We don’t usually discuss current events on Gospel Tangents, but we’re going to make an exception. Jennifer Roach is a former Anglican pastor, and experienced sexual abuse from her Baptist clergy as a teen. She has a unique perspective on the latest AP News article about a sexual abuse case in Arizona. She is also a counselor, and we’ll get her opinions on the case.  We’ll also get her opinion on LDS women’s ordination in the LDS Church. Does she support it? I think her answers will surprise you. Check out our conversation…

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Introduction

We don’t often cover current events. But, we’re going to do that today with Jennifer Roach. She’s a very interesting person in that she has been a former Anglican priest who converted to the LDS Church. How does that work? We’ll also talk about the recent case, the AP article about the church helpline that’s supposed to help bishops, when they deal with abuse victims and that sort of thing. Could they do things a little bit better? We’ll talk to Jennifer about that. She’s actually a licensed counselor, and has her own experience with sexual abuse. Unfortunately, she was a victim back in California, so she’ll talk a little bit about that, and about the current situation. She’s definitely got some unique perspectives, both as a counselor and an abuse victim and so you’ll definitely want to check this out.

GT  01:00  Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I’m excited to have an amazing woman here on our show. She’s a former pastor, and now a Mormon. Can we still say Mormon? (Chuckling) So why don’t you tell us who you are?

Jennifer  01:16  I am Jennifer Roach. I am a licensed mental health counselor. Before I joined this church, that’s true, I was ordained as an Anglican pastor. I have a master’s in divinity. I also have a master’s in counseling or therapy.

GT  01:34  Okay. Well, this is great. Now I’ve heard your story before. I’m sure most of my audience has not. So, tell us about–so Anglican and Episcopal, those are kind of the same thing.

Jennifer  01:47  They’re very close cousins.

GT  01:48  So which one’s the more conservative?

Jennifer  01:51  Anglican?

GT  01:51  Oh, really? Oh, I’m surprised to hear that.

Jennifer  01:52  Anglicans in the United States are more conservative than Episcopalians in the United States, by far. But Anglicans in the United States are probably more liberal than Anglicans, like, in Africa.

GT  02:09  Okay, because they allow women pastors.

Jennifer  02:14  They do.  It’s contentious in some circles, still, but they do. Yeah.

GT  02:17  Okay. This is my American history hat. The Anglican Church was founded by King Henry the Eighth. Right? Then, during the revolution, we didn’t want to be tied with the Church of England.

Jennifer  02:35  Correct. So, they changed the name to Episcopalian.

GT  02:39  So, in America, it was known as the Episcopal Church. But in England, it was known as the Anglican Church.

Jennifer  02:43  Correct. Then, it was John Wesley and his brother and others who–they were Anglicans, right around that time when the name changed. They kind of say like, “We need to be the circuit-riding preachers.  We need to take the gospel out to the people.” And that’s not how Anglicans normally are thinking, right?

GT  03:04  This is like the Second Great Awakening?

Jennifer  03:06  Yeah, so, John Wesley comes out of the Anglican Church at this time saying, like, “Y’all need to be doing more to get the gospel to the people. We’re starting our own thing.”  There you go.

GT  03:16  Oh, wow. Very cool. So, eventually, we won the war.

Jennifer  03:24  We did. I can report that as of today.

GT  03:27  So, Anglicans aren’t terrible, anymore? They’re still kind of a division between Anglicans and Episcopal, right?

Jennifer  03:34  Yeah. So, in the United States, people who call themselves Anglicans and not Episcopal, have deliberately walked away from the Episcopalian structure, in part because they will say things like, “Oh, we don’t actually know if Jesus was a real person.”

GT  03:35  That’s what Episcopalians say.

Jennifer  03:53  Yeah, not all of them. Many, many of them love Jesus, and they’re fine. But you also get a lot of that kind of stuff on the leadership. So, people who call themselves Anglicans in the U.S., searched out, they call them flying bishops, but, basically, they’re foreign bishops who would oversee them. So, when I was an Anglican, my top a bishop was actually the Archbishop of Rwanda, who was a welcoming refuge for American Episcopalians who wanted to break away from the Episcopalians.

GT  04:25  Oh, wow.

Jennifer  04:25  They have their own stuff. That’s a whole different episode.

GT  04:29  This is great. We’re getting a Pentecostal perspective, a Lutheran perspective, and now an Anglican perspective.

Jennifer  04:34  I actually grew up Evangelical.

GT  04:36  Oh, really?

Jennifer  04:36  Broadly Evangelical. It was only maybe in the last 10 years before I joined this church, that I was an Anglican.

GT  04:44  Okay. Well, very cool. So, because I remember in your story, you said you knew somebody who was LDS, and they talked about this scripture that you’d never heard of. Tell that story.

Jennifer  05:01  So, I was involved in a lawsuit in California, and one of the reporters who was most writing about it, he’s a member of the LDS Church. He and I had worked together a lot. There was a bunch of stories that came out, and so he and I were getting to know each other. I kind of had this sense of like, “Oh, I know, he’s a church-going guy.” I didn’t know anything, really, much more than that. The lawsuit involved a church where I grew up that I sued for my sexual abuse. So, I took them to court and won. That church decided to give a response to the initial stories about this lawsuit in a sermon. So, the pastor chose for his text to use Moses, and his sermon really was awful. It was basically, “Well, Moses messed up and God seems to forgive him. So, when leaders mess up, we should just forgive them.” I was angry about it. I was all worked up. The plan was, my reporter friend and I were going to talk later in the week after both of us had listened to this. So, we’re on the phone, and I…

GT  06:17  So, the sermon was recorded or something?

Jennifer  06:19  The sermon was recorded. This was pre-COVID, but they still had their sermons online.

GT  06:22  Okay.

