John C. Bennett and Homosexuality in Nauvoo – Pt 3 w/ LDS Discussions Ep. 51

Introduction and Episode Overview

John Dehlin 0:00 Hello everyone and welcome back to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It's January 25, 2024 and we are here to discuss part three of our LDS discussion series. Today we're going to be talking about John C. Bennett, Joseph Smith's right hand man, and homosexuality in Nauvoo, Illinois during the final years of Joseph Smith's life. This is part of the LDS discussion series. If you're. This is the first time you've joined us on Mormon Stories or on LDS Discussions, we want to strongly recommend that you pause this, go back to the beginning. This is like the 50th or the 51st episode of LDS discussions. It's a series where we're trying to discuss explore Mormon Church truth claims in as neutral and objective and as fact based of a foundation as we can. And these episodes build on each other. So you can go to YouTube, the LDS discussions playlist. You can go to Spotify, you can go to Apple Podcasts. Wherever you get your podcast, there should be a LDS discussions series there. You can start from the very beginning. You can watch it on YouTube. You'll get the best experience if you watch it either on Spotify or on YouTube. But you're also very welcome to listen to it on any podcast platform that you prefer. This series is well loved and we're so thrilled that it's continuing. We want to welcome back on the show Mike, the father of LDS discussions. Hey, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:29 Hey, everybody, how's it going?

John Dehlin 1:32 Mike has a website called LDSDiscussions.com where he wrote a gazillion amazing essays and you can read all this research that he did. Mike, it's good to have you back.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43 It's good to be back. Nice to be back with everybody here. So it's gonna be fun.

John Dehlin 1:47 And the Robin to Mike's Batman is Nemo. Hey. Hey, Nemo.

Nemo 1:54 Hey, how you doing, John?

John Dehlin 1:55 Welcome back, Nemo the Mormon. Nemo has a amazing YouTube channel that you all should subscribe to and donate to. How you doing, Nemo?

Nemo 2:02 I'm all right. I wanted to suggest before we start that we introduce a new segment called Snack Time with Nemo.

John Dehlin 2:09 Okay.

Nemo 2:10 Because the people seem to enjoy my eating of Doritos live on air. And so I think we should every episode bring in some snacks.

John Dehlin 2:19 Wait, wait, let's get it. Let's get a close up. Nemo. We got to get a shot of that for. We got to get a shot of that for Instagram. All right, all right, we'll freeze that. Thanks, Nemo. We. We appreciate you bringing that waxy chocolate onto the program. Okay. And of course, a new addition to the LDS discussion series is Julia. Hey, Julia.

Julia 2:40 Hi.

John Dehlin 2:41 How's grad school?

Julia 2:42 It's good. There's a lot of reading.

John Dehlin 2:45 Julia just started her master's in history at.

Julia 2:49 At Missouri State.

John Dehlin 2:51 Yeah. In Zion, basically. Basically in Zion, yeah.

Julia 2:54 Yeah.

John C. Bennett and His Role in Nauvoo

John Dehlin 2:55 All right, well, we're in part three of our series with John C. Bennett. He's one of the most important figures in Mormonism that Mormons have never heard of. He was Joseph's right hand man. Part one, we talked about him being mayor and chief justice and co president of the church, chief cook and bottle washer. He was everything. In Nauvoo Part 2, we talked about abortions and polygamy and spiritual wifery. And part three, it's scandalous. Julie, are you trying to tell me that there was LGBTQ shenanigans going on in Nauvoo, Illinois?

Julia 3:29 Yes. And actually, D. Michael Quinn, he's one of my favorite historians, and he has A book, a 19th century study of same sex dynamics or something like that. So please go read that one. He's got a lot of information. It seems like the early church leaders did not treat homosexuality in any way like they treat them now. So, yeah, that's a really interesting study to look at.

John Dehlin 3:49 All right.

Julia 3:50 Oh, also, I wanted to make a comment. Um, so last episode, we talked about the spiritual wifery and things like that. And in William Law's affidavit, he says that he heard of abortions and he heard of the no women or women got no issue. How did the phrasing go? Yeah, there's no issue from the women. So the word issue. Yes. It isn't. There was a lot of commenters. Yes. That word means posterity. So I just wanted to throw that out there and clarify that at the beginning.

Nemo 4:14 Wait, hang on, Julia, are you. Are you clarifying a previous statement you made so as to ensure.

Julia 4:18 Well, because I wasn't sure.

Nemo 4:20 Information. Are you?

Julia 4:21 Yeah.

John Dehlin 4:23 Can Mormons do that?

Julia 4:24 Wait, yeah, I'm not a Mormon.

Nemo 4:26 How excellent.

Julia 4:28 I'm an ex Mormon.

John Dehlin 4:29 Okay. All right, well, that's good clarification. All right, Julia, well, today's going to be fascinating.

Early Evidence of Same-Sex Behavior in Mormon History

Nemo 4:36 So.

John Dehlin 4:37 Yeah. Where do you want to start?

Julia 4:39 Yeah, so there's a quote actually from D. Michael Quinn, from this. From this book, that I was referencing the 19th century dynamics. Same sex dynamics.

John Dehlin 4:46 Oh, we started with that.

Julia 4:48 Yeah. So there's the quote right after this slide. Yeah.

John Dehlin 4:50 Okay.

Julia 4:52 Okay. So, yeah, the first topic is homosexuality and he says the. This is from D. Michael Quinn. The first known instance of homoerotic behavior in Mormon history involved John C. Bennett.

John Dehlin 5:03 Yeah, yeah.

Julia 5:04 That we know of. That's on the historical record. And I just think that was cool because I. I was excommunicated for being queer, for leaving my temple marriage and pursuing a same sex relationship. Anyway, so I just thought that was really interesting that we can. There's a person, Mormonism, so new that we can figure out what's the first instance. I don't know. I just thought that was.

John Dehlin 5:23 No, that's good. Yeah. And. And if John C. Bennett was excommunicated, it wasn't for that. I could tell you that.

Julia 5:29 Yep. Nope. And that's one of the things we're talking about too, so.

John Dehlin 5:32 Okay. All right, let's keep going.

Julia 5:35 Okay. In honor of Nemo, do you want to read the slide?

Nemo 5:40 Yes.

John Dehlin 5:41 Do you want to give your. Do you want to give our British listeners a warning? Like a content warning? Nemo.

Nemo 5:46 Yeah, A content warning for those we are about to use the B word.

Julia 5:51 Is that a square word?

Nemo 5:52 It's pretty mild over here too.

Julia 5:54 Okay. I was like, I would never put that up.

John Dehlin 5:56 I heard it was worse than the F word. Is that not true?

Nemo 5:58 No, no, no, no.

John Dehlin 6:00 Okay.

Nemo 6:01 All right.

Julia 6:02 I mean, no offense. This is what the historical record says.

Nemo 6:04 I would, I would say that as a. Like, it's, it's edgy. But I'd say it as a, Like a. As a fully orthodox member.

John Dehlin 6:11 All the, all the Americans are thinking, why is a bad word. I didn't even know that was such a bad word.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 6:15 Yeah.

Nemo 6:16 Ready? Bennett accused of buggery in the wasp, published on July 27, 1842. It reads, it will be seen by this that General Smith was a great philanthropist as long as Bennett could practice adultery, fornication.

John Dehlin 6:31 And.

Nemo 6:31 And we were going to say buggery without being exposed. Buggery was a slang word and legal term for sodomy.

John Dehlin 6:40 And is that still. Is that still a term that's used in. In Great Britain?

Nemo 6:44 Oh, yeah. So, like, if something goes wrong. Oh, bugger me. And then you actually think about it and you're like, that's really an inappropriate thing to say when you think about what you're actually inviting upon yourself. But it's. It's seen as much less. You cheeky bugger. That's a. Yeah, it's.

John Dehlin 7:00 But it means. It means same sex. Same sex intercourse. Is that what it means?

Nemo 7:05 If you think about it?

John Dehlin 7:06 Yeah.

Nemo 7:06 But in the same way the F bomb means sexual Intercourse. People don't drop that thinking of that. It just becomes a word. Right.

Julia 7:13 That's so interesting. Yeah.

Nemo 7:15 Yeah.

John Dehlin 7:15 All right. What'd you want to say about that, Julia?

Julia 7:18 So, yeah, this was before. I think this was right before his last communication around that same time. And so they're pointing out in the newspapers that he was accused, where he is being accused of. Of homosexual relationships. And then, like you said, John, that was not among his list of reasons why he was excommunicated. So.

John Dehlin 7:31 Okay.

Julia 7:32 Yeah.

John Dehlin 7:33 All right. So because we know he was practicing, quote, spiritual wifery, that would probably make him bisexual. Is it? Maybe.

Julia 7:40 Well, that's what I think. And that's. I think that's what Quinn points out, too, is that this would be a form of, like, bisexuality.

John Dehlin 7:44 Okay. But he was so close to Joseph. That's interesting. Maybe we'll get to that. All right.

Julia 7:48 Yeah.

John Dehlin 7:49 Okay.

Julia 7:50 Okay. All right, so then there's another case where Joseph Smith was accused of buggery. Mike, do you want to read this one?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 7:59 All right, so this is from. Also from the wasp, and this is Orson Pratt. He seems to accuse Joseph Smith of immoral acts with another man. And so Joseph Smith says, question to Elder Pratt. Have you personally a knowledge of any immoral act in me towards the female sex or in any other way? Answer by Elder Orson Pratt personally towards the female sex? I have not. Historian D. Michael Quinn clarified that since the same issue of the WASP had already raised the topic of Bennett's buggery and the prophet's alleged toleration of it, Smith's or in any other way was an implicit challenge for Pratt to charge him with buggery as well. Pratt declined to answer whether Joseph Smith had committed any immoral act with someone other than a woman, but also declined to exonerate the prophet from such a charge.

Julia 8:48 Thank you. Yeah, so I thought that was super interesting. Wait, did you have a comment?

Nemo 8:51 I was gonna say, if I understood that correctly, and he's saying, like, so have you seen me be sexually immoral with women or indeed with anyone? As if to say, like, you know, with men as well. And basically Pratt's like, well, not with women.

John Dehlin 9:03 Not with a woman. Yeah.

Nemo 9:04 And we're pointing out that the illusion of the failure to charge him with men as well is interesting. Is that so?

John Dehlin 9:09 Putting our skeptic hats on, what do we think? I mean, who are we to question Michael Quinn? Right. But what do y' all think?

Julia 9:19 Well, it's not much to go on, so there's. There's really not a lot There because he just says, personally towards the female sex, I have not. So that's, it's very little. But like, I like the Quinn's, like, it's, it might be enough to say that Joseph Smith was also engaging.

Nemo 9:31 Could it also be Pratt's sensibilities that he couldn't even bring himself to conscience the idea of homosexuality and so doesn't want to. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Julia 9:41 To say it like he wants to censor himself, which, which if that's the case, even the WASP was kind of censoring like they, oh, we were going to say buggery. And then later they will see that some of the stories were changed. So maybe it's the sensibilities of that. So yeah, maybe

Mike (LDS Discussions) 9:56 it's weird because it reads like if I, if I were to read that right now without any of that context from Michael Quinn, I might think that Orson Pratt might be going like, I have no idea what you're doing with other people, but with the, with regards to females, I haven't seen it. So you could go so many different ways. So I guess for me it's kind of like one of those things where it's so open ended. It's almost like you could draw your own conclusion based on kind of where you want to go with it. But it is, it's, it's an interesting quote for sure. It's just hard for me to like make sense of it. And I don't know if that's something where we could find like the longer records of if that's from like a disciplinary court or something where you could see if there's any context around it. Maybe there's immoral acts as far as like financial fraud or, you know, stuff like that. I just don't know. You know, it kind of feels like maybe that's drawing too much out of it, but it's certainly interesting.

Julia 10:45 Yeah, yeah, that's, that's good.

John Dehlin 10:47 I think we always. There's this thing, presentism, right. Where we assume the same cultural mores and values then that we have now. It's very possible that like same sex sexual relations in the late 20th century was viewed more severely than it was in the 1840s by Mormon Church leaders. Right. That it could have been seen as less of a big deal than like what Spence W. Kimball wants to make it, which is like an abomination. Right. It could have been just viewed as like, oh, you shouldn't do that. I don't know. Do you know, Julia?

Julia 11:24 Yeah. Oh, I don't know, during the stance, during the time. No. I should read Quinn's book again, though, to see if he has any insights on that.

Nemo 11:30 And what's interesting on that point, John, is that what a lot of apologists like to say is, oh, you know, standards would, when they talk about marriage, say another sexual interaction between people. They like to say, oh, standards were different then. You know, people were getting married younger. So, yeah, that would actually then play into that argument. If they want to say that standards were different back then, that's fair. And that presentism argument is fair. But then we have to look at the implications of that.

John Dehlin 11:54 Got it.

Nemo 11:55 Sexuality. So, yeah.

John Dehlin 11:57 All right, let's go to the next slide.

Julia 12:01 Okay, so then on one occasion. So this is Bennett with Higby. On one occasion, Joseph Smith discovered Francis Higby with John C. Bennett on a bed on the floor engaging in activity. Quote, so revolting, corrupt and disgusting that the editor of the Times and Seasons censored the material from readers. The censored article from the Times and Seasons says, I wanted to testify to this court. So I guess it is a court record, like you said, Mike. I wanted to testify to this court of what occurred a long time before John CBN left this city. I was called on to visit Francis M. Higbee. I went and found him on the bed on the floor. Here follows testimony which is too indelicate for the public eye or ear. And we would hear remark that so revolting, corrupt and disgusting has been the conduct of most of this clique that we feel to dread having anything to do with the publication of the trials. We will not hereafter, we will not, however, offend the public eye or ear with a repetition of the foulness of their crimes anymore.

John Dehlin 12:56 Well, there goes my theory that it may not have been viewed as a significant or severe thing. Right. They're calling it foul dread.

Julia 13:08 But at the same time, you have Joseph, who doesn't excommunicate him for this at all.

John Dehlin 13:12 Like, so revolting, corrupt and disgusting. That's pretty extreme. What are the court proceedings? I think that's interesting. Who. Who's on trial here?

Julia 13:25 I don't know. I have to. I have to read the whole full thing. This I just pulled from Quinn's book. So I'd have to read the whole thing to get context. But it is 1844 that this is.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 13:32 Yeah. Being published kind of feels like quite

John Dehlin 13:36 a bit, you know, see if you can sleuth this out. Because if, if, if, if this is like a trial for John C. Bennett because he, like, you know, let's just say John C. Bennett defied the prophet, made the prophet look bad, accused the prophet of polygamy, which he was denying. Then let's just say they were trying to smear him in this court, and so they charged him with something that everyone would be viewing as disgusting. Then that could just be a smear campaign. Now, of course, I'm just speculating, but I mean, certainly Joseph Smith and those around him wouldn't be above smearing someone with lies, right?

Julia 14:19 Yeah. So to discredit. So to discredit John C. Bennett's testimony against Joseph, they're trying to smear Bennett

John Dehlin 14:28 as a figure. Yeah.

