Carrie Sheffield's Journey Of Forgiveness
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It's Live in the Bream with the host of Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream. This week on Live in the Bream, we've got a guest who has a brand new book coming out that I could not put down. Now, it hits on a lot of ideas and themes and subjects that I'm super interested in, so I found it fascinating.

I think you will too. Let's welcome to Live in the Bream, Keri Shuffled. She's the author of this brand new book, Motorhome Prophecies. You may recognize her for her work as a columnist, a broadcaster in DC. She's covered politics from so many different angles, so many different areas. You've seen her on Fox. You've seen her everywhere. She, gosh, we'll get into a little bit more of her story, but Keri, welcome. It's great to have you with us.

Shannon, thank you so much. And thank you for your work. You're incredible. Honestly, you, you, your witness in your book inspired me to write parts of this book.

Oh, my goodness. I listen. Yes. Mutual admiration society, because this book is so gripping and it's so transparent. And I'll ask you about that, like how tough it was to be this transparent with all of the things that you share in this book. But it's your story. And you talk about growing up in a family that was kind of on the edges of Mormonism. I'll let you explain exactly why.

kind of an outlier where they were. But, you know, eight of you siblings together and just this crazy childhood where you were living in sheds and motorhomes, people's yards. I mean, it was just such an unconventional thing. And you weren't really along the way plugging in much to normal societal structures or schools. So it was really the only thing that you knew. You didn't. Did you know as a kid that your childhood was sort of crazy or no?

Well, I mean, I think everyone thinks their parents are invincible. And so you don't know how strange or abusive your childhood is until you grow into consciousness. But I think for me, there was also a sense. So big picture is my father believes he he's a prophet. He will be 86 soon and he has very bad Alzheimer's. So I mentioned that in the book. I

through God's help, I was able to forgive him. And since my Christian baptism worked through that, I don't have anger toward him, but I do believe that God is the God of justice and that God does not condone child abuse.

But essentially what he did to us was child abuse using what he claimed was God's authority. He was from a prominent Mormon family from Utah. Eventually he was excommunicated from the Mormon church. However, I believe he should have been excommunicated long before he was after we were adults.

But basically, he claimed that he was sent by God to save America from destruction and that he had a prophetic call and that he followed the Holy Ghost more than the official Mormon prophet in Salt Lake City did.

And in order to perform this prophetic call, he made us travel the country and perform classical music. I talk about his musical gifting and sort of the ingredients. I try to be as compassionate and understand his trauma of why he became this person, because he had a lot of significant childhood trauma, including sexual abuse at the hands of a female Mormon babysitter who was trusted from the community. And again, to some of the statistics of

child sexual abuse and how it significantly contributes to suicide as adults. It's actually the opposite when people say that time heals all wounds. You actually are more likely to commit suicide the older you get if you had childhood sexual abuse. So anyway, all of my dad's trauma response, he was an incredibly gifted classical guitarist. And he was performing with Andre Segovia. If any of your listeners are familiar with Andre Segovia,

He won the-- Andres Segovia has an asteroid named after him. He was knighted by the King of Spain. He had 10 honorary doctorates, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Andres Segovia, he's from Spain,

hand selected my father to be his protege on classical guitar. And so that's part of why I believe my dad had such narcissism is he was this incredibly gifted musician. So he said, I'm gifted. I'm taking this talent. We're going on the road. And he made my seven biological siblings and I live in the motor home. So 10 people in the motor home.

I ended up going to 17 public schools and home school. And we eventually, as we grew older, he assigned us instruments and we would play with him on street corners. And the crux of it was that we also, while attracting people to our music, we would pass out

religious brochures with lots of quotes from Mormon leaders, quotes from patriotic quotes from founding fathers, and lots of quotes from himself. And so we passed out thousands of brochures on street corners, but we were always dodging the law, dodging child welfare authorities, dodging Mormon church authorities. And so it was a very transient, very just unplugged life in many ways. We'll have more Live in the Bream in a moment.

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yeah we're talking to carrie sheffield author of the brand new book motorhome prophecies a journey of healing and forgiveness and man there comes a point where you obviously are very intelligent you you're a good student a great student um you test well you're a gifted violinist i mean you have all these things going for you but the moments that you finally begin to think about independence and going to college and

And doing something other than being part of this ragtag band, not knowing where you're going to lay your head the next night, um,

The feedback you get from your parents and the letters that you quote in the book are just astonishing things that they claim God told them about you and what would happen to you if you ventured out to get an education or do something else. I can't imagine as a young person who's always lived under this structure, finding the strength to say this.

that's not true or I'm willing to take the risk that it's not true and I'm going to go get an education and break from this situation. Yeah, it was a lot. And I talk about in the book, actually one of the main catalysts for me leaving was my, so I eventually, sadly because of the psychological abuse, um,

two of my five brothers developed schizophrenia. And I do believe, and I say this in the book, that if they were not abused in such a toxic cult environment, because my father claimed that Satan himself had, he used the word reassigned, lesser demons away from our family so that Satan himself could personally torment our family.