Jennifer  06:24  So I’m telling the reporter, his name is Garth Stapley, by the way. He won some awards for his reporting on my issue. [He did a] fantastic, absolutely amazing level [of] reporting accurate, good, fair, honest. So, I’m telling him all the reasons, on and on and on and on and on. He says, “Yeah, you know, I didn’t like that sermon, either, but for different reasons.”

Jennifer  06:49  [I’m] like, “Really, you’ve got to tell me why.”

Jennifer  06:53  He says, “Well, I have different scriptures than you.”

Jennifer  06:58  It’s like, “No, you don’t. What are you talking about?”

Jennifer  07:03  “I have more information about Moses than you do.”

Jennifer  07:06  I was riveted. I had to know what he was talking about. Unfortunately, it’s the middle of a workday. He’s working in a very typical newsroom, that open floor plan, all the reporters are sitting around. So, he’s like, “I’m not talking about Scripture with you at work.”

Jennifer  07:25  I said, “Okay, that’s fine.” I think as soon as we hung up the phone, I’m immediately texting him of like, “Okay, text it to me, then.” He sent me a link to the church’s website where I read the Book of Moses. That’s the first Latter-day Scripture I ever read.

GT  07:42  Before the Book of Mormon.

Jennifer  07:43  Before the Book of Mormon. I had no idea what I was even looking at, but that’s what I read first.

GT  07:47  So, this is interesting to me, because, I don’t know. It seems like my experience is most pastors get at least some sort of knowledge of Mormonism. But it sounds like you didn’t get any. Is that true? Because you’re both an evangelical and an Anglican.

Jennifer  08:07  So, I grew up in the evangelical church in the 70s and 80s. Godmakers was shown in my church, every single year. We were taught, as children– I lived in Modesto, California. That’s where I grew up. It’s a fantastic place to grow up. We would drive into the bay area where the Oakland Temple is, near there. If you’ve ever seen the Oakland Temple, it’s up on a hill, all lit up. You can see that thing from all over the Bay Area. What our leaders taught us was, “Don’t even look at their temple, because evil things happen in there and you don’t want to get corrupted, so like avert your eyes.” So, I got plenty, a healthy dose of Mormon equals bad.  But I also was childhood friends with a family who were members of the Church and I loved them. Their home was good and peaceful to me. I wanted, like, their mom to be my mom. So, I had a kind of a soft spot in me where I was always going, “These two pieces of evidence don’t quite fit together, what my church is telling me and what I see in my friends.”

Jennifer  09:19  In childhood and into my teenage years I didn’t have any ability to sluice out what that meant for me. After adolescence, after childhood, even, those friends were out of my life. I had moved and by then I was mostly in evangelical circles. I went to an evangelical University.

GT  09:38  Biola?

Jennifer  09:41  No, I went to Seattle Pacific, because I was living in Seattle. Seattle Pacific was fantastic. I really enjoyed it. It’s a really small school, but it was great for me. My M. Div. is from an Evangelical Divinity School, the Seattle School of Psychology and Theology. It’s a great program but very evangelical. I have worked in churches, most of my adult life. So, my world became really insular in that sense. I can’t even remember having a friend in the last 30 years who was a member of the [LDS] Church. I just have been around evangelical and Anglican church people my whole life.

GT  10:17  Wow. So how did you go from Evangelical to Anglican? Were you a pastor at an evangelical church before?

Jennifer  10:25  So, they wouldn’t call me a pastor. They would title me Director in the churches where I worked, just because I was a woman. But I worked in evangelical churches. I was a children’s pastor for a long time, did youth ministry, did family ministry, I did all kinds of stuff, right?

GT  10:40  Evangelicals don’t give women the priesthood, either. Is that why?

Jennifer  10:42  Some do and some don’t. It’s church by church basis. The Evangelicals make the rules for themselves. So, churches that want to, do, churches that don’t [want to,] don’t. The evangelical world was good to me in some ways. They taught me how to read Scripture. They taught me how to love the Bible, and I still do. But the way evangelical faith kind of gets practiced is it’s about an inch deep for most folks. It’s really, really, broad. It’s only about an inch deep. That just, ultimately, wasn’t very satisfying to me. I actually went to Divinity School, not with the intention of, hey, I’m going to go get ordained, but with the intention that just said, I need to make sense of what it is that I have been handed in this Bible, in this tradition. I took two years of Greek and Hebrew. I learned homiletics. I learned hermeneutics. I learned philosophy. I learned all this stuff, just in part, because that’s how my brain worked. I didn’t get that kind of stuff in my churches, growing up.

GT  11:53  Interesting. So, you got your M. Div. at Seattle Pacific. You went back to Modesto and were kind of a children’s pastor?

Jennifer  12:02  No, I actually, I lived in Modesto, up until the time was about 23, maybe 24. Then we moved away. I haven’t lived there since.

GT  12:10  Okay.

Jennifer  12:11  So, college happens later in life for me. At age 31, is when I went back to school.

GT  12:24  After you already had your M. Div?

Jennifer  12:26   No, I started at community college at age 31.

GT  12:30  Oh, okay.

Jennifer  12:31  So, essentially three and a half years to get my BA and M. Div. was four years on top of that. Then, my graduate degree for counseling is three more years on top of that.

GT  12:35  Wow.

Jennifer  12:35  So, no, I don’t have a doctorate, but I should. If I would have been smart, I would have figured that out.

GT  12:52  Oh, wow. So, once again, how did you go from evangelical to Anglican?

Jennifer  12:59  The evangelical church just wasn’t satisfying anymore. Anglicans are deep thinkers.  [They] understand a lot more about nuance in history and philosophy and how to actually understand Scripture. Whereas with Evangelicals, you get a lot of, “Just love Jesus, and it’s going to be okay.”

GT  13:17  Okay.

Jennifer  13:18  So, mostly my intellectual needs led me there.

GT  13:23  Okay, and so how did you become a pastor?

