December 24, 2024 • 23 mins
While The Front Page is taking its summer break, we will be shining a spotlight on some of the biggest podcasts from the New Zealand Herald network over the last year.
In 2022, BusinessDesk journalist Murray Jones investigated the finances of the New Zealand branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – better known as the Mormons.
That investigation sparked a lot of feedback on social media, including a number of posts that suggested there was more to the Church that first thought.
That led to Heaven’s Helpline, a NZ Herald podcast that investigated the Church and how it has built a system that protects its wealth and reputation – and shields sexual predators from the law.
You can listen to half of the first episode of Heaven’s Helpline now, and find the full series on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Yoda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special
of The Front Page, The Enzid Herald's daily news podcast.
While The Front Page is on summer break, we're taking
a look back at some of the biggest news stories
and top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.
(00:27):
New episodes will return on January thirteenth. In twenty twenty two,
Business Desk journalist Murray Jones investigated the finances of the
New Zealand branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints, better known as the Mormons. That investigation
(00:48):
sparked a lot of feedback on social media, including a
number of posts that suggested there was more to the
church than first thought. That all led to Heaven's Helpline,
an ends at Herald podcast that investigated the church and
how it has built a system that protects its wealth
and reputation and shields sexual predators from the law. You
(01:12):
can listen to half of the first episode of Heaven's
Helpline now and find the full series on iHeartRadio or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
In the church that Gayleen grew up in, they'd sometimes
do these things called firesides no actual fires involved. Rather
it be an evening meeting where a church leader would
speak on some topic or other and members, perhaps a
youth group, perhaps adults, would be encouraged to discuss it
and ask questions. Once, when Gayleen was in her early.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Teens, somewhere between twelve and fourteen, she.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Went to one of these firesides. This time there was
more than one speaker.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
We went from room to room getting different lessons.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And in one room there was a lesson that is
really stuck in Galien's memory. The bishop's wife, who was
leading the discussion, had put a cake on a table
at the front of the room. It was quite the cake.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
This really really beautiful looking, very white cake, and it
was almost sparkling with sugar crystals.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The youth group knew that the theme of the lesson
was chastity, but the cake, they weren't sure what that
was about.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
But then she said, who would like a piece?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, of course everyone wanted a piece, But.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Then she got this handful of dirt like dirt from
the ground and threw it all over the cake, and
she said, hoo wants a piece of cake? And no
one then wanted a piece of cake.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So the cake. You got this already is a metaphor.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
She likened that to being pure and chaste and keeping
ourselves clean versus a someody touched us inappropriately or kissed
us or anything. Haw, then we won't clean and nobody
would ever want us.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That was forty years ago, but the memory has always
stayed with Gayleen. I mean, seeing an adult throw dirt
over a cake is pretty memorable under any circumstances. But
the bigger point the bishop's wife was making was that
if you were impure, if you were unchased, if you
with a dirt spattered cake, you would be imperiling your
(03:29):
chances of getting into heaven. But missing out on heaven.
That was taking the long view. The more immediate incentive
to keep in line was that.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
If you did make a mistake, you would end up
in the bishop's office.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And there were so many mistakes you could make in
this church, so many rules that could be broken, like
to your coffee, you.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Don't if a swear, you can't be involved in six
year relations before marriage.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Don't watch TV on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
This podcast is all about the Church Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints, the Mormons. You'll hear about the things
they believe.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
The living can also be united with the deed.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
You'll learn about the importance of service and obedience.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Oh, it was just a full on soldier for the church.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And the unbreakable commitments that people in the church make.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
There is nothing that warrant breaking up our.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Family commitments that lead members to put the church first.
If the church gets embarrassed, I get embarrassed. No matter
the cost.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
They did what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
I told my bishop a church wouldn't deliberately put a
child in harm's way. They kept insisting that I needed
to forgive him, not just.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Tell the helpline and they can make it all go away.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Is this the LDS church abuse helpline speaking to this
is Heaven's Helpline? A six part New Zealand Herald investigation
into the Mormon Church in New Zealand, episode The Business
of Saving Souls. Where are we We're heading on to
(05:11):
State Highway one, so we're in South Auckland or heading
into it, I should say, and why are we here?