Nemo 14:29 It was the municipal court of the city of Nauvoo, third day at the rate of before Alderman N.K. whitney, Acting Chief justice, and Alderman Daniel H. Wells, William Marks, Orson Spencer, George W. Harris, Gustavus Hills, George A. Smith and Samuel Bennett, Associate justice presiding ex parte Joseph Smith Senior, on habeas corpus against Messrs. Siles and Rigdon, who are the council for Smith case came before the port upon a return to writ of habeas corpus, which was issued by this court on the 6th of May, instant upon petition of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin 15:09 I'm not sure what any of this means.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:11 Yeah, yeah, I'm not either. It feels like there was that. There's that joke. It's not a joke, but it's like. I think it was John Larsen, when I was listening to the old Mormon expressions episodes, I first started listening to stuff he would say. It was always kind of like this. This, like, joke that whenever someone accused Joseph Smith of something, he would then accuse them of that. So like when he proposed to Nancy Rigdon and she rejected it and it got exposed and he accused her of kind of being a whore, you know, through the newspapers. And in this case, it almost makes me wonder if John C. Bennett has all this expose coming out and now Joseph Smith is trying to get out ahead of it and saying, hey, I saw this, I saw that. It's not to say it didn't or

Julia 15:46 didn't happen two years after.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:47 It feels like that. Or two years after this got booted out. Right?

Julia 15:53 Yeah. So his expose was published at the. Near the end of 42, and this is beginning mid of 44. Yeah. So, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 15:59 So I just wonder if that's like this is that continual response to all of these charges that are going out. And I think Bennett is actively doing those, like, talks and lectures about this stuff.

Nemo 16:09 Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:09 So I just wonder.

Julia 16:09 Yeah, that's what.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:11 So it just feels like this could Be one of those things where Joseph Smith's like, oh, I just thought of something that I saw because there's no. As far as I could. I mean, I don't know if there's a contemporary disciplinary court record of it, but if there's not, it feels very interesting that you'd bring this up, you know, And I also wonder is because I can't remember if Francis Higby was still with the church at this point or not. I'm assuming. No.

Julia 16:32 Oh, that's a good point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 16:33 Sure. Because that would be a really easy one to just go after. It's kind of like when we talked about the, the three witnesses and how they all got booted out of the church and then as soon as they got booted out, Joseph Smith rewrites a lot of the history because they're not there to say anything, you know, So I have, you know, it's just interesting. I don't know the timeline of that, but I need to find that, you know, look at that.

John Dehlin 16:55 Well, what does this mean to you, Julia?

Julia 16:58 Yeah, I guess it's just further evidence. Although, you know, like we're saying it's kind of questionable evidence. It does seem likely, based on all the evidence that John C. Bennett is a homosexual and he has relationships after Mormonism, that there's no reason, I don't know, like Joseph's trying to smear him, I guess. So I don't know one way or another whether to believe this or not.

John Dehlin 17:17 Yeah, I mean, it's, it certainly falls for me within the realm of credibility. Absolutely. Yeah. And it. And again, his closeness to Joseph Smith. You have to watch part one of this series. They are so close that it's. I think we renamed the episode Joseph Smith's Nauvoo Puppet because John C. Bennett was clearly Joseph's right hand man. So it's, it's impossible to not at least wonder. Right. Make that association.

Nemo 17:46 Okay.

Julia 17:47 It is interesting though. Yeah. Nemo, did you have. Did you find anything?

Nemo 17:50 Yeah, yeah. So I've just done a little bit of reading and basically it seems like the, the circumstances of this court case are actually Joseph Smith Senior is.

Julia 17:59 Who passed away. Because he passed away in 42.

Nemo 18:03 Yeah. So I wonder whether this is because the undersigned is Joseph smith senior. Navu May 6. So I wonder whether at this point, because Joseph Smith's father's passed away and Joseph Smith has a son called Joseph

Julia 18:17 Smith at this point, the third. Yeah.

Nemo 18:19 Is he now going by Joseph Smith Senior.

Julia 18:22 Oh, Joseph Smith Junior. That's a good Question.

Nemo 18:24 Yes. Is he now going by Joseph Smith Senior?

John Dehlin 18:27 We clearly don't know what we're talking about here.

Nemo 18:30 So if that's the case, then this would be Joseph Smith. He was on trial and under arrest within the city of Illinois at this time, within the custody of John D. Parker, the deputy sheriff. And basically, Francis M. Higsby, or Higby, was charged, was going after him for damages of $5,000.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:49 Yep.

Julia 18:50 Oh, okay. There you go.

Nemo 18:51 What this court case is about.

Julia 18:52 So he's trying. So he's not. He's not trying to put Bennett under the. Under the bus. He's trying to throw Higby.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 18:57 Higby under the bus. Yeah, it's easy to do because John C. Bennett's already an enemy. Right. And so just as a quick timeline, it says on June 30, 1842, Higbee gave a sworn statement that Joseph Smith told him that John C. Bennett could easily. Could be easily put aside or drowned and no person be the wiser for it. On January 15th of 1844, the Nauvoo Municipal Court issued a warrant for Higbee's arrest on the affidavit of Orson Pratt. So that kind of maybe shows why there were some Pratts involved there. It says a Higby was present at a meeting of dissenters on April 28th. On May 1st, Higbee filed that legal complaint. This article's from May 15th. And then on May 18th, he was excommunicated from the church. So definitely seems like he's going after Higby here. Maybe he's using Bennett because Bennett's already kind of an enemy of the church, and it would be.

Julia 19:44 Well, and he'd already been accused of buggery, so why wouldn't he?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 19:47 Yeah, exactly. So it. You know, but that's. It definitely shows that these things don't seem to have come up early. And all of a sudden, you know, they come up with these. These reasons. And it doesn't mean that's not true. It just means that it's awfully convenient sometimes when Joseph Smith pulls these things out as justifications for what he's doing or for what he's doing to others.

Julia 20:04 Yeah, we'll have to talk about those characters when we talk about the leaders of the church in the early church who left or were excommunicated. We'll have to add Higby and Pratt.

John Dehlin 20:11 It'll be a future episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 20:13 Yeah.

John Dehlin 20:14 All right, Julia, what's next?

Brigham Young and Joseph Smith on Same-Sex Conduct

Julia 20:16 Okay, so there was a sermon by Brigham Young that also alludes to this Homosexuality of John C. Bennett. John, do you want to read this one?

John Dehlin 20:24 Sure. Sermon by Brigham Young. On May 15, 1844, Brigham, Brigham Young gave a sermon published in the same Times and Seasons. Quote, I will make one statement in our conversation with Dr. Bennett. I told Dr. Bennett that one charge was seducing women and leading young men into difficulty. He admitted it. If he let young men and women alone, it would have been better for him. In the same sermon, Brigham was specifically referring to 21 year old Francis M. Higby. That's Times and Seasons, 15 May, 1844, page 539. Now, can you talk us through that, Julia? Because I'm not totally understanding what Brigham Young is saying there.

Julia 21:09 So it sounds like he's bringing up, you know, he's bringing up Francis again. So he's also of the opinion that Francis, he's believing this homosexuality between Bennett and Higby. And so what, what I'm gathering, and this could be something different, but because of the Higby reference, it makes me think that he is talking about homosexual relationships. But he's saying that Bennett was leading. He was. To me it reads, bennett was seducing women and seducing men and leading them into difficulty. That's what I'm gathering from that. Do you guys have other thoughts?

Nemo 21:36 The thought that came to my mind immediately just because maybe I'm a Brit and we do innuendo and that sort of thing, it could also be, was he ever trying to get the young men to engage in spiritual wifery?

Julia 21:53 See, that's another thing you can point out with the difficulty because he was trying to convince others. Yeah.

Nemo 21:57 Leading those young men into difficulty by trying to teach them that principle that was getting them in trouble.

Julia 22:02 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 22:03 And that we know happened because. Well, we don't know for sure that he was accused of teaching other people because they all said that it came from Joseph Smith. But you have that kind of that ring of like Joseph Smith's brother Bennett. I think there's like two other men. So you could make the argument that Brigham Young here is saying that Dr. Bennett was the ringleader teaching these younger men spiritual wifery, which led them into difficulty. So, yeah, that's another maybe more plausible.

John Dehlin 22:26 Can I note something that's weird to me? Sure. Why, why is Brigham Young only concerned if it's young men and women? Why is he okay if it's not young? He throws young in there as if Higby or Bennett were doing this with just mature young, mature men and women. No harm, no foul. Am I misreading that?

Nemo 22:47 I'm having to avoid the pun. Go on, Julia.

Julia 22:49 Oh, no. Well, that's what he's saying. He's saying young, which, again, he's taking young women into polygamy. Joseph Smith certainly was, I don't know, the ages of Brigham's wife, so I don't know. I don't know.

John Dehlin 23:03 Well, there's the hypocrisy of the fact that Joseph Ann Brigham married young teenage girls, but there's also the implication that if they're not young, no harm, no foul. At least that's how I'm reading it.

Julia 23:16 Yeah, it can be read that way. So there's a lot of different ways to take this. So, okay, yeah.

Nemo 23:20 Maybe it's like if he'd left the young women. Yeah. If he left the young men and women for us, then we wouldn't have bothered.

John Dehlin 23:25 Oh, man. That's dark, right? That's dark. Yeah, that's dark. Okay. All right. That's good. This is good. Let's keep going.

Julia 23:34 Okay. So, Mike, you've referenced this one before. I've heard you. I think you even quoted in our last episode. Do you want to go ahead and read this one?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 23:40 Yeah. So this is the idea that Joseph Smith teaches that sin is not sin. And so this is on the 7th of November, 1841. And Joseph Smith says, if you do not accuse each other, God will not accuse you. If you have no accuser, you will enter heaven. And if you will follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me, I will take you into heaven as my backload. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you. If you will throw a cloak of charity over my sins, I will over yours. For charity. Charity covereth a multitude of sins. What many people call sin is not sin. And, yeah, this was a huge letter, because this is Joseph Smith telling everybody, hey, guys, if you don't accuse me of anything, I am going to leave you alone. And it really shows that this is how he operates as well.

Nemo 24:26 So it's like the judge not lest ye be judged thing has been taken to then go, so if you don't judge me, I won't judge you, and then we'll all just be fine.

John Dehlin 24:35 It's sort of anything goes. It's. It's literally like anything goes in Nauvoo. As long as we don't accuse each other of anything, how can it not be Joseph Smith? How is that not what it's saying there? Anything goes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 24:48 But then that's what.

Nemo 24:49 Yeah.

John Dehlin 24:50 Julia. Julia.

Julia 24:52 No, No, I was gonna agree with you. That's exactly what it sounds like it's saying. And this is also 1841. So this is before Bennett. And so, like, I'm. It's curious. Yeah. I'm curious to know what Joseph was trying to maybe say or cover up

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:02 for or I. I could tell you. So this is right around the time that polygamy is about to ramp up. Right. And go back to that slide real quick. This. This is the line right here. Go back to the slide and if you will, follow the revelations and instructions which God gives you through me. That's basically saying that if Joseph Smith tells you to do something and you do it, you cannot be a sinner if you don't accuse me of doing it. I mean, like, that is. It's not about. It's not saying to the whole church. And, hey, Nemo, if you want to go sleep with a bunch of young women and you guys don't accuse each other, it's okay, because it has to be through Joseph Smith. So there still is that structure going down. And this is basically. To me, we did this on the happiness. This is basically Joseph Smith putting out there, hey, if I tell you to do something and you do it, you can't sin. That's.

John Dehlin 25:46 So you didn't finish the sentence. It's the Happiness Letter episode on LDS discussions.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 25:51 Yeah.

John Dehlin 25:52 And everyone go back and watch that, especially if you haven't, because it's certainly one of the most important moments in Joseph Smith's history is the Nancy Rigdon Happiness Letter.

Nemo 26:04 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 26:04 And as a quick note, this will tie into the last episode a little bit, because there are some people that are saying Joseph Smith didn't write the happiness letter. And you read this. This quote here, which is not disputed. This is basically the theme of the Happiness Letter, which is what might seem wrong in some circumstances is right. And so this is basically Joseph Smith laying down the foundation of, yeah, I'm gonna tell you to do things that you think are horrible, but they're absolutely cool because they're through me, you know, they're through God, you know, because of me. So it really is. This is one of the most important quotes you'll have because it really illustrates how Joseph Smith is able to flip morality upside down by saying, hey, if you just do what God wants you to do, which I can only tell you, then. Then you're cool.

John Dehlin 26:45 It's also a threat. Right. If you will not accuse me, I will not accuse you. So it's like, I'm coming after you. It's sort of this mafioso. If you accuse me of anything, you're toast. Right? Am I, Am I. Am I overreading that? That's what I'm seeing there.

Julia 27:02 That's what I'm saying.

John Dehlin 27:04 And. And we know. And we know that he smeared any woman that denied his polygamous advances that then spoke out about it publicly. He would slut shame them. Am I wrong, Julia?

Julia 27:17 No, that's very correct.

John Dehlin 27:18 Yeah, it's factual. Right. He would call them horrors. He would call them horrible humans. Right.

Nemo 27:24 Well, he did that. He did that with Nancy Rigden when she. When she rejects his fancy, called her a woman about the town and these sorts of things.

John Dehlin 27:30 Right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:30 Yep.

John Dehlin 27:30 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. He's literally giving us the pages from his playbook. He's saying the quiet parts out loud

Nemo 27:38 because he's getting to the point where he can. Right. You know, he's getting more and more powerful. He can kind of just be quite brazen about this stuff.

John Dehlin 27:46 But also the cat's getting out of the bag, and he's got to develop a way to deal with the cat.

Nemo 27:50 Get.

John Dehlin 27:50 Cat's getting out of the bag.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 27:52 Yeah. Because this is where it's really about to ramp up.

Nemo 27:55 This is like. This is like the justification for soaking in many ways. It's like, if we don't move, it's not a sin. It is still a sin. And it's the same thing as, like, if you don't grasp me up, if you don't accuse me of anything, then it's not a sin. It's like, we don't have these conditions of, like, if X, then it's not a sin. God's pretty, like, firm about these things he doesn't want you to do. And Joseph Smith knows that. But he's having to come up with these external justifications for, well, if X, Y conditions are met, I. E. I've told you to do it, and you don't say anything about it, then it's fine. But just like we all know the argument for soaking is ridiculous, this argument is also ridiculous.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 28:31 Well, I still don't think soaking is real. But. But I will note that. I know, but the point is to. What you're saying is, you know, if. If you're with someone in your BYU and you're like, hey, let's soak, if we don't tell anyone, there's no sin. Joseph Smith said it. But that's why that line is so important, because he's saying through me. So that's like the ultimate you know, trump card on everyone else, which is to say that John C. Bennett can take those exact teachings and go to a woman and say, hey, let's have sex, because it's not a sin if you don't accuse me and I don't accuse you. But then Joseph Smith can jump in and say, hey, I did not tell you guys to do that. And that's. That's really where he's. He's once again asserting himself over everybody else, and he is inserting himself as the moral compass of everybody else as well.

Julia 29:12 Yeah.