Jennifer  13:29  Well, I’d been working in churches almost my whole life. I mean, the first paycheck I ever got from a church, I was 17. So, a lot of these roles I had had were director roles, which means you’re a girl pastor. So, when I came to the Anglicans, ordination is the entryway into doing any kind of pastoral roles. They have an entirely different theology of what it means to be a pastor. So, ordination is required. There’s some testing that happens with that. There’s some interviews. You have to have a master’s in divinity.

GT  14:09  Which you already had.

Jennifer  14:10  Which I already had. Honestly, very often I could sit at a table with 10 Anglican friends with two master’s degrees, seven years of graduate education and I would be the least educated person at the table.

GT  14:25  Wow.

Jennifer  14:25  So they are hyper educated. That’s just the bar to– if you want in on the conversation, have an M. Div., get ordained.

GT  14:34  Wow. So, you felt called to do that?

Jennifer  14:39  I did. I loved it. They were very, very good to me.

GT  14:42  And you did that for 10 years?

Jennifer  14:44  I did that for about 10 years. I was happy. I had, literally, no intention of going anywhere. And then I read the Book of Moses. I don’t know what to tell you.

GT  14:56  (Chuckling)  And that converted you right there?

Jennifer  15:00  No.

GT  15:01  You didn’t even need Moroni’s promise?

Jennifer  15:02  I didn’t even need Moroni. No, that did not convert me on the spot. It was a process, and I took lessons for about nine months. Most of the time, it would be me, the two girl missionaries, who I wanted to be teaching me, because that was my personal preference, the two elders who were actually the elders assigned to the actual ward, where I lived, and, frequently, two senior-adult, missionaries. I think they were feeling a little nervous, because I had questions, and the kids didn’t always know what to do with them. My friend, the reporter, would join us online, so he was in our lessons on Zoom. Often, somebody from the ward, the Relief Society President or whoever [would be there.] So, there would be like 10 or 12 of us sitting around for my lessons. We did that for months and months and months and months.

GT  15:51  Yeah. It would take some talking to…

Jennifer  15:54  I kept a notebook and just wrote down every single question I had, and I wasn’t going to make a movement until my questions felt answered to me. I also, you know, after I read Moses, I read all of the Pearl of Great Price. I read all of the Book of Mormon. I read cover to cover, I read all of those long before I got baptized. I had many, many questions for my reporter friend, who is a saint for taking it, because it was like daily. “What about this? What about this? What about this,” and the fact that he hasn’t unfriended me yet is only attributed to his patience and goodness, not because I have any restraint whatsoever.

GT  16:39  So, polygamy wasn’t a big deal to you.

Jennifer  16:41  I mean, it’s a complicated issue. However, my point of reference on polygamy is the Old Testament. Everybody’s a polygamist in the Old Testament.

GT  16:51  Exactly.

Jennifer  16:52  Who cares? So, I walked into the LDS polygamy situation of like, “Okay, it’s a little bit more recent, but I don’t, exactly, understand why all of you are so upset. I have come to understand and I have gotten a nice education. I know, I understand why people are upset about it. But I’m not. That’s also another episode.

GT  17:17  I’m sure you probably had to ask about–well, women and priesthood, right?

Jennifer  17:20  Women and priesthood, absolutely.

GT  17:21  I mean, that had to be a big deal for you. Right?

Jennifer  17:24  The day that I sat in an LDS service and watched the boys serving sacrament, is when I had the real realization of, that boy’s 12, maybe 11. I’m a full-grown woman, a completely over-educated adult woman who has all kinds of power and responsibility, and that boy has more than I do in this context. That took a minute. However, if you asked me, “Do I want women to be ordained?”  Hard pass.

GT  18:00  Oh, really?

Jennifer  18:00  Hard pass. We can talk about that. But that’s where I’m at.

GT  18:03  Well, let’s talk about that. That’s where I wanted to go, because I can imagine that would have been incredibly difficult for you. How did you overcome that?

Jennifer  18:14  Well, I mean, it was difficult. There are different versions of difficult. The initial version of difficult was, I mean, maybe that’s prideful, or maybe anybody in my position would have felt a little bit about like, “Wait, what, if I join all of you? I’m losing an awful lot,” right? I have current friends in this Church today who are fighting for their lives to get women to be ordained, right? And here I am voluntarily giving that up. So, the personal piece was one part. The social piece is another part, though, which a lot of LDS women don’t understand what it’s like to be an ordained person in another denomination. So, my initial forays into that conversation, there was a disconnect for me around, well, only some people are ordained in the evangelical church. You get a handful, four or five, maybe 10 people in a church who are ordained. Nobody else is. Compared to the LDS Church, every eligible man can be [ordained.]

Jennifer  19:23  So, presumably, if women were ordained, every eligible woman would be presumably, and that’s a different setup, and how does that end up actually playing out? I don’t know. But in the evangelical world where women are ordained, even in the churches that fully 100% accept and support them, they face an incredible, incredible backlash, sexist, awful, awful comments from their own congregations because of their gender. That is no cakewalk for any of them. The pushback is intense. So, part of why that was easy for me to overcome was, I know what’s on the other side of that, at least the evangelical version of it. And I am not eager to sign up for that again, right? The theological piece I got through by saying, I mean, it’s, it’s not a super sophisticated way to think about it, but, like, “Okay, if this is true, and then this true, and then this is true, I can understand how not ordaining women is true.” If you don’t have all these other things before it, it doesn’t make sense. But in this larger context, it makes sense to put aside my own pride. I can put aside the social piece, whatever, and it becomes okay for me.  But it was a struggle.

Jennifer  20:50  I’ll also say this. Not all of them. And if this, if this doesn’t apply to you, women, then, it doesn’t apply to you. But in our church, in our LDS Church, one thing I have noticed is more than I would expect, women who say, “I’m so mad women don’t have the priesthood. I’m so mad, I don’t get to lead. When is all of this going to change?” It is baffling to me. Because you don’t get out of the confines of a system by necessarily getting the system to change for you.”

