about that this is just a race construction. It’s nuts. It’s wrong. It’s just to justify racism. Nibley reads this stuff. Lowell Bennion reads this stuff. And they tell the brethren, “There’s no such thing as a one drop. This is crazy.” And anyway, so Nibley doesn’t believe in any of this stuff. But if you read some of the things he says in public, he’s a loyal foot soldier. He is not an activist. He’s not Lowell Bennion. He’s not Sterling McMurrin. He’s not putting pressure on the brethren in other words. McMurrin puts pressure from the outside on the brethren. Lowell Bennion puts pressure on the inside. Hugh Brown does both. But Nibley doesn’t put pressure anyway, he just sort of—he says the right thing. He says, “Oh, the ban, I support it.” But in private, he’s criticizing the ban.

GT  10:10  So, in public, he’s supporting it,

Matt  10:11  Yeah.

GT  10:12  In private, he’s criticizing it.

Matt  10:13  Yes and, frankly, I lost a lot of respect for Hugh Nibley when I read his private papers. This is why it’s important, any historians who are listening to this, you’ve got to get into the archives. So, in public, he’s saying things about race, and then in private, he’s saying the exact opposite. He’s just giving his views about things in private that, as far as I know, that he doesn’t share with the apostles. I don’t think that he does. But when he talks about God cursing land, not people, Hugh Nibley finds his voice after the ban’s been lifted. So in 1981, he publishes a book where he talks about God curses land, not people. I’m like, come on, Brother Nibley! Why didn’t you say that before 1978. You could have done the Church some good, but he just wasn’t a controversial person that way. I can’t emphasize enough how controversial the ban was, because the Church was getting intense pressure from a handful of intellectuals within the Church, including the Church Education System, and they were getting hammered by outside groups. And so they didn’t want their own people criticizing them. They were already getting it from the outside.

Matt  11:30. One of the biggest critics was Lowell Bennion, and they ultimately fire him because of his activism. Anyway, your original question was, what did you leave out? I left out a lot of the details. Bennion I didn’t. He’s a big person in the story. I talk about why he gets fired, how he gets fired, and how that hurts him. But there are some lesser people in the Church Education System that I couldn’t talk about, that I go into great detail. They get in trouble with the brethren, and they write private letters to the brethren about the ban. And they’re doing it–they’re on the Church payroll. So let’s be clear, they’re not going rogue, unlike Lowell Bennion, who talked to his students. “The ban’s immoral.” What? You’re going to teach that to your students at the Institute and expect to live and tell about it? But the other ones would push back in private letters, respectfully. Then you get some people who are very independent minded, like George Boyd, who was the brother-in-law to Spencer Kimball, so he felt like he had a little connection and probably protection. But when Ernest Wilkinson’s deputy in the Church Education System, guy named William Barrett, when he told George Boyd, who taught at the University of Southern California Institute, and for a while he taught at the University of Utah, where one of his colleagues was Lowell Bennion. Anyway, Barrett told Boyd that you need to fall in line with the Church’s race teachings. Boyd just laughed in his face, “I don’t take you seriously. ” He said, “I don’t take the brethren seriously on the Negro question, either.”

GT  13:19. Wow.

Matt  13:19. That’s what he said in 1955.

GT  13:21. Wow. That’s like Brown board versus Board of Education.

Matt  13:27. Yes. Well, you think back about this. I can’t imagine any CES person today telling their boss that I don’t take your view on this point of doctrine seriously, nor your boss’s view, ultimately, my boss, the brethren. I mean, it just speaks to the independence that some of these CES people, thought that they had at the time. Boyd, of course, again, he’s got a connection. His brother-in-law is an important apostle. But there are lesser people who didn’t have those connections and when they tried to do what Boyd did, they were pushed out.

GT  14:06. Yeah, I’ll bet.

Matt  14:07. And when Lowell Bennion was–I talk about this in my book, but when Lowell Bennion was pushed out in 1962, Apostle Mark Petersen spoke to the CES people, and he essentially said that if any one of you are opposed to any of our doctrines, this is not a place for you. You’re going to follow the same path as Lowell Bennion.

GT  14:37 Oh, wow, that was quite a threat.

Matt  14:38 He didn’t say Bennion by name. Let’s be clear. Bennion’s name was unmentioned, but this happened a few weeks after the firing. Everybody knew what that meant. Bennion wasn’t the only one who was let go. His colleague, Edgar Lyon was also an opponent of the ban. Lyon, they were both really, really prominent educators. The students loved both Lyon and Bennion for different reasons. They had different teaching styles, but the students loved them.  So, what the brethren did was they knew that they couldn’t fire these guys out right. There would be an absolute revolution. So what they did was they decided that they would reassign them, to remove them from the classroom. And that’s just a ruse to fire them.

GT  15:31 Right, you’re on the curriculum committee.