John Dehlin 29:13 He's also saying buggery isn't a sin. Right. Homosexuality isn't a sin if there's no

Mike (LDS Discussions) 29:18 accuser, if he tells you to do it.

Julia 29:20 And I think that's what I found interesting about this slide, is because Joseph never accused. He was never on trial for that. That's not why he was excommunicated. So, like, I think even Quinn pulls out this quote to say that maybe Joseph didn't really care or that he didn't mind that Bennett was engaging in these things.

Nemo 29:34 Well, because I would think that Joseph Smith is like, at this point, if you're the guy that if we take a position that God didn't tell Joseph to practice polygamy, if you take that position and this is a creation of Joseph's mind, then Joseph is clearly sexually experimental. Right. He's willing to try different ways of having sex with people under different arrangements and whatnot. So he is likely to be quite sexually liberal, I would imagine. And so maybe he personally doesn't mind, particularly as long as no one's accusing anyone of anything.

John Dehlin 30:07 Yeah.

Julia 30:08 Yeah.

John Dehlin 30:09 All right, Julia, let's go to the next slide.

Julia 30:12 Okay. So then I wanted to talk about. There was this idea of why Sodom was destroyed. And so we're. I'm just going to work through this slide, and we can talk. We can, you know, comment whenever you want to. So Mormonism's founding prophet also revised the common interpretation that God destroyed Sodom because its inhabitants preferred sex between men. And again, a lot of these are from Quinn. From his Same Sex Dynamics, Wilford Woodruff's journal gives us Joseph's Revision recorded on January 22nd of 1843, 22nd Sunday, President Joseph Smith delivered an interesting discourse at the temple to a large congregation. In consequence of rejecting the gospel of Jesus Christ and the prophets whom God hath sent, the judgments of God have rested upon people, upon people, cities and nations in various ages of the world, which was the case with the city of Sodom and Gomorrah who were destroyed for rejecting the prophets. And then if also if you look in Ezekiel, in the Bible itself, it puts away this idea that they were destroyed because of same sex relationships. In Ezekiel 16:49, it says, Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom. Pride, fullness of bread and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And the Bible and Bible scholars agree that Sodom was destroyed because they were not hospitable to strangers. Not for same sex, not for sex between men. And John, your episode with Dan McClellan, he also brings this up. He's a Bible scholar and he also says that this is not the reason why that Sodom was destroyed because they weren't hospitable or they weren't good hosts. Not because anything to do with same sex relationships.

Nemo 31:48 Right. But equally not because they failed to follow the prophets either. But Joseph Smith's going, that's one way of then essentially putting terror on people, being like, look, entire cities destroyed because people didn't listen to people like me. So you better listen.

Julia 32:01 True, very true.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 32:03 This is the most serving quote you're going to see.

John Dehlin 32:05 Yeah, yeah.

Julia 32:07 I just thought it was also interesting that he's, he's reframing the common idea of Sodom and Gomorrah. And so again, this makes me think that Joseph probably didn't care. You know, he's sexually experimenting and I don't think he had, I don't think he had a negative opinions. And from what it looks like, it doesn't seem like he had as big of a deal. He saw it as, as big of a deal.

John Dehlin 32:29 Okay, got it. Okay, what else? Okay, next slide.

Julia 32:34 Okay, so yeah, so this one, Quinn pulls this one out as well. He. There's a lot of debate within the, in the early Christianity or early Mormonism is that people had this Victorian love for each other. They would, they're just like, women would hold hands, women would kiss. Like even men would kiss. Even a lot of the prophets kiss each other in the past. And so it's hard to know what is homosexuality and what is, is like this Victorian love. I don't know how else to explain it. Nemo, do you want to read this? The quote itself.

Nemo 33:03 Yeah. Joseph Smith once said to bring it to the understanding it meaning the resurrection would be upon the same principles. Though two who were friends indeed should lie down upon the same bed at night, locked in each other's embrace, talking of their love, and should awake in the Morning. Together, they could immediately renew their conversation of love, even while rising from their bed.

Julia 33:25 Yeah, that's from Wilford Woodruff's journal. Did you guys have thoughts on that?

Nemo 33:30 It's. It doesn't make a lot of sense. So he kind of read it again.

John Dehlin 33:37 Talk us through it, Julia. Talk us through it.

Julia 33:38 So he's. He's teaching a sermon about the resurrection, and he's like, it would be just the same, like, we. We don't need to be worried. I think he's saying, like, we don't need to be afraid of. Of death and resurrection. It would be on the same principles as if two of you were to. Two friends were to lie down together on the same bed, locked in each other's embrace. And he's talking about two men, and they should wait together and renew their conversation of love. So, like, in my head, and maybe this is presentism. In my head, it seems like there's no straight. There's no straight way to explain this. But again, this could be the Victorianism.

Nemo 34:10 Unnecessary detail. Right. Because if you. If he wants to explain this simply, he just says it's like going to bed and then waking up the next day and everything being as normal. That's. That's what he's trying to say. Right. There's no need for this sort of homoerotic detail of being locked in the embrace of someone you love on the

Julia 34:28 same bed and everything like that. Yeah, it's.

Nemo 34:31 It's just a bit odd. I find it odd. I don't know what it says because like you said, the problem is there's so much euphemism and innuendo in so much of this. I think I've said. Made this point before, but it makes it very difficult to know because the whole point of view from ism and innuendo is to hide your true meaning sometimes.

Julia 34:48 Right.

John Dehlin 34:48 I wonder what point Joseph was trying to make there.

Nemo 34:51 Well, yeah, like. Like I said, it's basically just that the resurrection is quick and is like going to sleep and waking up again.

Julia 34:57 But which he could have said in

Nemo 34:59 so many different detail.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 35:00 Yeah, okay, maybe I'm being confused here, but how does this quote imply that it's two men as opposed to just two people that were just talking? Is it because we're saying friends as opposed to, like, marriage or lovers or whatever?

Julia 35:13 So I thought this out of Quinn's. Yeah, that's a good point, because he doesn't specifically say in this block. But I should look up and see if he does specify, because Quinn made it Seem like it was two men. So maybe I just didn't get enough of the quote. But y' all have to look that, look at that.

John Dehlin 35:26 I mean, we, we should acknowledge, and we probably already said this, that, that Michael Quinn, the, the super well known Mormon historian who was picked, you know, Yale PhD picked by Leonard Arrington to be an assistant church historian during those Camelot years of, quote, transparent Mormon history at church headquarters in the 70s. He himself was gay. He was in a mixed orientation marriage, I should add. There's a brand new book coming out by signature books called Chosen Path, which is Michael Quinn's memoir. He passed away, I believe it was last year, but it was pretty recently. And so I think my. Obviously. What's that? Oh, was it, was it, was it five years ago? Yeah, time goes by way too fast.

Julia 36:08 I might be wrong. Don't quote me.

John Dehlin 36:10 No, I'm sure you're right. Anyway, it's clear that he, he was looking for issues around homosexuality because of his own personal story and, and background and interest. So, you know, we can just acknowledge that, that, that he's use. He's, he's affected by his bias in these quotes he's picking. Right?

Julia 36:32 Yeah. He could be seeing things that maybe they don't mean. And I think he points that out, he really will. No, you were right. It was April of 2021. But yeah, you're, you're right that he could be trying to find things that aren't there. But I think he's forward about that. I think he's saying, like, there's really not a lot to go on, but this can be seen. This.

John Dehlin 36:47 It's at least, it's at least good to know about it. Right? Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 36:50 Yeah.

John Dehlin 36:51 Yeah. Okay.

Julia 36:54 Okay. So then, so then, so that's. There's really not a whole lot. Now that I'm looking at all this, there's really not a whole lot to go off of Bennett being homosexual. I think there's enough, especially I guess what happens after. That's my biggest convincing thing is hit the events that happen after Mormonism.

John Dehlin 37:07 But now are we, are we done with the homosexuality topic or does it keep going?

Julia 37:10 Well, it trickles in a little bit, but yeah, that's, that was the bulk of it just in his Mormonism.

John Dehlin 37:16 So what are we transitioning to? Just what happened to him? The fate.

Julia 37:18 Yeah.

John Dehlin 37:19 Okay.

Julia 37:19 Yeah. So this is like from when he leaves. From when he leaves Nauvoo and then what happens on. And then we do have, we do have. I want to talk about what happens to him. After Mormonism, because I still feel like it weighs. Like patterns, like future patterns can also reflect on.

John Dehlin 37:34 Yeah, yeah. And leave. For those who didn't or don't remember or didn't watch the past episodes, where did we leave off with John C. Bennett?

Bennett Leaves Nauvoo and the Danite Threat

Julia 37:44 Okay, so in the last episode, we talked about how he was. There was a lot of. He was accusing Joseph Smith of spiritual wifery, and he was being accused. Or, excuse me, was he. I don't know, the. The language of polygamy, spiritual wifery and everything like that confuses me. So he was accusing Joseph. Right. So he was accusing Joseph of being with women, and he was being accused of being with women, and he was also. We brought in abortions, too, and how that was maybe how Joseph was keeping this quiet and things like that. And then in the beginning, we talked about how close he was with Joseph and all the roles that he. That you'd mentioned, and then how he was quickly excommunicated because all this stuff was coming out. And so. And then we talked about how Bennett tells the story of Joseph Smith pulling a gun on him. Unless he were to sign this affidavit saying that spiritual wifery wasn't anything to do about Joseph. I don't think the gun story is. I don't believe the gun story part, but him signing the document makes sense to me. And then. So this is where we're going to pick up is like, right after he leaves Nauvoo.

John Dehlin 38:45 Okay, so he's been excommunicated and he's basically being run out of town. Is that fair to say?

Julia 38:50 Yes. Yeah. His autobiographer, or, excuse me, his biographer doesn't seem to think he's like, there was maybe. We talked about this before. He says he leaves Nauvoo really quickly because, like, he was thanked publicly as the mayor. He kind of hung around for a little while, but then all of a sudden, he just leaves. And so I'm not exactly sure what prompted that, and I don't even know that his biographer knows, but. So that's where we're going to pick up, is his quick leading and.

John Dehlin 39:12 And just sort of like a PR expert would want it to. To minimize the public scandal, but then to make him disappear as possible as soon as the public scandal was diffused. Is that fair to say?

Julia 39:25 Yeah, I think so.

John Dehlin 39:25 Okay. All right, so let's jump back to the slide. What happened to John C. Bennett?

Julia 39:30 Okay, so on June 21st of 1842, Bennett abruptly left Nauvoo and headed for Springfield. Bennett claimed that on the way there he was followed by Mr. O.P. rockwell, a Danite, who who on his arrival late at night made strict inquiries as to where I was. His ostensible business was. Was to put a letter in the post office. But judge ye, the real reason I was prepared for the gentleman and he approached me not but another swift writer, Captain John D. Parker, another day night followed me to Springfield to carry a letter to Dr. Helm. But he had another object and you may well suppose what it was. Sorry. I told Captain Parker that I was aware of his object, but I feared him not in Virginia, in Cass County. On my return, Parker met me again and I called attention to the stage driver to him, who thereupon put two additional balls into his pistol and then informed me he was ready for him or any other person having the same object in view.

John Dehlin 40:27 All right, so tell us who the danuts are. Did we cover that Mike, in. In our LDS discussions episode so far? Because that's, that's one of the top 50. That's one of the top 50 issues that bothers people about Mormon history, right, Mike?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 40:40 Yeah, we, we brought them up throughout like, but not in a. In a real like comprehensive way. So I think we mentioned them when it kind of fit in. But we didn't do anything like okay,

Julia 40:48 individually we should definitely do that one.

John Dehlin 40:50 So Julia, tell us, tell us just briefly who the day nights are.

Julia 40:53 Okay, so I don't know. So outside of Bennett's, I. They're kind of new to me as well. But so it's these group of people that work. So historians will debate on where, where they extended. But in Kirtland, this. I think it started in Kirtland. Please correct me if that's maybe Missouri.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:09 Yeah, I think it was in Ohio. I think Ohio.

Julia 41:12 Okay. And so he, Joseph gathered a lot of these men and he had them. So some of this might be incorrect because some of this is coming from Bennett. He had them swear an oath. And one of some of the other sources, not Bennett, say that there was at least 300 of these Danites that swore their allegiance to Joseph Smith as the leader and that they would do whatever was needed to be done. And a lot of times what that involved was usually violence from what my understanding is. So they were sort of like the bouncers for Mormonism. I don't know how does anyone have a better description than that?

John Dehlin 41:41 They would threaten, they would intimidate and if necessary be willing to do violence to Mormon enforces to protect.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:51 Yeah, they started in Missouri. I'm wrong, because in Missouri is where they had the Hans Mill and all that. Right. So that's.

Julia 41:55 Oh, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 41:55 It's kind of happening at the same time. So, yeah, that was kind of like a. Almost like a special ops force of Mormonism that was willing to do things other people wouldn't.

Nemo 42:03 Maybe Porter Rockwell is the most well known one of them. Yeah.

John Dehlin 42:07 Yeah, I definitely associate them with. With Missouri.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:11 Yeah, they were definitely Missouri.

Nemo 42:13 And just a quick point about them or about the individuals involved in this story that we've just looked at, is that John D. Parker, in that court proceeding we were looking at earlier, was the deputy sheriff in Hancock county and was the one whose custody Joseph Smith was in during these court proceedings. So Joseph Smith was in the custody of a Danite.

Julia 42:36 That's really.

Nemo 42:37 That shows you how, like, within Illinois itself, so much of the church was controlling everything that was going on. And the loyalty to Joseph was ultimate. Like, he was in custody, but to someone who had sworn an oath that they would protect him.

Julia 42:52 So that's super interesting.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 42:54 Well, that was a big part of the whole issue. Like, you know, when they talk about why the mob attacked Joseph Smith and killed him, it's. You know, I forgot what it was. It was one of the historians, like John. Maybe John Hamer or someone, they were saying, like, a lot of it had to do with the fact that this. These people just were like, he is constantly surrounding himself with. People are just going to support what he needs to do. And so that's why habeas corpus becomes this big deal. And because they know if he. If they can't get him out of Navu, he will never pay for any crimes he commits because they're basically. It's all fixed. And so that is a big part of the unrest towards Joseph Smith is that he's created this power structure that he is 100% in charge of.

Julia 43:34 Yeah.

John Dehlin 43:35 Okay, so let's take it back to the slide. Julia.

Julia 43:38 Yeah, so he's just telling the story that he's been. He's leaving Nauvoo and he's saying, these two men are following him and he's ready for them. And he's. I think it's funny that he's. He's. Both men are like, oh, no, I'm just going to mail this letter. I'm not going to kill you. But he's like, I know that you are. And so he's just. He's kind of making himself the hero. And like, this persecution of. I don't know, it was just funny the way that Bennett says it to Me. But also, like, it wouldn't surprise me at all if this were to have actually happened because of later.

John Dehlin 44:06 And the parts that we know touch on reality is that Orem Porter Rockwell, you know, was. You know, is likely the person that attempted the assassination on Governor Boggs of Missouri. He bragged about doing violence for Joseph Smith. So, I mean, whether or not this happened with John C. Bennett, that checks out with what we know about. Or in Porter Rockwell and just him mentioning the Danites and feeling fear of violence. That checks out in terms of just what we know about both Missouri and Nauvoo. And Joseph surrounding himself with protectors willing to do violence. Right.

Nemo 44:44 Or importer Rockwell, the one that Joseph promised, if he didn't, he gave him, like, a Samson promise. Like, if he. He blessed him, if he didn't cut his hair, he would be. No man would be able to defeat him.

John Dehlin 44:54 That could be true.

Julia 44:55 I thought that was the right word.

Nemo 44:56 This. Yeah.

John Dehlin 44:57 Yeah, but you can Google it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 44:58 Nemo.

John Dehlin 44:59 You can always Google those things.

Nemo 45:00 Oh, no, we can. Let the audience tell us in the comments. That's more fun.

John Dehlin 45:03 Okay. Oh, yeah, that's good. Okay, so whether or not Bennett's lying here, this definitely squares with what we know about church history, right?

Nemo 45:11 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

John Dehlin 45:12 Okay. All right.

Julia 45:15 Okay. So in his book. So this is more about the Danites. In his book, John C. Bennett claims that the Mormon Danites were called the Daughters of Zion and gave word for word the supposed oath. And again, we don't. I don't know for sure. Taken by the secret band. So this is the oath. Actually, Mike, do you want to read the oath?

The Danites: Oaths, Violence, and Church Accountability

Mike (LDS Discussions) 45:31 Yeah. So this is the supposed oath taken by the Daughters of Zion, which is the Danites. And it says, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I do solemnly obligate myself to myself ever to regard the prophet and the first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints as the supreme God. That I will stand by my brethren in danger or difficulty and will uphold the presidency, right or wrong. And that I will ever conceal and never reveal the secret purpose of the society called Daughter of Zion, should I ever do the same. I hold my life as the forfeiture in a cauldron of boiling oil.

John Dehlin 46:07 Oh, man. Can I just highlight a couple things there?

Julia 46:10 Yeah, please.

John Dehlin 46:11 So, like, the first presidency of the church and the prophet are the supreme God.

Nemo 46:16 The.

John Dehlin 46:17 That's just horrendous. Basically, pledging allegiance to very flawed men as. As divinity. That's outrageous. If it's true, we know that Joseph Smith had himself, by the end, ordained as King of the world. So, I mean, we know Joseph's not beyond sort of extreme worship and adoration. So, I mean, this fits at least that. But Supreme God takes it to 11 as. As the movie Spinal Tap says, but then also uphold the presidency, right or wrong. That squares with Dallin H. Oaks's comment, you know, in the past 30, 40 years, that it's wrong to criticize the brethren, even if the criticism is accurate. We know that Dallin Oaks has said that in modern times, so it doesn't seem. Oh, and we also have the Mormon Temple ceremony oath to never speak ill of the Lord's anointed. And since the church admits that leaders make mistakes, that means you uphold the church leadership, right or wrong. I mean, Right. I've never heard of Daughters of Zion as another name for the Danites, so that's new to me. But I'm rusty on church history. And then this idea of, like, forfeiting your life, I mean, that squares with my temple ceremony of oath to slit my own throat or have my heart cut out of my chest, or to be disemboweled if I ever violated my temple covenants. So that idea of swearing violent death upon yourself absolutely squares with the Mormonism that I. That I know of. Right. Whether this is actually true. Sorry, I just. I. That that slide triggered me.

Nemo 48:03 Julia, just to add to your down the H. Oaks bit, Henry B. Eyring did say, it is a sin we must repent of daily to think. To even think of weaknesses in those that we have pledged to sustain. Meaning the first presidency in quorum of the 12.

Julia 48:18 Wow. Wait, which session? That's insane.

Nemo 48:22 I can get you a citation for that.

Julia 48:23 Okay, perfect. That's crazy. But also, this made me think of my own temple experience, where one thing that really bothered me in the temple is that we don't covenant. There was a. There's a. There's a specific covenant where you covenant to the Church of Jesus Christ, Latter Day Saints, like, your very lives, if necessary. And that always bothered me because why aren't we covenanting our lives to Jesus or God? Like, why is it to the church? And here in this slide, like it says the First Presidency as the supreme God. They're not covenanting to God, they're covenanting to the First Presidency. So anyway, that was.

John Dehlin 48:55 And they would just say, they are the mouthpiece of God in Jesus. So they would say, whether by my voice, meaning Jesus, or the voice of my servants, the First Presidency, it is the same. And that's Mormon doctrine that. That the First Presidency speaks for Jesus, for and in behalf of God and Jesus.

Nemo 49:10 My last two videos have been all about the conflation between church leaders and Jesus Christ and how they demand the same loyalty that you would give to Jesus. A citation for that quote from Henry Bering. It's his talk, the Power of Sustaining faith from the April 2019 general conference.

Julia 49:23 Okay. Dang.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 49:26 So I would just. The only thing I'll note on this is that this slide in the last one, they both feel like he has. John Bennett has this. This insider knowledge, and it does feel like he's weaving it through what he knows. I'm not saying that this is false, but there's no other attribution of this anywhere. At least I'm doing a quick Google search. I've never heard of it before. It just makes me wonder if he knew, like, some of the temple ceremony stuff. And then all of a sudden he's like, okay, I can kind of work this into something else, because it's possible it's true, but in it, it tracks. Like you've said, a lot of this stuff tracks with the things that are being said at the time, which makes it really hard to know. It's just also one of those things where it almost feels too good to be true. Like, it feels almost too much like someone's writing this to make it seem like the church, like Joseph Smith is just crazy with power. Although, you know, they also say Joseph Smith wasn't necessarily running the Danites. So it's just. It's really messy. But, yeah, it's. It tracks in a lot of ways.

John Dehlin 50:21 Nemo.

Nemo 50:22 I just. I think a real good way of summing that up is to say it's almost like impressionist art. A lot of what John C. Bennett's, like, impressionist art gives you the feeling the flavor is there. This very much feels like early Mormonism. But the exact details, probably not.

John Dehlin 50:35 And. And Mike, I think it's really important you're reminding us in this episode. Like, we tried to remind people in the past, too, that John C. Bennett is not always a reliable narrator. And in some instances, he's completely unreliable. So everything John C. Bennett says, everyone should always take with a grain of salt and form their own conclusions. But. But he was a scoundrel. Flat out, he was a scoundrel. So we need to always remember that. Yeah. Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:05 Oh, go ahead.

Julia 51:07 I just say I don't think the Daughters of Zion is a real thing. I think it's something that he's just Making up. I bring it up because it's really interesting. And also, the oath is the main thing that I wanted to talk about. But then also, he goes on with his stories of the Danites. And then I. And I do have some questions with the. For Mormon historians, but we can talk about that in a few slides. So what were you saying?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 51:26 Yeah, and one small thing I'll add here is this is one little reason why I think there is reason to want to be skeptical of the Happiness Letter, because that's coming from John C. Bennett. Even though we're told that's a letter he has that really isn't disputed. As far as, you know, Sidney Rigs and Nancy Rigging don't come out and say the letter is completely made up. So that's why. And the teachings are good, and it's very long. But, you know, this is why, because he does have an insider knowledge, and he's really good at embellishing. Like in that last slide, where he's like, I knew they had a gun on him, but I wasn't afraid. It's like, shut up, dude. Yes, you were like, come on. No one's gonna. You're not gonna see some dude come up that you think might kill you with a gun in their pocket and just be like, yeah, it was cool as a cucumber. I mean, come on.

Julia 52:04 So, yeah, I really like that you point out. Yeah, I really like that you pointed out. Even the last episode where you're like, Bennett is really. He's really out there with his stories. So. So why is the Happiness Letter so almost subtle and what it's saying? It doesn't read like Bennett's writing it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 52:18 It doesn't like. And that's the thing. Like, so to follow up on that, like, one of the complaints is that he writes it. And the counter to that is why, if he was writing it, look at this oath. Look at the happiness letter. If he was writing the happiness letter, I would guarantee, I would bet money that John C. Bennett would have something like in there, it is permissible for you to have sex with me as a concubine or some language that's so loaded that it would be the most damaging. Whereas the Happiness letter, if you read it on its own and you're not really thinking of the context, it doesn't read as manipulative and controlling as it is. And that's why, you know, to what Julia say, it doesn't even feel like it's written by the same person, because that one is very subtle. It's very symbolic. It's very understated. Whereas John C. Bennett, in his expose is trying to hammer that Joseph Smith is an evil person. And so they don't. That's why it doesn't match to me. But it also is why, yeah, he's trying to sell a book. And so that's why there is. To me, I can understand why people are skeptical because this stuff to me reads as somebody who is trying to embellish what he knows into something that's absolutely scandalous. So you should. You should apply that same skepticism everywhere. I try to say that. And so I need to do that. And we all need to do that with the happiness letter as well. Although we did do that in that episode and tried to address that as well.

John Dehlin 53:27 Okay, makes sense. All right, nice, y'. All.

Julia 53:32 Yeah. So this next story, so that you'll see there's a gentleman here on the visuals. There's a gentleman here in a dress. And so this next slide will clear up why that. Why that's there.

John Dehlin 53:40 All right.

Julia 53:41 Okay, so this is in. This is from the Sangamo Journal Bennett recounted. This is from the Sangamo Journey, July 22 of 1842. Bennett recounted that Smith had threatened to kill him and had ordered some of the Danite ban to affect the murder clandestinely. According to Bennett, on the Evening of. Of June 29, 12 of the Danites dressed in female apparel approaching my boarding house. And this is General Robinson's that he was staying at in Nauvoo. And their carriage wheels wrapped with blankets and their horses feet covered with cloth to Prevent noise about 10 o'. Clock. This is in the evening for the purpose of conveying me off and assassinating me, thus prevent disclosures. But I was so admirably prepared with arms, as were also my friends, that after prowling around the house for some time, they retired.

John Dehlin 54:27 I'm still not understanding why there's a man in a dress there, though.

Julia 54:30 So he's. So they're dressed in women's apparel. So I think that's why they're called.

John Dehlin 54:34 Oh, dressed. It's right there. Dressed in female apparel.

Julia 54:37 Right.

John Dehlin 54:38 So what's going on there, Julia? Tell us what you think is going on there.

Julia 54:41 I think Bennett's just. I don't. I think it's just blowing smoke. But he's saying that. That these Danites are called the Daughters of Zion and they would dress in women's clothing. And they even. They came and they were trying to be really secretive. They wrapped blankets on the horse's feet and on the Wagons because it was too loud. I don't know why they couldn't just walk, because Nauvoo. I don't know. But anyway. And then he said that they were going to kill him, but they were. But he was really prepared. And the people he was living with were really prepared that they just went away after a while.

Nemo 55:06 So it really gives me that bit where he's, like, being so admirably prepared. Really gives me, like. It came to pass that I, Nephi, being exceedingly young, nevertheless being large in stature. It's like Aynifai. Being a big dude was, like, all good. It's. It's giving me those same vibes as, like, Ben. It's like. But I was just so well prepared, they couldn't come near me. It's like, come on, man.

Julia 55:29 Yeah. I think Nemo, you. I think you mentioned in the last one that, like, I. Like, there's enough in Mormonism that he didn't have to make stuff up.

Nemo 55:36 Yeah. He didn't have to have them in dresses. It's very likely that Joseph could have sent some Danites to try and off him. Like that is possible. But, yeah, the details of them being dressed as women, why does that make a difference? Maybe he thinks that because he's been accused of being such a ragamuffin and sleeping with so many women that people would, for some reason, expect a load of women to turn up at his house in the middle of night. And that was the ruse.

John Dehlin 56:02 Let's be clear. It could have happened. We don't know. We don't know. We're speculating.

Nemo 56:07 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julia 56:09 But like Mike said, I don't think the daughter's design exists anywhere else outside of Bennett's book. I don't think any historian will.

Nemo 56:16 Which seems to be a reference to the whole. It's almost like he's created this narrative that the Daughters of Zion are some sort of. It's the way that the Danites clandestinely assassinate people dressed as women to hide their tracks.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:29 Yeah. Which makes no sense.

Nemo 56:31 It's odd.

Julia 56:32 Okay.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:36 I was just gonna say this reminds me of the movie Home Alone, and Bennett's inside getting all this crap together, and they got the women outside and they're just too afraid, so they think there's this party going on. It's. To me, it's silly, but. Yeah. I mean, we don't know, but it just doesn't. It doesn't make sense.

John Dehlin 56:48 It's strange credulity.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 56:50 If you're gonna kill someone and you don't Want to draw attention. You're not gonna send a bunch of dudes dressed as women to a house that's gonna draw attention. It just makes no sense. But.

John Dehlin 56:58 Okay, all right. Okay. But. But that's what Bennett claimed.

Julia 57:02 Yeah, Bennett claims. Yes.

John Dehlin 57:04 Okay. All right.

Julia 57:05 Okay. So this is from Fawn Brody and I do have a little bit of pushback, so. But this is in her book of no Man Knows My History. She claims, she says there is no reliable evidence that the Day Night organization was continued in Illinois except among Joseph's personal bodyguards. So again, like we talked about with Oren Porter Rockwell, white uniforms, not robes as Bennett described in his book, were part of the military attire. So she's saying he's even getting the. The costumes wrong. John D. Lee, one of Joseph's bodyguards, proudly wore his red sash in later years and when he went to. When. When he went to dances in southern Utah.

Nemo 57:37 So she explains a lot.

Julia 57:39 Yeah. So she's saying, like, there's no evidence that the Danites existed past, she said, into Illinois. I don't know whether they would have moved on from Missouri. I don't know that specifically, but. So she's saying every. To me, it reads like John C. Bennett's, none of this is real because the Danites weren't a thing anymore. Although if you're. She did say that they would exist as Joseph's bodyguard. But also my thoughts are, if they're really taking an oath for. For their whole life to. To see Joseph as the supreme God, why would that go away? Like in Nauvoo, like, if you've made a covenant, it persists anyway. So I have questions about that, but.

Nemo 58:14 Well, yeah, like, once a Danite, always a Danite.

Julia 58:16 Right, Right, right.

Nemo 58:18 I would. I would think that maybe what form Brody is saying is that there's no evidence of them being acting as an organized group anymore. But I would. All those individual members exist like those people. A lot of those people survived, and

John Dehlin 58:31 they're oaths were for their oaths were until their death. So it's not like they ever renounced their oaths, their Day night oaths. Right.

Nemo 58:40 Yeah.

John Dehlin 58:41 Also, several of the Danites, as I understand it. Well, let's just say several of the perpetrators of the Mountain Meadows Massacre were associated with Joseph Smith in either Missouri or Illinois as Danites or protectors, including John D. Lee himself.

Nemo 58:59 Yeah.

John Dehlin 58:59 Who was ultimately framed for. For the Mountain Meadows Massacre. So there was violence, very explicit violence that happened after Joseph's death in association with the people who I think are associated with the Danites. Right, yeah.

Nemo 59:16 So those violent individuals didn't stop being violent individuals just because the Danites stopped

John Dehlin 59:21 meeting as a group if they needed to. Yeah.