Like as a woman who’s saying, “I’m so mad at those mean men that aren’t giving me permission. I’m just going to sit here and wait for them to give me permission.” Do I seem like a woman who is struggling to get her voice heard in this church? I don’t. Do I seem like a woman who is struggling to not lead in difficult areas? No, I do not. I feel completely free to do whatever I need to do.

Jennifer  21:59  What women can fall into–you know, our culture has done a really good job about talking about toxic masculinity, this sort of over aggressive, “It has to be my way, and nobody else can be right,” kind of…  We’ve done a really, really good job of identifying that.  What we’ve don’t a less good job at is identifying the female version of that, which is not an over aggressive, “I have to have my way.” It’s an over passive, “I have to sit back and wait to be given permission to lead. I have to wait to be given an official title to lead.” Because there seems to be this thought of, “If I’m given an official position, if I’m given an official title, and then I try to lead, I’m more guaranteed to be successful. I’m more guaranteed to not be criticized. I’m more guaranteed to just be universally loved.” That’s not a leadership is about. If you want to stick your neck out, then stick your neck out, but you’re going to take your lumps, too. It is harder for women who are caught up in a toxic femininity, not all women, not most women. If this doesn’t apply to you, it doesn’t apply to you. But that’s one of the problems I see, like women complaining they can’t lead. Well, I’m not sitting around complaining I can’t lead.

GT: You just lead?

Jennifer:  I just lead. There’s plenty of evidence of me doing that. I’ve been criticized for it and of sometimes been wrong and of getting things wrong. [There are] things I wish I had said differently. Bla bla bla bla bla bla bla, right? That’s the risk that comes with it. What are you going to you do?

Jennifer  22:27  Well, it’s funny because my experience. I have a couple of sisters. Both of them have said, “I don’t want the priesthood.” It’s funny to look at the Community of Christ. I don’t know how familiar you are with them.

Jennifer  23:55  I am.

 GT  23:56  You know, in 1984, they allowed women to be ordained, but they don’t allow every man to be ordained, either.

Jennifer  24:04  Yeah.

GT  24:07  That’s not how they function.

Jennifer  24:08  They’re a weird hybrid.

GT  24:10  Yeah. So, a third of their first presidency are female. A third of their apostles are female. They have patriarchs and matriarchs. Is that a more appealing model to you? Is that more like the evangelical model you’re used to?

Jennifer  24:31  It is more like the evangelical model I’m used to. It is not a more appealing model to me. There’s a Community of Christ congregation in Seattle. It’s actually not far from where I live. I’ve been aware of it, since I was investigating the Church. I have never given serious emotional consideration to joining with them. I think I mean, maybe there are ways in which I would align with them better. But, that’s not who my people are.

GT  25:00  I mean, I know one of the things that they say is, they don’t like that every man gets ordained, just at the drop of a hat. And [they think] that there should be a little bit more discernment, and for those women who don’t want to lead, they shouldn’t lead. And for those men who don’t want to lead, they shouldn’t lead, which is very different from LDS. But, to me, it’s kind of interesting, because it does allow people like my sisters to be, “Well, I don’t want to lead.  I don’t want to be the bishop. I don’t want to..  I’m fine with being a Relief Society president or Young Women’s president or whatever.”

GT  25:40  So, it’s more accommodating in that way. I do think, well, since Kate Kelly got excommunicated, the Ordain Women crowd has gotten a lot quieter. They’re still there. The website’s still out there. They’re still trying to promote it. But they’re not trying to be as confrontational as Kate was. So, there are some of these militant feminists, I guess, but I don’t think they’re representative of all women, of all Mormon women.

Jennifer  26:13  Yeah.

GT  26:15  The ones I go to church with, I mean, I don’t talk a lot about that, I don’t talk at all about this at church. I only talk about people like you.

Jennifer  26:24  Don’t do that.

GT  26:26  I would suspect that if there were a revelation, like 1984 with the Community of Christ, Mormon women would probably go along with it. They go along to get along. They’re not seeking this out. Some are, but I think they’re a minority.

Jennifer  26:46  Yeah. I think there are so many opportunities for leadership in areas I am interested in. It is hard for me to imagine that other women can’t figure out ways to lead in the areas they are interested in. I understand that I bring some strengths to the table. I bring education, I bring some of these other things. In the distribution, maybe I’m in the tails, right? However, I’ve been in this church for three and a half years. Do I seem like I’m struggling to lead? No, I do not.

GT  27:23  You’ve been on several podcasts. I know you’ve been on Leading Saints at least twice. What other podcasts? You have you been on Mormonland, I believe.

Jennifer  27:32  Oh, yeah, I did Mormonland. I gave a FAIR talk two years ago. They interviewed me about that. I can’t remember all the ones. I mean, I’ve done a bunch. There’s people who are probably like, “Oh, this lady again?” And then there are other people who are like, “Who is Jennifer Roach?”

GT  27:49  Yeah. So, it must have been hard, because you had to change career paths, right? You go from being a pastor to…

Jennifer  27:59  Not as hard as you might expect.

GT  28:02  Okay.

Jennifer  28:02  Because by the time I was already, like, before I ever even read the Book of Mormon, I had credentials in both. So, I was actively working in churches. But I also had a therapy practice. I had worked full time as a therapist before that. So, it’s not like I had to quit my job, and then all of a sudden go and get retrained in some other field. I had both masters to draw off of, and I’m not the sole income earner for my family. So, that also makes it easier. I know folks who the faith transition question is completely out of the question. They’re like, “Well, it might be interesting to find out about your church, but please don’t tell me, because if I’m interested, I can’t do anything about it. Because I’ve got five kids, and I’m the only one in our family who earns income and I’m a pastor, so I’m not changing.”

GT  28:54  Yeah.

Jennifer  28:55  That was not my path.

GT  28:56  Okay. So, it was a little bit smoother, because you could go into counseling, which you’d already been doing.

