#043 -- Two LDS Converts: Why We Joined (And Why One of Us Left) w/ Stevie Johnson

Two Converts, Two Paths: Temple Experiences, Polygamy, and Finding Your Place as an Outsider

Mitch and Ashton are out this week, so Stevie takes the host chair alongside guest Juliet for a rare two-convert conversation.

Both joined the Church as teenagers (Stevie at 19, Juliet at 16), and both have since gone through a faith crisis, landing in very different places: Stevie is still active and reconstructing her faith, Juliet has stepped away and now identifies as deconstructing/disaffiliated.

They dig into audience-submitted questions covering:

• Why they joined despite real concerns about prophets, Joseph Smith, and family pushback
• Their first time inside a temple: the culture shock, the "unremarkable" vs. "overwhelming" range of first impressions, and Juliet's "sandbox on a beach" metaphor for how her spiritual experiences have been recontextualized rather than erased
• Serving as temple workers, including baptistry and sealing-room escort duties, and the practical advice they both got to space out receiving an endowment from getting sealed
• Polygamy: how each of them made sense of it as converts, and why treating polygamist women (past and present) as simply brainwashed misses their own agency and reasoning
• Whether converts ever feel like they've "made it," and how never quite fitting the mold shaped both of their trajectories

A candid, generous conversation between two women who joined the same church from very different directions and still found a lot of common ground.

Stevie's first interview on LDBB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWRFkwwQw7U&t=274s

Stevie's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/s.t.e.v.i.e_j/

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