Faith Matters (Faith Matters Foundation)

As we have collectively turned our attention to the study of the Hebrew Bible, what is known to most Christians as the Old Testament, we at Faith Matters turn our attention to a perennial question: Who actually wrote these books?

We plan to have at least a few conversations in the coming year on how to engage the Hebrew Bible. To kick it off, we invited Terryl Givens to our studio to help us frame some of the big-picture issues, for example:  

Who wrote the Bible? 

How should we read it? 

What theological and ethical dilemmas does it force us to confront?

How is it relevant today? 

As you might expect, it was a candid and fascinating conversation. We hope you’ll leave this conversation asking better and deeper questions as you engage the books of the Hebrew Bible.

Many people were disturbed by the remarks of Brad Wilcox, a member of the Young Men General Presidency, given at a recent tri-stake fireside in Alpine, Utah. In addition to denigrating other religions, whom he characterized as “playing church,” his remarks on the history of denying the priesthood to Black members shocked many listeners. Brigham Young University quickly condemned his comments and Wilcox issued a public apology.

While it is admirable to see church institutions and officials take responsibility and face issues like this head-on, the incident itself points to persistent issues in the Church that deserve our attention in our ongoing efforts to create Zion. 

We invited Mauli Bonner to our podcast studio this week to address this timely topic, and also to tell us about his remarkable new film His Name is Green Flake. We felt like Mauli showed how to confront difficult issues like race with realism, but also with an abundance of faith, hope and charity. His honest and moving response to this recent incident shows the way to create a path forward toward Zion.

Mauli has had a long and successful career in the entertainment industry, and is the writer, director, and producer of this extraordinary film. The movie tells the story of an enslaved Black man, Green Flake, who was also a member of the Church and immigrated from Nauvoo to Utah as part of the vanguard group that prepared the trail to Salt Lake for other Saints. His Name Is Green Flake has been awarded Best Film in ten different festivals, including the Venice Film Awards, the London Independent Film Awards, and most recently, the LA Film Awards.

Mauli lives in Southern California where he serves in a ward bishopric. He is a member of the well-known Bonner family of musicians. 

Like you, we’ve been watching in horror as Ukraine has been faced with a brutal and unprovoked invasion. We’re in awe of the courage of the people of Ukraine and stand firmly with them as we pray that freedom and peace will prevail. We are working on bringing together some voices  to help us think through these events in the very near future.

In the meantime, we thought we would share a recent conversation we had with our good friend Terryl Givens about his new book, The Doors of Faith, which comes from a series of very popular campus-wide lectures Terryl delivered at Brigham Young University.

Many of you are familiar with Terryl’s long career as an expansive thinker and theologian in our faith. He is a frequent contributor to the Faith Matters podcast, both as host and guest, and is always fascinating.

Terryl is a New York native who did graduate work in intellectual history at Cornell, and in comparative literature at UNC Chapel Hill. Prior to his current position as Senior Research Fellow at BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute, he was the Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English and a Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond. 

Prior to releasing The Doors of Faith, Terryl has published over twenty other books. He and his wife, Fiona, are the co-authors of four books:  The God Who Weeps, The Christ Who Heals, The Crucible of Doubt, and, of course, All Things New, which was published by Faith Matters Publishing.

As parents, how can we help our children find and cultivate their inner compass? We often do a pretty good job of giving our kids an idea of what God and others expect from them. But nurturing an enduring love of things like truth, beauty and goodness and helping them engage their world from a deep sense of their true identity is the great challenge of parenting. How can we help our children become a beautiful expression of their spiritual natures? 

This week, we invited to our podcast studio Jon Ogden, one of the founders of Uplift Kids, a really wonderful program that integrates both ancient wisdom and modern science to help parents build values in the home. Uplift Kids is a program designed for families to systematically, step-by-step help children develop that inner compass.  

In two of the most popular episodes we’ve ever released, numbers 85 and 86, Michael Wilcox joined us to talk about “God’s Many Voices” — how God has communicated through many different people, all throughout time and space. One of the things we love most about Uplift is the way it pulls together so many of those voices in a way that’s really digestible for both kids and adults

Jon Ogden’s university training was in literature and he earned a masters degree writing, with an emphasis on research and ethics. Jon has worked as a university instructor, instructional designer, and writer. He’s coupled that work with a decades-long study of the world’s wisdom traditions. He co-created Uplift Kids along with Amanda Suarez, Drew Hansen, and Michelle Larson.

Fundraiser details here:  https://www.facebook.com/donate/281102717479491/

We’ve been working hard to gather voices that could help us process the ongoing atrocities that the Russian government has inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. Like you, we’ve wondered what the reality is like on the ground in Ukraine right now, how we can help, and if our faith might have something to offer in terms of how we approach what’s going on, both in our hearts and with our hands.

We were able to assemble a great line-up of people to help answer some of those questions for our podcast audience. We spoke to Yarsolav Chernyuk, a Church member who’s living and serving in Kyiv right now; Austin Walters, who served a mission to Ukraine and has been leading a wonderful fundraising effort for humanitarian relief; Mariya Manzhos, a Ukrainian currently living in the US who helped her parents flee from Kyiv, and Patrick Mason, a professor of history and scholar of violence and peacebuilding.

Yaroslav Chernyuk is a Church member who was able to speak to us briefly from his home in Kyiv, where he is doing incredibly brave and difficult work providing aid to families in need.

Austin Walters served a mission in Ukraine, and after completing an MBA at Harvard Business School, got into the world of fundraising and venture capital. He’s turned those skills, over the past few weeks, into fundraising for humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. Here’s the link if you seek to help relief efforts in Ukraine.

Mariya Manzhos is a freelance journalist based in Boston, whose writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Boston Globe, and other publications. She is married to Zach Davis, a member of the Faith Matters executive team. At the time we spoke with her, her parents were en route to the United States after fleeing their home in Kyiv; you’ll hear her speak a little about this journey. Thankfully, we can update you now to let you know that her parents have arrived safely and are with Mariya’s family in Boston.

We brought our friend Patrick Mason into the conversation to help us think through some of the philosophy and theology of war and conflict. Many of us have had our easy notions about peace and violence challenged in the face of such naked aggression. We explore what the scriptures and the Gospel of Jesus Christ have to say about this situation.

To all of our Ukrainian brothers and sisters: we see you, we hear you, we’re praying for you, and we’re doing our best to bear this burden with you. 

The perennial struggle to read and understand the Hebrew Bible--that strange and wonderful collection of books we call the Old Testament--has captured our collective attention this year as we dive back into its pages. The text presents profound challenges and questions to Christians and to people with modern sensibilities generally. Among those challenges are stories and accounts of what seem to be divinely sanctioned violence.

To get some perspective on these challenges, and on how broader Christianity has faced these same challenges, we decided to bring writer, teacher and public theologian Brian McLaren into the conversation by inviting him on our podcast. Brian is well-known within evangelical Christianity. Once a prominent pastor, in 2015 he was named by Time Magazine as one of evangelicalism’s most influential figures. He became a leader in the “emerging church movement.” These days, in addition to his speaking and writing, he works with Father Richard Rohr at the Center of Action and Contemplation.

For McLaren, as for many Christians, his relationship with the Bible itself has been an integral part of his faith journey. We were curious to hear how that relationship has changed over time, how he reads the Bible differently than when he was younger, how he sees people sometimes abuse the Bible (especially the Hebrew Bible), and where he continues to find beauty and inspiration in its pages. He explains how much of the Christian world arrived at the idea of Biblical inerrancy, and why we need not just re-translation but continuous re-interpretation of the text. 

We found his thoughts on the creation narrative of Genesis particularly fascinating. He even shared his thoughts on a famous story from the Book of Mormon. We think you’ll enjoy this conversation with a wise and good soul, our friend Brian McLaren.

Among Brian’s outstanding books are Faith After Doubt: Why your beliefs stopped working and what to do about it and The Galapagos Islands: A Spiritual Journey. You can check out all his work at brianmclaren.net. 

We talk a lot about the “self” in our culture, and in our faith. We use terms like selfish, selfless, true self, false self, self care, authentic self, etc. Many social commentators observe that the modern era (and maybe particularly the post-modern era) has produced a pervasive secular “cult of the self.” The advent of social media in the past decade has only fanned the flames of a preoccupation with self, complete with the “selfie.”

So we decided to host a conversation on what a healthy sense of “self” might look like.

We invited Dr. Julie Hanks to our podcast studio to explore this topic. Aubrey Chaves explores with Julie things like: why it's important to have a healthy sense of self, the difference between selfishness and self-care, and even what to do when our internal authority finds itself at odds with external authority. 

Julie Hanks is a licensed clinical social worker and psychotherapist, owner of Wasatch Family Therapy clinics in Utah, and host of the Ask Dr. Julie Hanks podcast. She has nearly 30 years of clinical experience, and has created a robust library of online resources that empower women to prioritize their dreams, revolutionize their families and personalize their faith.  

Our conversation was structured around a guide Dr. Hanks calls “10 signs of a healthy self." You can download a pdf of that list here.

We hope you enjoy this fascinating “exploration of self."