Jennifer  29:02  Yeah. Easy.

GT  29:03  Okay. That’s interesting. So, talk a little bit more about patriarchy. Is this problem in the LDS Church?

Jennifer  29:24  Let me try and use the language of the feminist world that would be talking about the patriarchy, right. If the patriarchy is a problem, or to the degree that it is a problem, it is also a problem to sit and say, “Well, I demand that the patriarchy give me permission, or endorsement to lead.” Like, why not subvert the system, in a sense, lead where you want to lead? Maybe you don’t have a title. Maybe you don’t have an official position and I understand the arguments for why those are so important to have, I’m not pretending I don’t understand those.

GT  30:05  Let me ask you this, because, I talk with a lot of different Mormons schismatic groups. David Ferriman, he’s got the Church of Jesus Christ in Christian Fellowship. It’s kind of an internet church. One of his selling points is you don’t have to leave your church to join my church. So, he has told me, and I don’t know who these people are, but he has told me that there have been women in the LDS Church that wanted priesthood and he’s given them what he calls the Magdalene Priesthood, which is similar to the Melchizedek priesthood, so that they can ordain other women or lay hands on the sick.

Jennifer  30:46  Sure.

GT  30:47  I’ve heard. I’ve been to Sunstone. I’ve heard about women who have laid hands on the sick. Now that used to be a practice up until the 1950s. Then, the said, “No, if there are elders around you should call for elders.” Would it be okay for a woman like this to say, “Well, you know, I’ve been listening to Margaret Toscano, and Michael Quinn, and they say, due to my endowment…”  Although you were at the FAIR conference a few days ago.

Jennifer  31:15  I was.

GT  31:16  There was a woman who said, “Due to baptism, that women have priesthood, and, at the time, lay hands on the sick.” The prophet hasn’t endorsed that today. But would it be okay for a woman in that situation to say, “Hey, by virtue of my endowment,” let’s at least go there, “I can lay hands on the sick.”

Jennifer  31:38  Can she lay hands on the sick and pray to Heavenly Father to heal them? Absolutely. Can she pray for her own children? Absolutely. Is that the same thing that is what is purported to be happening when an elder does that? No. Does that mean it’s meaningless and pointless, and that praying to God, that shouldn’t matter? Of course not. In our church, there are women who have put their hands on me and prayed for me, but nobody pretended it was a blessing. Right? So, the idea that like, “Oh, women are barred from this kind of care of each other.” That’s ridiculous. Nobody’s going around pretending that it is what it isn’t, “So, now I have some kind of priesthood authority here to do this.” It’s a, “Brother and sister in Christ, and we all are praying to our Heavenly Father,” kind of authority. I’m not going to go as far as to say that’s identical to, “I already have the priesthood.” I think that’s a ridiculous argument. But, if I had a friend, and she was pregnant, yeah, I’m going to put my hand on her belly and pray for her. And I hope the elders don’t put their hand on her belly, right? Like, yes, yes, I am. Am I blessing her? Am I acting in any priesthood role there?  No.

GT  33:01  You’re just doing it as faith.

Jennifer  33:03  Just doing it as faith. I mean, if people have a problem with that, that’s nonsensical to me. What is the problem with one woman praying for another woman? I mean, there’s obviously like, it’s very, very conservative people who might have the problem with that. On the other side are people who would say, “Oh, like you actually, you’re acting in function as priesthood right here. You might as well name it that.” Well, no, I’m not.

GT  33:29  Well, the other issue comes up is like if a woman has to confess a sin to a male Bishop. That can be very intimidating. The question is, why couldn’t she confess those sins to a female Bishop? A male is going to ask different questions, probably more invasive questions than a female. So, why should a woman have to submit to a male authority in those situations?

Jennifer  34:03  Yeah, so this comes up with me with clients quite a bit, actually. Probably half my clients are members of the church, and people will talk about something in therapy that ultimately becomes an issue they want to turn away from and are struggling to do. I, as their therapist, am more than happy to talk with them. We can figure out what the blocks are to changing their behavior. We can figure out strategies for behavior change. We can figure it out philosophically. We can do all these things. But I can’t do what their bishop can do. If we had female bishops to confess something to, the same would be true. I can’t do what your female bishop does. We don’t have that. I’m certainly not advocating for that. So, your bishop brings something to the table that your therapist doesn’t. The Relief Society president doesn’t. That’s how the system is set up. That is how it is. I’m okay with that. I know plenty of people who aren’t. And I’m okay with them not being okay with it. Like, I don’t judge them. I absolutely am fascinated by their perspective. I, at the end of the day, I just don’t share it.

GT  35:18  Well, and it’s interesting, because, you’ve kind of touched on this, and I would love you to share as much as you’re comfortable with. Because you mentioned earlier that you were involved in a sex abuse lawsuit with a Baptist pastor. Is that right?

Jennifer  35:34  Yep.

GT  35:36  And there’s the whole issue with Sam Young. Kids shouldn’t be talking to the bishop without parent present, or whatever, which has changed.

Jennifer  35:46  Yep, it has.

GT  35:47  So, can you talk about this issue? Is it okay for a woman to be alone with a bishop and confess sexual sins? Is that a way for grooming to happen?

Jennifer  36:04  Well, first, let me refer back to two years ago, I gave a FAIR talk on this. It didn’t focus on adults, but bishops and teenagers. So, if you want the longer answer, that’s a 45-minute talk. If the question is, is that a way, potentially, for bishops to groom people? Of course. However, I’m going to change and talk about teenagers, just because this is where I’ve done the research more.

GT  36:34  You’ve had unfortunate personal experience, as well.

Jennifer  36:40  Adults in every other church that exists are also talking with teenagers about sex. There is no church, where teenagers don’t need to talk about this as a subject. How does sexuality fit in with my faith? That is an appropriate developmental task for them to figure out. What happens in a lot of churches, I’m going to talk mostly about evangelicals, is that the youth leaders, who sometimes are trained, usually there’s one trained person and then a whole bunch of volunteers. So, they’re not any more trained than LDS people are. The volunteers will pull a kid aside, “Hey, gosh, let’s talk about what’s going on with you and your boyfriend or let’s talk about what’s going on,” you know, whatever, “with your porn viewing.” They have those conversations with kids on the regular without informing the parents. Parents never know about those conversations.

Jennifer  37:01  In our church, the bishop meets with the kid. The parents certainly knows that that’s happening. It’s probably scheduled. There is no, “Hey, let me pull you aside for a little private conversation, and oh, by the way, I’m never going to tell your parents we discussed graphically your sex life.” So, is there a danger there? Of course, there’s danger there. It’s better than—it’s safer than in other places. It’s not as bad as it could be. There is no risk-free way to live in the world. What are you going to do, lock kids in their homes? They’re actually more in danger in their homes when it comes to abuse. It’s family members and close friends of the family that abuse most often. Lock kids out of their homes and just keep them at school? 24/7? Well, there’s your second biggest source of sexual abuse is schoolteachers. So, we send our kids to school. We let them live in our home. Those are high risk activities for children. But there is no way to live in the world without risk.

GT  38:43  So, do you support the new guidelines where a parent can be in there?

Jennifer  39:01  Absolutely. Right? If the kid wants them in there, if the kid wanted their youth, their young woman’s leader in there with them, that’s allowed. If the kid wants a friend with them, that’s allowed. Of course! whatever is going to make that kid feel more comfortable. However, what I don’t love is when parents insist that they must be in there and the kid disagrees. There is a role to be played…

GT  39:11  Because there could be abuse in the home.

Jennifer  39:29  Yeah, because that kid might need to confess something that their parents—not confess, but reveal something their parents are doing. They also might need to reveal some activity that they themselves are involved in that the parents don’t know about, yet. The [church leader is in the] role, kind of the aunt or uncle figure plays in the church of like, “I’m not your parents. Like I’m not going to ground you if you reveal something to me. We can talk about it and we can figure out how to go talk to your parents together.” That is an important role. So, If the kid wants it, 100%. I’m suspicious if it’s dad that wants it.

GT  40:07  To make sure that…

Jennifer  40:07  I am sorry to say that, but it’s true.

GT  40:09  To make sure that nothing gets said that gets him in trouble, or whatever.

Jennifer  40:10  Is against his dad.

GT  40:12  Have you had these, especially when you were a pastor, I don’t know if I should use the word explicit, explicit sexual conversations with young boys?

Jennifer  40:24  Let me think.  As a pastor, not likely. How the evangelical church is set up is, usually, there’s one person who has something like the title, youth director or youth pastor, but they, alone, are not taking care of the youth. They’ve got a whole crew of volunteers underneath them,  men and women.  For the most part, the men are going to be having conversations with the boys. I don’t think I ever had, in my role as a pastor, certainly as a therapist, but that’s different.

GT  40:59  Okay.

GT  41:00  Because this all kind of leading into this AP story. Let’s talk a little bit about the helpline. There’s a big thing out here. There’s a terrible story in Arizona, where a father was sexually abusing his daughter, and it went on for at least seven years.

Jennifer  41:23  It’s horrific. It’s the worst case I’ve ever heard of in my entire life.

GT  41:28  So, there’s this helpline that bishops are supposed to call. Now, the way the Church frames it is, “We have a lay clergy. These are marketing majors and construction managers, they’re not psychologists, like you, generally speaking.

Jennifer  41:46  I’m not a psychologist, I’m a therapist.

GT  41:47  A therapist.

Jennifer  41:47  A psychologist is a PhD or Psy D level.

GT  41:50  Okay. They’re not therapists like you, that are that are used to dealing with these sorts of things. So, in theory, it sounds like, “Hey, let me call the Church. They’ll help me with this.” And that sounds like a great idea. But, the problem, at least in this Arizona case, is it looks like the Church said, “Don’t call authorities,” and from what I understand, there’s a little bit of a gray area in Arizona about whether you can call authorities. But this bishop was instructed not to call the authorities.

Jennifer  42:31  It’s unclear if he was instructed not to call or that it was up to him, if he called. I have not gotten clarity on that.[1] I don’t think that there’s a document that reveals [that.]  I’d love to know if there is.  Did they tell him, “Do not call?” Or did they tell him, “There’s an out and you can take it, if you want?” I don’t know.

GT  42:49  I’m going to look up something here in a second.

Jennifer  42:51  Please do. I would love to see it.

GT  42:52  But, at any rate, so the criticism is there’s a clergy exemption in some states.

Jennifer  43:03  Twenty eight states or something.

GT  43:06  I thought—was it a clergy exemption in 28 states? I thought it was 28 where they were mandatory reporters,

Jennifer  43:11  I could have it backwards. There are many states where there’s a clergy exemption. Arizona is not the only one.

GT  43:18  Well, because, I heard you mention this on the Oregon case, which is another case, and I kind of want to talk about that. My understanding is Oregon is a mandatory reporting state. So, the bishop did what he was supposed to do. He reported the sexual abuse. The wife of the husband, who went to jail for sexual abuse is,,,

Jennifer  43:41  She’s suing the church.

GT  43:42  She’s suing the church, because the church reported, but the church was following the law in that case.  So, I don’t think the case has been settled yet.

Jennifer  43:50  I don’t think it has either. I tried to find an update on it and just couldn’t.

GT  43:53  Yeah, I looked for it last night, too. I don’t think this woman has much of a leg to stand on, personally. I mean, I’m not a lawyer.

Jennifer  44:01  It wasn’t thrown out. I’m not a lawyer, either. But it wasn’t thrown out.

GT  44:08  Because I know that the question is, in some states, you’re a mandatory reporter, and you call and it sounds like the Oregon Bishop did the right thing. In Arizona, it sounds like it’s a little bit of a gray area, you can or cannot. From what I’ve read, it sounds like the Church said, “Do not report this.” The idea is, from the Church point of view, we don’t want to have splashed in the newspaper, “Oh, Mormon accused of sexually abusing his daughter.” It sounds like the church is scared of bad publicity, instead of “Hey, bishop in Arizona, go call the police and tell them what’s going on.” Because this went on for seven years. I don’t want to say–and the church is defending this, that the bishop did nothing wrong, because he followed the helpline.

Jennifer  44:55  Like in a very technical sense, he did nothing wrong.

GT  44:57  But, morally–the church is not about legally. We’re not supposed to take alcohol and tobacco, which are perfectly legal things to do in America. But morally, in the LDS Church, they’re not supposed to do that. So, why in the world would it be–and I realize these are lawyers and they have a lawyer thing. But, from a moral point of view, why isn’t the helpline telling this bishop in Arizona, “Get the police in here, now”?

Jennifer  45:31  Let me be very, very clear upfront. Those bishops should have called full stop. However, for some reason, it made sense for them not to.

GT  45:47  Most likely the helpline said not to, don’t you think?

Jennifer  45:51  Well, that’s one very possible, very probable piece of this. Let me actually back up a little bit. There are folks that want to say, [that] the bishops should have called. There’s nothing else to talk about here.” And that’s fine, like that’s an opinion. You can hold that opinion.

Jennifer  46:13  Some people kind of go the next step into interpretation. The bishops should have called. They didn’t. This is proof. This is evidence that the church is evil.” Okay, you can do that, too. But you also can take the same facts, the bishops should have called and they didn’t, and instead of saying, “Well, the church is evil, say, “Okay, let’s get curious about what are the factors involved?” The helpline is one of them. But there are also some lack of clarity of, “What, exactly, did they know, when?” In the Arizona paperwork, there are very few times when the bishops are even mentioned. They’re not the center of this. So, they get very few mentions, and when they do, it’s often with statements of like, “Adams revealed that he was abusing his daughter,” in one. What exactly did he reveal? Because there’s a wide variety of behaviors this guy is doing, all the way up from raping her and filming it, to–he filmed her while she was changing without her knowledge, even filming her with her knowledge, whatever.

Jennifer  47:21  What along that path did the bishop know and at what point? I’m not trying to defend them by any means, but to say [that] there are more factors at play here. It’s just trying to understand what happened, so that hopefully, we can figure out how to do better. It doesn’t seem helpful to say, “It looks like the helpline did this. Story closed and nothing else to talk about here.”  I would much rather say that okay, there are pieces involved here. One of them is, in the court paperwork. There is testimony from a lot of people. One of them is the FBI agent called Jay Allen. He has a quote. I just want to make sure I say it right. This is him, talking to the court, repeating what he knows about the mom’s meeting with the bishop. He says, “During the free talk,” that is, the wife’s conversation with the FBI, where she was just allowed to tell her story. “She said that there was a time when during an interview or discussion with her bishop that she was asked where the line was? How far is too far?”

Jennifer  48:34  She said, “If Paul ever touched any of my children, then I’m going to leave him.” So, at times, abuse is being disclosed, and at times we have statements like this, where she is acting like abuse is not going on. She knows perfectly well, even at every juncture along the way, that it is. But what is the bishop supposed to know from that? “If Paul ever touched any of my children, I would leave him.” It is reasonable to see a way that the bishop understood that as, “This child was not actively being abused. Mom would take the kids and run.” The court also says the judge says in no other case has he ever seen a woman who had more opportunities to rescue her own children than this woman. Her husband was gone for months at a time for work. She has a very large family who loves her and supports her, who would gladly have evacuated her and hid her from him. She had an entire ward begging her to let them help her. She doesn’t do anything, and in fact she lies continually. She tells the FBI that she has lied about things and then continues to lie about things. I am not saying the bishops did the right thing. They should have called. However, it is understandable to see why they were confused.

GT  50:07  Well, I guess my concerns, and the concerns expressed by those in the Twitterverse…

Jennifer  50:18  Oh good grief. I haven’t had time for Twitter. I’ve read the court documents. I’m not reading Twitter.

GT  50:23  Well, the idea is, maybe I should read a couple quotes here. Elisa at Wheat and Tares wrote an article on August 4, that said, “Stop Protecting Sexual Predators.” She quotes from the AP article. The idea is, I don’t want to get into the details of what the bishop knew or didn’t know. It’s more of the helpline, because it says, “The article reports that the sealed records say calls to the helpline are answered by social workers or professional counselors who determine whether the information they receive is serious enough to be referred to an attorney with Kirton McConkie, a Salt Lake City firm that represents the Church. But, it also says in capital letters that those taking the calls, ‘Should never advise a priesthood leader to report abuse.’” That sounds terrible, right?

Jennifer  51:21  It’s not what the handbook says.

GT  51:22  But this is what the, let’s see, the sealed records in the helpline…

Jennifer  51:29  So, let me help out a tiny bit here. Those sealed records are not about this Arizona case.

GT  51:37  No, they’re about a West Virginia case. But he’s applying that to the Arizona case. Because doesn’t it seem pretty applicable? Like this probably is what happened.

Jennifer  51:48  Sure, that’s how that reporter made those cases. There are two issues here. One, they’re sealed records. I haven’t seen them. You haven’t seen them. Nobody’s seen them. The court officers and participants in that case have seen them and the reporter has seen them. Is he reporting that correctly? I don’t know. I have incredible respect for that reporter. There is no one better on this topic than him. So, I’m not criticizing him by any means. The issue that I have is, you can’t pull information out of one case and always automatically apply it to the next case. Is that applicable here? I don’t know. Maybe it’s one of the pieces of the pie that needs to be looked at.