Matt  15:34 Yes, we’re going to put you in the basement of the Church building, in a dark corner with nobody around. And, oh, by the way, we’re going to read everything you write in the manual 19 times with a red pencil. So, that’s what they’re doing. I mean, they’re getting control. They’re clipped and controlled, as it’s been said. So Bennion is so hurt by this, he rejects it. He’s like, “I know what you’re doing. I’m not going to do this.” So, he’s written manuals for them before, let’s be clear. But he does not want to do this, and so he takes a job at the University of Utah.

GT  16:09 Where he’s still beloved.

Matt  16:13 Yes, true. It’s true, he is. You talk to Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Pulitzer Prize winning historian at Harvard University, who was one of his students, the late Doug Alder, a friend of mine who’s a Mormon historian [and he is still beloved by them.]  He [Bennion] was the president at Dixie State for years, and he was also a professor of history at Utah State for a while. Anyway, Doug Alder was a student of his, of Lowell Bennion’s. The late, great Eugene England was a student of Lowell Bennion. I mean, the list is long. Today’s generation, I’m sad to say, doesn’t know a whole lot about Lowell Bennion. But in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, his influence, at least for college students who went through the University of Utah’s Institute program–well, he was fired by then. But the people who came of age in the Church in the 1960s, 70s and into the 80s, who knew him and his influence, praised him. Let me say a quick word about Bennion. He was an independent thinker enough that he could tell President McKay and others his views on the ban. And obviously he crossed some proprietary lines by telling his students his views. But he said something interesting, Lowell Bennion. I got a hold of his memoirs that are unpublished. They’re in the Church Archives. Again, this is the turkey. Lowell Bennion said in his archives that he was privileged to teach. He was privileged to teach. So this 1976 that he wrote his memoir. He was privileged to teach. And he listed several students. He listed, “I was privileged to teach several General Authorities. Marion Hanks was one of them who was a student and would later become his colleague.” He admired Elder Hanks. I wonder why Hanks was liberal. (Rick chuckling)  “I was privileged to teach,” I think it was Neil Maxwell. He mentioned there were two other general authorities, one of whom was Bruce McConkie.  And he said, “I was able to influence four of the five general authorities that I taught. I could never, ever influence Elder McConkie. He was too independent.” (Both chuckling) I was having one of those moments where I burst out laughing.

GT  18:41 McConkie went to the University of Utah, too, right?

Matt  18:44  He did, yes, as an undergraduate. Then he went to, I think, Michigan for his law degree. So, Lowell Bennion taught Elder McConkie as a younger man, and even as a 21-year-old guy, he couldn’t get through to him. If anyone knows, just to be clear, it’s not surprising for a couple of reasons. Lowell Bennion was a liberal thinker. One of the things he taught that I appreciate a lot is he came of age in a great flourishing of Protestant theology. He’s reading this stuff. He’s a very open reader. He’s not just reading Church material. What he read from the 20th century, was that good theology is a theology that brings us together. Good theology is a theology that addresses life’s problems in society, whether it’s racism, poverty…  Good theology is one that produces harmony. You can see why he opposes the ban. The ban’s divisive. It doesn’t bring people together. In fact, it causes people to question. That was his view. And he never thought that it was good theology, either, to say, “Hey, look, you may not understand this point in life, but don’t worry. Be patient. God will work it out in the resurrection.” That’s bad theology he would argue. Theology is supposed to make sense for us today, in the here and now, in the present. He was very liberal in that sort of thinking, because this is liberal Protestant theology. That’s what’s influencing this. Elder McConkie was the opposite. He’s getting influenced by his father and then, most particularly, his father-in-law, Joseph Fielding Smith. So you can see why these two men would be polar opposites when it came to theology. But, to Lowell Bennion’s credit, even in private, he never disparaged the brethren, even Joseph Fielding Smith, who was responsible for his purge. It was Elder Smith that was the one leading the Cavalry to get him fired in 1962. Even Elder Smith and Elder McConkie and some of the men with whom he clashed, he always praised them in private. At least he spoke generously of them never, never showed any bitterness. To me, I guess I’ve been impressed by that. He was able to handle his emotions.  But in 1962 he wasn’t happy.

GT  21:18  Well, very good. So just a reminder to everybody, I’m giving away a copy. Go to gospeltangents.com/contest.[1] You might win an autographed copy of this book right here. A couple of things. I’ve got two pages of notes, and I asked like, three questions, I think,

Matt  21:39  Uh oh, that means I was long winded.

GT  21:43  Oh no, no, no, I love it.

GT  21:45  But also, check out my previous interviews with Matt. We’ve talked a lot about some of the stuff in the book. Can I just ask one question? You have to give a short answer.

Matt  21:57  Sure.

GT  21:58  On page 204, I read something, and it says–my question that I wrote, because I didn’t quite understand. It says, “Did Lee propose temple in Brazil?”