There is almost certainly someone in your life who is struggling with OCD, and it could be much more severe than you might imagine. OCD is a serious mental illness, and it’s very common for OCD sufferers to experience severe depression and even suicidal thoughts. In a religious setting, it is quite common for OCD to manifest in extreme and very unhealthy scrupulosity. 

In a previous Faith Matters podcast episode, podcast host Tim Chaves shared some of his own very painful struggles with OCD and scrupulosity. We were amazed by how many people  reached out to us to share their own experiences with OCD. Some had been diagnosed and knew what to call it, but others hadn’t replied that what they were suffering from during their lifetime was OCD. Latter-day Saints often start by explaining its symptoms in religious language, or looking only to religious solutions to solve it.

This week, we share a truly illuminating conversation we recorded with Paul Peterson, CEO of the OCD and Anxiety Treatment Center.

If you know someone who may be suffering from OCD, please feel free to share this episode with them. We want to spread as widely as possible any information that can lead to diagnosis and treatment.

This is part of an ongoing conversation Faith Matters is sponsoring about mental health challenges faced by so many of our brothers and sisters, friends, and family members. 

Find an OCD therapist:

https://iocdf.org/find-help/

The OCD and Anxiety Treatment Center (Paul’s organization):

https://www.theocdandanxietytreatmentcenter.com/

Single Saints Summit:

https://ss.leadingsaints.org/single-saints-registration

Mentally Healthy Saints Summit:

https://mhs.leadingsaints.org/mental-health-landing48113181

As Christians, we look forward to resurrection after death into a state of wholeness and joy. 

But understanding resurrection as occurring only in the next life can prevent us from experiencing the fullness of life that Christ offers us here and now. What if we looked at resurrection as a process that can begin now as we allow Christ to live in and through us?

This week, we invited our friend Adam Miller to talk about his book An Early Resurrection: Life in Christ Before You Die.  In this inspiring, profound little book, Adam shows us how, in a very real sense, Christ can start this process of rebirth now, in ways that can radically change how we experience even the most ordinary and mundane things in life.

Adam Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College near Dallas, Texas. He also wrote the remarkable book Letters to a Young Mormon.

As we celebrate Easter, we hope these ideas about resurrection can give you new perspective on the words of the Savior: “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”

*** Links to buy "The Mother Tree" ***

Softcover version: https://faithmatters.org/themothertree

Audible and Kindle version: https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tree-Discovering-Wisdom-Divine/dp/B09YCDHTDZ/

Today, we’re excited to announce the latest offering from Faith Matters Publishing, following our previous books All Things New by Terryl and Fiona Givens, Restoration by Patrick Mason, and Better Than Happy by Jody Moore.

This book is called The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom  of Our Divine Mother, and was written by Kathryn Knight Sonntag. It is a truly beautiful book and a great read.

The timing of this release is interesting. First, we’re coming up on Mothers Day and we love that this book is a profound recognition of  our Divine Mother. Second, Elder Renlund of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles recently gave an important talk to the women of the church on the doctrine of Heavenly Mother. While celebrating with us this unique doctrine, he also had words of caution about demanding further revelation on Heavenly Mother theology, among other things. 

Though this book was obviously completed well before that recent address, it strikes us as very much in the same spirit. It is a celebration of our unique doctrine, which is beautifully outlined in the church’s Gospel Topics essay on Heavenly Mother. But the book values experiencing her presence in the world and in our lives over theological speculation. It is about how accessing different ways of knowing–through the languages of art, nature, poetry and stillness–can lead to a personal relationship with our Divine Mother. And it points to surprising ways in which, as the Church’s essay points out, She has always been there in our scriptures.

So today we spoke with the author of The Mother Tree, Kathryn Knight Sonntag. Kathryn’s book of poetry The Tree at the Center was a 2019 Association for Mormon Letters Awards finalist. Her poetry and essays have appeared in many publications including Colorado Review, Rock & Sling, and Dialogue. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture and environmental planning, and works as a landscape architect and freelance writer in Salt Lake City.

Just a note on where you can purchase the book. As of today, the Kindle version is available on Amazon but the print version is just coming off the press. It will be a few weeks before you can buy it on Amazon. Since we know that many of you will want a physical copy of the book for Mother’s Day, we’ve set up a special shipping operation where you can buy the book and have it shipped to you right away. In order to do that, head to faithmatters.org/themothertree. You’ll be sent straight to a product page where you can buy the book, and Faith Matters is paying the cost of shipping for all US customers so that nothing gets in the way if you’d like to have this book as a gift in time for Mother’s Day.

The third volume of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days,  was published this week by the Church.

The Saints project has gained widespread popularity because of its accessibility—it’s written in a narrative format—as well as its assiduous adherence to documented history. It is an enormous endeavor led by a very able group of scholars. We invited one of the leaders of this project, Dr. Lisa Olsen Tait, to come on our podcast to tell us what’s in this volume and how it came together. It was a very engaging conversation.

We know that some Latter-day Saints have had a complicated relationship with Church history. It can be alternately incredibly inspiring, confusing, uplifting and at times disturbing.  And as Lisa put it, “There’s a history to the Church’s relationship with its history.” For those who have longed for an official history that is more open and accurate than what the Church has published before, Saints seems a huge step in the right direction.

This volume of Saints is titled Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, and covers the time period 1893 to 1955. It’s a really fascinating period, one in which the Church underwent extensive transformation. In many ways, this is the period during which the Church transformed from the “pioneer Church” into the beginnings of the Church we would recognize today.

The digital version of this volume of Saints is available for free on the Church website and in the Church History section of the Gospel Library app. Print copies will be available in coming weeks in the Church’s online store and at retail outlets.

Lisa Olsen Tait is a historian, writer, and specialist in women’s history at the Church History Department. She is a general editor on the Saints series and, on volume 3, contributed subject-matter expertise in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and on many aspects of women’s history. She is also a co-chair of the Mormon Women’s History Initiative Team (MWHIT), an independent group that fosters scholarship and networking in the field. Lisa earned a PhD from the University of Houston, studying American Literature and Women’s Studies, and she taught religion classes at BYU Provo for three years before joining the Church History Department in 2013.

For today’s conversation, and on this Mother’s Day weekend, we’re releasing a classic episode that was done with McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding. They’re the authors of several incredible books, including The Girls’ Guide to Heavenly Mother, The Boys’ Guide to Heavenly Mother, and the Girls Who Choose God series.

In this conversation, Bethany and McArthur addressed specifically where the longstanding myth comes from that we shouldn’t talk about Heavenly Mother, as well as pointing out why it’s important for girls to have a divine role model, and the importance of expressing this unique doctrine through art, which they do so well in their books.

Since the time of the original conversation release, these books have all been picked up by Deseret Book, and are available both in Deseret Book retail stores and online. The books have tended to go quickly, so if you go to a local Deseret Book and they’re sold out, you can always check them out at the publisher’s website, dstreetpress.com

And to introduce you again briefly to McArthur and Bethany: 

McArthur has a master’s degree in communication from BYU, and also co-owned Free Range, which is an award-winning marketing business focused on telling social justice stories. In 2011, she moved to India and started writing books, including those we talk about in this episode.

Bethany has a Master of Public Health from the University of London, and has worked for both large, international organizations and small, local non-profits to advance children’s health and wellness in South Africa, India, and the USA.  She calls Richmond, Virginia home where she runs school gardens, writes books, and raises three girls. 

For this episode, Faith Matters is honored to bring on our good friend, Richard Ostler. 

Richard is a former YSA Bishop whose ministry has focused on all types of Latter-day Saint journeys, and especially on those of people who have felt marginalized in any way. In addition to his podcast, he’s now written two books, both under the title Listen, Learn, and Love: the first is subtitled Embracing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints, and the second Improving Latter-day Saint Culture. Both are available at Deseret Book, and were published by Cedar Fort.

Our conversation with Richard was about his second book, which was recently released. In it, he addresses questions around cultural issues like emphasis on callings, women’s experience, mental illness, length of missionary service, the repentance process, and the experience of those with doubts and questions.

We felt like this was a really helpful discussion, and Richard’s unique gift of empathy and his love of the Church combine to give really powerful insights into how we can all contribute to improving Church culture. We were grateful to spend this time with Richard, someone who’s shown such Christlike love to us and so many others.

Link to Richard’s books: https://deseretbook.com/t/author/richard-h-ostler?ref=product-producer-list

Are we at the leading edge of a resurgent interest in religion and spirituality in the academy? Quite possibly. And not just as a curiosity. 

This week, Faith Matters begins a series of conversations with prominent scholars from outside our faith. What are we learning about the nature of spiritual experience and the value of a religious life?  In coming weeks, we’ll be traveling to some of America’s top universities—starting with Harvard, Yale and Princeton—to sit down with thinkers deeply engaged in this fascinating topic.

