1423: Giving up Major League Baseball for Mormonism - Marc Oslund Pt. 1

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 April 2021

⏱️ 203 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Join us today as we kick off our three-part interview with former baseball player and LDS seminary teacher, Marc Oslund. Fascinating for so many reasons, I believe this is one of the most important Mormon Stories Podcast episodes I've ever released.

Marc was a heavily recruited high school baseball and football player in the L.A., California area.
He converted to the Mormon church as a teen.
He was drafted to the baseball Major Leagues three different times, and turned down those offers to go on an LDS mission and to BYU.
He was an all-American baseball player at BYU.
He served an LDS mission where he was often racked with guilt and shame - almost sent home for it.
When his baseball career ended (due to post-mission injuries), he became a Mormon CES seminary teacher, and served from around 2013 to 2019 - while the Mormon church was trying to become more open/honest about its history, and deal with public activists like Kate Kelly, myself, Sam Young, Jeremy Runnells, etc.
Even though he constantly had doubts/questions/concerns, his position as a seminary teacher caused major rifts in his marriage when his wife expressed occasional doubts, specifically about the Mormon temple ceremony.
Marc became a liberal/progressive/Givens Mormon while a seminary teacher - but was punished by CES for his progressive stances.
Marc ultimately lost his orthodox Mormon faith as a seminary teacher, and was pressured to quit his job.

In part 1 of this incredible story, Marc talks about his upbringing in LA, his conversion to Mormonism, and why he gave up multiple opportunities to play major-league baseball in order to pursue a career in the Church Education System.

This is a long one...probably deserves its own podcast...but it's really, really important. I hope you enjoy.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host John
0:03.6	Delin. It's April 9th, 2021, three days after the birth date of the Church of Jesus Christ
0:10.8	of Latter-day Saints or the day Jesus was born. Yeah. According to, you know, how I was
0:16.1	taught growing up. Anyway, just kidding. I'm John Delin and I am so excited for today's
0:21.5	episode. This is the type of interview I have wanted to do forever and I kind of have
0:29.0	my golden interview we who I get to interview about it. Today we are interviewing Mark
0:35.8	Ozzland. Mark, welcome to Mormon Stories podcast. John, I'm so excited to be here. So excited.
0:41.2	And I'll just give you guys the preview. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to
0:46.5	number one be in the Church education system as a seminary teacher? You know, and we've
0:53.4	had John McCleon, you know, talking about what it was like being a seminary institute
0:57.5	when he was married to Brooke and you know, that was like a really groundbreaking episode.
1:01.6	And of course, we had Grant Palmer on when he talked about being in the seminaries
1:04.5	to program. But, but like imagine being in the NCES, I know I should say we had Jeremy
1:12.4	Reynolds on talking about letter to a CES director. Well, we've never had is somebody
1:18.0	number one who was kind of like, you know, over the past 10 years in CES working as a CES
1:24.7	instructor, but it gets cooler. Like think about starting around 2013, kind of two years
1:32.8	before everything broke. Right as the essays are starting to appear, right as the Mormon
1:38.9	Internet is really getting going. And then, you know, boom, Kelly's ex communicated, I'm
1:44.6	ex communicated. And then dealing with the CES letter comes out. And then dealing with
1:50.8	all the aftermath between let's just say 2015 and, you know, 2019, 2020, when you lose
1:58.3	your faith as a seminary teacher in Utah. And then you've got to figure out what to
2:06.4	do, how to leave this job. Can you even get a new job? And then what, you know, when you
	...

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