Matt  22:15. Yes, Harold Lee is the one that conceived of the idea in Brazil. President Kimball used that proposal to convince the brethren to lift the ban.

GT  22:27  That doesn’t make sense. Does it? Because of all the biracial problems? I mean, we’ve talked about that previously. I knew when I talked to you before, that Lee had purchased some property, and at the time you said you didn’t know what the purpose was and that President Kimball came in and said, “We’re going to put a temple here.” But Did Lee have that idea, too?

Matt  22:49  Oh, doubtful.

GT  22:51 Okay,

Matt  22:52  Doubtful.

GT  22:53  That’s what I wanted to make sure. Okay.

Matt  22:55. But the question I would ask if I were to interview Harold Lee, which is not possible, but if I were to interview him, I’d say President Lee, what are you thinking? How would you negotiate this temple with the ban? But that’d be the first question I would ask him. There’s zero evidence that he was remotely considering lifting the ban, even though he knew it was harming the Church.

GT  23:21  But he was going to put a temple in Brazil.

Matt  23:23. He was–they announced a temple. During his brief tenure as president, they announced the they were going to break ground for a temple. That all happens under his successors watch, Kimball. But it was Lee that announced it to the Church, and then Kimball recognized that he could use this temple as leverage to get the brethren to lift the ban. But Lee, I’ve talked about this a lot with different people, about Harold Lee’s views on race and I’ve seen a lot of material, and there’s just no evidence. In fact, there’s evidence in the opposite direction.  And I’ll just give you…

GT  23:57  So, this was just a temple for white people in Brazil?

Matt  24:00  Yeah, yeah.

GT  24:02  That seems strange. It’s like putting–we haven’t talked about Nigeria. We haven’t talked about Byron Marchant, Doug Wallace. There are so many things.

Matt  24:12. But see, that’s–

GT  24:12  You’ve got to read this book.

Matt  24:14  But that’s the that’s part of the consistency, right? They thought they could target white populations, and it’s just a fool’s errand. You can’t do that in Brazil. This is a country that has a long history of race mixing and long history of slavery. They thought they could target the white populations. But there’s no way to determine who bears African ancestors simply by looking at somebody. So, Elder Lee, I mean, patriarchal blessings, that’s another story. But how do you give blessings to these folks? You’re supposed to declare lineage,

GT  24:51  Yeah

Matt  24:52  The patriarchs in Brazil were declaring lineage all over the place. They were declaring lineage from Cain and Ham. I mean, those are biblical counter figures, and you’re being told that you’re from the lineage of Cain. Really? That’s not going to make you happy. And then some of them are told that they derive from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That’s hard, because those are temple blessings. Those are covenant lineages. And then, lastly, some of the patriarchs were not giving lineage declarations at all, which is a big taboo, because the purpose of a blessing is to declare one’s lineage.

Matt  25:25. So there’s a lot of issues going on, and Lee knows about this stuff, but he just thought that they could target the white population. President Kimball obviously knew that that’s [impossible.] They know they were ordaining black men to the priesthood or biracial men. They know this. They talk about it, and they hear about it from other people. I’ll just say this, because we’re running out of time. But as the brethren approached the ban in 1978, President Kimball had been working with the brethren to see the wisdom of lifting the ban. And he uses, as I noted, Brazil as one of the factors to do this. He talks about the blessings. We’ve got to get on board with the blessings. And he also says that we know we’re ordaining black men to the priesthood. We’ve been doing this for a long time. Let’s just make it legitimate now.

GT  26:08  Yeah.

Matt  26:09  And so that’s what happens and they lift the ban. And fortunately, people like Elder McConkie, when he hears President Kimball say, “You know, we’ve got this problem in Brazil. What do we do?” Elder McConkie is like, “Hmm, I think we should drop the ban.” “Ah, good point, Elder McConkie. I never thought of that.” And that was President Kimball’s genius leadership, right, making Elder McConkie part of the solution by posing a question to him, “What should we do?” Kimball knows what needs to be done. His remarkable leadership allowed him to finesse these very difficult issues with at least some of the brethren.

GT  26:48  Well, I encourage you all, like I said, I think this is going to be an award winning book. It’s already a best seller. So if you don’t have it, and if you don’t win it, go out and buy it anyway. Buy two, buy three, give them to your friends.

Matt  27:08  Amen. Well said.

GT  27:14. Dr, Matt Harris, I want to thank you so much. I know this could have been an eight-hour interview, but I don’t want to take all your day. But this is, this is just fantastic. I just want to thank you for being here on Gospel Tangents.

Matt  27:29. It was a pleasure. Rick,. This is always lovely to talk to you.

GT  27:32  Thanks.

{End of Part 6}

[1] Contest ended in 2024.

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

We’re discussing polygamy in John Turner’s Joseph Smith Biography and giving away a book!

