Mormonism Explained
Investigation · Fact-check
How Accurate Is Mormon Stories? We Checked Three Episodes
We checked 22 claims from three recent episodes against primary sources and the show’s own guest historians. Most push past what the evidence shows.
Claims checked in three episodes, about seven to eight hours
Misleading: framing or comparison goes past the evidence
Allegations presented as likely, with no support in the record
A debated question presented as settled
The strongest case for Mormon Stories
Mormon Stories’ defenders would say the show is doing what a critical podcast should. It centers stories that Church discourse has historically underweighted, often with careful historians as guests. Its host, John Dehlin, sincerely believes the Church’s truth claims are false and that he is helping people who are hurting. Many listeners credit the show with getting them through painful years, and those accounts are real. If the show’s overall picture leans toward leaving, the argument goes, that corrects for a lifetime of faith-promoting framing in the other direction.
Parts of that are true. Many guests’ painful experiences are real, and not every critical claim is wrong. The question this page tests is narrower: when the show makes specific claims about Church history, doctrine and policy, do they hold up against the record and against its own guests?
How we checked
We chose three recent episodes on three kinds of subject: history (Episode 2137, on the last months of Joseph Smith’s life), a personal story (2136, a recent graduate of Brigham Young University) and theology (2135, on the second anointing). Together they run about seven to eight hours.
The claim tables began as a thread by John Davis (@jkdavis89) on X. We listened to each episode, checked every timestamp and checked each rebuttal against the sources it names: the Joseph Smith Papers, the Church’s Gospel Topics Essays, BYU’s ecclesiastical-endorsement policy and the work of historians including Richard Bushman, D. Michael Quinn, Jonathan Stapley, Samuel Brown, Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Terryl Givens and Brian C. Hales.
This page is critical of Mormon Stories and its host. It is not a criticism of the people who listen, the people who have left the Church or the people still working out where they stand. Doubts are valid, and critical content should exist. The question is whether one of the largest platforms in this space describes the Church accurately.
Label
What it means
Label
What it means
Label
What it means
The 22 claims, episode by episode
Episode 2137: “Traitor in the First Presidency, William Law”
With historian John Turner, Dehlin discussed the final months of Joseph Smith’s life. Turner’s own work treats the period with nuance. The claims below were pressed by Dehlin rather than by Turner, and they move that nuance toward certainty.
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
Table first compiled by John Davis (@jkdavis89) on X; timestamps and sources checked by Mormonism Explained.
Taken together, a listener who doesn’t check the sources comes away with a portrait of Joseph Smith as a mob boss, a would-be assassin, a sexual manipulator, a wife-swapper, a smear artist, an abuser and a theocrat. That cumulative portrait is not the one in Turner’s own book.
Episode 2136: “Graduated BYU and Resigned Immediately”
A recent Brigham Young University (BYU) graduate describes why he left the Church. No historian is on the microphone, and several claims are statements about current teaching or policy, which makes them easy to check.
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
Table first compiled by John Davis (@jkdavis89) on X; timestamps and sources checked by Mormonism Explained.
Claim 5, up close
“If you stop going to church, you get kicked out” is a statement about policy, so it can be checked. Students need an ecclesiastical endorsement from a bishop to stay enrolled at BYU, and losing it blocks registering for future classes or graduating. That is a serious consequence. But it runs through a process with a bishop, not automatic expulsion, and for a student who is wavering, the difference matters. The host didn’t correct it.
Episode 2135: “Joseph Smith Introduces the Second Anointing”
With Turner again, Dehlin discussed the ordinance Joseph Smith introduced in 1843. Turner offered theological and historical context; Dehlin pressed toward a reading in which the ordinance was a tool of control.
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
#
Claim
The problem
What the record shows
Table first compiled by John Davis (@jkdavis89) on X; timestamps and sources checked by Mormonism Explained.
What three episodes can and can’t show Data gap
Three episodes are a small slice of a channel with about 2,800 videos. We didn’t pick them for producing rich tables: they were recent, and they cover three different kinds of subject. But they can’t tell anyone how often the same pattern appears across twenty years.
