Editor's note: This article has been updated to include comment from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its position on excommunication.

A former LDS bishop in Southern Utah faces excommunication over a podcast he produces about church history, and he says he'll likely be pushed out, even though some members of church leadership have told him they believe his rhetoric to be true.

Up until seven years ago, Bill Reel lived a comfortable, faith-based life within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He had been a bishop for nearly 4½ years with a healthy family and marriage, but he says he found himself in the midst of a "faith crisis" he could no longer ignore.

Fast forward to today, where his podcast "Mormon Discussions" is the epicenter of why church leaders are deciding whether or not to excommunicate him.

Former bishop seeks safe space for hard questions

Reel, a Washington City resident, faces two charges, both of which involve calling Elders Jeffrey R. Holland and M. Russell Ballard liars.

Holland and Ballard are members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second-highest governing body in the LDS Church.

The podcast aims to explore questions regarding the LDS Church's history and to give others who have questions a safe space to listen to others discuss it, Reel said. He said there is no "safe space" within the church itself to discuss hard questions about its past.

"Even if you tell the truth, in fact, if you do that, that’s actually not what’s tolerated," he said. "You cannot tell the truth and get away with it. On some level, I belong to a church where the truth gets you in trouble. Where that’s uncomfortable, it’s also vindicating to know that those guys can’t look at me and point out what I did wrong."

LDS Church spokesman Eric Hawkins told The Spectrum & Daily News the church does not comment on personal disciplinary matters in an effort to respect the privacy of those involved.

"Church discipline is administered by local leaders who are familiar with the individual and his or her circumstances," Hawkins said in a statement.

Sam Young shows support

Reel's disciplinary council convened Tuesday night in a Washington Fields ward building.

Such councils generally include the stake president and members of the high council, 12 men who help train and supervise stake personnel or programs.

Several members of the community and other podcasters showed up and waited outside to demonstrate their support for Reel and his family.

Among those who showed up to support Reel was Sam Young, a former LDS bishop who was excommunicated in September. Young protested interviews between clergy and LDS youth that sometimes included sexual questions.

More:LDS Church posts questions asked during youth interviews

"I really appreciate (Reel) standing for truth," Young told the gathering. "He is not willing to back down from truth no matter what. He is a normal guy. Actually, he is a super smart guy. ... He does not have the power and opulence and wealth that Salt Lake City has, yet he was willing to stand firm in truth and willing to point out the dishonesty that seems to be rife where it shouldn't be rife."

Reel believes he will lose his membership

Although Reel has not yet received the outcome of the meeting, he believes he will be excommunicated.

Still, Reel said he believes it went extremely well. He said he took away the fact that the men in the room were admitting he had told the truth, it hurts the LDS Church, and they need to do something about it.

Reel said his stake president is under intense pressure and the decision was likely made prior to Tuesday's meeting.

As he was explaining the purpose of his podcast to the men in the room, Reel said, several members of the high council were shocked at what they were hearing, and many of them looked concerned. Reel said they told him they found this information disturbing.

"One of the 12 high councilmen said, 'We are here tonight to protect the integrity of the church, but from what Brother Reel has told us, the church doesn't have any integrity,' " Reel said.

Disciplinary meetings are confidential. The Spectrum could not independently verify what was said.

Excommunication and church discipline

Excommunication, or a loss of membership, is the most serious form of discipline within the LDS Church.

Not every hearing has this outcome. Local church leaders can opt for disfellowship, formal probation or no further action.

According to the LDS Church, there are several reasons why discipline may be necessary: to help an individual repent and return, to protect the innocent, and to protect the integrity of the church.

"Church discipline is not designed to be the end of the process, but the beginning of the road back to full fellowship," according to mormonnewsroom.org.

Outcomes of disciplinary actions on a stake level can be appealed to the First Presidency, but that is uncommon, the church says.

People who have been excommunicated are still allowed to attend regular church meetings; however, they are restricted from actions such as paying tithing or taking the sacrament.

