852: Family Ties - Laurie, Doug, Julie, and Jerry's Mormon Faith Crisis/Transition Pt. 1

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 5.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2018

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this special episode of Mormon Stories, we travel to Southern California to interview 2 couples—Doug & Laurie and Jerry & Julie about their Mormon faith crisis and transition. The couples are connected in that Laurie and Julie are sisters, and Doug and Jerry served in the same LDS mission together.

This is a super fascinating story in that each grew up as faithful, orthodox Mormons and both couples were living what they considered to be the "Mormon dream" until Doug began to have a faith crisis that he endured silently for years. Suffering alone and feeling unable to share his doubts with anyone, he finally opened up to his wife Laurie and they carefully navigated a mixed-faith marriage for some time. Seeking support, Doug and Laurie reached out to Jerry and Julie to share their questions and struggles and we learn how each began a faith journey they did not expect.

Important topics we cover:

What the Church meant to each as they were in it
What caused them to doubt and question
What was hard and difficult about the faith crisis
The mistakes and successes they discovered while navigating their faith crisis
How they shared their faith crisis with their children
How they "came out" about their beliefs to others, including ward members and leaders
How they have begun to forge a new life

This interview is a first of many this year that will highlight what John calls "The Gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis." More information for this 2018 initiative can be found at http://www.mormonfaithcrisis.com

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Part 1: Each provide their Mormon background

Part 2: Doug is the first to have a faith crisis, which has ripple effects to Laurie, Julie, and Jerry

Part 3: Laurie, Doug, and Julie share how cracks developed in their faith

Part 4: Each tackle the tough topic of sharing their faith crisis with their children

Part 5: Each discuss "coming out" about their beliefs to others

Part 6: Each discuss the hard, yet rewarding task of forging a new life

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Transcript

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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.
0:39.0	Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host John D'Alinn.
0:44.0	It is January 11th, 2018 and we are broadcasting to you live from where?
0:51.0	Southern California.
0:52.0	Southern California where we are interviewing Jerry, Julie, Laurie and Doug. And this is going to be a really epic interview.
1:06.0	Let me give just a little bit of background. So one of the new projects that we're going to be doing this year with the Open Stories Foundation, thanks to your generous support, is a project called Mormon Faith Crisis.
1:21.0	Or like, as I like to call it, the gift of the Mormon Faith Crisis. So we've known, we've been covering Mormon Faith Crisis for 12 years now with the Open Stories Foundation.
1:31.0	We launched a project last year called Mormon Transitions, which had fabulous success. And it was so successful that we decided to really put some time and thought into planning and organizing a new project for 2018.
1:46.0	And it's going to be called Mormon Faith Crisis. You can go to Mormonfaithcrisis.com and check out our website. The website is not totally ready yet, but we've got a staging site there.
1:56.0	But the purpose of the website is to explore and even celebrate what is the Mormon Faith Crisis. And that may sound shocking or crazy to many of you, because many of you who have gone through or are going through a Mormon Faith Crisis might feel like it's the worst possible thing that's ever happened to you, like it's a catastrophic and terrible.
2:19.0	Of course, that's how it feels. Of course, that's how it seems. But the truth is, after having 12, 15 years of speaking with literally tens of thousands of individuals and couples about the Mormon Faith Crisis, what we've discovered is that over time, the Mormon Faith Crisis is this fabulous opportunity to get healthy, to develop and grow individually,
2:47.0	to make your relationships, your marriages, your parenting relationships, relationships with friends and family more deep, more intimate, more meaningful.
2:56.0	It's a chance to rescue and capture back your full life, to decide however you want to build your life. You can build it in the church or out of the church. You can build it with faith or in more of a secular format.
3:11.0	It's an opportunity to improve your mental health, to have happy and healthier, again, lives and relationships, to take on new adventures.
3:21.0	And what we're going to be doing with Mormon Faith Crisis, Natasha O. for Parker is going to be helping out. My wife Margie is going to be helping out and we'll have other special guests.
3:31.0	But we're going to be covering over the next year or two this outline of all the different sorts of issues that impact Mormons during a Faith Crisis.
3:41.0	So raising kids, spirituality, mental health, communicating with, believing family and friends, how to deal with your award, how to come out as a non-believer, LGBT issues.
3:54.0	If you go up there right now, you can go to MormonFaithCrisis.com, click on the outline.
3:58.0	There's this huge outline of topics that we plan on covering. So that's going to be something to look forward to.
	...

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