We’ll start this week with Dr. Lisa Miller, a Professor in the Clinical Psychology Program at Columbia University, where she founded the Spirituality Mind Body Institute, the first Ivy League graduate program in spirituality and psychology. Dr. Miller will share insights from her recently published book The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life. In her words, Lisa “takes the lens of science and focuses it on the impact of spirituality in human life,” with some surprising results. She talks about the truly remarkable real-world  benefits of a personal spirituality that leads to a lived relationship with the divine, and calls for a spiritual renaissance to help solve some of our society’s most troubling issues.

Dr. Miller's research has been published in top-tier psychiatric journals, and she is the Editor of the Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality and the Founder of the American Psychological Association’s journal, Spirituality in Clinical Practice. After finishing her undergraduate work at Yale, she received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

This conversation also introduces a new member of the Faith Matters team, Zachary Davis. We’re extremely excited to be joining forces with Zach, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School, where his work focused on intellectual history and philosophy of religion. Previously, Zach has been a producer at HarvardX where he built open online courses in the humanities. He’s  also a highly experienced podcaster and host of  shows like Ministry of Ideas and Writ Large.

Memorial Day reminds us to turn our attention and our hearts back to those who have gone before us and who have made our lives possible. It’s a time to contemplate Malachi’s prophecy of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to their fathers.

How might this turning of hearts actually look in our personal lives. We invited two incredibly insightful and wise people, Linda and Richard Eyre, to our guide an exploration of this timely topic. As usual, Linda and Richard share very practical and fun ideas for developing and maintaining a strong family culture. And they have great advice on how to avoid guilt as we inevitably notice our own inadequacies in striving to live up to our family responsibilities. We were also able to explore some of the themes of their important book  The Turning: Why the State of the Family Matters, and What the World Can Do About It.

Linda and Richard Eyre are New York Times #1 bestselling authors whose writing career has spanned four decades and whose books have sold in the millions and have been translated into a dozen languages. They spend much of their time speaking to audiences throughout the world on family, parenting, and life-balance, along with keeping up with their own nine children and an ever-increasing number of grandchildren.

Joseph Smith taught that faith is a “principle of action.” Although the world is full of crises and challenges, as Latter-day Saints, we are called to care for those in need with love and courage. 

In this week’s episode, Fiona Givens and Britta Ellwanger share stories from their recent efforts to put their faith into action. When Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, Fiona felt an inspired pull on her heart to help this situation however she could. That led her to catalyzing prayer and relief efforts in her ward and beyond, and then, in the last two weeks, journeying to Ukraine to join Britta and deliver humanitarian aid directly to those who need it.

Fiona Givens is the author of several books, including All Things New which was published by Faith Matters last year and The God Who Weeps, both co-authored with her husband Terryl. 

Britta Ellwanger has been living, working, and investing in Ukraine for ten years. Britta’s organization, forPEACE, focuses on the frontline needs of this war because it is the first piece in the domino effect that leads to the refugee crisis. 

Britta’s written an article on Faith Matters’ website that gives a really up-to-date synopsis about the situation on the ground, and gives actionable ways to help the effort on the front lines. You can find that article, and our other published material on the war in Ukraine, at faithmatters.org/ukraine.

As many of you know, at the beginning of May, the United States Supreme Court experienced an unprecedented leak of a draft opinion on the Dobbs v. Jackson case currently being adjudicated by the Supreme Court. The opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito Jr., and, if it ends up reflecting the Court’s decision due this month,  would overturn nearly 50 years of abortion law under the landmark Roe v. Wade case, which ruled that many then-current restrictions on abortion were unconstitutional, and guaranteed nationwide access to abortion through the first two trimesters of pregnancy. Roe, and the subsequent Casey v. Planned Parenthood have paved the way for laws that in many states, allow abortion very late into pregnancy.
 
Abortion is a very tricky topic, and a very sensitive one for people on all sides of the issue. But we feel like we have a duty as citizens to become educated on important matters like this, and our faith must have something to say on issues in which life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are at stake.  Elder Oaks recently stated: "On contested issues we seek to moderate and unify."
 
In that spirit, we explored the issue from several angles, starting from a factual perspective — diving into the specifics of what’s going on and what the practical stakes are, then moving into what our faith might be asking of us as we seek to create a world that is just and equitable; one that honors both agency and life. I’m sure we weren’t perfect as we navigated this territory, but we did the best we could to show respect to the values and humanity that inform people of good faith on either side.
 
This conversation comes in two parts; in the first, we spoke with Sherif Girgis, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, who also clerked for Justice Alito of the U.S. Supreme Court as well as for our friend Thomas B. Griffith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. When we asked Judge Griffith who would be the most qualified voice we could bring on the show, he unhesitatingly recommended Sherif. Sherif earned his J.D. at Yale Law School, where he served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and is currently completing his Ph.D. in philosophy at Princeton. Sherif helped us understand the current state of abortion law in the US as well as what it could look like after a decision is made on Dobbs. 
 
After speaking with Sherif, we spoke with Latter-day Saint scholars Justin Collings and Jenet Erickson. 

Justin Collings is ​​Associate Dean for Faculty and Curriculum at BYU and a Professor at the J. Reuben Clark School of Law at BYU, where he’s been since 2013. He is a scholar of constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, and constitutional history, and received his law degree  and his PhD in History both from Yale.

Jenet Erickson is an associate professor in the Department of Church History and Doctrine in BYU Religious Education. Her research has focused on maternal and child well-being in the context of work and family life, as well as the distinct contributions of mothers and fathers in children's development. She is a research fellow of both the Wheatley Institution and the Institute for Family Studies and has been a columnist on family issues for the Deseret News since 2013.

Justin and Jenet brought this conversation home in terms of what it means for Latter-day Saints. We found them incredibly insightful and empathetic, and helped us see this issue in new ways — we think they’ll do the same for you. The conversation with Justin and Jenet led to some really spirit-filled and practical takeaways for Latter-day Saints who want to be thoughtful, engaged, and loving on this issue. We’re deeply grateful to them for coming on.

Noah Feldman is one of the most fascinating and engaging public intellectuals in the world. He’s also had a long and rich relationship with the Latter-day Saint tradition. Terryl Givens and Zachary Davis recently stopped by Noah’s office in Cambridge for a wide-ranging conversation on faith and religion. 

Some of the topics discussed include: how young people are experiencing religion and spirituality today; why living a life of faith helps make sense and meaning of life; and Noah’s thoughts about the unique gifts Latter-day Saints can offer the world.

Noah Feldman is a Harvard law professor, ethical philosopher & advisor, religious scholar and historian. He is host of the Deep Background podcast, writes a column on policy and public affairs for Bloomberg, and is the author of 10 books on a variety of topics. You can learn more about Noah’s work at noah-feldman.com.

In so many domains of our lives, we are encouraged to think and act in a transactional, cost-benefit way. But Latter-day Saints are called to transcend this logic and follow the law of love, which Steve Young defines in his new book as “loving as God loves, seeking another’s healing, and expecting nothing in return.”

Living the law of love can help us focus less on acquiring religious merit badges and more on becoming extensions of Christ’s healing hands to bind up the brokenhearted.

Steve Young is a 3-time Super Bowl champion with the San Francisco 49ers, a two-time NFL MVP, and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. When he retired, Steve was the highest-rated quarterback in NFL history and was the only quarterback in league history to win four consecutive NFL passing titles.

Steve is currently Partner and Chairman of Huntsman Gay Global Capital and the founder and chairman of the Forever Young Foundation, an organization focused on passing on hope and resources for the development, strength, and education of children. Steve also serves on the Faith Matters Advisory Board. His new book is called The Law of Love, published by Deseret Book.

The twin challenges of the pandemic and political polarization have caused widespread anxiety and even despair. And yet, as Christian disciples, we are called to plant seeds of hope in even the most seemingly barren soil.  

For this episode, Zach Davis invited Anne Snyder to discuss her experiences planting such seeds of hope in her capacity as a prominent Christian editor and writer. Their conversation touches on how to cultivate hope in times of fear and anxiety; how to reknit relationships that have been damaged by mistrust and pain; and how encounters with the spirit can sustain and transform us.  

Anne Snyder is the editor-in-chief of Comment magazine and co-editor of the book, Breaking Ground: Charting Our Future in a Pandemic Year, published in January 2022. In her work as a writer and convener, she is committed to exploring questions of class and culture, moral beauty and a redemptive faith. You can learn more about Anne’s work at annesnyder.org.

Under the Banner of Heaven is a recent 7-part dramatized series aired on Hulu by about the horrific 1984 murders of Brenda and Erica Lafferty by brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty. Like the book it’s based on, the series paints a very grim portrait of Latter-day Saint faith and culture, and has been both praised and panned by critics. 

In this episode, McKay Coppins and Patrick Mason join Bill Turnbull to explore why the series has had such widely divergent receptions and discuss the validity of Jon Krakauer’s fundamental thesis: that religion and violence go hand in hand. 

McKay Coppins is a staff writer for The Atlantic who writes frequently about faith and politics; he published a superb piece about the series at the request of his editor at the magazine.

Patrick Mason is the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University — he’s also a frequent and valued guest on this show and advisor to Faith Matters.