Julia 59:23 That's why I think the church claims that the Danites. And maybe somebody looked this up. I think it was like five months, it was like a very short period in Missouri that I think. And so it's interesting to me that if they've made these oaths and there's still stories of coming out in, in Illinois or even like Bennett's or John D. Lee's wearing his sash in Utah, like, and these violence acts are still happening anyway, so maybe they didn't, maybe they were organized formally, but the Danites were still a thing out through the oaths were.

John Dehlin 59:49 The oaths were until death, full stop.

Julia 59:52 Right, yeah.

John Dehlin 59:53 Yeah. And the temple, and the temple covenant was to give your own lives if necessary for the building up and the strengthening of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints also full stop.

Julia 1:00:06 Right, yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:07 But we're also making the assumption that that oath from John C. Bennett is accurate. And so I would, I would again point out, yeah, that's the only instance we have. So there, there may not be an oath or maybe there's an oath that they take on their own, you know, that we don't know about. So I would argue to Julia's point and to all of your points, that they came from Missouri to Illinois and they were probably ready to do things that they needed to do, but it wasn't as active because they weren't having the kind of mob violence that they saw obviously in Missouri, especially early on in Nauvoo. So, you know, because they were in

John Dehlin 1:00:36 charge by that point.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:37 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think Fawn Brody's probably right in the sense of it wasn't like this organized, constant thing, but they were probably there. So, you know.

John Dehlin 1:00:44 Yes, well, they had a militia.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:00:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It just evolved.

John Dehlin 1:00:49 Okay.

Julia 1:00:50 Yeah. Okay. So I just wanted to look at the church's official stance on the Danites. Oh, so yeah, this is where it talks about that. So historians generally concur that Joseph Smith approved of the Danites, but that it probably was not briefed on all their plans and likely did not sanction the full range of their activities. Danites existed for only five months from June through October in 1838 and were only ever active in two counties in the northwest Missouri. Though the existence of the Danites was short lived, it resulted in a long standing and much embellished myth about a secret society of Mormon vigilantes Well, I'm

Nemo 1:01:24 sorry, but you can't say Joseph Smith approved of a group of violent vigilantes, but he didn't sanction all their actions. I'm like, yes, but he is responsible for them because he falls in the first place. So they're trying to somehow put Joseph Smith beyond responsibility for whatever it was the Danites got up to. He's 100% responsible. Even if he didn't know about what they're getting up to, he's responsible for it because he created them.

Julia 1:01:47 Especially. Especially if an oath like that existed at any point. Again, we don't know this is from Bennett. Like, of course this is going to carry on.

Nemo 1:01:54 Like, yeah, what they're not things back in the box.

John Dehlin 1:01:57 Like, yeah, what they're not saying there is that everyone renounced their denied oaths after the five month period. They're certainly not saying that. And they're not mentioning that the temple ceremony had oaths of loyalty until death.

Julia 1:02:10 So they're gruesome deaths.

John Dehlin 1:02:13 Right, sorry.

Julia 1:02:14 In the temple. Like that.

Nemo 1:02:14 Just even, even oaths aside, once you give men like this the ability to go around and enact justice in that way and you give them that kind of power, it's a bit Pandora's box esque. You can't put these men back in a box and control them again in the same way. These, as we see with John D. Lee, it goes on throughout their lives.

John Dehlin 1:02:34 Yeah. The Mountain Meadows Massacre is a great example. So this is a clear attempt of the church to bracket and limit what they know is problematic behavior without giving all the information that would show that the effects of the Danites lived on far beyond that five month period in Missouri.

Nemo 1:02:53 And it says God justifies that behavior. It will continue.

Julia 1:02:56 Right. Yeah. They're like, it's a long standing and much embellished myth. If you hear about the Danites after this point, like, it's all like, anyway. Yeah, they're trying to really control that.

John Dehlin 1:03:05 What they're also not mentioning is Brigham Young's blood atonement doctrine that led to the death, I'm sure, of several people, you know.

Julia 1:03:14 Well. And again, I. With the. I'm interested in the blood atonement because in Danite or in John C. Bennett's book, he alludes to Joseph Smith teaching the blood atonement.

John Dehlin 1:03:22 Yeah.

Julia 1:03:22 So that'd be really interesting to see.

John Dehlin 1:03:24 We should do it. We should. Julia put that on our list of episodes to do Mike and Julia a blood atonement episode.

Julia 1:03:30 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:03:31 All right, let's keep going.

Julia 1:03:34 Okay. So this is one thing that I pulled out just from. This is just from. I did a study on the Sangamon Journal just to see whether the Danites still persisted or what they were doing. So in the 1840s, the day nights appeared in at least four articles of the Sangamon Journal. Most of those were in conjunction with John C. Bennett, so take that with a grain of salt. But there was one article in 1846 that was submitted by William Smith, Joseph Smith's brother. And then I have the, the dates of those four articles. I just think that's really interesting.

John Dehlin 1:04:00 Should we read that, should we read that little article blurb on the left?

Julia 1:04:04 Sure. Like, yeah, this is. My eyesight's probably not going to read. Does somebody else.

John Dehlin 1:04:08 I can see it. I can see it. So is this the, is this the 1846, November 5th edition or not? Do we.

Julia 1:04:18 Actually, I think it might be the July 1 one, but that's a good question. I should have written it down.

John Dehlin 1:04:21 It says, it says. So this is in. This is in Nauvoo, 1842-1846. Somewhere between there it says, the Danites foul murder, exclamation point. We copy the following from the Cascala Republican. It has long been understood that committees were sent about the country from the establishment at Nauvoo requiring the members of Joe Smith's church to pay tithes and offerings for the purpose of building the temple or fortification at that place. The commands of Joe is in this particular. Are we suppose to be implicitly obeyed. In the case before us, the individual who declined the order of Joe's servants paid the penalty of the refusal. His house was robbed and himself shot dead in his field. So this is an accusation that someone who didn't tithe and obey Joseph Smith was murdered, basically. And they're. And they're bringing up the Danites as to add credibility to the story or because they heard that it was a day night murder, right?

Julia 1:05:27 Yeah, yeah, they probably heard that it was the Danites and that's why they're tying it specifically to them or Joseph Smith's buddies or followers.

John Dehlin 1:05:35 And Mike, I saw a little bit of a shrug on your part. Obviously it could be anti Mormon people hate the church and they're just trying to make false associations. Is that what you're thinking?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:05:43 Well, I think it's also kind of like a thing that is sensational. Right. So you see that and it's, it draws attention. I'm not saying they're lying. I'm not saying they're doing it To. To incite people. They might be, but it also. When you. When you start, it's like, if you think about our current climate, you've got labels to define, you know, whether it's politics or religion or anything. You've got these labels. And once they take on, man, people just keep using that label because it's. It's sensationalistic. So it could just be that. Because people are like, there's this thing, and we're now going to associate it because it. It allows us to define it, you know, so kind of rambling a bit, but it just could be a term that people kind of think is interesting.

John Dehlin 1:06:19 Yeah. And he's calling him Joe. Anytime they call him Joe, it's. Chances are they don't like the church. Right.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:26 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:06:28 All right. But we don't need to keep repeating that. We. We'll let viewers and listeners decide what they believe and don't.

Julia 1:06:34 Yeah. So I just wanted to point out.

John Dehlin 1:06:35 Go. Go ahead.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:37 So I'm trying to find stuff on the. The Danite oath while we're talking, and I keep finding this other oath that is just not sourced. And it's interesting because it does feel similar to what John Bennett says. Do you guys want me to read it real quick?

John Dehlin 1:06:50 Sure.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:06:51 It's quick. It says, in the name of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, I do covenant and agree to support the first presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in all things, right or wrong. I will faithfully guard them and report to them the acts of all men as far as in my power lies. I will assist in executing all the decrees of the first president, Patriarch or president of the 12, and that I will cause all who speak evil of the presidency or heads of the church to die the death of dissenters or apostates unless they speedily confess and repent. For pestilence, persecution, and death shall follow the enemies of Zion. I will be a swift herald of salvation and messenger of peace to the saints. And I will never make known the secret purposes of this society called the Destroying Angel. My life being the forfeiture in a fire of burning tar and brimstone, so help me God and keep me steadfast.

John Dehlin 1:07:39 What's the source, Mike? Well, it's just a random text on the Internet. Like what?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:45 It's everywhere. It must come from a book.

Julia 1:07:47 It sounds like Bill Hickman, his. His whole book. He has a book called the Destroying angel, and that's. It sounds like. I mean, I don't know for sure if that's the source, but that sounds like that might be a good place.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:07:58 I would love to know where it comes from.

John Dehlin 1:07:59 So we'll ask our viewers and listeners to do that research and in the comments they'll let us know and then we'll mention it next episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:08:04 Yeah, for sure.

John Dehlin 1:08:06 Okay, thanks, man. What was that, Julia? What were you going to say?

Julia 1:08:09 Oh, just going back to the slide. So I just wanted to point out also in Utah. So at Utah, of course, Brigham Young is teaching the blood atonement and there's a lot more violence going on, especially during the Reformation. So during the Utah period, this same newspaper, the day nights were referenced 41 times between 1850 and 1859. And, and then 10 times during 1860 and 1869. And so like, so they're ramping up in Utah. So like the church. For the church to say that it's. They're just a myth or like a long standing. What, what was the wording again? Like, if it. For the church to say that it's a myth doesn't feel very honest.

John Dehlin 1:08:45 Yeah. Though the existence of the Danites was short lived, it resulted in a long standing and much embellished myth.

Julia 1:08:52 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:08:52 About a secret society of Mormon vigilantes. You juxtapose the church calling it much embellished myth with all those instances that you just mentioned 41 times in a single decade and 10 times in another decade. That's good research, Julia. Nice work.

Julia 1:09:10 Yeah, I just. Anyway, so I wanted to, so I guess I kind of wanted to push back with Brody, but like at the same time she didn't. She just said organized. She just said we. It wasn't an organized thing. Which I wouldn't argue with her about that. But, but it definitely, I would definitely push back on the church to say that's not accurate.

John Dehlin 1:09:23 Yeah. Check out my, check out my interview with Barbara Brown about the Mountain Meadows Massacre because. Or, or check out her book with Richard Turley because regardless of whether they use the word Danite, with the Mormon Reformation and Brigham Young's violent rhetoric, there was absolutely a multi decade cultural, you know, milieu of violent language and rhetoric spearheaded by Brigham Young. And so whether or not he used the word Danite is, is sort of masking the fact that if he wasn't responsible for the Mountain Meadows Massacre, I think even Turley would agree he was responsible for using language that encouraged and led to violence.

Julia 1:10:12 Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I was just thinking the oath of vengeance in the temple at the time that the members covenanted to take vengeance on the people who killed Joseph and Then, Mike, as you were reading it, it made me think of the. I'm not going to get the name right. The secret society right now in the Mormon Church that checks people.

John Dehlin 1:10:28 The strengthening. The Strengthening the Church Members committee.

Julia 1:10:32 Yeah, it made me think of that. That the church has people now watching out for people who, I don't know, are causing problems.

John Dehlin 1:10:38 But yeah, yeah. Hi, Nima.

Bennett's Expulsion, Legacy, and Later Life

Julia 1:10:43 Okay, so I just wanted to. This next one is just an overview of what was happening with Bennett. So he's disfellowshipped in 1842, in May, and then in the same month there's sexual allegations, which we've discussed, and then he's resigned as mayor, and then he's given his disfellowship notice, and then he's excommunicated. June of 1842, and then he abruptly leaves like two, three days later. And then Joseph publicly denounces Bennett in July. And then August 8th, there's a record of him being expelled from the Nauvoo Lodge. And then one thing I thought was interesting, and on August 13, he began writing his expose. And then not even a month later, like, or a month later, his expose is finished.

John Dehlin 1:11:18 That's almost as miraculous as the Book of Mormon.

Nemo 1:11:21 Yes, John.

John Dehlin 1:11:25 It's almost like an angel gave him a record that he translated.

Julia 1:11:29 Well, I mean, people will say that he's pulling out of. He's pulling sources out of newspapers and things like that, but, you know, why

John Dehlin 1:11:35 isn't it the gift and power of God that. That helped him write that book in under a month?

Julia 1:11:42 Actually, I think Joseph took longer with his book. Right?

John Dehlin 1:11:44 Yeah.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:11:45 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:11:45 Like, which is more miraculous, John, John C. Bennett's biography or the Book of

Julia 1:11:50 Mormon, which is John C. Bennett? And John C. Bennett got to survive on his own book for two years. And Joseph, I don't think he got Just live off the Book of Mormon.

John Dehlin 1:11:58 Did John C. Bennett have scribes to help him? He didn't. Which I think we've just proven that John C. Bennett's biography was more miraculous than the Book of Mormon.

Nemo 1:12:06 I sense a community tab poll. Which one's more miraculous?

John Dehlin 1:12:12 That's funny. Okay. All right, that's good to know.

Julia 1:12:15 Okay, so this is. This is a quote from his. From John C. Bennett's book that I thought was fun. If Joe Smith is not destined for the devil, all I can say is that the duties of the devil have not been clearly understood.

John Dehlin 1:12:25 Ooh.

Julia 1:12:29 He writes very well. He's. Well, I shouldn't say well, but like, he. He's very flamboyant. Or he's very, I don't know, he's not accurate. I will say he's not accurate, but he, he does, he's very humorous.

John Dehlin 1:12:39 Okay, all right. That's a good quote.

Julia 1:12:42 Oh, here's another one. Nemo, do you want to read this one? This is just another fun one from his book.

Nemo 1:12:47 Okay. And now, my fellow citizens, permit me to appeal to you again and again on this most momentous subject and urge you in the name of all that you hold dear and sacred, to spare no efforts to put down this hydra headed monster of Mormonism before it swallows up all that is valuable to you in this life or in the next. Unite yourselves and stand not idly by suffering a few zealous individuals to fight single handedly to battles of humanity and religion. Written by John de Lis. No, that wasn't you, was it John? That was John C. Bennett.

John Dehlin 1:13:22 And Julia, what do you like about that?

Julia 1:13:24 Well, he's just, his language is just really funny. Like he's calling it a hydra headed monster and he's like, we have to put it down. And he's being very vocal. Like Joseph was right to worry about Bennett. I don't think, I don't think he needed to go as far as he did in trying to stop Bennett.

John Dehlin 1:13:37 But I mean, let's, So I just have to say that like we all have our Mormon conditioning. Where Nauvoo was, was, was jelly beans and unicorns and lollipops and rainbows. But, but I, you know, I, I, I've tried to make this point in some of my writings. What's the difference between Warren Jeffs or David Koresh or Jim Jones right prior to Joseph Smith being assassinated? In other words, isn't it true that Nauvoo could have had a similar fate as Jim Jones or David Koresh or Warren Jeffs if Joseph hadn't been assassinated? Because wasn't it, at a minimum doesn't meet the criteria of a sex cult by any definition. And then if you add the abuses of power and, and, and of the, the political corruption and the, the military exhibitionism, like how, how is 1844 Nauvoo indistinguishable or distinguishable from the worst cults that we know of other than it didn't end in the, in the massacre of the members. Thanks weirdly to the assassination of Joseph. It's almost like the assassination of Joseph Smith spared the death of many, many Mormons. Do you guys think I'm, I'm off there?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:15:06 No. I mean, the thing is Like I always say, I wish Joseph Smith had ever been killed, because I think the longer he lived, the more obvious it would have been that he was making it up. On the other hand, like you said, you've got this militia building, you've got all of these tensions, and eventually, yeah, you're probably likely, if they couldn't have pulled Joseph Smith out to where they could kind of kill him on his own, you probably would have had some sort of a war or larger skirmish because of the fact that the outsiders looking in are going, this is not right. And more and more info is coming out what Joseph Smith is doing with polygamy, and it would have ended probably a lot, a lot worse had Joseph Smith not been killed.

Nemo 1:15:44 My cynical brain is throwing all sorts of things out there about, you know, what's the difference between a cult and a religion that. Well, in a religion, your first leader dies in their 30s. You know, you look at Christianity, you look at Mormonism, both had leaders, young leaders that died in their 30s. Right. But I think on a more sensible point, it having Joseph Smith be martyred gives people something to rally around. And I think what cults thrive on is a feeling of external oppression. And having your leader killed in the way particular Joseph Smith was killed is just gonna solidify that oppression narrative, and it's gonna make people scared. And what cults thrive on is people in the community being scared and having a strong leader to tell them that they're gonna fix everything. And that's what Brigham Young was very good at. Brigham Young was very good at that, and so he led them. But arguably, their. Their exodus across the plains and the people that were subsequently brought to Utah, I would argue a lot of Mormons died because of that journey. More than maybe would have, you know, died had Joseph Smith survived. I don't know. But, you know, it wasn't that Mormons stopped dying for the cause. It's just they died out on the prairies rather than in a swamp, I guess.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:16:59 Yeah, I mean, that's. That's why it's so interesting, because what if. What if Joseph Smith lives, and all of a sudden, in 1845, 18, you know, more and more people find out about polygamy, and the church kind of splits because of that. You just don't know how it's going to go. But, yeah, the church survives. Mormonism survives in large part because Joseph Smith is killed. Because from a standpoint of as we've done in 50 episodes, if you look at this stuff, it's clearly not what it claims to be. But when you have something to rally around, like Nemo said, it gives you that, you know, polygamy was something they rallied around. It allows you to have this, this identity to the church as opposed to to yourself. And once you, once you give your identity to something, it's hard to get it back. So yeah, it certainly gave it that, that extra oomph.

Nemo 1:17:42 Just a couple of real quick points there. I think that's critical that idea of identity because as Russell M. Nelson is now just continuing to undermine everything that made being a Mormon unique and individual. I think we're actually. That's not going to make the church easier to live and keep people. I think it could actually have an inverse effect is that more and more people leave because they kind of just float out because there's nothing holding them there. And the second thing about Nelson about the word Mormon, that quite quote that you showed on there, the hide the hydra headed monster of Mormonism that will definitely at some point I'm sure be shown as someone saying, look, the word Mormon was used to abuse us in the early days of the church. And this is why Mormonism is a horrible nickname. We have to remember that Joseph Smith used the word Mormonism and Mormon himself too and espoused it and used it as a normal name for the church. So this is not John C. Bennett using it. That part of the quote is not the bit where John C. Bennett's being mean to the Church. That's just the common name for the church at the time. I just want to make that clear because there's so much out there of people trying to say, look, early detractors of the church used the word Mormon and Mormonism. Therefore isn't Russell M. Nelson right to say we shouldn't use it anymore? No, because Joseph Smith himself was using it. So that's.

Julia 1:18:49 Yeah, well he said it meant more. Good. He wasn't just using it, he was claiming it.

Nemo 1:18:54 And Hinckley reaffirmed that in the 90s. Anyway. Yeah. Not to get sidetracked, I just, I feel passionate about that point.

Julia 1:19:01 Yeah. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:19:01 What's. I guess reflecting on this quote a tiny bit more. On the one hand I think any of us would, would feel like if, if a prophet was pressuring our 14 year old girls to marry them under penalty of eternal damnation of them and their families, we would call that a monster. Right. That is, that is a mother, daughter pairs, sister pairs, men being sent on missions so that Joseph could, could you know, make advances to their wives. Like that all happened. And, and so it is. It is. It was a monstrous time. If you care about, you know, sexual predation. It was. That alone was a monstrous time. I guess the problem with this quote is, is that John C. Bennett was involved in it. He was participating in it. And so he's. He's. He's a hypocrite because he was complicit. Right.

Julia 1:19:57 Like, he helped make this.

John Dehlin 1:19:59 He created the monster.

Julia 1:20:00 Yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:20:01 He was. He was one of The Hydra heads.

Julia 1:20:03 Dr. Frankenstein.

John Dehlin 1:20:04 He was one of the hydra heads.

Nemo 1:20:06 Yeah, he was one of the hydra heads.

John Dehlin 1:20:08 Yeah.

Julia 1:20:09 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:20:10 He was right next to Joseph. His head was right next to Joseph's head.

Julia 1:20:13 Yeah.

Nemo 1:20:13 And his head got cut off, and now he's sour about it.

John Dehlin 1:20:16 Right? Yeah. So that's complicated. Okay, great quote, Julia.

Julia 1:20:20 Okay, so one of the biggest things that came out of him leaving Nauvoo and writing this expose is that he gave lectures. He gave so many. And in dozens of places along the east coast. And he was promoting this book and Joseph Smith. One thing that I thought was really interesting, Joseph Smith predicted or prophesied, however you want to see it, that whoever involved themselves with Bennett and his book would lose money. But on the contrary, Bennett was able to go two years without any other source of income from the money he earned by giving lectures and selling his book. So he. His occupation was being an ex Mormon, I guess.

John Dehlin 1:20:53 So are we saying it's a failed. It's a failed prophecy by Joseph Smith,

Julia 1:20:56 Basically, if you want to call it a prophecy, yes. It was certainly a failure.

John Dehlin 1:21:00 Okay.

Julia 1:21:01 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:21:02 All right. That's good to know. That's good to know. Yeah.

Julia 1:21:05 And then how Joseph reacted. So Bennett's. Bennett's giving all these along the East Coast. There were so many places in his autobiography. Excuse me, in his biography, there's just chapters and chapters of this. And then Joseph was. Seemed afraid to me. It looks like he's afraid. And so in late August of 1842, Joseph Smith called on many elders in Nauvoo to go on missions to rebut Bennett's lies and disabuse the public mind. More than 300 elders fanned out from Nauvoo. That's so like, I think a normal mission has. Does a normal mission have 300 missionaries or 150?

John Dehlin 1:21:38 A couple hundred. Probably 200 maybe.

Julia 1:21:40 So it's like a mission. It is a whole mission that he's doing anyway, so he sends these elders out, and they were.

Nemo 1:21:46 That's a lot.

Julia 1:21:47 Yeah. And they were laden with certificates to rebut the statements of Bennett. So they've got their own material. The elders tried to encourage editors to insert these statements and affidavits into their newspapers. Few succeeded. But many newspapers mentioned that these anti Bennett certificates had been published in the Mormon press. After one of Bennett's lectures of the Mormon. After one. It's been. After one of Bennett's lectures, the Mormon elders stood up and began preaching and afterwards baptized 12 people. That was a fun story.

John Dehlin 1:22:14 Like, so what? Tell us, Julia, what.

Julia 1:22:17 So they're so in one of the meetings, and I can't remember if I referenced this one, but there was one. So one of these meetings, he's telling them he's exposing Joseph's polygamy, he's exposing the Navajo city charter, just everything else that he's talking about. And then. So missionaries are sent there and they stand up and they start yelling. There. There's just a lot of debates that are just. There's openly yelling at each other. And then afterwards, I guess 12 people got baptized. So it's a mission. And there was a lot of them that. There was one of them. They would turn off the lights and everyone had to leave. And then there was another one where they started. They interrupted Bennett and they started speaking in tongues to try to get him to be quiet. So, like, anyway, I just thought. I just think those stories are really interesting.

John Dehlin 1:22:57 I can hear Mormon rhetoric, Mormon church leader rhetoric, saying, well, you know, Bennett was making money off of, you know, tearing the church down. But this is sort of like the. The equivalent back then of true crime. Like, people had a fascination with Mormons because there were all these rumors of death and death oaths and, and polygamy and sexual predation. And so why wouldn't they want somebody who was an insider to come tell them what was going on there? It makes all the sense in the world that people. And I'm glad, I'm grateful for the whistleblowers that were willing to talk about what they saw. You know, personally,

Nemo 1:23:40 I just had a thought that, like, we. You often say history repeats itself, right? And. And it's nice to see that the church hasn't deviated from a pattern of behavior since the. The 1840s where someone's out there criticizing the church. And so they actively send people out to try and drown them out and to try and bury their message and to try and convince people otherwise. I mean, what, what are. What is fair Mormon if not the exact same thing they tried to do to John C. Bennett? What, what is the pamphlet that D. Michael Quinn wrote to try and take down the Tanners, if not exactly the same thing, yet the church does this time and time again. Someone who was in the church, discovers problems with the church, tries to tell people about those problems. And the church's MO every single time is maybe not send 300 missionaries, but certainly send some people out there to try and talk down the problem and say it's not as big a deal as it is, and they've been.

John Dehlin 1:24:33 But also to ex. You forgot. You forgot excommunicating the whistleblower.

Nemo 1:24:37 The whistleblower also. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:24:39 Even if they're telling the truth. Mike, what do you think?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:24:42 No, I think Nemo's point is good. I think you. You're going to expect that the church is going to try to rebut these. I mean, ultimately, the church is trying to. To convert everyone in the world. Right. So they're not going to want to have one guy going around to these lectures and being unchecked. The flip side is what you don't hear at these lectures is these Mormon elders getting up and saying, yeah, we're doing polygamy, and, yeah, we're taking extra wives, but it's totally cool. They're just saying, you know, this guy's lying. And so that's the difference. Like, it's one thing to defend yourself and to defend yourself with facts. It's another to defend yourself and leave out a lot of important details, which you still see today. As Nemo said, when you look at apologetic sites where all of a sudden you read it like you're leaving out a lot of big details here that completely undermine your point. So, yeah, I expect the church to do that, but I also, I think you can't give them points because of the fact that they're not coming clean on what they are doing.

John Dehlin 1:25:31 Didn't the church continue to deny the practice of polygamy until, like, 1855 or something like that?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:25:37 Yeah, a long time after.

John Dehlin 1:25:39 This was like another 10 years before Brigham Young and the church admitted polygamy.

Nemo 1:25:45 Yes. It was only once they were firmly settled in Utah and felt they were, like, beyond the reach of people, that they were like, well, we can be open about this now.

John Dehlin 1:25:54 So this, this. This was part of a ruse. Didn't we cover that, Mike, in one of the LDS discussions episodes about missionaries who literally. Mormon missionaries who literally were polygamists themselves, going to England, converting people and denying that the church was practicing polygamy as polygamists.

Nemo 1:26:14 Right, Paris? Right. Yeah, famously.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:26:18 And then these women are coming over, They're Coming over with nothing. And they get off the boat or they get off whatever, the train, whatever. I don't know what. They came on by and then all of a sudden they have nothing and they find out, oh no, they are doing polygamy and I have to join. Yeah. I mean, I can't.

John Dehlin 1:26:33 Julia. We did an episode on that. Right. On.

Julia 1:26:35 On with human trafficking. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:26:37 Was Joseph Smith the human trafficker. And I think we decided. Yeah.

Nemo 1:26:41 From that. I think it's important to mention that actually once that became known and reporters were going to Utah and reporting on what these women, the conditions they were in and whatnot. And. And once that was reaching its way back to England, the amount of Brits going over as converts instantly began to dry up. Like the moment people found out, we were like, no.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:02 Who would think that being. Finding out that when you go to Utah, you're gonna be handed off to a 75 year old man as his teenager young 20s bride would be unattractive offer.

John Dehlin 1:27:12 And you didn't speak the language, right? You couldn't even speak the language.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:15 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:27:15 And you have no way out, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:16 Yeah, no way out. Like the idea that it's not like you're driving from Salt Lake to Provo and you can be like, I'll just go back home. You have nothing. You have no family. You leave your family. A lot of cases, you leave your friends and the predatorial behavior with. And you know, we've talked about that in those episodes. And that is an area where I still can't talk without getting mad because it is so horrible what they were doing. But.

John Dehlin 1:27:37 Yeah, so.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:27:38 Yeah, so. So to come out here and say we're not doing it is just. That's right. You know, I'm like, yeah, of course the church has a right to defend itself. But they're telling everyone that Bennett's lying, was not lying about polygamy.

John Dehlin 1:27:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, that's good.

Julia 1:27:53 Okay, so this is more on the anti venom missionaries. So regardless of whether these Mormon men who were sent to watch John C. Benham were Danites, which I thought was interesting because some of the sources say that there were 300 Danites. So that's the exact same number. So it just connected in my head. So whether they were Danites or not, they were sent. Nonetheless. Newspaper articles reported that the Mormons would. Some would sometimes show up to these lectures and debate openly with Bennett. I think I just told the story, so I kind of just went over the story. We don't have to read it. It's just that these. These people are coming. They're standing up and they're starting. They're just interrupting him by speaking in tongues, and they put out the lights and everyone is forced to leave. So the Mormons are trying. Or the members of the church are trying really, really hard to get Bennett to be quiet.

John Dehlin 1:28:31 So, I mean, that's. That's intimidation, right? It's. It's silencing. It's. It's intimidation. That's bad stuff. Let the guy tell his story. Don't interrupt him. He. He's entitled to his own story. And it was true. I mean, a lot of what he's saying was true.

Julia 1:28:50 I guess part of me. Yeah, yeah, my part of me was. Is like, Joseph's protesting too much. Like, if it was all lies, just let him say lies. No one's. It's. There's going to be nothing to back it up. But Bennett wasn't saying lies. Bennett was being. To some degree, he was. But it's specifically about polygamy and how Nava was. Was set up and things like that. That. Those were honest.

John Dehlin 1:29:09 The church acknowledges now those things.

Julia 1:29:11 Right?

John Dehlin 1:29:12 Yeah. All right, that's good.

Julia 1:29:16 Okay, so this is just something that I wanted to point out just to. Just to show the expanse of this all. So before the publication of his expose and after Bennett was giving lectures to the public exposing Joseph Smith in Mormonism, he met with newspaper editors and had as many articles published as he could. And then the following are newspapers that cover the stories of Bennett in his expose. And this is not all of them, but these are the ones that were pulled out by his biographer. There's just this huge running on list of everyone who was covering that. Like, for our.

John Dehlin 1:29:44 For our listeners, there's at least 29, you know, newspapers. New York Times, Chicago Democrat, Buffalo Commercial, Illinois Register, Quincy Wig, Bostonian, Salem Observer. Like, I just want to give our listeners a sense for what they're not seeing on. On the slide. Just a ton of newspapers. Okay, go ahead.