Because I'm going to show you the Mormon Temple, Adam,
the Auckland Mormon Temple. This recordings from a couple of
months ago, I was with Adam Dudding, one of the
producers for this podcast. I wanted him to see what
I'd been seeing every time I drove south of Auckland,
(05:33):
and every time I drove back and boom there it is.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Okay, that is really absolutely stalkingly huge.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, it's been. It's been going up for a couple
of years now. Every time I drive to Hamilton and
come back to Auckland, I see it getting bigger and
bigger and bigger, and it's nearly done. I'm Murray Jones,
I'm an investigative journalist, and yeah, it's fair to say
over the past couple of years, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints, better known as the Mormons
or the LDS Church, has become a bit of an
(06:06):
obsession for me. The church, its money, its vast new
Auckland temple, but I think it's so notable right. It's
put right up on the hill, it's looking over the
whole of Manico. It's really quite a big statement from
the church. You know, when I first started writing two
years ago, I didn't even know the Auckland Temple was
coming up. And then to the fact that this huge
(06:26):
temples being built in the city I've been living in,
just as I've been introduced to the Mormons. This obsession
began not long after I arrived in New Zealand from
the UK. You might have spotted from my accent that
I'm not from around these parts. Originally I got a
contract to help Enzeme's business desk with a project looking
into charities and their money. Which ones are rich, where
does the money come from, how do they spend it,
(06:48):
that kind of thing, And really quickly it became obvious
that the LDS Church was worth a close look, because
it turns out they are mind bogglingly rich, and there
are all kinds of fascinating side issues around their wealth,
like the way they tithe ten percent of all their members' incomes,
many of whom aren't all that rich to begin with,
(07:10):
or the fact that they spend just a tiny fraction
of that tithe money on the kind of things you
might expect from a charity, you know, soup kitchens or
helping the homeless or running hospitals, Or the way that
the Mormons have this huge focus on constructing these extravagant
and expensive temples all over the world, just like the
one in the south of Tarmackie Mikodo. Anyone who's driven
(07:33):
or flown into Auckland in the past couple of years
will have noticed it.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I mean it's quite beautiful though, isn't it. I mean
I'm just looking back at it now, you know. The
spy sort of goes up like a tin layer wedding cake. Yeah,
sixty meters. Although I was focused on the New Zealand
LDS Church, I couldn't ignore the global wealth of the Mormons.
They've got investments worth two hundred and sixty billion dollars US.
(07:58):
That's more than the annual gd of New Zealand. Anyway,
when my articles came out, well, they got a pretty
big reaction. Online. Journalists like to pretend that we don't
read the comments on our stories, but of course we do,
and these ones were fascinating. There were non religious readers
outraged that churches have tax free status at all. There
(08:22):
were current members of the church coming to its defense,
saying that my articles were a hit job by a
so called journalist. But there were also conversations kicking off
in the comments that made me realize there was more
to say about Mormon money. There were some heartbreaking accounts
of the way tithing had been really punishing for members.
One woman talked about how she still felt emotionally scarred by.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
The realization that I could have provided my suicidal team
the specialist therapy the bishop refused.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
To help pay for if I hadn't been paying tithes
for decades.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
One woman talked about how she was asked by a
senior church leader to.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Pay tithing my student line because I was receiving money.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Another woman, commenting from Salt Lake City, Utah, the home
of the Mormon faith, said she'd been led to believe
that if you pay tithing, the Lord will provide.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
But funny, once we start paying tithing, we had enough
on our own.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
What a scam. Reading all these, I wanted to do
some follow up stories on the human cost of tithing
and also hear from more women, since most of the
people in my original Mormon money articles were men, so
I sent messages to a dozen or serve of the
people who'd made comments. Would they be interested in telling
their stories in a bit more detail for a follow
(09:40):
up article. Half of those people got back to me.
Half of that half agreed to a phone call, and
one of those three people. Well, she didn't want to
talk to me about tithing. She wanted to talk about
something much much darker. That first call lasted for a
(10:02):
couple of hours, and.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
So you think you're the only one that's such a
disparate circumstance. But that's the mentality editor time.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And to be honest, it shook me. So I have
a bit a bit lostful words. Yeah, it's not as
it is hard to understand this woman who I'll be
calling Caroline. So she had been in the church for
more than forty years before finally leaving. Her story was
(10:30):
one of betrayal. You just trust that the leaders are
going to take care of things, trauma and denial. I
cut myself off from everything. I cut myself off from
the news, trying to protict myself of missed opportunities and
cover ups. You said that people knew he was predatory.
(10:51):
Who knew and what did they know? But talking to
her also made me realize I needed to be asking
some very different questions about the church. Yes, the church
is rich, and sure it's important to look closely at
the burden that tithing places on some members. But after
(11:12):
talking to Caroline, it got me wondering about things like
who does the church value and who do they see
as expendable.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
If you feel superior to somebody, it becomes real easy
to just say, oh, well, wouldn't have happened to my kid?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Who holds power in the church and how do they
use that power?