Returning to the church is possible. Full and sincere repentance can grant an excommunicated individual membership again, though rebaptism is necessary, the website says.

Once an individual has been restored to full fellowship, no record of the disciplinary action is retained on his or her church record.

Studying history from a faithful perspective

Reel wasn't always on the church's radar for excommunication. In the early stages of his podcast, Reel said he tried to explore the issues he felt within the church from a faithful perspective — holding to what the church says about its own history.

"When you do that, you keep finding out the church isn't telling you an important chunk of the story," Reel said. "I became certainly more pointed. My tone became more and more aggressive, but I felt I was being completely honest and only shined a light on what I thought was deeply true about what (the LDS Church) was or wasn't doing right."

The issues Reel has tackled with his podcast range from Joseph Smith's history with treasure digging, how the church deals with LGBTQ individuals, interviews between youth and their bishops regarding topics of a sexual nature, and the patriarchal system in which the church operates.

Reel said the church, in recent years, has released "Gospel Topic" essays that begin to tell these stories or tackle these issues, but he said they aren't being told forthrightly.

"They're still whitewashing them and painting them in a way that has a faithful spin to them and doesn't deal with history in a way that's historically honest," Reel said. "Before the internet, the church could tell a story, and there wasn’t a way for us to double-check it. Today, we live in the internet age, and we can go look these things up."

He says thousands of LDS Church members are "figuring out the story the church tells doesn't match the historical data."

More:New LDS Church narrative history book includes polygamous roots

As Reel began to have more questions about church history, he said, he quickly learned his questions were not ones that could be answered by higher-ups within his own tribe.

"You're told that you shouldn't express your doubts publicly, that you should go talk to your bishop, but when you go talk to him, 95 percent are clueless to the history of the church," Reel said. "They don't tend to have empathy. You're lucky if you get sympathy, and often it comes with shaming mechanisms that you must have sinned, or you must have done something wrong, or you're reading anti-Mormon material."

Over time, Reel said most people begin to feel frustrated when their questions aren't answered. At that point, it's difficult to remain in the church because there isn't a safe space to "work things out," Reel said.

Reel said he has even been in contact with Holland himself. And while Holland was kind and loving toward him, Reel said he did not receive the answers he sought out to find — answers to questions he assumed a general authority could speak about.

"Mormonism has capitalized by telling its story without being challenged," Reel said. "If there was a safe space to ask questions, we would have an entirely different religion."

A rocky faith journey

When a member of the LDS Church makes the decision to leave, Reel said, many people assume they have somehow sinned.

He says that's not always correct, especially in his case.

Even when he was in the throws of a faith crisis, Reel said he still tried to make it work.

It's possible to live in the middle of those two worlds for a while, Reel said, but the cognitive dissonance soon becomes too overwhelming.

"People who tend to not care about truth claims, what's important is more of an emotional benefit from their groups and systems, and they'll tend to make it work and stay naive to the issues," Reel said. "For those who are more critical thinking, those who the truth matters at all costs, even if it's uncomfortable, those people tend to find out things don't add up and find themselves out."

Moving forward, Reel said the podcast will continue. He believes it will still be fair — kind and generous toward the LDS Church when it does something good, and critical and pointed when it does something unhealthy or bad.

"The church likes to paint it like when people call away, their lives fall apart," Reel said. "As I've done this for eight years now and literally have talked to thousands of people, I always ask them if they could go back to where it all fit together again, where they were naive to the issues, not one person has said they would."

Reel said he expected to feel angst or trauma after the disciplinary council hearing, instead, he felt vindicated and calm.

"We don't have one single healthy story of someone who has left the church," Reel said. "You can tell when a system is unhealthy when it praises the courage of anyone who comes in, and it diminishes and belittles everyone who goes out."

Follow reporter Emily Havens on Twitter, @EmilyJHavens, and find her on Facebook at facebook.com/emilyjhavens. Call her at 435-674-6214 or email her at ehavens@thespectrum.com.

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