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

Welcome, everyone, to Gospel Tangents Live! Sunday, we were live, giving away a copy of John Turner’s acclaimed biography, “The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet.” I just wrapped up an amazing interview with Turner. He is a super fun guy. It was certainly an engaging discussion, even touching on unexpected controversies like the gold plates.

I’ll have a specific focus on the often-debated topic of polygamy. I’ll be tackling this subject for an upcoming presentation at Sunstone (University of Utah, Aug 1st) and the John Whitmer Historical Association (Independence, September 20th).

Let’s break down some of the key points discussed, looking at both the “problematic” and “overwhelming” evidence surrounding Joseph Smith’s polygamy.

There are several challenging aspects of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, as presented in Turner’s book:

Despite the problematic aspects, John Turner consider “overwhelming evidence” for Joseph Smith’s involvement in polygamy:

◦ Joseph Bates Noble performed the sealing of Joseph Smith to Louisa Beaman on April 5, 1841, noted in two different journals. Noble was also plurally sealed to Sarah Alley in 1843, a sealing believed to be performed by Joseph Smith.

Zina Huntington (page 261) and several other women discussed Joseph Smith being commanded by an “angel with a drawn sword” for Joseph to practice polygamy. There are several accounts of this angel with a drawn sword, not just Zina’s account.

Joseph Smith’s marriages often occurred in quick succession:

◦ Zina Huntington was sealed to Joseph Smith in October 1841 while six months pregnant.

◦ Agnes Coolbrith (Don Carlos’s wife) was sealed to Joseph in January 1842.

◦ Lucinda Morgan Harris, widow of William Morgan (involved in the Masonic secrets affair), was sealed to Joseph in February 1842.

◦ Miranda Hyde was sealed to Joseph on April 9, 1842.

◦ Eliza Snow was sealed on June 29, 1842 (the podcast’s anniversary of this event!).

◦ Lucy Decker was sealed to Brigham Young on June 14, 1842.

◦ A letter instructed to bring Sarah and Whitney and to “watch out for Emma,” which Turner believes was to keep the meeting secret from Emma, rejecting the skeptic’s idea that it was about protecting Joseph from arrest.

◦ Sarah Whitney (already secretly sealed to Joseph) entered a “sham marriage” to Joseph Kingsbury on April 1, 1843, to get her “off the market” from other suitors9.

◦ William Clayton married Margaret Moon (his wife’s sister), and Clayton states they shared a bed.

◦ Lucy Walker married Joseph Smith on May 1, 1843.

◦ Almira Johnson shared a bed with Joseph Smith, according to her father, Benjamin Johnson, who also stated Joseph shared a bed with another wife the previous month, suggesting Joseph was sexually involved with other women.

◦ Emily Partridge, one of the Partridge sisters Emma reportedly chose for Joseph, confirmed sexual relations in later court testimony during the Temple Lot case in the 1880s. Testimony with a penalty of perjury is “hard to dismiss”.

◦ Bostwick said that Hyrum (Joseph’s brother) slept with his spiritual wives in 1844, indicating sexual relations were not exclusive to Joseph.

The discussion touched on D&C 132 and the story of Emma and Hyrum’s conversation about it. Skeptics often claim this section is a forgery. How skeptics deal with the implications for sealing power and temple ordinances if D&C 132 (and 110) were forged, as it would invalidate “even monogamous couples together?”

◦ Margaret Moon (sealed to William Clayton) regretted her plural marriage, and Sarah Crooks rejected a proposal from Clayton.

◦ Lydia Moon rejected Joseph Smith (later marrying two Clayton brothers).

◦ Emma repeatedly asked Joseph to renounce polygamy, even smashing Flora Woodworth’s watch after finding Eliza Snow’s letters.

◦ Emily Partridge stated Emma wanted her and her sister Eliza to break covenants, leading to their “divorce” from Joseph.

Joseph Smith was married to Melissa Lot (age 19) and Fanny Young (age 56) on the same day (September 20, 1843), highlighting the wide range of ages. Fanny Young and Eliza Snow (who never had children) were likely infertile and thus excluded from his probability models.

◦ William Law was convinced Joseph Smith had slept with Maria Lawrence. Turner believes Joseph Smith actually invented adultery allegations against William Law. Joseph Smith was opposed by William Law, Leonard Soby, and Francis Higbee, leading to the Nauvoo Expositor.

◦ Emma famously denounced polygamy in the Relief Society and the Nauvoo Neighbor.

◦ Joseph Smith excommunicated William Law, Jane Law, Wilson Law, and Foster for their opposition.

◦ In 1844, Joseph Smith was indicted on adultery charges and would have faced trial had he not died.

Some skeptics argue Joseph didn’t have sex with his plural wives even if sealed. These testimonies suggest otherwise.

The episode was a live stream, with listeners checking in from North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Georgia. We celebrated Grant Lloyd from Martin, Georgia, who won a copy of John Turner’s book!