Speaker 6 (11:36):
Every think good that your family wants sort of you,
you have to get this person's approval.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
The opportunity for abuse as a means.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And when things go wrong, when lives are ruined, when
families are torn apart, when crimes are committed, what will
the church do to keep things quiet?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Handle problem, sh'll it off, get the victim into figures.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It would be almost two years before some of those
questions were answered, and we are going to get to
all of that soon. And yes, we are going to
come back to Caroline and hear her whole story, but
first we need just a bit of context about this church.
Where did it come from and how did it make
it over to Altairoa. Mormon history is really fascinating. We're
(12:23):
going to give you the potted version here, but if
you're keen to understand more, then listen to our explainer
episode in the podcast feed. So in eighteen twenties, New
York State, a young man called Joseph Smith had some
religious visions which told him not to follow any of
the current churches out there, but to set up his
own instead. The way Smith tells it, he was first
(12:47):
visited by God and Jesus. Then one night in eighteen
twenty three, an angel called Moroni appeared in his.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Bedroom, standing in the air, for his feet did not
touch the floor.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Moroni showed Joseph the location of some golden plates that
were hidden near his home.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
He said there was a book deposited written upon gold plates.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Under divine guidance, Smith translated the pages, and those translations
became what's known as the Book of Mormon. It has
a huge narrative spanning centuries, climaxing with Jesus visiting the
Americas after his resurrection. Smith was into polygamy, the practice
of men taking multiple wives. This would get the church
(13:31):
in trouble with wider American society, so they fled westwards
and set up shop in Salt Lake Valley, Utah, which
has remained the beating heart of the church ever since.
Just a quarter century after the Book of Mormon was
published in the eighteen fifties, the first LDS missionaries arrived
(13:55):
in New Zealand, they had minimal success converting Europeans, so
turn their focus to Mary and it went really well.
Large numbers of Tanga to Fenua joined the church. There's
a number of reasons that people point to for this. Language. Ancestry, polygamy,
and prophecies all played a part. But crucially, unlike European missionaries,
(14:21):
American Mormons weren't involved in the British crowns land grabs.
But again we dive into these factors in the Explainer episode.
Whatever the specific reasons, though, the fact is Mormonism became
really big in Marydom. By the nineteen sixties, over sixty
percent of the membership of the LDS Church was Mardy.
(14:44):
So can't we go and can we go inside this thing? Nope,
So only the most worthy of church members are allowed
to go in. It's where special rituals and ordinances happen.
So you got your ceilings, which is your weddings, You've
got your baptism and they are dead. You've got your endowments,
So not anyone can just go in at any time.
It's only for special situations, ceremonies. Watch out for that
(15:06):
track temples are one of the most important symbols of
faith for Latter day Saints. Sure they have churches all over,
but temples are much more rare and much more special.
As I mentioned there to Adam, only those who are
deemed to be behaving well enough according to church doctrine
are allowed inside the temple. This new temple in the
(15:29):
south of Auckland will no doubt be a huge deal
to the many members living nearby. But if you wind
the clock back to the construction of this country's first
Mormon temple in nineteen fifty eight, well, it literally shifted
the landscape.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
An American style suburb spraying from the swamp and Tuikaramea
became Temple View, a beautifully landscaped village, snugly and closed
by one thousand acres of church owned farmland.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
That was from a nineteen seventy three documentary marveling at
how the church had built a self content community in
the Waikato centered around a brand new temple, a vast
white building with a sharp spire reaching for the sky.
This was just the eleventh Mormon temple in the world,
so it was a matter of enormous prestige and pride
(16:16):
for New Zealand Mormons. The school next door, Church College,
was a co ed secondary school that took borders and
day students. The temple, the school, and the houses of
Temple View were all built by volunteers called labor missionaries.
Their mantra was Kiirhanga mortunu ake, build for eternity.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
The labor missionaries were just ordinary people who were mostly
Marii being missionaries.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's doctor Gina Colvin her father have been Mormon for generations,
and although Gina has been a vocal critic of the
church over the years, she's only recently left. The idea
of Temple View was to build a community where Mormon
families could flourish and look after each other. But for
some of the mari among them, it was something even more,
(17:12):
you know.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
After generations of having your land and your livelihood taken
away from you through the confiscations and the land grabs,
and all of the agony and the traumas that were
as result of that, it was phenomenal, I think, to
be part of something that built something for mari and
for the spiritual flourishing and the spiritual welfare.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Mormons flocked to live near the temple. Some came from
Pacific nations or from Australia, places which at that time
didn't have temples of their own. Remember Gayalen, the woman
who watched someone throw dirt all over a white cake
when she was a kid. Her family moved from Dunedin
to live near the new suburb.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
We moved up here and that was different because like
there were more everywhere. Like you go to the supermarket,
you'd bump into them. You'd walk down the road, you'd
bump into them. You wanted to talk to someone, and
it's just over your fence or over the down the road.