**A MONUMENT HONORING AFRICAN AMERICAN PIONEERS**

We wanted to let you know about an exciting event that’s being organized by our friend, previous guest, and Faith Matters advisor, Mauli Bonner. At 10am on July 22, at This Is The Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, there will be a dedication of a new monument honoring enslaved pioneers, including Green Flake, who drove the first wagon as part of a vanguard group through emigration canyon on July 22, 1847. This will mark the 175th anniversary of that historic moment. We think that this will be an unforgettable event and will help all of us remember and honor the vital role early Black pioneers played in our faith and community. We expect government and Church leaders will be in attendance, and you can find out all the details at greenflakemovie.com. 

With all the exciting things happening at Faith Matters, we thought it would be a good time to step back, take stock of what we’ve done, and share more about where we’re going. 

So in this episode, Tim and Aubrey were joined by one of Faith Matters’ founders, Bill Turnbull, as well as Faith Matters’ new Executive Director, Zach Davis, to discuss how our organization began, answer common questions we get from listeners, and share more about our purpose and approach. 

This episode was also a chance to announce Restore: A Faith Matters Gathering. Occurring over two days on October 7-8 in Salt Lake City. Restore brings together the best minds exploring the biggest questions as we look forward to the Restoration’s third century. Featuring speakers such as Terryl Givens, Jody Moore, Brian McLaren, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, and Patrick Mason and musical performances from groups such as the Debra Bonner Unity Gospel Choir, our hope is that this gathering will restore your hope, your curiosity, your connection and your faith. 

We have been so grateful to you for listening and reading and supporting the work we do at Faith Matters and we are excited to have the chance to gather and connect with you in person. We really hope you can join us. 

To learn more and register, visit https://www.faithmatters.org/restore

For this episode, we spoke with Jeff Strong about the experience of missionaries in today’s mission field, including the unique challenges and opportunities they face. This conversation was based largely on a document Jeff wrote, called “What One Mission President Would Tell His Own Grandchildren About Serving a Mission.” Jeff wrote this document after his experience as the mission president of the Bentonville, Arkansas Mission.

We found Jeff’s reflections on missionary work to be refreshingly candid and deeply insightful. He illuminated how in many ways, our culture can be afraid to share honestly what a mission can be like. It’s not “all roses,” as he says — and talking openly about the thorns doesn’t have to be a bad thing; not only can we be more honest about the mission experience, but we can honor the difficult parts of it that cause the most growth.

Jeff also emphasizes that not every missionary, or every young person, is the same — and that’s ok. He shares several experiences that show how God works differently in different lives, including different types of missions and different lengths of service — including the choice not to go, or not to stay.

Jeff has worked as a senior level executive at several multinational companies and has spent 28 years in management. He’s also worked as a consultant and private equity advisor, in addition to serving as a special project director at BYU’s Marriott School of Business, where he led the startup of the Marketing Lab. In 2018, he and his wife Sara were called to the Bentonville, Arkansas mission, where Jeff served as President until 2021.

Be 100% Responsible — Lynn G. Robbins Talk

For today’s episode, we’re really excited to bring on Jared Halverson.

Jared shares with us a really important concept he calls “proving contraries,” —something we’ve talked a little bit about on the podcast before using the term “polarities.” He spoke with us about how recognizing these polarities can help us understand our own strengths and weaknesses, how attributes that are positive, taken too far, almost always become problematic, and how wrestling with contraries is essential in a life full of growth and meaning.

Jared Halverson is an associate professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, and has taught religion courses at the high school and college level since 1998. He studied history and religious education at BYU and earned a PhD in American religious history at Vanderbilt University, focusing on secularization, faith loss, and anti-religious rhetoric. He is frequently involved with interfaith dialogue, has been a featured speaker in both devotional and academic settings across the country. He also hosts a popular YouTube channel and podcast called “Unshaken.”

We’re also really excited that Jared will be speaking at Restore, Faith Matters’ gathering taking place in October. You can find out more about that at faithmatters.org/restore.

In this episode, we spoke with Allison Dayton from Lift and Love, an organization that focuses on strengthening Latter-day Saint LGBTQ families.

We met Allison not long ago and were so impressed by the spirit and love she brings to every interaction. She tells her story in the episode itself, but she’s been deeply involved with the LGBTQ community for many years, first through her older brother Preston, and later through her son. In those interactions she’s lived through the deepest of tragedies, as well as the joy of love, acceptance, and unity.

Because of the journey she’s been on, and the blessings that she says have come into her life because of her LGBTQ child, she wanted to do more to help other families, wards, and leaders support these remarkable children of our Heavenly Parents. That’s why she started Lift and Love, which has grown into a podcast, meetups, retreats, social media accounts, and even an online store where you can find lots of unique, simple and affordable ways to signal love and support to the LGBTQ community. You can find all of that at liftandlove.org.

For us, Allison’s most resonant message was that an LGBTQ child, sibling, or family member of any kind is a true gift: there are so many blessings that come from having these amazing individuals in our lives and communities. That said, Allison expresses this message much better than we could, so we encourage you to listen to her share her feelings in the conversation!

For decades, our understanding of how the brain works has advanced dramatically. Using new theories, methods and tools, like fMRI technology, scientists are beginning to reveal the mysteries of this truly remarkable and complex organ.

One scientist on the cutting edge of this research is Michael Ferguson, a BYU grad who is now researching and teaching at Harvard. 

For Michael, the most exciting result of all this new knowledge of the brain is how it might transform our spiritual lives and help us connect more fully to the divine. He is a pioneer in a field called neurospirituality and his research has been in part inspired by Latter-day Saint theology, in particular the idea that spirit and matter are on a continuum, not radically different substances. In this episode, Michael was interviewed by Zach Davis and Terryl Givens about these fascinating subjects, and the most important insights he’s gained from his research.

Michael is an Instructor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School, a Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School, and a neuroscientist at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. He earned his Doctorate in Bioengineering at the University of Utah, after which he completed post-doctoral fellowships at Cornell University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Today, we’re bringing you a really amazing story that we can’t wait for you to hear. It’s the story of Sam Chiou — a remarkable young man who is nonspeaking and autistic, and who was totally unable to communicate for the first fifteen years of his life. His family was unaware that despite being nonspeaking, he was hearing and understanding everything they were saying — and had so much that he wanted to share.

We don’t want to tell the whole story here, but after this long period of struggle — and largely through the faith and determination of his mother, Mindy — Sam and the Chiou family had a real breakthrough that allowed him to begin to communicate for the first time through the use of a letterboard. Sam’s wisdom and insights — what he’s been thinking all along, but never been able to say — are truly moving.

On this podcast, you’ll hear the voices of Sam’s mom, Mindy, and his sister, Julia, who help tell the story. Sam was also present for the interview. We also had the privilege of sending questions to Sam beforehand, which he took the time to answer and you’ll hear those near the end of the episode.

For those that are watching on YouTube, you’ll be able to see what the use of the letterboard looks like in a brief segment after the episode ends. For those currently listening on audio, just head to our YouTube channel if you’d like to see that.

We want to send a huge thanks to Sam, Mindy, and Julia for coming on and telling this remarkable story.

The Faith Matters family lost a dear friend this week. Kate Holbrook passed away after a long battle with cancer. Kate was a graceful light in our lives. Her strength, her courage, her wisdom, her intelligence and her gentle manner will be with us forever. Our thoughts, prayers and determined support go out to our good friend Sam Brown, Kate’s forever companion, and to their three daughters.

In Kate’s memory and honor, we’re sharing this conversation that she had with Terryl Givens in 2018. The video was called “extraordinary women in Mormon history,” and Kate, of course, is one of them.

As managing historian of women’s history at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints history department, Kate wrote, studied, and interpreted history full-time. Her major research interests were religion, gender, and food. Her primary professional activity was to discover, encourage, and celebrate women’s flourishing in the scholarly and spiritual realms.

We’d encourage everyone who’d like to honor and further Kate’s legacy to donate to a scholarship fund that has been set up in her honor, and that was established by her, together with her family. It was Kate’s wish as she departed mortality that these funds serve to help the women of the Church to flourish in their scholarly and spiritual lives. Kate herself benefited from a similar gift (from Ruth Silver of Denver, Colorado) early in her scholarly career, when she and Sam had minimal financial resources, and she needed time and money to devote to the study of women and religion. She hoped that such giving would become more and more common over time.

To contribute, please head to kateholbrook.org/scholarship.

We love you, Kate, and we miss you.

In the past few decades, scholarship on the New Testament has opened up exciting new ways of understanding the context of the early followers of Jesus and has enabled new interpretations of the texts they wrote. 

One of the leading scholars advancing our knowledge of early Christianity is Laura Nasrallah, a professor at Yale who specializes in New Testament texts and archaeology. In this conversation, Zach Davis and Terryl Givens visited Laura in her New Haven office to discuss topics like the role of women in the early Christian church, how to discern God’s hand in the messy complexity of history, and New Testament practices like speaking in tongues and baptism for the dead. 

Laura Nasrallah is a Professor of New Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale University. Her research and teaching engage issues of gender, race, colonialism, status, and power and bring together New Testament and early Christian literature with the archaeological remains of the Mediterranean world. She is the author of the book Archaeology and the Letters of Paul.

For today’s episode, we were lucky enough to bring back Latter-day Saint philosopher and theologian Adam Miller to talk about his new book, Original Grace. Of the many incredible books we’ve read from Adam, this one, we think, might have the most potential to really change the way we engage God and the world.

We’ll let Adam explain the major theses of the book, but we’ll just say that in many ways it entirely upends traditional understandings of concepts like justice, suffering, mercy, punishment, and, of course — grace. For anyone that has ever felt that they simply aren’t good enough, Adam mines Latter-day Saint scripture and teachings to show that it was never our job to “save ourselves.” As he puts it, “grace-filled partnership with Christ” was the plan all along.

Adam even shares some recent scholarship that shows that one of our faith’s foundational scriptures about grace  — “it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do” — has been misread and misunderstood so widely, and for so long, that its original meaning has been almost reversed.

Adam Miller earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Brigham Young University and an MA and PhD in Philosophy from Villanova University. This book, Original Grace, was published by BYU’s Maxwell Institute and Deseret Book. Adam is the author of several others, including some of our favorites like Letters to a Young Mormon and An Early Resurrection.

For today’s episode, we were really excited to bring on Jason Olson, who, along with James Goldberg, is the author of a new memoir called The Burning Book.

Jason’s story is truly fascinating: he was born into a reform Jewish household with a Jewish mother and a Christian father. As a child and young person, he was always drawn to God and to religion, and found himself very involved in both study and practice in his faith. After his Bar Mitzvah at age 13, he eventually encountered some Latter-day Saint friends who, after many hours of religious discussions over a long period of time, offered him a copy of The Book of Mormon with no real expectations.

Afraid of what his family would think if they saw the book at home, and afraid of what his friends would think if they saw him carting it around, unread, he decided the best option would simply be to burn the book and  destroy the evidence. But just as he was about to do so, Jason had a moment of remarkable spiritual insight — and that’s where his truly unique story begins.

Now a defense diplomat and policy officer with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic studies, Jason came on with us to share his remarkable insights about faith, religious conversion, and God’s expansive plans across all faiths and religions.

The Burning Book was published by BCC Press, and you can find it on Amazon.

2023 Update: The Burning Book won the 2022 Association for Mormon Letters award in creative nonfiction.

The Restoration occurred in a fascinating and complex religious and historical moment in American history, and knowing more about that context can help us more deeply appreciate the blessings and beauty of the Restored Gospel.

One person at the forefront of expanding our knowledge of early American religious history is David Holland, a professor at Harvard Divinity School and also the son of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland. 

In today’s episode Zach Davis and Terryl Givens visited David in his Cambridge office to discuss a range of topics, including how to discern the hand of God in history, whether there’s something about Calvinist theology worth celebrating, and how the experience of being a parent might be the best insight of all into the nature of God. 

David Holland is a Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School and a renowned scholar of American religious history. He earned a BA in history from BYU and a PhD from Stanford University. He is the author of Moroni: A Brief Theological Introduction, published by the Maxwell Institute and Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America, published by Oxford University Press in 2011.

In this episode, we got to speak with Carol Lynn Pearson about her new book, The Love Map: Saving Your Love Relationship and Incidentally Saving the World.

Carol Lynn has been a powerful and well-known voice in the Latter-day Saint community for many years. She’s the author of several remarkable works, including the memoir Goodbye, I Love You, and the book of poetry Finding Mother God: Poems to Heal the World. Her full catalog of works is too impressive to list here, but one other highlight is that she wrote one of our very favorite primary songs: I’ll Walk with You, which was published as a children’s book in 2020.

Carol Lynn will also be speaking with us at Restore, our upcoming gathering in Salt Lake City.

Carol Lynn’s new book is a remarkable work of fiction, that, as Carol Lynn says, is also true. It’s the story of a young woman whose fraught relationship with her husband is reaching a breaking point just as she suffers traumatic injuries in a terrorist attack. But a vision she experiences while recovering gives her something remarkable and unexpected — a “map” that will serve as a guide to healing her most intimate relationship, and allow her to see each person in her life as God does.

Though the book is intended for an audience much wider than just Latter-day Saints, its message resonated deeply with us, and Carol Lynn’s hard-won wisdom and remarkable gifts an artist were abundantly apparent throughout the book.

We’d strongly encourage anyone hoping for healing in their relationships to pick it up — we really think you won’t regret it. You can find the book available on Amazon now.

We want to extend a sincere thanks to Carol Lynn for coming on, and we hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

In this episode, we were honored to bring back our friend Brian McLaren to talk about his brand new book, Do I Stay Christian?

In this new book, Brian addresses a real question which underlies a startling sociological truth: people are leaving Christianity at a rapid pace. In fact, Pew Research shows that today, about 64% people in the US identify as Christian, after falling rapidly from a high of 90% just a few decades back.

Brian’s book takes an unflinching look at the reasons people might leave Christianity, before spending a lot of time on why someone might choose to stay, as Brian has. But you won’t find any “apologetics” here — rather, Brian looks at staying as part of a broader faith journey — one that can take us out of a simple world of black-and-white into a new “stage” of our faith: one filled with paradox, mystery, and love. In one of the most compelling and memorable parts of the book, Brian asks “What if you’re really trying to change stages, not religions?”

While truly not prescribing any particular path for readers, Brian shows how all people of good will — including those with doubts, questions, and criticisms — can do so much to benefit their institutions and traditions if they choose to stay. We think this book does so much good work to paint compelling reasons for doing so, and to help illustrate a path forward.

Brian McLaren an author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for “a new kind of Christianity” – just, generous, and working with people of all faiths for the common good. He is a faculty member of The Living School and podcaster with Learning How to See, which are part of the Center for Action and Contemplation. We’d also recommend going back and listening to Brian’s first appearance on the Faith Matters podcast in episode #67, where we discuss his book Faith After Doubt.

We’ve been thinking and talking a lot recently about a phenomenon that sometimes happens and that we’ve occasionally felt ourselves — something you might call a “spiritual whiplash.” It can happen when we’re really uplifted by something: maybe a book we’ve read, an inspiring group of people we’ve been around, or even a transcendental experience in nature. We’re feeling fed, and our cup is full… but then, we come back down to earth. We’re faced with the realities of the mundane, and the imperfections and humanity of the people all around us, including ourselves. 

So — what are we supposed to do when this happens? Is it realistic to expect to stay in this spiritually uplifted state all the time? What about when even our Church meetings don’t feel like they’re recharging our batteries, but instead are draining them? When we’re feeling fed by something, how do we take that feeling with us to share in our everyday settings and communities, rather than resenting the contrast between them? How can we look at members of our communities as God might, rather than judging them for not meeting our standards — or even judging them for what we perceive as them judging us?

To discuss these issues, we brought back a trusted friend and mentor, Patrick Mason. Patrick is the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, and a frequent guest on this show and advisor to Faith Matters. He’s spoken and written quite a bit on this topic, including in his book Planted. He was an amazing conversation partner as we worked our way through some of these questions. We can’t thank him enough for coming back on.

As a note, we referenced our recent Restore gathering several times in the conversation, including presentations that were given by Brian McLaren, Jared Halverson, and Jody Moore. We also reference a few faith development frameworks that you’ll hear, including Brian’s which you can learn more about in his book Faith After Doubt.

For this episode, we were happy to bring on someone that’s been on our list for a long time  — scholar and writer James Goldberg.

James is a fascinating person and Latter-day Saint, and brings a truly unique perspective to our faith. In his words, his family is Jewish on one side, Sikh on the other, and Mormon in the middle. He works as a historian at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and is also a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, documentary filmmaker, scholar, and translator. He’s won the Association for Mormon letters awards in both the Drama and Novel categories, for different works, and has been a finalist in the Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, and Criticism categories. He’s also one of a rotating cast of scholars on BYUtv’s Come Follow Up series. 

Our conversation was wide-ranging and it turns out James has interesting insights to share on just about anything — so we covered several topics, including how Latter-day Saints can approach the Old Testament, wrestling with other difficult scripture or history, and the virtue of the slow, distilled process of creating poetry. We also discussed James’s book of poetry, Let Me Drown with Moses and its provocative title, including the virtue of choosing faith in a chaotic world while maintaining our own moral compass.

This week, Faith Matters is bringing you a story that defies expectations so completely that you really have to hear it straight from the source. Our guest was Daryl Davis, who’s easily one of the most fascinating and inspiring people we’ve ever met.

Daryl has spent his career as a professional musician, including decades playing alongside rock and roll legends Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis. He’s a master of multiple instruments, but specializes on the piano, where he blends unbelievable talent, skill, and passion to create truly incredible music. Make no mistake however, there's much more to Daryl than just music.

Daryl first experienced anti-Black racism from strangers as a young boy, and it inspired a lifelong question: “how can you hate me when you don’t even know me?” Over many years, that question eventually led him to not just meet, but befriend members and leaders of Ku Klux Klan: as those friendships have blossomed, love and respect have grown in the place of hate. Daryl now estimates that he’s been instrumental in persuading over 200 white supremacists to leave their hate groups. 

Along with his story, Daryl shares a provocative message: that we should continuously allow people with incorrect or even abhorrent viewpoints to air their opinions. In Daryl’s view, ignorance is the root of fear, hate, and destruction. And only by remaining together in the same cultural spaces, and even actively seeking out and conversing with those we disagree with, can we counter the root cause — ignorance — with education and exposure to better views. That’s how Daryl says we can then eliminate the symptoms of fear, hate, and destruction.

Daryl has told his story on platforms like The Joe Rogan Experience and TedX, where he’s garnered tens of millions of  views and downloads. 

We want to thank the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, known by their acronym “FAIR,” who introduced us to Daryl and made this interview happen. FAIR is nonpartisan organization dedicated to advancing civil rights and liberties for all Americans, and promoting a common culture based on fairness, understanding, and humanity. Daryl is a Senior Fellow and Advisory Board Member at FAIR, and you can find out more about their foundation at fairforall.org. 

In 1945 fifty-two papyrus texts were found concealed in an earthenware jar buried in the Egyptian desert. They turned out to be early Christian writings, some dating all the way back to the first few centuries AD. Elaine Pagels, a historian of religion at Princeton university, has dedicated her life to studying and interpreting these texts and it turns out that there are some surprisingly powerful connections between some of the teachings in these ancient texts and the doctrines of the Restored Gospel. 

In this episode, Zach Davis spoke with Elaine about her life and research, the importance of wrestling with the big questions of existence, and how religion can open transformative new relationships and perspectives.

Elaine Pagels is a historian of religion and the Harrington Spear Paine Professor at Princeton University. Her ground-breaking books include The Gnostic Gospels, The Origin of Satan, and the New York Times best-seller Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. Her most recent book tells her own story and why she loves investigating the history of religion: Why Religion? A Personal Story.

*This discusses the topic of sexual abuse and prevention of sexual abuse. Please use discretion in determining whether or not this is a suitable episode for you or for anyone listening in.*

Sexual abuse and sexual violence are shockingly prevalent. In the United States, about 1 in 4 girls, and 1 in 13 boys experience child sexual abuse. In their lifetimes, over half of women and 1 in 3 men will experience sexual violence. And it’s remarkably common for child sexual abuse to go undisclosed for decades: One study showed that the average age at the time of reporting child sex abuse was 52 years old.

As Latter-day Saints, we’re encouraged, to “do everything we can to prevent abuse and to protect and help victims,” Pres. Nelson re-emphasized this in his conference talk last month. we hope this conversation can help us all do that more effectively. 

Our guests are Sage Williams and Rebecca Bettilyon (please listen to the podcast intro to find out more about Rebecca and Sage).

With Sage and Rebecca, we cover issues like the prevalence of abuse, who perpetrators often are, how to recognize abuse, the body's autonomic response system and how we could teach the law of chastity to prevent feelings of shame, and how our communities can be one of the best tools we have in preventing abuse.

All of us recognize that our comments in the conversation today are raw, real, imperfect and incomplete. We’re all still learning how to articulate our thoughts and feelings on these difficult topics in public, and together with Rebecca and Sage, we ask for some grace and understanding of our intent to inspire healing for everyone impacted by sexual abuse.

NOTES:

• CDC statistics for adults and children
• Policy Brief, including average age of disclosing sexual abuse)
• Shame vs guilt
• Reference to children getting sex education from pornography
• Conversation prompt to prepare children for an encounter with pornography:
• Reference for the quote on forgiveness:
  Neil L. Andersen, The Divine Gift of Forgiveness, Deseret Book Co., 2019, p. 225. 
• Abuse.churchofjesuschrist.org
• Liahona articles on consent, sexual assault
• For the Strength of Youth article on relationship boundaries:
• Friend article on body safety: 
• The Mama Bear Effect

A few years ago, we were invited by some good friends to see a Christmas concert their kids were participating in. We were happy to be invited, and of course, wanted to support our friends and their kids! So we headed to Salt Lake City expecting a fun evening.

But when we walked into Abravanel Hall, we knew something was going on that we didn’t understand. The place was buzzing — it was packed full of people, with a tangible excitement in the air. We took our seats, and when the lights went down, nearly 1000 musicians flooded the stage and filled the balconies around us. When the music began, we were hit with a wall of sound unlike anything we’d ever heard. The quality of instrumentation, singing, and arrangement was truly incredible — by the time the concert was over, it felt like every person in attendance had been profoundly moved.

That was our first introduction to Millennial Choirs and Orchestras, known as MCO, founded in 2007 by Brett and Brandon Stewart — and now home to over 4,000 musicians in five different chapters.

Brett and Brandon are brothers, both with incredible musical resumes. Brett received a doctorate degree in choral conducting with cognate studies in composition from the University of Cincinnati College–Conservatory of Music, a master’s degree in choral conducting from California State University, Long Beach, and a bachelor’s degree in piano performance from BYU. All in all, he’s been teaching music for nearly three decades, and is an accomplished conductor, composer, pianist, and vocalist.

Brandon received a bachelor’s degree from BYU before going on to receive a Master’s Degree from Juilliard, and being invited to complete a doctorate program and teach at Juilliard — before choosing to instead join his brother Brett and found MCO. In addition to his talents as a conductor, composer, and vocalist, Brandon has been second-prize winner of the Juilliard Concerto Competition and the first prize winner of the MTNA national collegiate piano competition.

Brett and Brandon tell the  founding story in the episode itself, but here we’ll just say that these two have felt guided each step of this journey over the last fifteen years, including in some difficult moments that have turned into remarkable blessings for the choir and for audiences around the world.

We’re releasing this episode this week because over the next few weeks, MCO will be conducting its Christmas Concert series, with concerts in Utah, Arizona, California, Texas, and Idaho. You can still find tickets to the concerts and we can promise that you won’t be disappointed. To get those tickets, head to millennial.org.

You can also find a book about the MCO story, called Divine Orchestration,  written by our friend Greg Trimble and available on Amazon.

Everything seemed to be going right for Jason Portnoy. While studying engineering at Stanford, his career took a sharp and unexpected turn upward when he met the CEO of a new startup — a company that became PayPal. He was soon offered a job, jumped on the rocketship and didn’t look back. The years that followed led him to success after success, and Jason became a prominent figure in the high-flying worlds of tech and venture capital. The money and opportunities were endless. In the meantime, Jason got married and had his first child. He was living the dream.

But not everything was as it seemed. In fact, Jason was living a secret double life; one that had started with online pornography and led to a dark world of lies, deceptions, extramarital affairs, envelopes full of money, and casual hookups. Eventually, the two worlds collided, causing Jason to rethink everything: where he was, how he got there, and where he was going.

Jason has since turned his life completely around — largely influenced by his life coach, Jason learned that shame thrives in secrecy, that taking radical responsibility for one’s life really can change everything, and that in very literal ways, the truth really does set us free. He’s emerged with a new sense of spirituality and mission, and finds himself on a quest to live a life full of love and service.

Jason recently released a new memoir called Silicon Valley Porn Star, a deeply vulnerable and moving book. And in this episode, he joined us to tell his story. We’re deeply grateful to Jason for his willingness to share what he’s been through and what he’s learned. 

This episode is being released jointly with Jody Moore from Better Than Happy, and was co-hosted by Jody and Tim.

We couldn’t be more excited about today’s episode, and it’s with someone we’ve wanted to get on the podcast for years — Peter Enns. 

Pete is a well-known bible scholar and is the Abram S. Clemens professor of Bible Studies at Eastern University in Pennsylvania. 

In recent years, Pete has become well known for several highly popular books, including How the Bible Actually Works, The Bible Tells Me So, and the book we discussed with him today: The Sin of Certainty.

In addition to his research and writing, Pete co-hosts the podcast The Bible for Normal People.  

In The Sin of Certainty, Pete opens up about his own faith journey, including what he calls “uh-oh” moments — those moments that, as Pete says, “wreak havoc with our neatly arranged thoughts of God, the world, and our place in it.”  He makes the argument that a faith preoccupied with correct thinking can quickly become exhausting as we try to fit our “uh-oh” moments into our previous ways of thinking and believing. Pete insists that there’s a different way — the way of listening to our “uh-oh” moments and learning from them, even letting them change us  — and finding our faith transform from a rigid certainty about God to a radical trust in God.

We really think you’re going to enjoy this conversation, and we’re super grateful to Pete for coming on.

In Japanese culture there is a beautiful practice called Kintsugi, which translates roughly to “golden repair”. This is how it works: when a piece of ceramic breaks, like a teacup or plate, instead of gluing the broken pieces back together so that the cracks are hidden, a special gold or silver adhesive is used so that the fractures are emphasized and even celebrated. 

In this episode, Zach Davis spoke with Makoto Fujimura, an artist and writer who has reflected deeply on the meaning of kintsugi and more broadly about the relationship of art and faith. In their conversation, they explore how beauty can help us draw near to God, the role of creativity in bridging our differences, and how we can live with hope even in times of despair.

Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose art has been described by David Brooks of New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time”. Fujimura is also an arts advocate, writer, and speaker and was recently awarded the Kuyper prize for his religious engagement in matters of social, political, and cultural significance. He is the author of several books, including Art+Faith: A Theology of Making.