And that's been in my head as I've been reading in the news. Actually, just recently, there's a YouTuber with millions of subscribers. Her name is Ruby Frank, mother of six. She's got millions of followers on YouTube. They cut her channel off. But she's a Mormon evangelist from Utah with six children. And she's been sentenced to 30 years in prison for abusing her children using God's name. And she's an official member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which

I'm careful in the book to explain the difference between the official Mormon church and what my father did, and I believe this woman did. But my heart broke as I read what this woman had done to her children, because

Telling your child that you're possessed by demons, you're basically prophesying evil over them. And that's what she was doing. And that's what my father did to my brothers and me to the point where, like I said, two of my brothers developed schizophrenia. And out of my now hundreds of cousins and second and third and fourth cousins and cousins,

uh, in Utah and elsewhere, none of them have schizophrenia except my two brothers. So you tell scientifically, what are the odds of that? So I do believe my dad, his psychological and spiritual abuse, um, contributed to them. So when I was 17, the older of the two schizophrenic brothers, he groped me and he tried to rape me. I was able to run away. So fortunately he wasn't able to rate me, but he did sexually assault me that way. Um,

And that was really the catalyst for me to have a wake up call. Do I actually believe my father is a prophet? Because up until that point, I believed my dad. In some ways, I felt like I had a special childhood to your question earlier. I actually thought our family was special because we had this calling and this gift. But eventually I realized there was such a gap between the things my father preached publicly and the way he lived his life privately and the way he treated us.

So I say in the book that life's most wrenching crucibles can propel us to our greatest moments of growth and freedom. And that was, for me, the most wrenching thing to have my brother, who's, you know, 200 pounds plus, twice my size, I'm only five foot two, assault me and try to, you know, do horrible things. And so I went on this, I call it like my first investigative journalism project, Is My Father a Prophet?

And so I he at the time was wanting to write his autobiography. And so I had been writing for the local newspaper at that point for this high school column they had, which was just this amazing outlet for me down in the Ozarks in Springfield, Missouri. And that was my 17th public school in that area, by the way. I ended up going to 17 public schools and homeschool. And.

But the investigation that I undertook, I started helping him type up his materials. He'd save some boxes in the back of the motorhome. We had this fiberglass trailer attached to the back of the motorhome where he had some of his books and letters and things. I sorted through them and he had letters to and from his mother that were so radicalizing to see how he spoke to his mother that she was evil and that he was so disrespectful to his own mother. But the thing that really...

caused my hands to shake. And when I was holding them, I found some handwritten prophecies that my father had written down. And he was claiming, basically, he was using the same style and language, the Elizabethan Old English, that Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church would use

in the Doctrine and Covenants. So within Mormonism, they have four books of Scripture. They use the King James Bible. They use the Book of Mormon. They also have the Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants. So those first three books, they claim are ancient. And King James Bible is the same Bible that Protestants and Catholics use. Well, probably more Protestants, but...

But the other three are Mormon specific, and the first two that I mentioned are supposed to be ancient, but the Doctrine and Covenants were handwritten prophecies that Joseph Smith did. So basically what I saw was my father trying to be a knockoff Joseph Smith, using the same type of language, the way that Muhammad wrote down his prophecies, he said, from God.

My father was doing this himself, and I sometimes joke he was like a Walmart Joseph Smith, my dad, only because we lived in a lot of Walmart parking lots, and he was less successful than Joseph Smith in terms of his ministry.

So when I saw when I found these handwritten prophecies, my hands began to shake because I knew at that time my father was going against the official LDS hierarchy, because within the LDS church, there's only one prophet at the time at any time. It's almost like the pope. And that's passed down in a very formalized process and.

There was one prophet, he lived in Salt Lake, and he was not named Ralph Sheffield. So that really became the decision point I had to make. Am I following the official LDS church, or am I following my father, who I believe now is a false prophet? And so I chose the official LDS church. I ended up going to Brigham Young University, which is the official LDS church-owned flagship university. But

To your question on the prophecies that my dad said, so when I said to him, I don't believe you're a prophet and I want to go away for college and I can't do this, he calls it the mission, you know, his ministry. I can't do the mission anymore. All of you kids together. Exactly. All of us playing the music. And he raised his hand to the square, you know, like he was making an oath, and he said, I prophesy in the name of Jesus you'll be raped and murdered if you leave. Whoa.

Yeah. So for any daughter to hear that from her father, I mean, it's shocking. And he said these kinds of things over the years, years and years of this stuff. Yep. He would send me letters and my mom would get into it as well. My mom said she had a vision that I was in a body bag if I left the mission and I was in the gutter dead. And so I joke to the students of Liberty University when I spoke down a convocation that for them,

you know the flames yes um i said for most of you i can imagine your freshman week might have had some some anxiety but comparatively it was probably peanuts to what i went through yeah yeah i mean and there was so much that happened and again so people understand your book is not against lds or anything like that but you talk about your own faith journey about

you know, Buddhism and Catholicism and all, just all these different things that you began to explore after you left home and gotten into college. And it really, as you said, you have these skills, you really enjoy working as an investigative journalist and digging into things.