They were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Temple View is still a really distinctive place, although it's
much quieter since the school shut down in two thousand
and nine. The whole suburb, which is southwest of Hamilton City,
is a little bit eerie if you drive into it
without realizing what it is. A tiny land island of
suburbia centered around spotless white buildings in the middle of farmland.
(18:33):
There's around twelve hundred residents and just about everyone that
lives there is a Mormon. For a very long time,
this really was the epicenter of Mormonism for the whole
of the Pacific region. Many of the people you'll meet
in this podcast lived in or near that suburb, or
studied at church college, or married their spouse at that temple.
(18:57):
But even though it's kind of a religious one, and
even though this is a really tight knit community, Mormons
haven't completely separated themselves from mainstream New Zealand. We've had
Mormon all Blacks, including Jonah Lomu Mahonu and in the
sixties and seventies the Going Brothers Sid, Brian and Kenn.
(19:19):
We've had Mormon Olympians including Valerie Adams and Joseph Parker.
There have been Mormon Miss New Zealand's. One of them
made it to the top seven in Miss World Miss
New Zealand.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
My name is Vicky Lee HUMEI I'm a student teacher
and I'm studying English and Education.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
There are New Zealand judges who are Mormon, Mormon politicians.
I mean, our third most recent Prime Minister was a Mormon.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
I was Mormon.
Speaker 6 (19:47):
I lived in Mornsville, and while I loved politics, I
never ever dreamed I would work in it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Ja Cinder Ardern quit the church in her early twenties
for reasons. We'll get to, but her family is still
very involved. Her uncle Ian is a senior leader and
was principal of Church College in the nineteen eighties. The
church has made a real effort to help the country
understand that they're pretty decent folk. Since the mid nineteen eighties,
the people of Temple View have put on their epic
(20:15):
Christmas Lights extravaganza, and around the same time in nineteen
eighty one, the church commissioned a documentary for the New
Zealand audience.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
I've asked me to tell you a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Themselves, narrated by five star gold plated New Zealand hero
Edmund Hillary, who, as you know, climbed Mount Everest before
anyone else.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
For the Mormons, the most important single unit in the
church is the family.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
To be clear, Hillary was not a Mormon himself, but
as he put.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
It, maybe they didn't convert me to anything, but I
couldn't help admiring their politeness and their sincerity.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Clean cut, family, focused, working, polite, harmless, and that's the space,
more or less where Mormons have sat in the eyes
of non Mormon New Zealand for a good half century
or so. A minority religion. Fifty four thousand members according
to the twenty eighteen census, closer to one hundred and
(21:17):
twenty thousand according to the church's own figures. A church
whose followers here are mostly Maudi in Pacifica, but a
sizeable minority of Pakia, with some doctrinal quirks that make
it a bit different from a lot of other Christian churches,
a bit old fashioned, a bit straight, and sure outsiders
might find some of their rules and rituals a bit unusual,
(21:40):
worthy of a bit of teasing, Like in the TV
show south Park.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
That's another thing.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Why do you have to be so freaking nice all
the time?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It isn't normal, Or in the hit Broadway musical The
Book of Mormon, which was written incidentally by the creators
of South Park. That's been born of the.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Modern Jackson Chary.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
For this sketch from the mid nineteen eighties New Zealand
comedy show Funny Business, I.
Speaker 6 (22:08):
Don't drink goff it, I don't drink tea, and I
enjoy it.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
Celibacy.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
And I don't know if there's any connection between that
kind of teasing and the fact that around two thousand
and nine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day
Saints started distancing itself from the label Mormon and insisted
that people refer to the religion as LDS or by
its full wordy title. Most members I spoke to still
referred to themselves as Mormons, even though it's no longer
(22:42):
the official line.
Speaker 6 (22:43):
A Mormon, Norman Mormon.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
But if the worst thing you're known for is your
straight laced faithfulness and your Christmas lights, then reputationally speaking,
you're not doing too badly. Demon eler after the break
your front dormant, O me the door knockers.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
You've just heard the first half of episode one of
Heaven's Helpline. You can listen to the full episode and
the rest of the series on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Yoda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is a summer special
of The Front Page, The Enzid Herald's daily news podcast.