Today we’re sharing with you one of our absolute favorite presentations from our Restore gathering that happened in October  — a talk by Patrick Mason that he called “Envisioning the Restoration’s Third Century.”

As we prepare for our Church to enter into this next era, it’s become increasingly clear that something fundamental has changed; people inside and outside the Church are seeing the world and their place in it in different ways. Patrick points out that the world itself is rapidly becoming more secular, or, at the very least, less religious. The response of some of our Christian brothers and sisters has been to advocate for a withdrawal from the world, the creation of a religious counterculture set up opposite mainstream secular society.

But Patrick advocates for something different here — he says that even if that were possible, it’s probably not a good idea, and it’s certainly not what Jesus asked us to do. Not only did Christ’s incarnation set a literal example of going “into the world,” he also told his disciples explicitly to do so in his great commission. 

Patrick also reminds us that we’re to do that Christian work not with fear, but with a spirit of love — following Christ’s example again by ministering to the broken-hearted, the betrayed, and the marginalized — and to those affected by war, poverty, racism, or any other type of prejudice or violence. That’s how Patrick believes we can truly fulfill our mission as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and participate in the audacious work of “saving the world.”

You’ll also hear Dawn Dimick, who’s recently become the first woman to be approved by the Church to be an army chaplain, ask some really insightful follow-up questions to Patrick after his presentation.

This was an absolute highlight for us at Restore and we’re so happy to share it with you. If you’d like to see Patrick’s presentation visually, along with his slides, you can head to the Faith Matters YouTube channel. And of course, digital access to our entire Restore gathering is available for purchase at faithmatters.org/restore.

As we imagine many of you have, we’ve been thinking a lot about Jesus these last few weeks. From the nativity we set up in our living room to the movies we’re watching to the hymns we’re singing in Church, this is a time that in so many beautiful ways, makes him more prominent in our lives and minds.

And one question naturally comes up from there: when we imagine Jesus, what do we see? For many of us, it’s probably heavily influenced by the art we grew up with. If you’re like us, you might even be imagining the famous Del Parson painting, featuring the red-robed Jesus with piercing blue eyes.

But as today’s guest, Esther Candari, points out, some of this imagery strays quite far from what Jesus, a middle-eastern man born 2000 years ago, probably looked like. But she’s also quick to point out that historical accuracy may not be the point either — none of us do know what Jesus looked like. And if Jesus is the Savior of the World, then couldn’t there be room for diverse images Jesus in religious art that allows members of a similarly diverse, worldwide Church to resonate deeply and personally with it?

That’s what we spoke about with Esther in today’s episode, and we found her perspectives fascinating. To give you just a bit more about her background, Esther Hi’ilani Candari is an Asian-American artist and educator from Hawai’i. She has an BFA from BYU-H, an MFA from Liberty University, studied at the New York Academy of Art, and interned with Joseph Brickey. One of her favorite projects so far was working on the Rome Temple Visitors Center mural with Joseph. Her work can be found in galleries and bookstores across Utah including Deseret Book. In addition to her studio work, she teaches art courses for Southern Virginia University, manages programming for Writ & Vision Gallery, and serves on the Board of Directors for the Dialogue Foundation. In her ward she serves as the first counselor in the Relief Society Presidency. 

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Lee Correia is the artist we mentioned: https://ascartistry.myshopify.com/products/heavenly-mother-print

Tips from Esther:

• You choose what is displayed in your lessons and homes. We are a home centered church. Teaching the Savior’s Way, the current official teacher’s manual for church curriculum, urges instructors to, “Consider how using music, stories, pictures, and other forms of art can invite the Spirit, clarify gospel principles in memorable ways, and help learners relate the gospel to their everyday lives.”
• Buy from artists directly.
• Always credit art when you repost it and if you are using it for any materials/products, even if it is just for church. Check with the artist first.
• Find ways to support artists of color! It doesn’t just have to be cash. Personal example, giving educational information and experiences freely. If you know them personally, offer to watch their kids if they are a mom artist. Donate supplies. Volunteer what skills/resources you have to help them promote their work. 
• Volunteering to support group activities like I AM.
• If you are an artist, create art that is genuine to your personal experience.
• Deseret Books functions as a business, vote with your dollars.
• Write letters to decision making entities, such as the president of Deseret Book, or members of the temple art committee. Include notes on what was done well as well as what needs to improve. A little bit of strategy can go a long way and sometimes people who haven’t done the work that you have to see biases in art need to be shown where they got it right and where they got it wrong so they know what to aim for more frequently. 
• Have open conversations with your ward/stake leaders about what art is selected for church buildings.

Meetinghouse Mosaic: https://meetinghousemosaic.com/

This week, we were honored to bring on a guest we’ve hoped to have on for years — Susan Cain. In 2013, she released her book Quiet: the Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking.  But today, we brought Susan on to talk about her new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, another masterwork that reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and has been praised by Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, and Adam Grant. This book touched us deeply with its key truth: that somehow, feelings of deep pain and deep joy are often intimately linked. In Susan’s words, “Bittersweetness is a tendency to states of long­ing, poignancy, and sorrow; an acute aware­ness of passing time; and a curiously piercing joy at the beauty of the world. It recognizes that light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired.”

In this conversation with Susan, we talked about how sadness may be the strongest agent available to us for connection to others, how embracing bittersweetness may be the antidote to toxic perfectionism, and how longing is the very essence of faith.

Susan’s books have been translated into 40 languages, and spent over eight years on The New York Times best seller list. Fast Company magazine has named Susan one of its Most Creative People in Business.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Her TED talks on the power of introverts and the hidden power of sad songs and rainy days have been viewed over 40 million times. She is an honors graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School. She lives in the Hudson River Valley with her husband, two sons and golden doodle, Sophie. You can find out more about Susan and her work at susancain.net.

Check out Susan's 30-day “Bittersweet: Practices and Reflections course” at courses.susancain.net.

This week, we’re bringing back a couple of our favorite guests and close friends, McArthur Krishna and Bethany Brady Spalding. McArthur and Bethany have just released a new book titled: In the Image of Our Heavenly Parents: A Couples’ Guide to Creating a More Divine Marriage.

Bethany and McArthur have done super interesting and important work with this book — it uses the model of “divine partnership,” based on the doctrine of Heavenly Parents, to inspire couples to create powerful and fulfilling partnerships in their own marriages. They do so in each chapter with sections that they call “prophetic counsel,” mining the rich resources we have from Church leaders that point to true equality and partnership in marriage, as well as “professional expertise,” allowing marriage and family therapists to help couples find practical ways to make that ideal a reality.

The book also functions like a workbook with lots of practices that help us understand our own values and goals for our relationships: we really think it’s something lots of Latter-day Saint couples would enjoy going through together.

It really is something special that they’ve put together, and we’re grateful they sat down with us to talk about it.

McArthur Krishna has a master’s degree in communication from BYU, and also co-owned Free Range, which is an award-winning marketing business focused on telling social justice stories. In 2011, she moved to India and started writing books, which she’s been doing ever since.

Bethany Brady Spalding has a Master of Public Health from the University of London, and has worked for both large, international organizations and small, local non-profits to advance children’s health and wellness in South Africa, India, and the USA. She calls Richmond, Virginia home where she runs school gardens, writes books, and raises three girls.

This book was published as an e-book and can be purchased at dstreetpress.com.

This week, we’re excited to share with you another presentation from our Restore conference, and one that we think was super memorable to everyone who attended. It was given by our friend Jared Halverson, and called “Don’t Let a Good Faith Crisis Go to Waste.”

In it, Jared shares his experiences as a scholar, teacher, mentor, and person of faith who’s been through — and helped others work through — faith crises and faith journeys of all types. And what we loved about it was he completely removes “fear” from the experience of faith crisis — for Jared, not only is faith crisis “ok,” it’s actually a sacred space that many people have even found necessary for their own continued progress on the path of faith.

While honoring many of the developmental faith frameworks that have helped so many, Jared brings his own to the table: a simple 3-stage model that he calls “creation, fall, atonement.” As you listen, you’ll hear the depth of this framework and understand why it can be such a useful map for many people as they experience shifts in their faith. Tim and I really related to what Jared had to say here, especially because we consider our own faith crises gifts we wouldn’t give up for anything — and Jared honors the “crisis” part of it while pointing to something even more beautiful on the other side.

Jared is an associate professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, and has taught religion courses at the high school and college level since 1998. He studied history and religious education at BYU and earned a PhD in American religious history at Vanderbilt University, focusing on secularization, faith loss, and anti-religious rhetoric. He is frequently involved with interfaith dialogue, has been a featured speaker in both devotional and academic settings across the country. He also hosts a popular YouTube channel and podcast called “Unshaken.”

For today’s episode, we spoke with Kristian Heal.  BYU’s Maxwell Institute has just released an amazing new volume of research called Ancient Christians, that offers remarkable insights into Christianity’s earliest centuries. It’s intended for Latter-day Saints, but based on the best scholarship available to give us a glimpse into what these ancient Christians believed,  how they worshiped, and the ways in which they saw and experienced the world.