Julia 1:30:04 It's just remarkable how much Bennett. How much he was being heard or spreading out this exposing Joseph.

John Dehlin 1:30:11 I mean, this. This would make sense why they. This would give credence to the idea that they wanted to kill him because how much damage did he do to the church once he was allowed to live and to go on and talk about what he experienced.

Julia 1:30:25 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:30:26 It had to have been incredibly damaging, right?

Nemo 1:30:29 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:30:30 Which is why the church excommunicates whistleblowers, right? To try and discredit them and cut them off. Yeah, yeah.

Julia 1:30:38 And I know We've talked about this multiple times before, but just as a. One of his pushes in his expose was to. He wanted Joseph Smith convicted for the attempted murder of Lilburn Boggs. And he says that Bennett claims that Joseph sent or in Porter Rockwell to do the murder. Of course, he was not murdered. It was a failed attempt. But he was shot.

John Dehlin 1:30:56 He was shot.

Julia 1:30:57 Yes. He was injured. And there were reports, and I think. Or in Porter Rockwell may have even said it himself, that he was in the neighborhood on the night of the attempt. And so that was just a big push that for him to. He wanted Joseph to be put away. So. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:31:10 And to be fair, Boggs had issued an exterminating order against Mormons where he basically said it was okay with what for Missourians to kill Mormons. Is that right? You're.

Julia 1:31:21 You're in Missouri, Julia, I apologize on behalf of my. My state. Yeah, that. That is what happened. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:31:26 And it wasn't just until a couple decade or two ago that the Missouri.

Julia 1:31:31 Which is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:31:35 Okay. That's good to. That's good to know. And again, we talk about that. That Hydra monster assassinations or attempted assassinations. I think that fits within the characterization of a monster, right? Yeah, I think. Yeah.

Julia 1:31:50 Yeah. So there's this idea that his biographer pulls out that maybe Joseph and Bennett were kind of made a reconciliation. On December 8th of 1843, Bennett returned to Nauvoo, went to Joseph Smith's general store, and paid Smith $3 for each of the 39 weeks he had boarded with the Smith family. Neither Smith nor Bennett ever made any public reference to this incident, leaving us to wonder if Bennett attempted a reconciliation with Smith. And this is from Andrew Smith, his biographer. I just thought that was really interesting, that I thought it was worth putting in here, is that we don't. Like, maybe because he's like, hey, I stayed at the. I think this was the Nauvoo or the Mansion house. Like, hey, I stayed. I'm trying to pay you back. And this is in 1843. So it's a couple of years after he was excommunicated. So maybe there was something in him where he was maybe tired of. I don't know. It's just interesting.

Nemo 1:32:36 Maybe he was just coming to flex on all the money he'd made by selling his book and doing damage to the Church.

Julia 1:32:40 He's like, maybe.

Nemo 1:32:41 And drops money.

Julia 1:32:42 Maybe it's the opposite of reconciliation. Maybe he was gloating. Yeah. Who knows?

Nemo 1:32:46 But maybe that's what I'd do.

Julia 1:32:50 Gloat. Like, here's all the money I owe you. Yeah. Okay. So one thing. So this is just. This is his after. After his lectures and things. So in the spring of 1844, Bennett was reportedly once again in Nauvoo among the Mormons. The Daily People's Organ reported that Bennett had formed an acquaintance with a female Mormon by which he was led into lamentable mishap and was expelled by them. So I guess he's kicked out twice. This was evidently a polite way of referring to Bennett's adulterous behavior. So he still has the pattern of trying to take women. That hasn't changed.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:33:26 Yeah.

Nemo 1:33:27 Why would he try and sneak. This doesn't make any sense. Because if he is, as, you know, scared of being assassinated by Danites as he keeps making out, then why is he coming back into, like, into the den? The lion's den. Right. Why does he keep going back there? It makes no sense.

Julia 1:33:43 Yeah, yeah. He returned in 1843 and then 44. Right, right. Maybe it was an old acquaintance.

Nemo 1:33:49 Maybe it was an attempt to. To keep the boogeyman alive. You know, from. From the perspective of Joseph Smith, trying to control narrative about. There's this John Bennett character and he's out there, he's doing all these problems just as a way of reminding people that he's the. Still exists and that we're fighting because these cults, these groups, whatever, they all need an enemy. Right. They need someone on the outside that they're fighting against. So this could.

John Dehlin 1:34:12 Yeah, it doesn't. If he's running around the country trashing the Mormon church in 30 newspapers.

Nemo 1:34:18 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:34:19 I. I would think he'd be afraid to show up in Nauvoo.

Julia 1:34:22 Yeah, I don't know. I think. I think the newspaper went to Salt Lake. Yeah, I think the lecture has. The lectures had started dying off in 1843, so, like, maybe things had calmed down. I don't. I don't know.

John Dehlin 1:34:33 But.

Julia 1:34:34 Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

John Dehlin 1:34:34 That's weird. That's a weird story. Yeah.

Julia 1:34:36 Yeah. Okay. So after the death of Joseph Andrew Smith, his biographer points out that Bennett appears to have had no influence on the events that unfolded in the Carthage jail during June of 1844. It didn't even occur to me that that would be a question in people's minds that Bennett could have been involved in the murder. When Bennett heard about the murder of Joseph Smith, he regard. He regretted that in the heat of a. An embittered strife, he had strayed into a severity of expression of which his cooler judgment did not approve. So he's apologizing for being angry is what I'm reading. Bennett maintained that at no time did he justify mob violence in dethroning Smith or urge. Or Urge circumventing Smith by fraud. And so far that seems to stand up. He just wanted to.

Nemo 1:35:19 Yeah, go ahead, Julia.

John Dehlin 1:35:21 Finish your thought, Julia. And then Nemo.

Julia 1:35:23 Well, it seems like he wasn't. It didn't seem like Bennett was trying to be violent towards Joseph. It just seemed like he was just trying to give these lectures and sell his book. I don't think he was involved in trying to send a mob towards Joseph.

Nemo 1:35:32 Can we have that slide about the monstrous hydra again?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:35:38 Sure.

Nemo 1:35:38 Because I want to have a quick look at the wording of what he said there. He said, you name all the holy sacred, spare no effort, no efforts to put down. Put down this hydra headed monster of Mormonism.

John Dehlin 1:35:52 Yeah.

Nemo 1:35:53 Before it swallows up all that is valuable to you in this life or in the next.

John Dehlin 1:35:57 Is it put down a euphemism for murder or kill.

Nemo 1:36:00 He talks about suffering a few zealous individuals to fight single handedly to battles of humanity and religion. Like, I'm not sure he can say, oh no, I didn't want anything bad to happen. Like he was. Yeah. He may not have appealed directly to violence, but he was very much urging people to do everything possible to stop Mormonism.

John Dehlin 1:36:19 Isn't the whole fable of the Hydra about killing it? Right. Fighting it with the sword and killing it. So it is a violent. It's a violent metaphor to invoke. And my immediate reaction was, yeah, just like Brigham Young didn't cause the Mountain Meadows Massacre, but he certainly contributed to the rhetoric that led to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. And in the same way John C. Bennett absolutely contributed to the information. And then the hatred of Joseph Smith, that certainly contributed to his death. Right.

Julia 1:36:52 Yeah, that's a good catch, Nemo. That's. Yeah. Not specifically calling for violence, but absolutely calling for violence. I don't.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:36:58 Yeah, yeah, that's just it.

Julia 1:37:00 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:37:00 Yeah. Okay.

Julia 1:37:03 Okay. So then I want to talk about the succession crisis. Because Bennett plays a fair amount into the succession crisis. So Bennett claimed. So after Joseph Smith's death, we don't. There was no specific person who would be the. I don't know if you guys have done an episode on that yet about who was the next chosen prophet.

Succession Crisis and Bennett's Ties to James Strang

John Dehlin 1:37:18 The succession crisis.

Julia 1:37:20 Yeah. Have you?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:37:20 We covered it a little in the transfiguration of Brigham Young, but we haven't done it like a real good. In depth look at it.

Nemo 1:37:26 Add it to the list.

John Dehlin 1:37:28 Yeah.

Julia 1:37:28 Yeah. Okay. So Bennett claimed that during his time in the First Presidency, Joseph Smith gave him a sealed envelope that appointed Sidney Rigdon as the next. As the next prophet with William Marx and Brigham Young as the counselors. Brigham Young and others called the revelation a forgery. And, and one newspaper claimed that the revelation was written in Bennett's handwriting. And I just wanted to point out that we don't have any revelations in Joseph Smith's handwriting. I'm pretty sure that's been, that's known by historians that he was, he always dictated things. And so that's just not something that we have. Rigden lost his leadership struggle and was excommunicated. He started a new church called the Church of Latter Day Saints.

John Dehlin 1:38:06 Okay.

Julia 1:38:06 So, so, yeah, he's, he's. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:10 I mean, it, it, it would. Sidney Rigdon claimed that he was the successor and Joseph. And John C. Bennett was Joseph's right hand man at the time. So I've got no problem thinking that that claim has merit.

Julia 1:38:26 Yeah. Like we don't, we haven't. We don't know. Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:29 Because I mean, it's plausible. It's possible.

Julia 1:38:31 It's absolutely possible. Yeah.

Nemo 1:38:33 If Brigham Young's staging a power grab, he's going to say things, Right?

Julia 1:38:37 Yeah.

Nemo 1:38:38 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:38:39 Okay. That's good to know. That's fascinating.

Julia 1:38:42 Okay, so later. So there's another character, James Strang. He broke off from the Mormons. Bennett later began to write letters to James Strang, who also claimed to have had a letter from Joseph appointing himself Strang as the rightful successor. In his letters, Bennett stated that he was ready to enroll under Strang's banner and requested the same position that he had under Joseph Smith in the First Presidency. Bennett became a strong supporter of Strang. Bennett advised Strang to have Joseph and Hyrum's bodies exhumed and removed because it would quote, have an astonishing effect on. In congregating the people in Vore and where they were located at the time, which I'm pulling that one out because I just thought it was super interesting. Like, I didn't realize, but people I. This last summer we went to Nauvoo and they have. They told stories that the reason they didn't tell, they didn't disclose where the bodies were buried is because even the members wanted to dig them up and take their body parts like hair or fingers or whatever to. Because they saw them as like luck charms and things like that. So I just thought that was super interesting that even Bennett's pulling that out

Nemo 1:39:42 and the church tries to tell us that magical thinking plays no part in the early church. Like, come on, people want Joseph's finger as a lucky rabbit's foot. Like this.

Julia 1:39:50 Well, and then you have the stories of. And then you have the stories of Alvin Smith, who. They're. They were going to exhume his body because Joseph was told to take his body to go get the plates or to take him, and he had died already. So. Yeah, there's just a lot of. I just thought that was an interesting story. So.

Nemo 1:40:05 Yeah, so I think this. Okay, go on, Julia.

Julia 1:40:08 No, no, you say.

Nemo 1:40:09 I was gonna say, I think this shows Bennett's flair for the dramatic once again and just kind of like the stones on this guy to just wander up to strangle. But yeah, give me the same position that I've caused loads of trouble by having before. Like, you know, that church that I've almost single handedly undermined and caused this succession crisis in. Yeah. Give me the same job again, please, in your movement. Cool. Like, pretty shameless when you think about it.

Julia 1:40:34 Yes.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:40:35 Yeah, I thought that he wrote in his expose that his whole objective in joining the Mormon Church was to expose it. And now he's trying to join other offshoots of it, which just either he. Yeah, either he loves the power he had and he wants to regain that power and that feeling of importance, or he actually has some affinity for Mormonism. It probably is just. He just seems like a bad dude. But. Yeah, it just cracks me up how he contradicts himself by his actions quite a bit.

John Dehlin 1:41:04 Yeah, I get, you know, I get it. You know, when somebody like, for example, becomes a part of Mormon Stories podcast or becomes part of the Mormon Stories interactions with the world, you know, they really like the, the exposure, they really like the notoriety and the fame and, and just like in those instances that I've seen people like Oliver Cowdery or Martin Harris or certainly the Whitmers, what is, what are they going to do in their lives after they leave the Mormon movement that's ever going to come anywhere close to the notoriety, the fame, the significance of being attached to or associated with the movement? And so it makes sense that John C. Bennett, once the interest in his stories about Mormonism dies down, he's irrelevant again. And so sometimes people will do anything that they have to to stay relevant. And so in that sense, it makes sense to me.

Julia 1:42:05 Yeah.

Nemo 1:42:06 So you're saying, John, if your podcast becomes irrelevant all of a sudden, you'll go join another religion, leave it, and then start.

John Dehlin 1:42:11 I'm going to. I'm going to try and be a co host of Nemo the Mormon. I'm going to try and be a co host for Nemo the Mormon podcast is what's going to happen.

Nemo 1:42:18 We're not going to see Catholic stories anytime soon. Maybe.

John Dehlin 1:42:22 Maybe. Who knows if I feel too desperate and unneeded.

Julia 1:42:28 So I do think it's interesting that he is trying to join Strang's church and not Reagan's church, even though he's the one that carried the letter to Raiden saying that he was the next prophet. So it's kind of confusing.

Nemo 1:42:38 Although I don't. I don't think. I don't think for Bennett, it's about the legitimacy of the church so much as it is just about being, like John said, kind of at the top of the. A power structure. Like, I don't think he's going, oh, well, I'm going to go for Rigdon, because Rigdon's got the legit claim to be Joseph's successor. He's kind of just like, well, who's actually going to let me in? And then I'll go.

Julia 1:42:55 Right, right. I think that's what. What the concern was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So in. Mike, do you want to read this one?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:43:02 Yeah. In 1846, while in the Strang church and while Strang was away on business, one of the members of the High Council, Aaron Smith, charged Bennett with teaching and striving to put into practice false doctrine. And regarding polygamy and concubinage, the High Council expelled Bennett from the church, but Bennett ignored them. And when Strang returned, he said that the meeting held without him was not legitimate and that the testimonies against Bennett was a lot of hearsay trash. Eventually, James Strang excommunicated Bennett from the church.

John Dehlin 1:43:34 Oh, man.

Nemo 1:43:34 This guy. Man, this guy.

Julia 1:43:37 Yeah. So he's just. He's repeating the same behavior and having the same results as. As in the Mormon Church.

Nemo 1:43:43 So, yeah, he's like a seedy guy. He's turned up. He's like, guys, I can get women. And they've gone, nope. We've seen this go wrong before. Off you go, Bennett. We're not having any of it.

John Dehlin 1:43:52 Well, kudos to Strang. I don't know. Kudos to Strang for not. For not succumbing, I guess. I don't know.

Julia 1:43:59 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I don't know if his religion maintained not having polygamy. I kind of.

John Dehlin 1:44:04 That's true.

Julia 1:44:05 Somebody should look that up, because I thought his. I thought his group Accepted polygamy later, but I'm not sure.

John Dehlin 1:44:10 Maybe they called it spiritual wifery.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:44:11 Sure.

Julia 1:44:12 Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:44:12 Or maybe they called it the new and everlasting covenant.

