Posted by:
azsteve
(
)
Date: May 12, 2021 11:15PM
I listened to several hours of John Dehlin's private meetings with church leaders (several meetings with his Bishop and several meetings with his Stake President) that he secretly recorded and that are now up on the Mormon Stories podcast website.
At one point before starting the tape for play back to us, John Dehlin said that he became a minister of another church only for the purpose of officiating as the minister in the marriage of a personal friend of his. It was one of those 'you pay us and we mail you the certificate' types of being a minister. But it did get recorded somewhere, where his Stake President found out about it.
Later in the tape, Dehlin's Stake President outlines a long list of things that Dehlin has to do to avoid excommunication. The Stake President cites the source of his knowledge about Dehlin's ministerial certificate. He then tells Dehlin that one condition (amongst everything else on the list that Dehlin must do) is that Dehlin must resign his minister status in the other church, to avoid being excommunicated. I don't think that Dehlin complied with anything on that list. And he was later excommunicated.
If you want to listen to some really non-confrontive but uncomfortable conversation between a man and his Bishop and Stake President, this is it. Dehlin remained humble and honest (other than by hiding a tape recorder and then telling the church leaders that he wasn't recording anything - you can hear him agreeing not to record anything at one point, right on the secretly recorded tape). The injustice heaped upon him escalated to amazing levels as he just shook his head and said "ok", and then asked questions followed by even more abuse against him. It confirmed for me just how bad mormonism is.
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/the-excommunication-of-john-dehlin-my-bishop-and-stake-president-interviews/