You had a lot of rabbit trails and different places that you went in your life in New York and to Harvard on a full scholarship. And all of these different places you were searching, you're very transparent in the book. Again, it's Motorhome Prophecies by Carrie Sheffield. Very transparent about mistakes that you made and relationships that weren't good for you. And just kind of trying to find your footing as a quote, normal person after growing up where you had

with knowing anything about social cues or what is healthy in a relationship or anything else because of the way that you grew up with two parents, especially your father, who it seems like we're struggling with mental health issues. And you talk about what your dad went through and maybe not ever really getting the help he needed for that. But through all of this and your candor, you eventually do come back to believing there is a God and that that is a good force in the universe and

and then he wants a relationship with you and then you began to heal through that.

Yes. No. And Shannon, like I said, your book, Finding the Bright Side, you were so transparent in there about the struggles you went through with your eyes and how you felt suicidal. And I was just like, how can I process what I see of Shannon Bream when I know Shannon Bream with not been in the book? I it your transparency there was like I said, it inspired me in part to write this book. So thank you for sharing that witness with people to know that.

You can hit the lowest of the low. And that's part of the human experience. And it doesn't mean that you don't have enough faith in God because you're angry about what's happening or because you feel suicidal. That's not...

It's it doesn't mean that you've lost your way forever, you know, and so I'm so grateful that you shared that that example, because it gave me a lot of courage and other people sharing their stories, which is why I shared the story, because right now, this moment in time in America is.

we have the highest suicide rate since the Great Depression. And in 2022, the most recent data we have is we have the highest number of suicides ever recorded. And the fastest growing group in terms of the percentage growth, it's happening among women. Women aged 25 to 34 had nearly a 7% increase in suicides in 2022, up from 2021. So there is a mental health crisis right now

And I talk about some research in the book about there's so much just evidence, scientific evidence.

for the strength that religious community and spiritual practice gives to your mental health and how it prevents your suicide. So Harvard School of Public Health, for example, they found that women who engage in regular religious practice are 68% less likely to die by suicide, alcohol overdose, or drug overdose. I mean, it's pretty shocking. And for men, it was about 33%.

So, and there are other studies that were similarly found with the National Bureau of Economic Research. There was a literature review in Psychiatric Times that found 93 observational studies. Among those 93 studies, two-thirds found lower rates of depressive disorder with fewer depressive symptoms in people who were more religious.

So and what I what I think is is disappointing in America right now is that you have this life saving force that really literally will save your life. And in my case, it did. And yet you have.

psychology professors are literally the least religious and most hostile to God among all professors. Like that's what Harvard found. So you have this life force and you have people who hate the life force who are supposed to be the guides and the healers to connect you. So that's part of why I wrote this book is because multiple of my siblings have attempted suicide before

I have considered suicide multiple times. I've never attempted it, but I have had multiple episodes of suicidal ideation, of PTSD, of anxiety, of fibromyalgia, chronic pain from the fibromyalgia.

And God has seen me through all of it. And he's brought amazing, incredible mentors to me. So I'm a witness for what God can do and how it's not. One of the main themes of the book is that God is not religion. And when I see, for example, the story that I mentioned in Utah happening right now with this Ruby Frank story.

She's using man-made religion to justify horrific... They called it... The authorities there, they called it a concentration-like environment for her children. They said...

They were using religion and it's not just hurt. We see it, you know, whether it's pedophilia in the church or embezzlement or sexually assaulting women. You know, it's it can be so confusing to see people doing religious things and then using God's name. I compare it. It's like a Gucci bag with a knockoff G. It's that's not God. Yeah.

Or if somebody is playing Beethoven horrifically, you don't blame Beethoven. You blame the musician. So I wrote this book because I want people to know the difference between God and religion. And I'm not anti-religion at all. And like you said, I...

I eventually found my way back to God in relationship with God. I was baptized as a Protestant Christian a little over six years ago. And now I attend a non-denominational church here in the D.C. area. And my church community is like my family. It truly is. I feel like I've been adopted into the family of Christ.

Yeah. And gosh, who doesn't need community after all that we've been through the last few years and as divided as this world feels. And you talk a lot about in the book to like dividing politics, which you had a real joy in covering and investigating, taking that separately from religion and, and in our relationship with God, more importantly that, you know, so often politics and religion are married and yet what's really the core of what's important is our relationship with God and,

And, you know, making that right and from that flow things like service and humility and other things that we are also lacking right now in society. Again, this week we've had Keri Sheffield with us. Motorhome Prophecies is the book. It's out March 12th. A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness. It is a fascinating look at what happens when, yes, religion is misused, where there is mental illness.

And also such a redemption story. Thank you for being just so open and vulnerable in this. And I hope that this book will also encourage a lot of people, Carrie, that, you know, I remember you mentioned my book. You know, I did worry about putting things out there that were so personal. But the whole point was to hopefully encourage others. So you don't know how much it moves my heart to hear that in any way that could have happened for you. So thank you so much. Good luck with the book. And I hope that there's an update.

Thank you, Shannon. Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure and God bless you and your work. Listen ad-free with the Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts and Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.

from the Fox News Podcast Network. Hey there, it's me, Kennedy. Make sure to check out my podcast, Kennedy Saves the World. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast.