Cultish: Under the Banner of Heaven

All right, welcome back ladies and gentlemen to cultish entering the kingdom of the cults My name is jeremiah roberts one of the co -hosts here

I am joined by andrew the super sleuth of the show up in your super secret headquarters in utah.

How you doing, man? I'm doing better than I deserve. It's a wonderful day out here in utah

There's a little heat wave going on, but I can't wait till it starts getting cool later in september. So doing well.

Awesome I'm super. Yeah. Awesome. Good to hear that man. Super excited. And also i'm here with dan tate Good to have you back here, man.

Yeah, thank you Give yourself give everyone the quick 25 second mini bio just so people kind of know who you are in case they haven't heard

You on any of the previous episodes? Sure. Um Shortest story possible. I was a active practicing mormon for about 28 years of my life.

Um, And there came a certain point where I stopped believing I reached out to pastor

Jeff out on the streets, uh talked to him on the corner of the mesa temple Just kind of asking questions trying to understand true christianity from that point.

I was uh, Attending paul gia for like two years and then i've been a guest on here a couple of times and here

I am Awesome. Awesome, man. Well, i'm sure that you're glad to be on here today Uh, I am super excited because we have someone on with us today that we have been a fan of for a long time

We have a really deep appreciation for and a lot of the work that she has done Has even been very impactful for our ministry and how we go about things here

Uh, we are here joined by sander tanner. Uh, sander tanner. It's good to talk to you Yes, i'm glad we finally worked out the kinks and i'm able to be on awesome awesome fantastic So i'm really excited.

A lot of people have reached out to us we are going to be talking a little bit about today about the Lafferty brothers

Uh that was depicted in the recent hulu series under the banner of heaven Uh, we had a lot of people reach out to us when that series on hulu dropped

And I thought about reaching out to you because you had made a couple posts about your involvement with the show

Uh, or at least, uh, can you just tell everyone about what was that like? I mean what on what level were you involved?

Uh in the show? Did you consult did you kind of give people ideas let everyone know about that real quickly? Well, I was consulted about temple ritual and about the temple underwear and uh

It's known around town that I have samples of them from different eras

So the producer wanted To see what the garments would have looked like in the 80 1980s when uh the murders happened to have a

Idea of just exactly what the Lafferty's would have worn or ceremony gone through or whatever so they they sent a film crew down and uh,

I guess the wardrobe person and they came down and filmed my various garments

Mm -hmm. And uh, so I had a pair that was from the 80s and so, uh

You don't get much of that actually in the film I don't know if they had more and they cut it out

But when they show brenda standing in the bedroom when it looks like she has a slip -on before the shower scene

Yeah, and uh That's the woman's flare leg garment that she has on that they photographed

At my store and then made a duplicate Of it, but so so what

I contributed was very small to the overall picture of the story of course, they had crack hours book and a host of Ex -mormons that they were consulting with so yeah, they didn't need a whole lot from me.

Okay Hey, what's up everyone? Have you ever wanted to get behind the microphone? And chat with myself and andrew the super sleuth of the show here at cultish

Well, guess what you get to do exactly that this october october 27th through the 29th at reform con

It's going to be a great and awesome live converse. There's going to be a lot of great speakers So if you want to get behind a microphone with myself and andrew the super sleuth of the show

Go to reformcon .org get your tickets right now October 27th to the 29th and can't wait to meet you all there and have a great conversation now back to the episode

And now you have an expanded you've been in utah for a very very long time for anyone who doesn't know about you

Can you get the quick cliff notes linkedin bio of who you are? And what makes you some of an expert on this whole subject that everyone was enamored by with this series?

Well, my husband and I are both from fifth generation mormon families and when we were

In our late teens we each in different situations were challenged on the historic claims of mormonism

And through our research into those kind of problems. We ended up leaving mormonism became christians

Still hung on to the book of mormon for a couple of years until finally god led us down the road to see that That didn't make it either.

It wasn't just Joseph and brigham that were the problems and then from that we started publishing our research and my husband died in 2006 of alzheimer's

And i've continued the ministry since then And we have a little bookstore here in salt lake.

Uh, but I am getting ready to retire next year And uh, but through the years we have talked to thousands of people leaving mormonism because of our writings

Okay. Yes. I excellent. Yeah. I've actually been to your store a couple times I was just there recently a couple months ago.

It was great to chat with you for a little bit Uh, I have a question. So a lot of people Know the whole story the lafferty brothers i'm kind of introduced to it through this show

You have a ministry that goes back several decades, uh as you just mentioned When was the very first time you heard about the story of the lafferty brothers and what was the atmosphere like?

In utah with what in which this was all happening. What what was your perspective on that? Take us into that if you could well the uh

Lafferty's were kind of coming in in the middle of the turmoil with the fundamentalists in the uh time period the uh

Irville o 'barron crowd was uh famous before this with the murders that irvil did down in mexico and then up in texas and Different places like that.

So the polygamist or fundamentalist mormons had been in the news for the last 20 years before The lafferty's came along they were one up a string of people or men

Claiming to be god's true prophet The one mighty and strong the one that was going to set the church in order the one that was going to restore everything to his glory and so from uh researchers point of view the lafferty's were one of a string of fundamentalist murders and they certainly

Were a dangerous Duel the two brothers, but they weren't the last of them more stuff has happened.

It's it's just Joseph smith and brigham young Put out teachings that when taken to their ultimate extreme

Would lead them lead followers to commit murder And it doesn't mean all the polygamists are murderers.

We don't need afraid of all of them They are not to kill everyone But these killings related to the temple ritual of Where you had for years in the temple?

the oath of Swearing on an oath to not reveal the secrets not to fight against the church to be faithful and all those things

Lest your throat be slit and so there's a undercurrent of um this idea of people being killed for uh disobeying god, so we see this in the

Lafferty murders where the one sister sister -in -law is uh

Persuading the other sister -in -law to leave the group Uh and helps her to where did she go to?

Uh florida was a florida. She went to I think yeah, I think it was Yeah, and uh, so that made her an apostate which would have brought her under the curse of the temple oath of uh

Offering your life as a sacrifice to have your throat split for revealing and helping people to apostatize

So that was brenda brenda's big sin Is apostatizing from the apostatizing from the true church fighting against the true prophet, of course in this case was lafferty um, not the regular mormon church and uh

There is this undercurrent in mormonism that produces these violent acts It doesn't mean all the mormons are violent and it doesn't mean that you need to be afraid of your next door neighbor it's in these extremist cults that take it so Letter of the law serious on all these covenants they make

That gets some of them to this extreme measure of murder, but then

I guess the question would be were they already a little unstable mentally and more susceptible to Ending up killing someone but I just want to emphasize this isn't all the mormons, right?

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So we thank you all for watching us and now back to the episode I I have a question for you.

Uh sandra. So going back in like Lds history if we think about Uh, the missouri war or even joseph smith having the army of the lord of hosts which rivaled the united states military at that time

Was there any? beliefs of joseph smith that are kind of consistently being played out with modern fundamentalists like Uh in terms of restoring the kingdom of god on earth with doctrine and covenants one section 132 or anything of that nature

Well, it was a gradual Militarizing of mormonism and becoming more radical

Uh at the start of mormonism, I don't believe joseph was promoting Uh anything that radical but as they got thrown out of different towns after they had experienced, uh some of these

Attacks on their own people Like the hans mill massacre, there's things like that that push them into this ideology of Uh, we're the persecuted true followers of god

And finally to the point that we need to protect the kingdom of god And we're going to go into a forced submission to the kingdom of god so they become more radicalized as The mormons are thrown out from place to place, of course the mormons never asked why were they thrown out from place to place?

but There were reasons they were expelled from different places. They had their own bad stuff going on on their own camp

Um, certainly it was taken too far by both sides But when joseph set up the temple ritual

In nauvoo in the 1840s by then he certainly was much more militaristic

He had set up the nauvoo legion and made himself Um, what was it?

lieutenant general of the nauvoo legion And there's paintings of him on his horse holding his sword up there charging out, you know, it looks pretty militant

So it was a growing militancy in mormonism And then when they came west

Uh, of course, they're fleeing the law And they leave the united states a lot of mormons seem to forget this

They weren't supportive of america. I mean they left the united states and came to mexico

And by a quirk of fate the next year Uh, the united states acquired the territory and the mormons were back under the rule of the united states

Which caused conflicts because they wanted to have their own law and their own rule in utah

Which was just a territory at that point And uh, it put him direct in conflict with the government um that led to all sorts of problems and was part of the problem of having a mountain metal massacre when

Mormons killed a bunch of immigrants coming through the state. Well the territory and So it's a long history of Conflict and Wars or whatever you want to call them.

Hmm Dan, did you have any thoughts or what are you thinking so far? Yeah, there was a specific question regarding the lawfordy brothers.

Um Sandra you may be aware of this kind of tying into this the whole topic of uh,

The throat slitting thing that was going on in the temple um in uh

I can't remember what year it was done. But jeffrey r holland was in an interview with I believe uh bbc where they were asking him where their penalties this was right around the time that uh

Mitt romney was going for president and so they were asking jeffrey r holland Were these penalties in the temple were they in the temple and jeffrey finally admits it that they were but they're not anymore

So the reason i'm even bringing this up is just one to Validate that we have appropriate authorities of lds, uh confirming this but the question

I wanted to offer to you Is we would kind of look at the lawfordy brothers utilizing this principle in an extremist radical type of way

Are you aware of any way that the lds church? Would look at this

Slitting your throat in in a I hate saying an appropriate way

But is there a right way to look at this in the lds faith? Was there ever a time that the lds church executed this themselves?

Like what what would be the difference between the right way to look at that and the extremist way, which would be lawfordy's any thoughts?

Well under brigham young it was not a church Instituted practice, uh, okay.

I mean it's not like where you have Uh catholics running um spain or something, you know it wasn't a official program of the administration however

There we have stories of bishops Who sanctioned blood atonement in cases where?

the man committed adultery Repeatedly and the church leaders in this area told him he had gone too far

And the only way he could get forgiven would be to have his throat slit and uh

I mean, I can't prove it from a court in case because uh, they didn't go to court on any of it uh, but I believe we can document

Early examples under brigham young of people who had their throat slit for disobeying the church

But that was not done through an official channel That would go up to the top of the church.

It would have been a local thing that would have been done Okay, and this was in this whole, uh throat slitting thing was eradicated.

I think around 1989 Or somewhere around there. Would you have an idea? Uh, well, well, okay, you gotta watch how we word this because people think they were slitting throats up.

Sure. Sure. Sure, of course okay, they were not slitting throats in the 1900s uh they

The temple ceremony had an oath in it uh from early days that uh

Promised not to reveal these things on the threat of death of having your throat slit Yeah, they modified it to where it wasn't as gory as the original wording in about 1912 or something the oath where you

Symbolically in the temple drew your thumb across your throat to symbolize ways That life could be taken was in the ceremony until 1990

They were not splitting people's throat up until 1990 Yes in a uh pantomime

Uh in this ceremony of the ways that life could be taken if you broke your oaths Gotcha, so they're saying not 1990.

Okay Okay. So the problem we have with this nowadays is that everyone that went through the temple ceremony after 1990

May very well Tell you you are crazy and listening to horrible liars

Because they've been through the temple for years and they never experienced this. Yeah. Well, right because they went through after 1990

We have tape recordings of it beforehand, I mean, there's no doubt that that was in there

Yeah All the mormon historians will concede That those were part of the elements of the ceremony before 1990

What what prompted sandra the changing of the temple was it a pr thing was there was there a new was there like a news

Uh, like a 60 minutes expose of sorts or what was the catalyst for them? I think it would have been gordon b.

Hinckley who would have been the president Uh to remove those what was the story behind that? well,

I don't know the inside details but Gordon b. Hinckley was a pr man

He understood public relations better than anyone they've ever had at the head of their church he

Came up with all kind of ways to utilize the media That was available At this point they're starting to get a lot more converts that don't have any mormon background

Uh that weren't brought up in a utah area where they had some familiarity already ready about mormonism or something

He's trying to sell it to the nation so he starts this big program We are mormons

And uh, so he has this big video campaign where you have joe the plumbers. I do plumbing

I'm a mormon big campaign well they did surveys of their own people and came up with the

Conclusion i'm guessing at this. I know they did the survey. The question is what they made of it But evidently after they did the questionnaire on their members

They realized that people had a problem with the temple ritual and certain aspects of it. So the next year after taking the big survey

Uh, they changed the temple ritual and I think there's such a direct connection for this. So I assume that as a pr leader

He realized this was a negative for new converts coming into mormonism that came from a christian background where they had

A nice pastor for instance that when they saw in the temple ritual the pastor making a deal with the devil for money

That some people would have been offended by that. Yeah, and And so I think all these changes they did in 90 in the ceremony were all in relation to new converts

Not being offended when they went through the ritual so they won't get outside and say oh my word.

What was that? I'm leaving, you know, yeah Uh, I have a question for you sandra You I noticed

I think I overheard that Maybe it's from so I was chatting maybe with eric. Johnson uh who recently who just is about to publish this new book introducing christianity with uh,

Mormons and he had mentioned to me that ever since the series has come out You've gotten quite a bit of people.

You've gotten quite a bit of attention your ministry has is that correct? People have been reaching out to you Yeah, so I guess

I have a question relation to that. I noticed that a lot of the videos of young Mormon influencers who are reviewing this series

They are constantly trying to categorize what was depicted in the miniseries as this Really extreme not just extremism

But even this is a distortion of original mormonism And they were trying to articulate that in their videos

Is there any similarity between the people reaching out to you? Did you have people reaching out to you who are?

Mormons who are maybe upset trying to justify or explain away things that are problematic or maybe people who are generally struggling with maybe uncovering

These teachings or what was it like with people reaching out to you people have reached out to your ministry well, they see the video and It's kind of like, you know, what the heck?

I I think these guys are crazy to put this film out and so they go to google. Yeah, google is the gateway to apostasy

Because any topic you hear on mormonism if you google it you're gonna find

Real history not the mormon pr version And people will come in and talk to me and say

I had no idea That the mormons ever taught some of those things and they're horrified uh, some of them have family memories that finally made sense to them of uh discussions with their

Uh grandma or grandpa or something And so it's been interesting and been all kinds of things, but I have not had hardly any

Mormons Give me pushback. I think the mormons have given up on me So they don't come harass me anymore

I talked to a lot of people that it was for some the very beginning of their examination of mormon claims because They just were sure this was all being made up yeah and until they googled it and I realized oh my goodness

There's a lot of research on this topic So I have a quite uh, it's another thing there is i'm going to give a bit of a spoiler for the series

Uh, so not only did you uh give some consulting for the show? There's an easter egg inside of I think the third or fourth episode

Where the main protagonist goes and i'm a spoiler alert if you want to not get spoiled Have watched it skip forward a couple seconds.

I think you know what i'm going to talk about sandra The main character portrayed by andrew garfield goes into a car all by himself because he finds this big red book

That big red book just so happens to be your classic work that you and more gerald did mormonism shadow reality

Uh, so question. How did the how did how did you work out with hulu to have that book make the cameo?

And do you think that what you saw depicted in that scene Is maybe relevant for a lot of the mormon experience when someone all of a sudden sees

Anti -literature for the first time kind of the other edge the paradigm being shattered of a sort.

So what are your thoughts on that? I did not know they were going to show our book

Especially not in the actual storyline. Yeah And have this poor guy sitting all night reading our book and going through a crisis of faith

Well the next day I've got all these people streaming into my store Do you have the red book?

I've got to have the red book. We sold right out of our printing and it really uh

Was inconvenient because we didn't think we had to reprint that book for some months down the road

And suddenly we're thrown into a whole different printing schedule. Yeah Uh to get that book reprinted, but yes, it was phenomenal how many people called and said

Was that your red book? Was that your book? I gotta have that so Thank you to the producers of the film.

Uh, we appreciate all the sales Yeah Um, I got

I got I got a question for you sandra So you mentioned something a little bit earlier, uh, the one mighty and strong I think that's in doctrine and covenants, uh section 85

Uh, what what led to the fl not not the flds my apologies Uh, let's say fundamentalist mormon groups to believe that the one mighty and strong is someone that's returning

To bring the church back from apostasy Like what what occurred in history to make a certain sex of people think that the mainstream lds church went into?

apostasy because I could see uh, for example getting rid of the That one oath with the you know, the splitting of the throat motion that's done within their temple ordinances uh

That also being like an impetus for people to think well what else has changed over time?

Like what was the main thing that started creating these different branches? In groups, uh splinter groups out here in utah well, the splinter group started at the

What uh two years after joseph started his church because joseph smith kept changing and revising his doctrines

And bringing in new things. That's one of the problems when you have a cult leader that gets to get new revelations all the time

Uh things are going to change and so as joseph smith started getting bigger and bigger ideas of what he could make of this church

I mean in the beginning he never envisioned all the stuff that happened uh, it's just got away from him and One thing you have when you have a cult leader leading something

That goes by the cult of personality. You have to keep up with that ante Okay, this is the big blitz bang for today.

Well, people get dissatisfied. You got to have another big thing Okay. Yeah, here's the latest revelation here.

We're going to do this thing and he keeps adding and adding and adding uh And when you do that, they're going to always go off track and go into something crazy so joseph smith

Starts changing things he puts out a new printing of his revelations in 1835 two years after he did the book of commandments

And his revelations are rewritten And so this is a process that goes on and on new teachings new revelations new changes

And people were getting upset about this and the early witnesses to the book of mormon were upset about all the changes he was bringing in and so Uh, you had splinter groups in the 1830s

Starting not over polygamy. They're just over the changes of doctrines that happened at that time period so when you look at mormonism through joseph and brigham's lifetime, you have the beginnings of Dozens of splinter groups that feel the church leader went on track at a particular year

And everyone's got a different year when he went off track And so The early splinter groups weren't over polygamy.

They were over Doctrine over end time things that sort of stuff Then when you get brigham young then you got splinter groups because the church

Because they don't want to give up polygamy and the church is moving towards giving it up So when the church gets up like we supposedly gets it up in 1890

You have all these splinter groups then that develop the church has gone into error because it's given up polygamy

So it's funny how you get all these groups and so there's a whole book out uh divergent paths of the restoration where this guy lists the hundreds of breakoff groups of mormonism so it's uh,

I Kidded with some of my mormon friends, you know if the whole point of joseph smith was to unify the church because Everyone is splintered into so many denominations in standard christianity that we needed restoration

I told him joseph didn't help He created a whole new we got hundreds more splinter groups.

Now. We were better off without joseph smith If the problem was the splintering of christianity Dandy what do you what are your thoughts?

So what are your thoughts on this? One of the original things that comes to my mind is um and sandra correct me if i'm wrong, but I I guess what

I would personally define which could be Correct or wrong, but the the original split which was when joseph smith died

And brigham young was trying to take the leadership spot and emma smith was saying, you know Her son her son should take the spot and then they divided um

There was there was a portrayal in the series under the banner of heaven that it

They kind of portrayed brigham young as somebody that wasn't necessarily setting joseph smith up to get killed in carthage jail

But that he was kind of lying and waiting for it like he was waiting for his opportunity to jump up Um now me as a missionary when

I had served through 2009 to 2011 Uh, this was right when the joseph smith prophet of the restoration movie came out

It was about an hour long and it showed that this amazing relationship between joseph and brigham and and that joseph somehow

Had revelation that he needed to actually lay his hands on brigham young's hand to like bestow the priesthood specifically to brigham um, and that even got changed there was a second edition where they removed that, um, but where my question's coming from is do you have any recollection or have you had any experience in the history of brigham of whether he was

Really waiting for joseph smith to die so he could really jump the gun um

Does that make sense? like joseph smith's relationship to brigham

I don't see that. I thought that the video picked up on a rumor that some people are passing around that Brigham planned or was a part some way of reading about joseph's death and I I wish they hadn't put that in because it's just It's uh setting things off on a different track that I think just confuses the story.

Okay. I don't believe he uh Was involved in trying to get rid of joseph smith.

Okay and No, go ahead. He wasn't the first problem. I mean joseph smith kept given a saying who was going to be a success

Successor and it wasn't brigham. It was going to be uh, albert caldry it was going to be Hiram smith, uh,

I may not hire him. Um Sidney brighton and brigham young and it was going to be his son

Joseph at the end is saying his 11 year old son is his designated leader

So it all was it was left in confusion It was an open opportunity for brigham to step in and take leadership

But I think the stars just aligned in a way that just opened the door for him to step into that role

Okay Do you know go ahead? Yeah sandra So you're mentioning that aspect of that scene from under the banner of heaven when they kind of threw that in there

And given they are a tv show they're making television They're making entertainment and sometimes that can be done at the expense of historical authenticity

In throughout the series you see the journey of the lafferty brothers and how they get radicalized

Specifically by entering into what was known as the school of prophets Um, i'm curious just to know was there

How accurate was that was lafferty's journey from being a traditional mormon to being radicalized?

Was there elements where you think it was over? Thematic doesn't mean given the nature. It's a mini series

And maybe just to tell everyone too what the school of prophets was and how that affected the lafferty brothers Well, you have this

Well, there's these different movements behind the scenes around here of uh The especially amongst the fundamentalists of uh

Looking for this one joseph talked about the one mighty and strong to set the church in order Well, they see all kind of things.

They don't like in the church today. So it just increases the rhetoric going around of Where's the one mighty and strong?

Oh, I heard that the this guy down in so, you know centerfield or somewhere is

Maybe he's the one mighty and strong. Here's this other guy that's having a revelation. Maybe he's they're all looking for this solution

In some person that'll step forward and solve everything And um at the time of the lafferty stuff there were stories rumors going around about school of prophets uh,

I didn't know that much about them, but I heard Rumors about you know, there was this little group

But there were a number of different splinter groups with all kind of rumors about their different leaders uh,

I When I look at lafferty's father I Know a lot of people around here were saying.

Oh, I didn't even recognize The this as typical mormon I never even met anyone that sounded like that father and i'm sitting there thinking

I got relatives that sound like him I don't know.

They're they're hanging around with a lot more liberal friend uh family than I am. Yeah Because the father's rhetoric

Would have been things I could have heard my grandfather say granted it wouldn't be 1990s mormons, but it's back when uh, my grandparents were alive back in the 70s

I could have seen my grandpa give him that kind of thing that the father said to his sons so To me it it sounded right for the time for being part of the polygamous movement

Almost believable to me Yeah also, uh, i'll let you guys jump into if you have any thoughts as well, but uh

In the film as andrew garfield's character, who's the detective? Is proceeding in this investigation and this crime that was committed by the lafferty brothers

There seems to be a continued conflict of interest not only with him being someone who's a devout mormon but also people within his precinct

People who are in his church who are even his spiritual leaders who are trying to control

Him and the narrative that's being depicted about the lafferty brothers connection to mormonism

Even though that again, even though it's cinematic. Is that is that an accurate reflection anyway to think of just the culture?

within the mormon hierarchy not just not just bishops, uh People that were irregular ward or stake president of the higher the bigger hierarchy when you're looking at The quorum of the 70 the quorum of the 12.

Do you think that was an accurate kind of depiction of mormon culture in general? Well, I don't know how

I would put that Early on the church leaders obviously saw the danger of one guy just Uh shooting off at the mouth and come up with some crazy idea and and stick them all with this decision

So at some point they started Uh getting much more corporate

That in -house discussions that didn't go out of the room And there has to be a hundred percent agreement on what they do.

You can't have these kind of charismatic Uh leadership deals just let them go wild because they'll come up with crazy ideas that you don't want to be a part of Yeah, so here's they've tried to refine this to have control over the leader um

I don't know how uh the current president Got that thing going about getting rid of i'm a mormon that him and uh hinkley were at different ends of the spectrum on this hinkley puts this whole

I'm a mormon campaign spends millions millions of dollars on all these films for the internet about i'm a mormon

And then nelson gets up in conference and says, oh no, we use the name mormon. Uh, that's giving a big

Satan and change. I don't know like what? Yeah, I remember that And so I don't think he ran that by the committee um,

I his Film department must tore their hair out when he when they heard that one.

Yeah They had to go back and spend millions to revise all their videos to take i'm a mormon out so Nelson's a different fish.

I mean He he's dangerous because he dreams at night and thinks it's a revelation and he gets up in the morning and just announces things so Uh, it's been kind of interesting to see how his role as prophet was different than hinkley's

Hinkley was a pr guy and was trying to make mormonism sound normal Nelson's trying to sell mormonism as normal, but he doesn't know he doesn't have the pr savvy

That hinkley did to know how to do that. So he kept up with some odd decisions And then stepping away just from the series.

Uh, what was that? What was it like for you? Uh during the early 80s when this when this these murders took place not just for you but just the what was the just the nature in general in utah against just the

The cultural conversation because at that time the percentage of non -lds versus lds in the population of utah

It was a lot more higher mormon What was that like? How were they kind of dealing with it? Would it look like in the news?

I mean, how did that? Look like compared to what was depicted in the series Well, there was it just seemed like every

Decade you had some other crazy mormon story about polygamous murders or Um some polygamous stuff going on I mean

I got in front of me our newsletter back in march of 85 Number 56 called blood flows in utah about the lafferty's but then

I got another one here from 2003 uh

And this is number 101 Wanted one mighty and strong fundamentalist charge all these churches fallen into apostasy

Well, then we move up to the hoffman stuff Uh 2010 issue number 115 the mormon murders 25 years later.

I mean, it's just our career has been going through and talking about All these different decades how you have a some sort of major Story every 10 years.

Yeah Have either murders or polygamous that have all gone amok some way or another

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You um see I was thinking about this prior to Coming on with you and I think

I talked with you dan also with d 'andrea talk with you as well There's another series that you made an appearance on recently the netflix miniseries murder among the mormons

And just tell us about that real quickly. How did you get involved with that? Um, well that's uh all on the hoffman scene and mark hoffman in the uh

Uh early Was it the 1990s?

uh He was inventing a bunch of documents that he was claiming were written by different early mormon leaders like martin harris or joseph smith or His mother lucy smith and different people like this that would be worth a lot of money but then some of his fine fines

Uh would be on documents. It would be embarrassing to the church things that would tie the smith family more closely into magic and money digging and like crystal ball gazers and So the church had this dilemma of um

Do we accept these as authentic And of course, I don't want to accept them because they all went in there against their claims so the mormon church had had uh, the fbi and different people do forensic stuff on these documents and It looked like uh

It was pointing to them all being authentic Well, gerald my husband had uh done his own

Investigation of the literary content of the different documents And had become convinced that mark hoffman was inventing these documents at the forgeries

But everyone was against us Including the fbi on their forensic people

And the lds church people and christian people because they wanted the documents to be authentic Okay And here's gerald standing out there all alone.

No, I think they're made up. I don't care what you say. I think they're frauds no one would listen and uh, so uh a year later

Hoffman gets in financial difficulties and ends up killing a couple of people as part of his scheme to get out of his debt problems

And then the whole thing comes out in police investigations that oh, by the way

Yeah, the documents are forgeries And marks the murderer So it was a big big story um because gerald had been the first one to Publicly go in print questioning the documents a year before the murders uh

We got mentioned in all of the paperback books done on the hoffman case

Uh, because gerald becomes a sort of man bites dog story It's not the story you'd expect it's the guy that should be championing the documents who's saying there's something wrong with them

So we got written up in all these books So when they started to do the film originally

The filmmakers were going to make that a part of the film Of gerald's questioning of the document and they interviewed me for hours on all this

Which are all on the cutting room floor Uh Because evidently when it got down to the nitty -gritty of putting this series together

They just evidently decided to go with the boilerplate Outline of true crime drama that you see on tv

And the way true crime stories go Generally is you have the family and friends interviewed at first.

Oh, he was the most wonderful guy. Yes I had a boy scout blah blah blah blah and then then they then they tell about this murders or whatever it is

And then you interview the family and they all say oh, I couldn't believe it I never in the world would have thought that he would have been the one that would do that Okay, that's the three -part general way of telling a documentary on uh these kind of murders

But we follow up the narrative because along the way before when everyone's saying oh, he was such a wonderful guy

They got to have one protagonist here to say no, I think he's a real jerk he's making this stuff up, you know

So it doesn't fit the way they want to tell the big picture. So Our part got cut out and that's how

I end up with these two short little Cameos where i'm stuck in the film and it doesn't make sense why i'm there

Because they cut everything else. Oh, yeah Uh, dan andrew, do you guys have what do you guys thought you have any questions you want to throw in there?

I have I have some questions about uh bringing it back to uh, the lafferty brothers in the situation

I know that one of the big uh impetuses for dan lafferty was that A little pamphlet tracked called the peacemaker.

I think i'm remembering the title correctly. Yeah Uh, what what exactly was that who wrote that was it written by joseph smith?

Uh, what did he write under a pseudonym like sandra? What do you know about the peacemaker tract?

Oh That you're getting back to some really early years on that I don't know if he actually wrote it or worked with somebody to write it, but he had to know

The person that did if he didn't write it and it was a Kind of a feeler about polygamy and uh

Then it got everybody upset so that oh no, no, I just printed that up as a Print job for somebody

I I didn't have anything to do with it, you know Uh, and i'm sure he did whether he physically wrote it or not.

I don't know But he certainly was fully aware of who did and that he wanted it to print it as a

Uh introduction to the idea of polygamy. Yeah You can enter in google the peacemaker

And mormonism and you'll find a site that tell you about it. Okay All right, thank you for sharing that sandra

So one of the reasons why I just thought to bring up Mark hoffman and the other doc in the netflix documentary that you were a part of Um, you guys can let me know this too.

I see a commonality between The two between the lafferty brothers and mark hoffman because both of them involve crimes that were committed uh, which you just mentioned sandra and then

Also, it involves mormon revisionist history And what

I what i've observed in just our my amount of time kind of just viewing Mormonism as it's evolving is that the the primary church is becoming more progressive

And as a byproduct of that they're kind of abandoning a lot of the fundamentalist aspects of aspects of mormonism

And what i've seen as a consequence is a lot of the fundamentalist groups or friends groups or spinoffs

Are using that to their advantage To exploit that and they say that the official church has gone amok has gone astray

The restoration needs a restoration Which is a catalyst for them to radicalize.

Do you think the current state of mormonism where things are at in utah specifically? could create has the sort of cultural mixing to create another

Situation like the lafferty brothers or create another mark hoffman. What are your thoughts on that? Well They are the mormon church always faces the problem

Of somebody out there in the fringe groups rising up to claim. They're the one mighty and strong.

That's a very deep embedded concept in At least generational mormon families and I think that's becoming less

Prevalent as the younger generations come up What we're finding with a lot of the younger people today is they don't even care about any of that Uh, then they're just very pragmatic about oh, it doesn't affect my life who cares, you know

And so the mormon church is changing Uh, I don't think it's moving towards christianity

It's moving towards some sort of amalgamation of whatever you want to believe uh and the younger people

Don't they aren't as engaged on Uh worried about whether it is the old brand of mormonism they just are concerned about well, it works for me who cares so I think that the group that would be affected by the

Claim of i'm the one mighty and strong is a shrinking older crowd of mormonism

But they'd also be the ones most likely to be converted into the polygamist groups but younger people more and more seem to be

Uh, just generalizing everything. Well, you know, it's close enough and we're better than you

It doesn't matter if we're absolutely 100 true. We're close. We're better than you are So, I mean, you know, we're like 80 through you guys are only 50 and it's more relative from the younger people but People 50 and above they got that old mind

Uh belief system embedded in their souls, right? Uh There's going to be a one mighty and strong come along to set things in order and that's why they got so excited

About mit romney as they were sure he was the coming savior for the nation

Anymore than the rest of our offices immediately. Oh, here's the one Yeah, especially if you are really adhering to the white horse prophecy, for example mit romney would be very convenient when the constitution

Hangs by a thread wink wink right if you who know dan, do you have any thoughts? Do you have something you want to know?

uh the only Something that kind of ties into both. Uh The show is under the banner of heaven and then the mark hoffman series

Something that i've been deeply interested in that i've kind of heard you comment on before Is kind of the closed doors pr moves

Uh that we see specifically and under the banner of heaven That might be the best example to kind of give you a target to shoot at um when some of the

I believe the younger brothers are in the jail, uh detective jeb, uh Sees somebody walk inside the door

And I believe it's either in area 70. Maybe it's a quorum of the 12 apostles I didn't catch their name, but it was definitely somebody high up in the church and comes in and just basically

You know make some comments like he needs to get these guys out of here and tries to convince jeb who's a current mormon that we need to save the face of the church or the the um the common image of the church to the public

And so in your experience How accurate were those um

Presentations of the church responding to this Was there a lot of things behind closed doors where mormons would be like?

Oh my gosh, I had no idea they they'd try to hide this stuff that they didn't want people to know about it um

Like does that make sense? Because that was one of the things yeah, go ahead I could envision that scenario.

I don't know how true it is. I mean, I I don't have personal knowledge of um You know how their inner workings would have been in those cases it wasn't

Jail like that. I can envision it in a mormon setting as being uh gone in that way, but I don't know that it was

Someone would have gone in to talk to them about uh, not hurting the church image kind of thing uh, especially with them being apostate,

I mean if it was If it was like a bishop that embezzled funds

I could see them going in and appealing to his loyalty to the priesthood to Not make this an embarrassment to the church.

Be sure you make it clear. It was just you And don't bring any bad light on the church or something

But I don't know with apostates if they would have made an appeal to them They don't usually like the polygamous that much

Yeah Right private deals or conversations Yes, and in the spirit of explaining things away um a lot of times people will see

Things depicted like under the banner of heaven and maybe they'll they'll come across the big red bug

And I think just right now the way the internet is it's very easy if you have confirmation biases

It's easy to also jump on google and try and find things that reinforce you So somebody will look up, you know quotes by bringing on talking about, you know

Three if you find a wife Caught in adultery be better to throw a javelin through her like that that quote

That like that from journal of discourses or just any of the other extremes Or looking at what is depicted in the mountain meadows massacre

It's very easy for someone to go and find something on fair .org Any lds apologists who apologists who try and explain?

Those things away Um, what would you say because that's depicted in the series as well, too What are some of the counter arguments that lds apologists will bring up even though they don't they have to put the disclaimer

They don't officially represent the lds church. What are some of the arguments they bring up to try and explain that away?

Um, and then what would you say are some counter arguments you've seen in your time in ministry? Because that's a real centric point of the series well

They when it comes to anything that happened in pioneer days, they just want to say oh it was part of the times

You have to understand they were persecuted people And they'd been driven out they'd lost so much in illinois and missouri that of course there would be radicalization of people

But that's not the church. It's not the spirit of the movement. It's not the spirit of joseph smith Uh, that was uh, you have to understand it in the extremes of the times

So they want to make it all like um It was just a fluke or something that that developed that way into something dangerous

Not that the teachings itself would have led to that But when you see the temple ritual when you see the different revelations and sermons

Um, that's all the flavor of mormonism. I mean the militancy By the time they came to utah was there uh to have

Um Got the mormons convinced to go to a war with the united states or anyone they just were

Had their leaders had brought them to a point of very militancy of uh

We're the good guys everyone else in the world's against us and we have a legitimate right to fight back

But the truth of the story is want to play it all down as oh We were just victims of the time anyone would have done the same thing in the same situation kind of stuff

Yeah, and then I really appreciate you taking the time again santa for to talk with us and uh, Dan, i'll let you jump in too if you have thoughts, but I think also when we're looking at this these types of mormon history

This ends up creating a crisis of faith that again that was depicted by Andrew garfield's character again when he's reading your big

Red book and the majority of people who do end up losing their faith They usually end up going to into some form of agnosticism uh, and again, just tell tell sandra real quickly very cliff notes of Your your experience because yours wasn't looking at the big red book, but it was looking at the book of abraham

Let tell sandra real quickly about that Oh, man, it was I mean first off sandra

I had run I had ran into some of your work back when I was in high school and some of those things

I had printed off and they had Metaphorically stayed on the shelf for 12 15 years after that and You know something happened in the family that kind of caused us to doubt some things

Those were kind of small things that didn't matter and then I finally decided to take all of my big questions that i've kind of always put in the back of my head down in front of me and how it basically turned out was really similar to a lot of other ex -mormons where you kind of get this idea of Well, I have always believed that the lds church is true because what other church has 12 apostles has this has that has that so If this isn't true, and i've really lost faith in this then

I guess no other church is true Because uh, you know something that was very specifically said to me and not in a derogatory sense at all

Is when I had very first reached out to apologia and had some questions they had said the it sounds like you have a lot of mormon baggage like that You still have the mormon glasses on like you're still looking in the world looking for the things that mormonism wants you to look for But you don't agree with the things mormonism has and so just that that dilemma alone

Threw me into a down your downward spiral of just complete godlessness. I was agnostic hated religion hated christianity um

And then there was just a couple of random videos that I came across that could have been yours A lot of them were jeff's that I finally just reached out and said i'll give christianity another try and once I actually understood

What christianity was even about I I had no idea and I spent two years in Jacksonville florida in the bible belt and I had no concept of what christianity was as I was still looking for A mormon replacement and didn't find it and that turned to agnosticism.

So yeah Yeah, I guess so I guess in light of what dan has told you for the people who reach out to you both in your time of of utah lighthouse ministry

Both in relation to the recent explosion of everyone looking for the big red book But also just throughout the years you like I said, you've had thousands of mormons reaching out to you

A good majority of them do end up becoming atheists or agnostic Like how do you

I think of almost I think of the analogy of a burning building That burn that building is coming down that worldview is coming down And I've almost seen your ministry as the two firefighters with a net to try and catch them

Yeah, how again as we wrap up here and again, thank you for taking the time sandra What is what did you and gerald do even when you're together?

And now what did you do to try and help them not lose faith all completely but actually fall into biblical christianity into not yeah, what tell us about that well one thing that I Try to uh engage them in a discussion on Why they are so easily

Uh turned to walking away from the bible and from christianity and I mentioned to them that Just as you have now found out that the mormon church

Misrepresented everything about their own history Have you ever considered that they are the ones that fed you your view of christianity and the bible

My position would be just as they misrepresented Mormon history to you.

