New Church Essays on Translation and Polygamy - LDS Discussions w/ Sandra Tanner | Ep. 2063

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2025

⏱️ 176 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We are thrilled to have Sandra Tanner as a guest on our LDS Discussions series this week! Along with John, Julia, and Nemo, Sandra is here to offer commentary on three new essays recently released by the LDS Church, addressing the issues of Book of Mormon translation, polygamy, and Joseph Smith’s character.

In part one of this two-part episode, we will focus on Joseph Smith’s “translation” of the Book of Mormon and on polygamy.

Among the topics we’ll cover:

-“Translation” vs. “Revelation”

-Joseph’s use of the seer stones

-What became of the Eight Witnesses

-The polygamy manifestos

-The Nauvoo Expositor

You won’t want to miss this fascinating conversation with the one and only Sandra Tanner, as we dissect the essays point by point and offer a unique perspective on these issues.

___________________

YouTube

At Mormon Stories we explore, celebrate, and challenge Mormon culture through in-depth stories told by members and former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well as scholars, authors, LDS apologists, and other professionals.

Our overall mission is to:

1. Facilitate informed consent amongst LDS Church members, investigators, and non-members regarding Mormon history, doctrine, and theology

2. Support Mormons (and members of other high-demand religions) who are experiencing a religious faith crisis

3. Promote healing, growth and community for those who choose to leave the LDS Church or other high demand religions

🤝Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today

One-time or recurring donations: https://donorbox.org/mormon-stories?default_interval=m

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mormonstories

Venmo: https://account.venmo.com/u/mormonstories

Paypal: https://paypal.me/mormonstories

Join this channel to get access to perks:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCx6OgmoqJbOVRq-Lv1P7SzA/join

Our Platforms:

🌐Mormon Stories Blog: https://www.mormonstories.org/episodes

🎙️Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mormonstories

✳️Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sDzk7dRjODTSEqzZKZJzk?si=148b0efc1ccc4404&nd=1

🍎Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mormon-stories-lds/id312094772

🖼️Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mormstories

📱TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mormonstoriespodcast

🎮Discord: https://discord.com/invite/kuX5p6yyjF

📧 [email protected]

📬PO Box 171085, Salt Lake City, UT 84117

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast, LDS Discussions Edition.
0:05.4	I am your host for today, John DeLynn. It is August 28, 2025, and we have really important news.
0:13.3	The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as the LDS or the Mormon Church,
0:18.3	has released three very important pages or essays, depending on how
0:24.0	you want to describe them, to its gospel topics essays series, where it finally, around 2013,
0:31.2	2014, started to publicly take responsibility and own up to problematic LDS or Mormon church history and or
0:39.6	truth claims. It's added three new essays or pages as of August 2025, and the three topics
0:47.7	are plural marriage, Joseph Smith's character, and Book of Mormon translation. They're all very important topics that
0:56.6	have been addressed at some level before, but there's new information, updates, clarifications,
1:05.0	and there's even some new sort of historical or cultural context that we could discuss that help
1:10.0	frame and explain why the church
1:11.6	is making these updates. But most importantly, I think we're all thrilled that the LDS
1:17.6	discussions series on Mormon Stories podcast continues. What is that? Years ago, we brought on a brilliant
1:24.9	human named Mike, who has a website called LDS Discussions, where he
1:29.7	spent a lot of time covering multiple topics about LDS Church Truth Claims in as much of a fact-based
1:36.2	or an evidence-based objective manner as he could. We started this series on LDS discussions,
1:42.5	where for 40 or 50 episodes or more we brought
1:45.0	Mike on in a panel format to discuss these LDS Church Truth Claims. It's absolutely one of the
1:52.4	most important projects Mormon stories has ever been involved with. And we constantly hear from you
1:57.4	that you want to hear it continue. So for those of you who have not heard any of them,
2:03.3	what we always like to say is that these episodes are best enjoyed in sequence. So you can go
2:08.8	to the LDS discussions playlist on YouTube. We think that's the best way to consume it. So under
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

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.