849: Mormon Millennial (Neo-) Apologist Jaxon Washburn Pt. 2
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2017
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this Mormon Stories Podcast episode, we interview millennial apologist Jaxon Washburn. Jaxon is 19 year old, pre-mission Mormon apologist attending Arizona State University.
Jaxon was introduced to issues of Mormon faith as his mother lost belief in and left the LDS church, while his father remained faithful to the church. Jaxon’s involvement in an interfaith family led to strong personal interest in matters of faith, which has led to extensive interfaith efforts.
In this interview Jaxon discusses his own history of doubts, including his experiencing watching the church evolve as an active Mormon youth in how it speaks about and teaches certain issues. He explains how he reconciles difficult Mormon issues and also discusses his view of classic and modern Mormon apologetics, including the newly coined term/wave of “neo-apologetics.”
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners. |
| 0:09.0 | To help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page. |
| 0:21.0 | All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. |
| 0:30.0 | Thanks for your support. |
| 0:33.0 | All right. Well Jackson, if it's okay, I think it's now time to move from your story to your current beliefs in the church. |
| 0:48.0 | Yeah, feel free. |
| 0:49.0 | Because I think that would be really interesting. Is that all right? |
| 0:52.0 | Yeah, go ahead. |
| 0:53.0 | Okay, so let's just let's just begin at the top. |
| 0:59.0 | You know, you you you you have it love the term neopologist, but you have described yourself as a as a liberal or as a progressive sort of believer. |
| 1:11.0 | So how do you describe? Yeah, how do you describe your beliefs or or you know, flavor or style within the church? |
| 1:19.0 | So the I mentioned earlier how my interfaith and religious studies efforts are very much they very much serve to color my current perspective as a Mormon, right. |
| 1:30.0 | So one thing that I would say kind of sets me apart. |
| 1:35.0 | I usually contrast myself against kind of correlation generation or correlation Mormonism because I recognize that |
| 1:45.0 | Mormonism or LDS Mormonism hasn't been a static entity since its inception. |
| 1:51.0 | It's it's witnessed a fair amount of development. There's different time periods and different perspectives that are held within the faith both in leadership and in membership. |
| 2:02.0 | And so the Mormonism of Brigham Young is going to be different than the Mormonism of Bruce Arma Conkey, which is going to be different than the Mormonism of me or tale givens or you know, |
| 2:12.0 | I just recognize a diversity in Mormonism and recognize that it's not necessarily a monolithic experience that people can have different takes on the faith and that's okay. |
| 2:23.0 | I would kind of compare that to maybe forms of Judaism today where you have lots of different types of Jews, even within the same synagogue who might believe very different things or have different takes on the faith and that's encouraged and accepted. |
| 2:40.0 | I wouldn't say the LDS church is necessarily at the same place institutionally in terms of making as much room or promoting a lot of diversity and belief like we still hold on to a lot of orthodoxy. |
| 2:55.0 | But I certainly recognize that within the faith community and I look to individuals who have varying kinds of belief and I just kind of draw from from a lot of them and a lot of them are general authorities too. |
| 3:08.0 | So as far as my faith goes, it's pretty universalistic in terms of like salvation or things like that. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Dr. John Dehlin, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Dr. John Dehlin and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