Nemo 1:44:15 Maybe. Yeah. And then got rid of it.

Julia 1:44:20 Okay, so this is another part that plays into the homosexuality. During his time with the Strangite church, Bennett made became close with a Dr. Pierce B. Fagan. Bennett made every excuse to see him, sometimes temporarily leaving his wife in another state due to financial reasons. Bennett and Fagan later started an office together in Iowa. Andrew F. Smith said Bennett was clearly attracted to Fagan and this attraction might well have been of a passionate nature, at least on Bennett's part.

Nemo 1:44:47 That was a picture of Fagan.

John Dehlin 1:44:49 I think that's AI. That's AI If I've ever seen AI. That's AI.

Julia 1:44:53 Yeah. I'm not trying to deceive people. I was just having a reference. Yeah, that is.

John Dehlin 1:44:56 Calm down. Calm down, Nemo.

Nemo 1:44:58 I mean, that's a good looking guy in a cravat. Like.

John Dehlin 1:45:04 That's good. That's cool. Julia. All right.

Nemo 1:45:06 So, Julia, you were saying something before I lowered the tone.

Julia 1:45:09 Oh, no, it's just another reference of him being bisexual. So, yeah, it makes me. It makes all the other ones kind of hold a little bit more weight that even his biographer is like. Yeah, that and he had a lot of letters that he was sending to this doctor and he was really insistent on seeing him. But anyway.

John Dehlin 1:45:27 Yeah, okay. All right.

Final Years of Bennett and Closing Reflections

Julia 1:45:30 Okay. So this one I thought was really funny. So this is Brigham Young. He's the next prophet. He's so he's the mouthpiece for God. In 1850, Brigham Young claimed that Bennett had died a gruesome death. And one of the saints called it a fulfillment of one of Joseph Smith's prophecies. Despite the prophet's statement, Bennett was alive and well and would live for another 15 years.

John Dehlin 1:45:48 So either Brigham Young was lying or he was misinformed.

Julia 1:45:52 But you'd think that if you're talking to God, that you wouldn't be. I don't know.

John Dehlin 1:45:56 You would know.

Julia 1:45:57 You would know.

Nemo 1:45:58 My own voice and the voice of my servants. It is the same.

Julia 1:46:01 Also, they reference. They reference that Joseph prophesied that Bennett would die a gruesome death. I haven't seen that prophecy anywhere. But that is really interesting if he did say that.

Nemo 1:46:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:46:11 Okay. Interesting. All right.

Julia 1:46:15 Okay. So we're just wrapping up here. So earlier. So I titled this one Ketchup, Poultry and Death. Earlier in the fall of 1843, Bennett joined the. Joined the Hinkelite church founded by ex Mormon George Hinkle Bennett, published his own recipes for ketchup and used it in pill form as medicine, which obviously didn't do anything. Bennett wrote. Bennett wrote a poultry book, and you can see that you can just go to archive.org and. And check out his poultry book in March of 1850 and crossbred other chickens to create the Plymouth Rock Fowl, which I thought was super interesting. It's a very gorgeous chicken. He also was the first to exhibit and publicize the Brahma chickens. He also bred several game birds for cock fighting. So that's interesting. He died. He died in early August of 1865 and is buried next to his wife in the Polk City Cemetery in Iowa. His tombstone is one of the largest in the cemetery. And you can Google that. It's just this huge, massive tombstone. Like, I'm not sure why, but I get. The town loved him at the end when he totally disassociated from Mormonism. He started, like, doing all these things, and he brought the communities together. And I think. I think when he was trying to show off his chickens, they. They started. They're like, oh, actually, we love this idea. He wanted to be the center of attention to show his chickens off, but the whole city loved the idea that it's still a thing that runs on today that they created around these chickens. So, anyway, I just thought that was interesting.

Nemo 1:47:33 I. I think, to be honest, if he had mixed that ketchup with mayonnaise until it was a nice kind of, like, pink color and then put it

John Dehlin 1:47:40 in pill form, then he would be

Nemo 1:47:42 a prophet then that. That would have medicinal properties up the wazoo. I would. I would argue.

John Dehlin 1:47:48 All right, Nemo. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Fry sauce, Nemo. Thumbs up or thumbs down? Thumbs up. Thumbs up.

Nemo 1:47:54 Weird. It's so weird, but yeah.

John Dehlin 1:47:57 All right, Mike. All right. Put your thumbs up, Julia. Thumbs up or thumbs down on price? Mike says no. Why? We have a dissenting voice. Let's excommunicate this guy.

Nemo 1:48:06 Get rid of him.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:07 I'm not a huge Mayo fan. I'm not a huge Mayo fan, so, you know, that's all right.

John Dehlin 1:48:12 You're. You're. You're exc. We just excommunicated Mike. Mike. Mike's out of here. He's no longer part of LDS discussions. Sorry, Mike. See you later. You're gone. No, I'm just kidding, Mike. Welcome back. Mike will bring you back into full fellowship. Mike, if you repent. Will you repent?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:31 I've never. You know what? I'M not a huge Mayo fan, so I don't think. I don't think I can.

Nemo 1:48:35 He's just holding the line. He's just. He's not repenting. He's not refusing to take the ketchup sacrament every.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:48:42 I'm now gonna go on. I've just scheduled a lecture tour against Mayo, so

Nemo 1:48:49 prep the missionaries, John.

Julia 1:48:52 So I think I had one. I think I had one final quote.

John Dehlin 1:48:54 I think I'm going to start speaking in tongues. As soon as you say anything, Mike, I'm going to start speaking in tongues.

Julia 1:49:05 Okay, so to most Mormons, this is a quote from Andrew F. Smith. To most Mormons, Bennett's activities in Nauvoo, his expose of Joseph Smith, and his subsequent activities in Vore represent the deepest moral depravity. It is no wonder Bennett is the man Mormons love to hate.

John Dehlin 1:49:20 And what the only problem I have with that is modern day Mormons have never heard of the guy. And that's how we started this episode. Literally. None of us heard of John C. Bennett until well into our 30s or 40s. Right. Except Nemo's not 30 yet.

Nemo 1:49:34 Yeah, I'm not 30 yet.

John Dehlin 1:49:36 But none of us were taught about John C. Bennett in all our years of church education. Correct?

Julia 1:49:41 True. Yeah.

Nemo 1:49:42 I don't know about Porter Rockwell. I knew more about Porter Rockwell.

John Dehlin 1:49:46 Absolutely. The. The assassin. But it's just because the church didn't want us to know about John C. Bennett, so they hid his existence from all of us. Right?

Julia 1:49:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John Dehlin 1:49:59 Which. Which means something. Anything else you want to say about that, Julia?

Julia 1:50:04 I know, I just, I. I really liked it, but he's the biographer, so he. Of course he. The sources he's pulling from are. He is seeing clearly that Mormons hate him, even though the lay members or whatever don't know anything about him. So. All right, so hopefully this was informative to everyone.

John Dehlin 1:50:20 What a great three part series, Julia. Mike, do you get. Do you give Julia the thumbs up for her John c. Bennet series?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:25 100%.

John Dehlin 1:50:26 Yeah. Nemo. Yeah. Thumbs up to Julia. Nice job, Julia.

Julia 1:50:30 Thanks.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:31 That's very good.

Upcoming Episodes and Farewell

John Dehlin 1:50:32 Now, do any of you have episodes you've either prepared or want to prepare just to give people a preview of what might be coming? Julie, I know we've had you work on a couple possible things.

Julia 1:50:44 Yeah. So I have one that's almost ready. It's the problematic witnesses of the gold plates. I know that, Mike. You're. You have a mixed feelings about that because it's like we shouldn't even be Doing this episode, which is.

John Dehlin 1:50:53 We're not gonna invite Mike. Mike is just won't be invited to that episode.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:56 Yeah.

Nemo 1:50:56 Too much of a Debbie Down.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:50:58 No. Oh, my goodness.

John Dehlin 1:50:59 He's a buzzkill. He's a buzzkill. Mike's a buzzkill.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:02 The other witnesses, well, we talked about it before. The witnesses don't they matter? Of course. And they're. They're. They're used as an evidence for the Book of Mormon. So they matter. But at the same time, like, you have so much stuff to tell you that this isn't what it claims to be, that people having an experience. I mean, at that point, you could go to any religion.

John Dehlin 1:51:19 You're already poisoning the well, Mike. She hasn't even done the presentation. You're already poisoning the well.

Nemo 1:51:24 Where's your objectivity?

John Dehlin 1:51:26 Yeah, let her present the case, Mike. Let her present the case.

Julia 1:51:30 Well, I know it's important to some people. There's people like, I'm making tiktoks right now. People are getting really mad. They're like, no, they never denied. And like, yeah, I. While it's not important, it is important, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:40 It's important.

John Dehlin 1:51:40 Grant Palmer. Graham Palmer thinks it was important and he's to be respected, right?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:51:45 It is. Because you. To Julia's point, I can't tell how many people have said I. The witnesses never denied their statement. They saw it, which means it was real. So of course it's important. I just feel like the people that are saying that typically haven't gotten into the details of all of the issues with the Book of Mormon. But yes, it is important. It is worth going over. I didn't do it when I did the overview topics because at the time, I didn't think it really was conclusive. So it's like, you know, it's a choose your own adventure kind of topic. So to me, that's why I didn't do it. It's not that it's not important, it's just that it. To me, there's so many other things. It's kind of like we talked about in the last episode. There's so many things that show it's not what it claims to be, that the witnesses kind of fall into that well. And I know Julia will cover a lot of the. The things that I think you can look at right away to go, this doesn't quite add up. But yeah, no, it's.

Julia 1:52:35 Wait, can I ask, do you think there were actual plates? Do you think there were actual plates

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:52:39 or do you think I. I agree with Dan Vogel and I know other people have said it that there had to have been some sort of prop set that they, you know, wrapped in cloth, because there's too many accounts about that. But I do not believe there were real plates with reformed Egyptian for sure.

Nemo 1:52:52 You know, I think. I think what we really. What I'd love to get into as, like, maybe you could add this. Julia, sorry to give you more work, but the church seems to have added a new witness out of nowhere. The Mary Whitmer in the barn.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:04 Yeah.

Julia 1:53:05 You think that's out of nowhere?

Nemo 1:53:07 Well, yeah. Like, to me, that's out of nowhere.

Julia 1:53:09 Like, oh, I grew up hearing that story.

Nemo 1:53:10 Yes, I did.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:11 I heard that one.

Julia 1:53:12 Okay.

Nemo 1:53:13 So I'd never heard that until I saw this article that the church chose to entitle. That one night in the barn is a moment she'll never forget or something like that.

Julia 1:53:22 Yeah, that was a really big oversight.

Nemo 1:53:25 And then the ex Mormon world went mental and then they changed it back to something.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:28 Did they change it?

Julia 1:53:30 Yeah, they changed it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:31 I didn't know that.

Julia 1:53:31 It's like she was another witness of the gold plates is what it says now.

Nemo 1:53:34 The SCMC is watching, so hello to you on whatever floor of church office building you work on. I hope you're well.

John Dehlin 1:53:43 So, Mike, are you wanting to develop any more episodes or are you on retirement for a little bit?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:53:47 Well, no, we're definitely open to it. I don't have anything, like, I, you know, haven't done anything on the website in like a year and a half. So at some point, I really want to put a PDF together of all of the topics which I started and have not finished. But, yeah, we have a list of stuff that I think will be interesting. I would love to do. You know, we talked about the witnesses, but Julie is doing that, which I'm glad, because as you all know, my feelings on the witnesses. But there's definitely different elements that I think would be really fun to go over that we haven't touched on or stuff that we kind of. Like we were talking about some other episode and something came up. We're like, oh, that'd be a good thing to cover. So there are we. We have a list somewhere that we were working with.

Julia 1:54:24 Yeah, I think Maven's made the list. I think she's got a running. She adds to it.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:28 Yeah.

John Dehlin 1:54:28 All right, well, we'll rely on Julia until you're ready to step back up to the plate, Mike.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:33 Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Well, Julia's doing a good job, so I might just keep Sitting back here.

Julia 1:54:38 I love you guys. Takes. You guys have really good, like, I don't know, like, having different perspectives is really helpful.

John Dehlin 1:54:44 All right, well, you do great work, Julie, so thanks for this series and we're looking forward to the next one.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:54:48 Thank you.

Julia 1:54:48 Yeah. Thanks, everybody.

John Dehlin 1:54:50 Yeah. And please subscribe to Nemo, the Mormon podcast on YouTube. Please subscribe to Mormon stories on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. And check out LDSDiscussions.com for the essays. And, Julia, you've got a great TikTok and Instagram channel as well called Analyzing Mormonism, which is also, you know, I told you, my dad, who's 89 years old, he loves your TikTok channel.

Julia 1:55:17 What? I didn't know that.

John Dehlin 1:55:19 And he is a faithful Mormon. I'm kidding. I'm not kidding. My dad, faithful Mormon, 89 years old, loves your TikTok channel.

Nemo 1:55:29 And put this into perspective, Julia, you know how lovely and charming I am. John's Lynn's dad, like, I'm. I'm convinced, doesn't like me because I've been on an episode with him and he did not have any time for me.

John Dehlin 1:55:39 No, he loves you. My dad loves everyone. And he's. He's not your typical Mormon. He is a very progressive, kind, Jesus focused Mormon. He's not a truth claims only, true church kind of Mormon. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I've never felt.

Nemo 1:55:57 Saying it's high praise, Julia, it's high praise.

Julia 1:55:59 Okay?

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56:00 That is high praise.

Julia 1:56:02 All right, because you're so charming and it doesn't make sense why he would.

Nemo 1:56:05 It doesn't work on him. Apparently.

John Dehlin 1:56:08 He doesn't get your. Your humor's over his head. Ne. Emo. It's just too sophisticated.

Julia 1:56:15 I don't know if I can ask this. What's your dad's name?

John Dehlin 1:56:16 John David. David Joel Delin. Yeah.

Julia 1:56:19 Okay, well, I'll have to give him a shout out or something.

John Dehlin 1:56:21 All right, I'll send. I'll send it to him. He'll be thrilled.

Julia 1:56:24 Okay.

John Dehlin 1:56:24 All right. Mike, you're a legend. Thanks for joining us today. You're the best.

Mike (LDS Discussions) 1:56:28 Thanks, everybody.

John Dehlin 1:56:29 Nemo, thanks for everything you do. And Julia, you're also the best. We're a good team. Let's keep this going.

Nemo 1:56:36 Yeah. All right.

John Dehlin 1:56:37 All right. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today on Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition. Please comment. Please let us know what you like and don't like. Please tell us of all our historical inaccuracies. The best place to do that is in the comments on YouTube. We read every comment. So if we need to do important corrections, we will. But if you have ideas for topics, if you have feedback or thoughts, praise or criticism, we'd love to hear it again on YouTube. Thanks to the donors that support Mormon Stories in the Open Stories Foundation. We pay these three amazing individuals and me from your donations. So if you want to see this continue, please do support us financially. Thanks for the support. Be good to each other, be kind to each other, and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon Stories Podcast and LDS discussions. Take care everybody.

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