What they show is consistent. In each, the least generous reading of the evidence is presented with confidence, and pushback, when it comes, is light. Other examples point the same way. A 2023 episode on Richard Bushman’s translation research was promoted with a headline saying the historian had “admitted” a criticism, though Bushman’s published position is more complex. And Dehlin’s 2014 “Questions and Answers” document, which called the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham fiction, has drawn detailed responses from faithful historians for a decade.
The pattern: Austin Fife’s five-step formula
One of the clearest descriptions of how the show works comes from Austin Fife, who went through his own faith transition, listened extensively and later wrote about it in The Light and Truth Letter. “I eventually stopped listening to Mormon Stories when I caught on to the formula,” he writes. In his telling, each step is defensible on its own. It is the combination, repeated episode after episode, that does the work.
- Build trust. The host is warm, and the opening tone is “we’re just here to listen.” The trust is real: Dehlin and his guests are usually genuinely curious and empathetic. It is also the precondition for everything that follows.
- Center the pain. Each episode is anchored on a guest’s painful experience with the Church, and in the great majority of cases the story is true. But fifty painful stories in a row, with none of healing or faithful flourishing, suggest pain is the typical Latter-day Saint experience. It is a real subset, not the whole.
- Generalize. One bishop who mishandled a confession becomes “the bishops.” One Relief Society that shunned someone becomes “the Relief Society.” The move is small; repeated, it adds up.
- Recast the good. Fellowship, testimony and temple worship become instruments of control: sincere faith becomes “programming,” and spiritual experience becomes “emotional manipulation.” A listener’s own good experiences start to look like evidence of a con.
- Exit. No one tells the listener to leave. The conclusion feels like their own because, in Fife’s account, it is the only one the premises leave open.
The formula doesn’t require any single claim to be false, only that the overall picture lean one way. The tables above suggest that in these three episodes, individual claims often lean too.
Belief and effect
The strongest defense of Mormon Stories gets several things right. Dehlin very likely believes what he says, his audience is real and many of his guests’ stories deserve to be heard. But sincerity doesn’t settle accuracy. A show can be exactly what its host believes it to be, a good-faith space for exploration, and still, through what it chooses to center and how it frames it, give listeners a one-sided picture of the Church. In these three episodes, its portrayals often don’t hold up against the record.
What this means for listeners
Many listeners credit Mormon Stories with saving marriages, ending isolation or helping their mental health, and those testimonials are real. Other families describe a different arc: a spouse who began listening and later left the Church, or an adult child who now describes the family’s faith as a means of control. No study measures how often either happens or how much a podcast has to do with it. Data gap Faith transitions have many causes, most of them personal, and a podcast does not create a crisis. It can shape where a person in crisis lands.
This page doesn’t argue that Mormon Stories should be silenced or shut down, or that former members’ stories shouldn’t be told. If you’re a Latter-day Saint, you don’t need to avoid the show. Listen, if you’re willing, the way you’d read any source with a known point of view: with the primary sources at hand. If you’ve left the Church, we aren’t asking you to come back, only to ask whether the picture you carry came from a balanced set of sources. If you’re investigating the Church, a podcast with a strong point of view is not a neutral starting place. Start with primary sources, such as the Church’s Gospel Topics Essays, Richard Bushman’s Rough Stone Rolling and Patrick Mason’s Planted. Read critical voices too, knowing where each is coming from.
Questions about Mormon Stories’ accuracy
Is Mormon Stories biased against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
What is the Mormon Stories editorial formula?
Sources and methods
- Mormon Stories episodes 2135, 2136 and 2137 (YouTube and podcast feeds), listened to in full; timestamps refer to the original broadcast.
- Claim tables first compiled by John Davis (@jkdavis89) on X, checked by Mormonism Explained against the episode audio and the sources in each row.
- The Joseph Smith Papers (josephsmithpapers.org); the Church’s Gospel Topics Essays; BYU’s ecclesiastical-endorsement policy.
- Richard Lyman Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling; Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma; Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy; and published work by D. Michael Quinn, Jonathan Stapley, Samuel Brown and Terryl Givens, as cited in each row.
- Austin Fife, The Light and Truth Letter, chapter “Manipulation and Fallacies” (lightandtruthletter.org).
Corrections. If you believe we have mischaracterized a claim, misquoted a source or misrepresented anyone’s position, including Dehlin’s, write to hello@mormonismexplained.org. Substantiated corrections get a visible note at the top of this page.