In other news, our host is working on editing an interview with Gary Weber of the Strangite Church. I’m also working on a video tour with Joseph Soderberg of old Mormon churches in Ogden and Salt Lake, including President Hinckley’s church, the unofficial ward historian, highlighting a time capsule from 1909.

Comments and questions?

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

In our final conversation with Dan and Ann Hatch of Christ’s Church, we’ll get into whether they accept black Church members. Do they ordain blacks? (Many fundamentalists reject the 1978 revelation on priesthood from Spencer W Kimball in the mainstream LDS Church.) We’ll also discuss why outsiders can’t attend priesthood meetings, solemn assemblies, and other topics.

Don’t miss our other conversations with Ann & Dan: https://gospeltangents.com/people/ann-hatch/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Recently, we had the privilege of speaking with Dan and Ann Hatch, the Temple President and Matron for Christ’s Church Temple, to delve into the distinctive beliefs and practices of their church. While sharing some common roots, Christ Church operates with several notable differences that offer a fascinating look into their unique path.

Here are some key insights from our conversation:

One of the most immediate distinctions discussed was Christ Church’s stricter interpretation of the Word of Wisdom compared to the LDS Church. While they adhere to the same principles found in Doctrine and Covenants Section 89, their understanding goes further. Members are expected to abstain from cocoa-containing products (chocolate) and swine flesh (pork). This specific interpretation of avoiding chocolate was formally established in 1992, following a direct inquiry in a Q&A session with the Prophet, who received a revelation on the spot confirming the prohibition.

This means no chocolate bars, no chocolate ice cream, and no bacon. Herbal teas are permissible, unlike coffee and Postum. Even cold caffeinated drinks like Coke and Pepsi are not preferred, with caffeine generally interpreted as part of the “hot drinks” prohibition. The change had a significant impact on members, with one anecdotal story highlighting a mother’s decision to wait until after Christmas to be baptized so she could enjoy one last chocolate orange.

Christ Church has its own set of 22 Articles of Faith, which are an expanded and customized version, having gone through three revisions via revelation. These articles are more detailed and align with their Temple recommend questions, of which there are 24 or 25.

Notably, their first Article of Faith states: “We believe in God the Eternal Father the literal father of both our body and our spirit who as Michael Adam created this world on our behalf we believe Jesus Christ The Offspring of God the Father and Mary who lived without committing sin and willingly provided atonement for the sins of the world in the Garden of Gethsemane finally giving his life up upon the cross we believe in the Holy Ghost the third member of the godhead the witness and testator who lived upon the Earth at the head of this this dispensation”. The reference to “the head of this dispensation” refers to Joseph Smith.

In addition to customized Articles of Faith, Christ’s Church boasts a unique collection of over 230 inspired songs. Their own composer, Gloria, began writing music and songs around 1975-1976 under the direction of Rulon, a former leader. These songs are considered “totally in the spirit and completely 100% inspired”. Originally called “Paquin hymns,” they are now known as “Songs of Zion” and are in the process of being published in a hardbound hymnal. While they have their own hymns, they also use the LDS hymnal and occasionally sing songs from the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) hymnal. There’s also hope to incorporate some of Eliza R. Snow’s poems and songs into their new book.

When it comes to temple attendance and church gatherings, Christ Church has specific requirements:

What are your thoughts about Christ’s Church?

Copyright © 2024

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Joseph Smith’s arrest for treason in having the Nauvoo Expositor destroyed led to his death. He didn’t use habeas corpus to get out of this jam, and it cost him his life. Dr John Turner shares his reactions to Joseph’s life. Check out our conversation…

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission.

Joseph Smith, a towering figure in American religious history, saw his life come to a dramatic and tragic end in June 1844. As discussed in this conversation with John Turner, author of “Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet,” the events leading up to his death reveal a complex interplay of political tension, legal maneuverings, and personal choices.

The final six months of Joseph Smith’s life were marked by increasingly provocative and reckless actions. He engaged in unnecessary fights, denouncing and antagonizing men from the stand during meetings, almost as if “inviting opposition.” His rhetoric and one-on-one conversations with dissenters were “incautious.” While he was under an “incredible amount of stress” due to fears of enemies and potential execution, this stress often led him to respond in unconstructive ways.

A key event was the destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor newspaper in May 1844. This act made him vulnerable to his enemies. While some historians like Michael Quinn have suggested the Council of Fifty minutes and negotiations with foreign nations were a bigger concern than polygamy charges in the Expositor, Joseph and his allies used “salty language” for various objections to the paper, including theological innovations, accumulation of political power, and polygamy. It wasn’t a single issue, and despite opponents like William Law finding it difficult to break with Joseph, his incendiary behavior prevented reconciliation.

When Governor Thomas Ford of Illinois sent a posse to arrest Joseph Smith in June 1844, Joseph initially fled across the Mississippi River, contemplating leaving Nauvoo and reuniting with his wife, Emma, elsewhere. He had a history of evading arrest. However, he ultimately chose to return to Nauvoo and go to Carthage to face charges related to the Nauvoo Expositor‘s destruction.

Later sources sometimes blame individuals, like Emma, for convincing him to return, not wanting him to abandon her and the family. However, a contemporary letter from Vilate Kimble states that Joseph “sought the will of the Lord and God told him to return.” This indicates Joseph believed his decision to return was a revelation.

Joseph Smith’s experience with legal challenges, particularly his use of habeas corpus, is a significant aspect of his later life. Habeas corpus is a legal mechanism that gives an arrested individual an opportunity for a hearing on the legality of their arrest at the earliest stage of the process.

John Turner’s overall impression of Joseph Smith is that of “a bit of both” – prophet and scoundrel. As a “religion maker and the forger of a tradition,” there is “a lot to admire,” and Turner personally enjoys elements of Joseph’s personality and finds many of his ideas “arresting.”

However, Joseph also exhibited “significant flaws,” sometimes treating close associates like Orson and Parley Pratt or Martin Harris with callousness and cruelty. Turner also expresses “serious reservations about the way that Joseph pursued plural marriage” and the treatment of individuals involved. While Joseph could be hospitable and charitable, he also had what Turner describes as “a touch of what I’d call megalomania” concerning his role in the grand order of things, his ability to pursue it, and his imperviousness to risk and danger. Turner generally avoids psychoanalyzing Joseph, noting the difficulty for historians to do so.

Ultimately, Joseph Smith remains a figure of immense historical importance, whose actions, choices, and the turbulent context of his time continue to be a subject of fascination and study.

How do you view Joseph Smith?

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

We’re diving into Nauvoo polygamy & Joseph Smith’s many wives. How often did he have sexual relations with his wives? Was it less frequent than many think? John Turner attempts to answer. Check out our conversation…

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

The Nauvoo period (1839-1844) in the history of the Latter-day Saints is a fascinating and often controversial chapter, particularly concerning the practice of plural marriage, or polygamy, by Joseph Smith. Historian John Turner, author of the acclaimed biography “Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of American Prophet,” sheds light on this complex topic.

Following Joseph Smith’s escape from jail in Missouri, the Latter-day Saints established a new community in Nauvoo, Illinois. The choice of Nauvoo was largely due to an individual named Isaac Galland, a land speculator who had extensive land holdings on both sides of the Mississippi River in Nauvoo and Iowa. Galland was in contact with church leaders even while Joseph was imprisoned, making the possibility of purchasing these lands an early consideration.

Upon arriving in Quincy, Illinois, Joseph Smith quickly pursued these land purchases, and Saints began to gather rapidly on both sides of the Mississippi. Despite facing opposition and being advised by opponents to spread out, Joseph Smith characteristically doubled or tripled down on his vision rather than backing down from setbacks. This resolve led to the quick establishment of Nauvoo, a community that by 1844 rivaled Chicago as the largest city in Illinois. Far from an interruption, Nauvoo represented an “acceleration of Joseph’s vision” in the years after 1839.

It is in this rapidly growing and centralizing community that Joseph Smith’s plural marriage practice truly took off. John Turner noted that the pace of Joseph’s marriages was “astonishing,” with him reportedly taking a dozen wives in 1842 alone. While “monogamy affirmers” or “polygamy skeptics” contend that these events did not occur, most scholars, including John Turner and Larry Foster, agree that the evidence for Joseph Smith’s practice of polygamy is “overwhelming”.

While it is difficult to precisely date exact timelines or get directly inside Joseph Smith’s mind to understand his intentions, there is substantial evidence regarding his polygamous activities. Joseph Smith took pains to keep his plural marriages quiet. However, information comes from:

Joseph Smith himself did not explicitly articulate a singular reason for the exact number of women he married. However, contextually, and based on what other early Latter-day Saints said about plural marriage during these years, it appears that Joseph connected “the size of an individual’s family on earth to the extent of his heavenly glory”. This theological motivation led him to pursue additional plural marriages “assiduously” and at times, “recklessly,” to “get all that you can” as he explained to William Clayton.

This rationale explains why he was sealed to such a “diversity of women” – very young women, older women, married women, and single women. Joseph’s approach was not to quietly or secretively be sealed to just two or three women, but to continually pursue additional plural marriages, even after the practice became a public controversy in the summer of 1842. Turner notes that Joseph “just was not his approach” to keep his head down or make fewer waves, often demonstrating a “lack of caution and prudence” in his activities toward the end of his life.

A frequently asked question concerns the frequency of sexual relations in these plural marriages. It’s crucial to distinguish between what can be documented and what is a reasonable supposition.

This hypothesis that sex was infrequent suggests that plural marriage was not solely about Joseph’s sex drive. While he may have had sincere theological motivations, this does not absolve him of “behaving inappropriately in many instances” towards women, their families, and his associates, whose wives he sometimes pursued. The topic, like Joseph Smith himself, tends to be polarizing, with some viewing it as “nothing” and others as “everything,” but the evidence suggests a more nuanced reality.

The intricacies of Joseph Smith’s polygamy remain a subject of ongoing historical inquiry, with scholars striving to understand the motivations and realities behind this controversial practice, often limited by available information.

Comments?

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

The origins of polygamy are murky. Was there an 1831 revelation on the topic? What was the nature of the Fanny Alger relationship? We’ll also discuss Zion’s Camp, and Joseph Smith’s dog, Old Major, who caused some issues with the troops. How did Liberty Jail affect Joseph Smith & the Church? John Turner tackles these questions. Check out our conversation…

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

We recently had the privilege of delving into the life of Joseph Smith with John Turner, author of the compelling biography, Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet. The conversation unpacked some of the most intriguing and lesser-known episodes from Smith’s early life, providing valuable context and challenging common narratives.

One of the topics we explored was the Fanny Alger controversy. While historical sources on this episode are often late or secondhand, making it difficult to write about with confidence, John Turner found persuasive arguments that date Fanny Alger’s relationship with Joseph Smith to shortly before she left Kirtland in August or September of 1836.

Interestingly, there’s been discussion about whether this was an “adoptive sealing.” However, John said it’s considered unlikely to have been an adoptive sealing because Joseph Smith had not yet fully articulated or developed his understanding of sealing at that time. Oliver Cowdery, a key figure in the early church, certainly didn’t view it as such, remaining “very angry about it in early 1838.” Instead, it is most likely to have been “some sort of intimate relationship” that was disturbing to both Oliver Cowdery and Emma Smith. He said It is also considered unlikely to have been a plural marriage.

It’s worth noting that while sexual impropriety allegations were common against new religious movements, the Fanny Alger controversy, though a “live issue within the church for several years,” did not particularly resonate with the church’s external critics at the time in the context of plural marriage or polygamy. In fact, the Church’s 1835 Declaration on Marriage emphasized monogamy as the standard.

Moving to 1834, we discussed Zion’s Camp, Joseph Smith’s march to Missouri. While often seen as a significant event for its larger purposes, it also had its lighter — and more human — moments. One such detail involves “Old Major,” Joseph Smith’s dog.

During the challenging and conflict-ridden trip, Old Major didn’t get along with another church member, Sylvester Smith (no relation to Joseph). The dog’s barking at night and potential attempts to bite Sylvester led to Sylvester speaking “rude things about Joseph Smith’s dog” and even wanting to shoot it. In a moment highlighting the “juvenile” but understandable “temper flared” nature of the trip, Joseph Smith reportedly threatened to shoot Sylvester Smith in response. This anecdote underscores that the participants of Zion’s Camp were “not all of one heart in mind.” Sylvester Smith later published a confession for opposing Joseph rudely, even managing to say the note was made “under duress.”

From a broader perspective, while the spiritual purpose of Zion’s Camp — the redemption of Zion — ultimately failed, it was ironically a “very positive thing for many of those who were participants.” Despite Zion not being redeemed and the march stopping short of engaging enemies or reclaiming property, the majority of marchers found their faith strengthened. This was partly because, by accepting the call, they were “further entering into Joseph’s story,” experiencing “divine promises and chastening and failures” alongside him. Joseph Smith highly valued this loyalty, rewarding many participants with “blessings with church offices.” He viewed their decision to stick with him despite difficulties as a testament to their loyalty and friendship.

Finally, our conversation delved into a period often overlooked: Joseph Smith’s four months in Liberty Jail (late 1838 to early 1839). While it might seem like an interlude in Joseph’s kinetic life, John Turner emphasized its profound significance.

These were “incredibly terrible months” for Joseph Smith. The jail was “squalid,” and he experienced a “very forlorn moment,” even feeling “abandoned by God.” Beyond the harsh conditions, Joseph faced a capital charge of treason. While we now know Missouri officials allowed him to escape, Joseph had to “contemplate with the horror of those four months and the possibility going forward that people in Missouri or elsewhere might want to arrest and execute him.”

This traumatic experience had a lasting impact. John Turner suggested that Joseph’s actions in Nauvoo, particularly concerning “politics and the judicial system,” which often seemed “reckless, provocative, sometimes unwise,” were likely influenced by the trauma of Liberty Jail. Joseph’s strong desire not to be “dragged back to Missouri” or “imprisoned where he might be vulnerable to his enemies” in places like Missouri or Carthage later on, was a direct consequence of his time locked up and facing possible execution.

These insights from John Turner’s work offer a nuanced and empathetic view into Joseph Smith’s life, highlighting both personal struggles and pivotal historical moments. To dive deeper, be sure to check out Joseph Smith: The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet!

Don’t miss our other conversations with John: https://gospeltangents.com/people/john-turner/

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

What does John Turner believe about the Golden Plates? Were they made of tin as Dan Vogel asserts? What about the First Vision controversy? Does John think Joseph was a pious fraud? Did Joseph take advantage of Martin Harris? John answers these and other question. Check out our conversation…

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission

Historian John Turner, author of Joseph Smith, The Rise and Fall of an American Prophet, delves into the enduring mystery surrounding Joseph Smith’s golden plates and the origins of the Book of Mormon. His insights offer a nuanced perspective, moving beyond simple pronouncements to a historian’s critical examination.

When it comes to the golden plates, Turner makes a clear distinction between visionary experiences and material objects. While he acknowledges that understanding Joseph Smith’s visions is difficult as a historian, dealing with a physical claim like the golden plates is different.

Turner’s “best judgment” as a historian is that Joseph Smith did not have actual golden plates. However, he strongly believes Joseph did engage in a “certain amount of subterfuge”. Joseph clearly possessed some sort of physical object which he would place in a box, heft around, and at times cover with a linen cloth. Others, including Emma Smith, witnessed an object that seemed like “thin sheets of metal under a linen cloth,” suggesting some form of metallic object.

For Turner, the simplest explanation for a young man claiming to have a valuable object he can’t show to anyone else is that he doesn’t have it. This conclusion is also reinforced by his reading of the Book of Mormon as a 19th-century text, rather than an ancient record. If it’s a 19th-century text, golden plates aren’t necessary, making it “more likely” that the text “flows out of Joseph’s literary imagination”.

Turner emphasizes that this critical examination is not meant to be disrespectful to faithful Latter-day Saints, but rather a serious approach to studying the tradition.

The question of what Joseph might have had in the box has led to various theories:

However, Turner states that there is not enough evidence to support any of these alternative theories. While these are “suggestive possibilities,” he concludes, “we can’t know. So, I think we have to leave it as a bit of a mystery”. He also clarifies that for him, the “absence of evidence for any alternative explanation is [not] evidence for the faithful account”.

Despite his view on the golden plates, Turner doesn’t primarily see Joseph Smith as a “fraud,” “deceiver,” or “impostor”. While he acknowledges an “element of deception that gets it off the ground,” his main takeaway from the Book of Mormon project is its utter improbability and audacity.

Turner describes it as a “hairbrained scheme” that Joseph “pulls off”. He points out that it was “utterly unlikely” for a 21-year-old Joseph Smith, without formal education, to embark on such a project and publish a 600-page book. This remarkable literary success, while not a bestseller at the time, certainly had “serious legs”. Turner sees this as “an act of audacity” rather than primarily an “act of deception,” crediting Joseph Smith with this incredible literary production.

The question of Joseph Smith’s sincerity is complex. Turner generally tries to avoid weighing in on Joseph’s sincerity at any given moment, noting that it’s difficult to assess even for people we interact with daily.

He does, however, believe that Joseph was a “sincere Christian” in the sense that his family had been seeking a context to “encounter to know and be saved by Jesus Christ”. Joseph was familiar with the Bible and prayed sincerely. Ultimately, Turner concludes that “Joseph believes in the vision that the Book of Mormon and his other texts articulate”.

Martin Harris was instrumental in the Book of Mormon’s publication, even mortgaging his farm to bankroll it. Turner notes that Harris was “desperate to believe” in the golden plates and Joseph, being “very primed to believe” and looking for a new direction in his life. In the end, Harris reportedly felt he “gotten what he was looking for” and did not think Joseph had deceived or swindled him.

However, Turner finds Joseph’s treatment of Martin “troubling” in certain ways. He believes Joseph applied “ecclesiastical pressure to get a wavering Martin Harris over the line to bankroll or guarantee the book publication”. Furthermore, in early 1830, Joseph appeared “a little bit callous toward Harris,” being “reluctant to split profits from the book sales with him” and seeming to “cut him out of the potential Canadian copyright sale”. Turner describes Joseph’s treatment of Harris as “a little bit on the shabby side”.

The discussion also briefly touched upon a possible 1831 polygamy revelation related to elders marrying Native Americans on the Missouri border, as suggested by a later account from William Phelps. Turner, however, states he does “not put too much stock in that” and does not believe there is “solid evidence for Joseph having had a revelation on plural marriage in the 1830s“. He notes that a critic from that period, Ezra Booth, who wrote scathing letters after becoming disillusioned with Joseph, made no mention of polygamy, which Turner believes would have been “good fuel for Booth’s criticism” had it existed.

John Turner’s approach invites a deeper, more analytical engagement with the history of Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saint tradition, encouraging readers to consider the complexities and human elements behind the narratives.

Copyright © 2025

Gospel Tangents

All Rights Reserved

Except for book reviews, no content may be reproduced without written permission