While The Front Page is on summer break, we're taking
a look back at some of the biggest news stories
and top rated episodes from the podcast in twenty twenty four.
(00:27):
New episodes will return on January thirteenth. In twenty twenty two,
Business Desk journalist Murray Jones investigated the finances of the
New Zealand branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints, better known as the Mormons. That investigation
(00:48):
sparked a lot of feedback on social media, including a
number of posts that suggested there was more to the
church than first thought. That all led to Heaven's Helpline,
an ends at Herald podcast that investigated the church and
how it has built a system that protects its wealth
and reputation and shields sexual predators from the law. You
(01:12):
can listen to half of the first episode of Heaven's
Helpline now and find the full series on iHeartRadio or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
In the church that Gayleen grew up in, they'd sometimes
do these things called firesides no actual fires involved. Rather
it be an evening meeting where a church leader would
speak on some topic or other and members, perhaps a
youth group, perhaps adults, would be encouraged to discuss it
and ask questions. Once, when Gayleen was in her early.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Teens, somewhere between twelve and fourteen, she.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Went to one of these firesides. This time there was
more than one speaker.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
We went from room to room getting different lessons.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
And in one room there was a lesson that is
really stuck in Galien's memory. The bishop's wife, who was
leading the discussion, had put a cake on a table
at the front of the room. It was quite the cake.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
This really really beautiful looking, very white cake, and it
was almost sparkling with sugar crystals.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
The youth group knew that the theme of the lesson
was chastity, but the cake, they weren't sure what that
was about.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
But then she said, who would like a piece?
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Well, of course everyone wanted a piece, But.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Then she got this handful of dirt like dirt from
the ground and threw it all over the cake, and
she said, hoo wants a piece of cake? And no
one then wanted a piece of cake.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
So the cake. You got this already is a metaphor.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
She likened that to being pure and chaste and keeping
ourselves clean versus a someody touched us inappropriately or kissed
us or anything. Haw, then we won't clean and nobody
would ever want us.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
That was forty years ago, but the memory has always
stayed with Gayleen. I mean, seeing an adult throw dirt
over a cake is pretty memorable under any circumstances. But
the bigger point the bishop's wife was making was that
if you were impure, if you were unchased, if you
with a dirt spattered cake, you would be imperiling your
(03:29):
chances of getting into heaven. But missing out on heaven.
That was taking the long view. The more immediate incentive
to keep in line was that.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
If you did make a mistake, you would end up
in the bishop's office.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And there were so many mistakes you could make in
this church, so many rules that could be broken, like
to your coffee, you.
Speaker 4 (03:51):
Don't if a swear, you can't be involved in six
year relations before marriage.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
Don't watch TV on Sunday.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
This podcast is all about the Church Jesus Christ of
Latter day Saints, the Mormons. You'll hear about the things
they believe.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
The living can also be united with the deed.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
You'll learn about the importance of service and obedience.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Oh, it was just a full on soldier for the church.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
And the unbreakable commitments that people in the church make.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
There is nothing that warrant breaking up our.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Family commitments that lead members to put the church first.
If the church gets embarrassed, I get embarrassed. No matter
the cost.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
They did what I was supposed to do.
Speaker 4 (04:35):
I told my bishop a church wouldn't deliberately put a
child in harm's way. They kept insisting that I needed
to forgive him, not just.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Tell the helpline and they can make it all go away.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Is this the LDS church abuse helpline speaking to this
is Heaven's Helpline? A six part New Zealand Herald investigation
into the Mormon Church in New Zealand, episode The Business
of Saving Souls. Where are we We're heading on to
(05:11):
State Highway one, so we're in South Auckland or heading
into it, I should say, and why are we here?