They have also misrepresented christianity and the bible to you and that's

Rethink As you have done for the problems of mormonism Uh, they say the most outlandish things to me that guys that are educated, you know, they'll come in and say oh well the

The bible wasn't the new testament wasn't even written till 300 a .d. And i'm like what no

Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I don't think so, you know, but they just they have no knowledge of Manuscripts for the bible they

I talked about time that seemed to think of it as a game of gossip That the bible was written down in uh hebrews some of them think the new testament was hebrew, but uh, and uh greek and then latin and then german and then french and then

Uh, whatever other languages until 12 languages later. It comes out in english.

And I said no it didn't work that way I thought you can go to school learn greek yourself do your own translation.

Yeah It is you don't have to rely on this Guy 20 people down the road on the translation process so we try to pull them back into the fact that they have just dismissed the bible without even looking at what a christian is saying about it, they just Assume that what they always thought about the bible was still valid even though they saw the mormon church wasn't then so We try to get them back to you

Uh, what are the evidences? How would you establish that an ancient document was really authentic?

And the book of mormon certainly doesn't meet that you don't have any people group any land mass

You don't have any maps. You have no artifacts no sample of the language and uh

It plagiarizes the king james bible, which is a little clue But they don't even think that one through yeah, so and when you go to the new testament, we have all sorts of Ways that we can go back and establish what the earliest text was and all the indications are that the text is

Essentially the same there's been no major doctrinal shift Change in any of the documents.

Yes There's a few different verses like first john that you could talk about But they don't change the major fabric of christianity

Mormonism has changes that literally change the direction of what they're talking about. They reverse themselves on doctrines

So I try to challenge them to go back and look at some material on the new testament that there are reasons to believe it

Hmm. Do you guys have any any last thoughts as we kind of wrap up? No here? No, i'm good I have

I have a I have a last question. I don't know it could be A long answer to the question sandra, but it seems like when people are leaving

The lds, uh, there's like three options. Let's say they go to agnosticism atheism, and i'll just uh

Compile that with like new age spirituality and other religions, right? And then there's also biblical christianity

But then there's this fundamentalist Realization that there are people that actually just say that the modern church is an apostasy

They hold on to the book of mormon and they're waiting for that one mighty and strong What separated you and gerald from becoming?

Uh fundamentalists like you held on the book of mormon for a while But how come you guys didn't turn, uh to polygamy?

Oh, well, we we come from polygamous families. Uh, we got all kind of horror stories

Got it. So that was not it. We never considered the polygamous arguments.

Yeah We focused on the book of mormon in that. It was the first thing joseph smith wrote

And brought out as the word of god. And so we thought if god called him at all

Then the book of mormon was the first thing he did. It's got to be the litmus test Now it never occurred to us to use the bible for that because you're raised to know it's not that reliable So, okay, we're going to take the book of mormon as the litmus test if it's not taught in there

We aren't going to believe it Well, you read the book of mormon. It's only got one god one heaven one hell no pre -existence

No work for the dead. No temple marriage. No three levels of heaven So we just threw all that stuff out and Only believed it if it was in the book of mormon

But then the more we read the book of mormon the more we realized it plagiarized the king james bible all through That the nephites couldn't possibly have read

And that there was something wrong with this so we finally had to give up the book of mormon But it was because we went out through the book of mormon

Not from later teachings that kept us closer to biblical openness

Okay No, thank you. No, thank you for sharing that and just one last thing real quickly Uh is that you with all your ministry mentioned thousands of people coming into the door?

I'm sure you've got a couple of colorful stories of interactions of people walking through your door throughout all the years

Is there one or just one example specifically of just maybe a two -minute cliff note story that you could just tell of just an interesting

Story of when someone walked through your door one that you kind of tell that would just for our audience Well for uh, just a few years ago

I had this young woman come in that was coming out of one of the polygamist groups and She had

Left the polygamist group and got married to an lds guy, but that hadn't worked out

She now was dating a fellow from a polygamist group that had

Um been involved in polygamy but was now uh Seeing there were problems with all of that.

She brought in him and they weren't married yet They just came in to see me and he comes in this big curly guy and he's got his arms folded across And she wants me to talk to him about jesus

And uh, and he's all just scrunched up there, you know, you know, just try it and anyways

He was defiant, I don't know if I say defiant smug he was smug about everything

And just made a joke about the whole discussion of truth Um, because he thought he already had it anyways as the time goes by and different, uh

Discussions with me and other christians Uh, finally the guy comes back in and he's just this nice Uh congenial person that's ready to talk about the whole issue

And uh, then a few months later They both at our church were baptized

And gave these just glorious testimonies Of how god had delivered them from these generational polygamist family groups

And that they were taking their stand for christ and they knew it would cause Uh waves in their polygamist family, but they stood for christ

And so here we are several years later and they're still standing for christ. So we're just thankful for what god's doing here

Wow, praise god And then as we wrap up here You recently had a book that was written about a lot of the adventures that you and gerald had in your ministry

Uh, just tell everyone real quickly about that book and where they can get access to that We'll have links in our description when we drop this episode

Yeah, the name of the book is lighthouse gerald and sandra tanner uh

What is it despised and beloved critics of mormonism? And it's our life story about all the crazy things we got involved in lawsuits fbi cia guys

I mean just a lot of different profits we've known so Our biography is for sale on amazon and everywhere like that, but they can get it through our website at utlm .org

Okay Excellent. Excellent. All right, sandra. Thank you so much for coming on. Uh, if you guys are hanging around we're gonna do andrew

Uh dan and I we're gonna do kind of like a little aftermath kind of giving our thought our own thoughts in the series And also giving our aftermath from the conversation

Sandra, thank you so much for taking the time And if you guys enjoyed this episode definitely leave a comment on our social media

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