GT  52:22  Okay. Anyway, it continues on, “Counsel of this nature should only come from legal counsel.”  It continues on, “Two church practices identified in the sealed records work together to ensure that the contents of all helpline calls remain confidential. First, all records of calls to the helpline are routinely destroyed.” I mean, that sounds like destroying evidence.

Jennifer  53:01  Well, let me ask you a couple questions. When was that the policy of the helpline? When are these calls from? What year is this Arizona case even talking about? We have no idea.

GT  53:13  Well, it says they’re routinely destroyed. So, it does say, earlier, that it was set up in 1995.

Jennifer  53:19  So, this West Virginia case, is it an abuse case that happened in 1995, and those were the early policies of the helpline? Or was this a 2001 case, and that’s still the policy? Is this an old case, and it’s changed? We don’t know any of that?

GT  53:37  Okay.

Jennifer  53:37  So, do I love the thought of like, the evidence gets destroyed at the end of the day? No, I think that’s terrible. I think that should change. Is that their current policy? I don’t know.

GT  53:47  Why would it change unless there were public pressure to change it?

Jennifer  53:50  Well, things change all the time without public pressure to change them.

GT  53:55  It doesn’t seem like the Church changes all the times without public pressure.

Jennifer  54:01  I don’t know.

GT  54:02  Okay.

Jennifer  54:03  I’m just saying it’s an open question on the table. That’s not defending abuse. That’s not defending this dude. That’s just, like, this is a reasonable question.

GT  54:13  This is a question that, I mean, as you mentioned earlier, this reporter is the same one who uncovered the Catholic Abuse scandals.

Jennifer  54:20  He is extraordinary. Top Notch.

GT  54:23  We probably wouldn’t question him on those issues. So, it seems reasonable that he’s probably on the right side of the issue here.

Jennifer  54:32  Except for that he needed those West Virginia documents to make a connection that you do not see that connection in the Arizona documents. There’s just not enough information about the Helpline in them, for him to have gotten where he gets, and so he’s reaching back to these West Virginia documents. I love a good document leak. I would love to see those documents. But are they describing the Helpline as it exists today or 25 years ago?

GT  55:01  It certainly is describing–do we know when this West Virginia case was?

Jennifer  55:05  That’s the question. Literally, no one knows.

GT  55:08  Okay.

Jennifer  55:08  Well, at least, at this point in the West Virginia case and everything was sealed. So, it doesn’t seem like the Church has a lot of incentive to change their practices. I mean, it continues on. “The notes are destroyed by the end of every day.” Like, every day we destroy our notes? [This quote was] said [by] Roger Van Coleman, the Church’s Director of Family Services, in an affidavit included in the sealed records. Second, Church officials say that all calls referred to Kirton McConkie lawyers are covered by attorney-client privilege and remain out of reach of prosecutors’ and victims’ attorneys. The Church has always regarded these communications between its lawyers and local leaders as attorney-client privilege,” said Paul Rytting, the Director of Risk Management.” The question is why is this in Risk Management and not in Family Services?

Jennifer  56:00  Well, because you don’t want a therapist answering the phone. Do you know the McMartin preschool case?

GT  56:10  I do. But for those people who don’t know, tell us that story.

Jennifer  56:13  Mr. & Mrs. McMartin have a preschool in their home. When it’s first revealed, it’s considered THE most horrific child abuse case that exists. All these kids are confessing massively incredible, terrible sexual abuse. But what had happened was the children were interviewed by social workers. Social workers are not forensically trained in the collection of evidence or how to collect evidence, especially from a child, without leading them. And that is what happened in these cases. You can still go online and see the videos of the social worker interviewing the child. You can look now and be like, “Oh, yeah, I see how her holding up a doll with anatomically correct parts and saying to a two-year-old, “Show me what happened.” And he yanks on the doll like… Well, I understand how the social worker got there. But that’s not how you forensically interview a child.

GT  57:11  Right.

Jennifer  57:11  So, the kids give really, really bad information because it got collected in a really, really bad way. Therapists and social workers have their role. You want an attorney answering that phone call for the protection of those victims, because those initial disclosures of what actually happened, whether they’re coming from the victim themselves or a close confidant like a bishop, those are incredibly important. They need to not be corrupted. They need to be collected in a certain way. I’m not trying to do any of that. Neither are any of my therapist peers. So, is there a time and a place for a therapist in this helpline situation? Absolutely. But not answering the phone at first.

GT  58:01  Well, the issue is, supposedly, this guy confessed to the bishop that he was sexually abusing his daughter. It sounds like and I don’t know so, I can’t say this, for sure. But it sounds like the Church Helpline said, “Don’t contact authorities, “and this continued to go on for seven more years through another Bishop and another child.

Jennifer  58:28  Yeah, so technically, it goes on for three years. Between Bishop One and Bishop Two, there’s a three-year span. He’s excommunicated after three years. Abuse goes on for four more years, which is horrific, and, yes, we bear some responsibility in that. But he was not in the church for seven years. He was he was excommunicated after three years.

GT  58:49  But most people are going to say, “Who cares?” I mean, I guess in the eternal scheme of things, that’s a big deal, but…

Jennifer  58:58  The kid’s still got abused. It’s horrific.

GT  59:00  The kid’s going to be abused for three more years that that person could have been in jail. I mean, he’s since committed suicide, so maybe he would have committed suicide sooner.

Jennifer  59:13  We bear responsibility for that.  We, our church has made those girls lives harder. Whatever settlement they get, they deserve every single cent. And one is quoted in the AP article as saying how much she hates Mormons and they’re the worst people in the world. She’s absolutely allowed to say that. And we should be humble enough to say, “We are going to listen to you.”

GT  59:43  That’s what people are so upset about is the Church is more worried about its reputation than this poor little girl.

Jennifer  59:48  Here’s the part that I found really frustrating with that, is the bishops didn’t call and they should have.

GT  59:54  But they were probably directed not to call.

Jennifer  59:56  And they were probably directed not to call, li