Because I'm going to show you the Mormon Temple, Adam,
the Auckland Mormon Temple. This recordings from a couple of
months ago, I was with Adam Dudding, one of the
producers for this podcast. I wanted him to see what
I'd been seeing every time I drove south of Auckland,
(05:33):
and every time I drove back and boom there it is.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Okay, that is really absolutely stalkingly huge.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, it's been. It's been going up for a couple
of years now. Every time I drive to Hamilton and
come back to Auckland, I see it getting bigger and
bigger and bigger, and it's nearly done. I'm Murray Jones,
I'm an investigative journalist, and yeah, it's fair to say
over the past couple of years, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter day Saints, better known as the Mormons
or the LDS Church, has become a bit of an
(06:06):
obsession for me. The church, its money, its vast new
Auckland temple, but I think it's so notable right. It's
put right up on the hill, it's looking over the
whole of Manico. It's really quite a big statement from
the church. You know, when I first started writing two
years ago, I didn't even know the Auckland Temple was
coming up. And then to the fact that this huge
(06:26):
temples being built in the city I've been living in,
just as I've been introduced to the Mormons. This obsession
began not long after I arrived in New Zealand from
the UK. You might have spotted from my accent that
I'm not from around these parts. Originally I got a
contract to help Enzeme's business desk with a project looking
into charities and their money. Which ones are rich, where
does the money come from, how do they spend it,
(06:48):
that kind of thing, And really quickly it became obvious
that the LDS Church was worth a close look, because
it turns out they are mind bogglingly rich, and there
are all kinds of fascinating side issues around their wealth,
like the way they tithe ten percent of all their members' incomes,
many of whom aren't all that rich to begin with,
(07:10):
or the fact that they spend just a tiny fraction
of that tithe money on the kind of things you
might expect from a charity, you know, soup kitchens or
helping the homeless or running hospitals, Or the way that
the Mormons have this huge focus on constructing these extravagant
and expensive temples all over the world, just like the
one in the south of Tarmackie Mikodo. Anyone who's driven
(07:33):
or flown into Auckland in the past couple of years
will have noticed it.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
I mean it's quite beautiful though, isn't it. I mean
I'm just looking back at it now, you know. The
spy sort of goes up like a tin layer wedding cake. Yeah,
sixty meters. Although I was focused on the New Zealand
LDS Church, I couldn't ignore the global wealth of the Mormons.
They've got investments worth two hundred and sixty billion dollars US.
(07:58):
That's more than the annual gd of New Zealand. Anyway,
when my articles came out, well, they got a pretty
big reaction. Online. Journalists like to pretend that we don't
read the comments on our stories, but of course we do,
and these ones were fascinating. There were non religious readers
outraged that churches have tax free status at all. There
(08:22):
were current members of the church coming to its defense,
saying that my articles were a hit job by a
so called journalist. But there were also conversations kicking off
in the comments that made me realize there was more
to say about Mormon money. There were some heartbreaking accounts
of the way tithing had been really punishing for members.
One woman talked about how she still felt emotionally scarred by.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
The realization that I could have provided my suicidal team
the specialist therapy the bishop refused.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
To help pay for if I hadn't been paying tithes
for decades.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
One woman talked about how she was asked by a
senior church leader to.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Pay tithing my student line because I was receiving money.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Another woman, commenting from Salt Lake City, Utah, the home
of the Mormon faith, said she'd been led to believe
that if you pay tithing, the Lord will provide.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
But funny, once we start paying tithing, we had enough
on our own.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
What a scam. Reading all these, I wanted to do
some follow up stories on the human cost of tithing
and also hear from more women, since most of the
people in my original Mormon money articles were men, so
I sent messages to a dozen or serve of the
people who'd made comments. Would they be interested in telling
their stories in a bit more detail for a follow
(09:40):
up article. Half of those people got back to me.
Half of that half agreed to a phone call, and
one of those three people. Well, she didn't want to
talk to me about tithing. She wanted to talk about
something much much darker. That first call lasted for a
(10:02):
couple of hours, and.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
So you think you're the only one that's such a
disparate circumstance. But that's the mentality editor time.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
And to be honest, it shook me. So I have
a bit a bit lostful words. Yeah, it's not as
it is hard to understand this woman who I'll be
calling Caroline. So she had been in the church for
more than forty years before finally leaving. Her story was
(10:30):
one of betrayal. You just trust that the leaders are
going to take care of things, trauma and denial. I
cut myself off from everything. I cut myself off from
the news, trying to protict myself of missed opportunities and
cover ups. You said that people knew he was predatory.
(10:51):
Who knew and what did they know? But talking to
her also made me realize I needed to be asking
some very different questions about the church. Yes, the church
is rich, and sure it's important to look closely at
the burden that tithing places on some members. But after
(11:12):
talking to Caroline, it got me wondering about things like
who does the church value and who do they see
as expendable.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
If you feel superior to somebody, it becomes real easy
to just say, oh, well, wouldn't have happened to my kid?
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Who holds power in the church and how do they
use that power?
Speaker 6 (11:36):
Every think good that your family wants sort of you,
you have to get this person's approval.
Speaker 3 (11:40):
The opportunity for abuse as a means.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
And when things go wrong, when lives are ruined, when
families are torn apart, when crimes are committed, what will
the church do to keep things quiet?
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Handle problem, sh'll it off, get the victim into figures.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It would be almost two years before some of those
questions were answered, and we are going to get to
all of that soon. And yes, we are going to
come back to Caroline and hear her whole story, but
first we need just a bit of context about this church.
Where did it come from and how did it make
it over to Altairoa. Mormon history is really fascinating. We're
(12:23):
going to give you the potted version here, but if
you're keen to understand more, then listen to our explainer
episode in the podcast feed. So in eighteen twenties, New
York State, a young man called Joseph Smith had some
religious visions which told him not to follow any of
the current churches out there, but to set up his
own instead. The way Smith tells it, he was first
(12:47):
visited by God and Jesus. Then one night in eighteen
twenty three, an angel called Moroni appeared in his.
Speaker 5 (12:55):
Bedroom, standing in the air, for his feet did not
touch the floor.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Moroni showed Joseph the location of some golden plates that
were hidden near his home.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
He said there was a book deposited written upon gold plates.
Speaker 2 (13:10):
Under divine guidance, Smith translated the pages, and those translations
became what's known as the Book of Mormon. It has
a huge narrative spanning centuries, climaxing with Jesus visiting the
Americas after his resurrection. Smith was into polygamy, the practice
of men taking multiple wives. This would get the church
(13:31):
in trouble with wider American society, so they fled westwards
and set up shop in Salt Lake Valley, Utah, which
has remained the beating heart of the church ever since.
Just a quarter century after the Book of Mormon was
published in the eighteen fifties, the first LDS missionaries arrived
(13:55):
in New Zealand, they had minimal success converting Europeans, so
turn their focus to Mary and it went really well.
Large numbers of Tanga to Fenua joined the church. There's
a number of reasons that people point to for this. Language. Ancestry, polygamy,
and prophecies all played a part. But crucially, unlike European missionaries,
(14:21):
American Mormons weren't involved in the British crowns land grabs.
But again we dive into these factors in the Explainer episode.
Whatever the specific reasons, though, the fact is Mormonism became
really big in Marydom. By the nineteen sixties, over sixty
percent of the membership of the LDS Church was Mardy.
(14:44):
So can't we go and can we go inside this thing? Nope,
So only the most worthy of church members are allowed
to go in. It's where special rituals and ordinances happen.
So you got your ceilings, which is your weddings, You've
got your baptism and they are dead. You've got your endowments,
So not anyone can just go in at any time.
It's only for special situations, ceremonies. Watch out for that
(15:06):
track temples are one of the most important symbols of
faith for Latter day Saints. Sure they have churches all over,
but temples are much more rare and much more special.
As I mentioned there to Adam, only those who are
deemed to be behaving well enough according to church doctrine
are allowed inside the temple. This new temple in the
(15:29):
south of Auckland will no doubt be a huge deal
to the many members living nearby. But if you wind
the clock back to the construction of this country's first
Mormon temple in nineteen fifty eight, well, it literally shifted
the landscape.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
An American style suburb spraying from the swamp and Tuikaramea
became Temple View, a beautifully landscaped village, snugly and closed
by one thousand acres of church owned farmland.
Speaker 2 (15:54):
That was from a nineteen seventy three documentary marveling at
how the church had built a self content community in
the Waikato centered around a brand new temple, a vast
white building with a sharp spire reaching for the sky.
This was just the eleventh Mormon temple in the world,
so it was a matter of enormous prestige and pride
(16:16):
for New Zealand Mormons. The school next door, Church College,
was a co ed secondary school that took borders and
day students. The temple, the school, and the houses of
Temple View were all built by volunteers called labor missionaries.
Their mantra was Kiirhanga mortunu ake, build for eternity.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
The labor missionaries were just ordinary people who were mostly
Marii being missionaries.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
That's doctor Gina Colvin her father have been Mormon for generations,
and although Gina has been a vocal critic of the
church over the years, she's only recently left. The idea
of Temple View was to build a community where Mormon
families could flourish and look after each other. But for
some of the mari among them, it was something even more,
(17:12):
you know.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
After generations of having your land and your livelihood taken
away from you through the confiscations and the land grabs,
and all of the agony and the traumas that were
as result of that, it was phenomenal, I think, to
be part of something that built something for mari and
for the spiritual flourishing and the spiritual welfare.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Mormons flocked to live near the temple. Some came from
Pacific nations or from Australia, places which at that time
didn't have temples of their own. Remember Gayalen, the woman
who watched someone throw dirt all over a white cake
when she was a kid. Her family moved from Dunedin
to live near the new suburb.
Speaker 3 (17:56):
We moved up here and that was different because like
there were more everywhere. Like you go to the supermarket,
you'd bump into them. You'd walk down the road, you'd
bump into them. You wanted to talk to someone, and
it's just over your fence or over the down the road.
They were everywhere.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Temple View is still a really distinctive place, although it's
much quieter since the school shut down in two thousand
and nine. The whole suburb, which is southwest of Hamilton City,
is a little bit eerie if you drive into it
without realizing what it is. A tiny land island of
suburbia centered around spotless white buildings in the middle of farmland.
(18:33):
There's around twelve hundred residents and just about everyone that
lives there is a Mormon. For a very long time,
this really was the epicenter of Mormonism for the whole
of the Pacific region. Many of the people you'll meet
in this podcast lived in or near that suburb, or
studied at church college, or married their spouse at that temple.
(18:57):
But even though it's kind of a religious one, and
even though this is a really tight knit community, Mormons
haven't completely separated themselves from mainstream New Zealand. We've had
Mormon all Blacks, including Jonah Lomu Mahonu and in the
sixties and seventies the Going Brothers Sid, Brian and Kenn.
(19:19):
We've had Mormon Olympians including Valerie Adams and Joseph Parker.
There have been Mormon Miss New Zealand's. One of them
made it to the top seven in Miss World Miss
New Zealand.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
My name is Vicky Lee HUMEI I'm a student teacher
and I'm studying English and Education.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
There are New Zealand judges who are Mormon, Mormon politicians.
I mean, our third most recent Prime Minister was a Mormon.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
I was Mormon.
Speaker 6 (19:47):
I lived in Mornsville, and while I loved politics, I
never ever dreamed I would work in it.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
Ja Cinder Ardern quit the church in her early twenties
for reasons. We'll get to, but her family is still
very involved. Her uncle Ian is a senior leader and
was principal of Church College in the nineteen eighties. The
church has made a real effort to help the country
understand that they're pretty decent folk. Since the mid nineteen eighties,
the people of Temple View have put on their epic
(20:15):
Christmas Lights extravaganza, and around the same time in nineteen
eighty one, the church commissioned a documentary for the New
Zealand audience.
Speaker 5 (20:23):
I've asked me to tell you a little bit about.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Themselves, narrated by five star gold plated New Zealand hero
Edmund Hillary, who, as you know, climbed Mount Everest before
anyone else.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
For the Mormons, the most important single unit in the
church is the family.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
To be clear, Hillary was not a Mormon himself, but
as he put.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
It, maybe they didn't convert me to anything, but I
couldn't help admiring their politeness and their sincerity.
Speaker 2 (20:57):
Clean cut, family, focused, working, polite, harmless, and that's the space,
more or less where Mormons have sat in the eyes
of non Mormon New Zealand for a good half century
or so. A minority religion. Fifty four thousand members according
to the twenty eighteen census, closer to one hundred and
(21:17):
twenty thousand according to the church's own figures. A church
whose followers here are mostly Maudi in Pacifica, but a
sizeable minority of Pakia, with some doctrinal quirks that make
it a bit different from a lot of other Christian churches,
a bit old fashioned, a bit straight, and sure outsiders
might find some of their rules and rituals a bit unusual,
(21:40):
worthy of a bit of teasing, Like in the TV
show south Park.
Speaker 6 (21:45):
That's another thing.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Why do you have to be so freaking nice all
the time?
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It isn't normal, Or in the hit Broadway musical The
Book of Mormon, which was written incidentally by the creators
of South Park. That's been born of the.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
Modern Jackson Chary.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
For this sketch from the mid nineteen eighties New Zealand
comedy show Funny Business, I.
Speaker 6 (22:08):
Don't drink goff it, I don't drink tea, and I
enjoy it.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
Celibacy.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
And I don't know if there's any connection between that
kind of teasing and the fact that around two thousand
and nine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day
Saints started distancing itself from the label Mormon and insisted
that people refer to the religion as LDS or by
its full wordy title. Most members I spoke to still
referred to themselves as Mormons, even though it's no longer
(22:42):
the official line.
Speaker 6 (22:43):
A Mormon, Norman Mormon.
Speaker 2 (22:49):
But if the worst thing you're known for is your
straight laced faithfulness and your Christmas lights, then reputationally speaking,
you're not doing too badly. Demon eler after the break
your front dormant, O me the door knockers.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
You've just heard the first half of episode one of
Heaven's Helpline. You can listen to the full episode and
the rest of the series on iHeartRadio or wherever you
get your podcasts.
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