Kristian Heal was one of the editors of this volume, and wrote the chapter that we spoke with him about, called Preaching Christ. In his chapter, Kristian explores several fascinating topics that we got to ask him about, including the ritual of baptism, and what were referred to as “the deep mysteries of baptism,” what sabbath worship looked like early on, and how he deals with the concept of “apostasy” and “restoration,” including how we can view the evolution of Christianity without seeing it through an “us vs. them” paradigm.

And for those of you just being introduced to Kristian and his work: he’s a Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He received a BA in Jewish History and Hebrew from University College London, an MSt in Syriac studies from the University of Oxford, and a PhD in Theology from the University of Birmingham.

As we study the New Testament this year, we actually hope to bring you more of the insights that the Maxwell Institute has shared through this book.

For today’s episode, we were honored to bring back the inimitable Terryl Givens. Terryl and his son Nathaniel have recently released a new book, called Into the Headwinds: Why Belief Has Always Been Hard  — And Still Is.

This is a remarkable book and addresses some of life’s most profound questions, especially as they pertain to the modern world. Terryl and Nathaniel argue that though many of us see faith as “hard” in our scientific and rational age — but the reality is that for many years faith may have been too easy. People of faith, and Christians in particular, have long benefited from being a part of the in-crowd—since Rome adopted Christianity as its official religion, it’s been quite comfortable to call oneself a Christian. But Terryl and Nathaniel say that that may have produced a more fragile discipleship, and one that focused more on how we believe than on how we live.

So in this conversation, we dived into all of this with Terryl — including how he defines faith, the limits of agency, how reckoning with our own biases is key to our own spiritual life, and how we can look well outside our own tradition to find examples of true discipleship.

We’re sure that most of you know Terryl, but just in case: Terryl Givens is a Neal L. Maxwell Senior Fellow at Brigham Young University. He formerly held the University of Richmond's Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English, where he was professor of literature and religion. He is the author and coauthor of numerous books, including All Things New, The God Who Weeps, and The Crucible of Doubt.

Nathaniel Givens, Terryl’s co-author on this book, has been published in First Things, the Deseret News, and RealClearReligion on the topics of faith and politics. With graduate degrees in economics and systems engineering, Nathaniel works as a data analyst and entrepreneur.

This week's guest is Richard Bushman, who is simply one of the most important scholarly voices ever in the Latter-day Saint tradition.

Of course, Richard has been interviewed many times over the years, and we wanted to make sure that we covered new ground while asking for his perspective on some of the questions that have propelled and perplexed us throughout our faith journey.

So in this very wide-ranging conversation, Richard spoke about his own early journey from agnosticism to faith; why learning history, and learning from history, are so important; the revelatory process, including his experience giving many patriarchal blessings; the legacy of Rough Stone Rolling, and even why he wants to live in a world where there could be such a thing as gold plates.

Richard received his AM, AB, and PhD in the history of American civilization from Harvard University. Through the years he has taught at Harvard, BYU, Boston University, the University of Delaware, and Columbia. He married his wife, Claudia Lauper Bushman, in August 1955, and together they have four sons and two daughters. He’s written many books, including, of course, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, which has been called “the crowning achievement of the new Mormon history.” Richard served a mission New England and Atlantic Canada, and his Church callings over the years include seminary teacher, bishop, stake president, and stake patriarch.

Richard is also the co-founder and Chairman of Center for Latter-day Saint Arts, a project that is incredibly important to him; you’ll hear him discuss in the episode why he believes that art is the next frontier for the Church, and why he’s so excited about what’s to come. The Center will be having a large festival in 2024; to stay up to date with that project or to donate, head to centerforlatterdaysaintarts.org.

This week, we’re sharing another one of our favorite presentations from our Restore conference, given by Jennifer Finlayson-Fife and called Developing Sexual Wholeness.

In her talk, Jennifer brilliantly laid out human sexuality in terms of development, in the same way we might talk about adult development or spiritual development. Jennifer teaches that in its earliest stages, our sexuality is egocentric and focused on ourselves; eventually, moves into a social stage with deeper awareness of others and concerned with belonging, and finally, into a self-authoring stage, where we both know our own mind and move beyond self-preoccupation and into expansive love.

Jennifer is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with a Ph.D in Counseling Psychology from Boston College, where she wrote her dissertation on LDS women and sexuality. She teaches online courses and live workshops to individuals and couples seeking to develop their capacity for deeper emotional and sexual intimacy.  Additionally, she offers limited private and group coaching services to individuals and couples who have benefitted from her podcasts and courses and are looking for more direct input on improving their lives and relationships.  She is frequent contributor on the subjects of sexuality, relationships, and spirituality to many Latter-day Saint themed blogs, magazines, and podcasts. You can find her podcast “Conversations with Dr. Jennifer,” on major podcast platforms, and find out more about her work at finlayson-fife.com.

Today, you’re going to hear a really special episode. It’s a conversation with Melissa Inouye and Kate Holbrook that took place last summer, not long before Kate’s passing in August 2022. We spoke with Kate and Melissa about an amazing new book that they co-edited called Every Needful Thing: Essays on the Life of the Mind and the Heart.

In their book, Kate and Melissa gathered so many remarkable Latter-day Saint women who are true leaders in their fields, including academics, psychology, medicine, law, and many more. These women also represent countries around the world; it’s a truly diverse book and gives wonderful insight into how broad the definition of “Latter-day Saint” can be.

Kate and Melissa talked through so many important questions with us, including how we can belong exactly as we are and how we may have more choice in the matter of belonging than we think we do; how it’s important to be thoughtful as we think about change and progress in a global Church; and perhaps most importantly, how we can reconcile both mind and spirit as we live our lives. As the book’s description puts it: “Instead of pushing us to choose between faith and reason, love and law, truth within the restored gospel and truth in the wider world of God’s children, these writers urge us to seek ‘anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report’ and learn to live in a world of complexity and abundance.”

Melissa received AB and PhD degrees from Harvard University. She is a senior lecturer in Asian studies at the University of Auckland and a historian at the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

Kate received a BA from Brigham Young University, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD from Boston University. At the time of her death, Kate was the Academic Outreach Director at the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where she focused on women’s history.

We’re really grateful that we got to hold this conversation with these two, especially at the time we did. Kate was an influence for beauty, truth, and goodness wherever she went, including on us at Faith Matters. And for those interested in furthering Kate’s work — when she passed away, a scholarship was set up in her honor, which anyone can donate to at  https://www.kateholbrook.org/scholarship/

This new book, Every Needful Thing is available on Amazon and at Deseret Book.

** To help, head to https://www.toukrainewithlove.org **

It’s been exactly a year since the world received the shocking news that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, and exactly a year since the lives of millions of Ukrainian people changed forever.

As news of troop movements, cities under siege, refugee crises and all kinds of geopolitical saber-rattling has come to those of us outside Ukraine, many of us have gone through varying stages of shock, dismay, and fear. But what have been harder to come by than news are stories: the stories of families whose lives have been upended, of women and men who have displayed true heroism, and of the bright light of miracles, big and small, shining through the darkness of war.

And today, we’re bringing you a few of those stories, starting with the story of Svitlana Miller and her remarkable organization, To Ukraine With Love. This is an organization we’ve gotten to know over the past several months and have been astounded at the sheer effectiveness of the work they’re doing: providing immediate needs like food, sleeping bags, and generators — even building homes for people displaced by the war. We’ve been stunned by the impact of each dollar they’ve raised, all of which goes 100% to direct aid in Ukraine, not to wages for team members or any other expense.

Svitlana Miller is a native Ukrainian who founded To Ukraine With Love  once she saw the immediate the needs of her friends, family, and country. She had been running an international education agency from the United States since 2009, and with her team and contacts in Ukraine, Svitlana was able to mobilize aid in a remarkably short amount of time.

Svitlana was joined in this conversation by her team member Nancy Cadjan, who has over a decade of experience working with the Global 500 C-Suite and the heads of HR in the biggest organizations in the world. She lived in Russia in the 1990s and has been connected to Eastern Europe for the past 30 years and immediately jumped in to help with both feet when this crisis began.

We were honored to have these two on, because they’ve been instrumental in helping us be more connected to Ukraine. Through them, we’ve met families whose homes have been literally destroyed in a moment by direct missile hits, and we’ve been able to learn from and connect with on-the-ground heroes who have changed everything about their work and lives to help relieve suffering.

We really believe that these two, and this organization, are remarkable in the work that they’re doing and the impact they’re having. If you listen to this episode, and feel moved to help, you too can be a part of their direct relief efforts, getting food on tables and roofs over heads. You can find out how to help or get in touch at toukrainewithlove.org.

Several years ago, Matthew Holland, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s son, was on a sabbatical at Oxford University. One day, he passed by a door that said “Chaplain.” Intrigued, he decided to knock. Thus began a remarkable relationship with Andrew Teal, an Anglican priest and lecturer in theology at Pembroke College, Oxford. Since then, Andrew has developed a close friendship with Elder Holland, attended General Conference, given a BYU devotional address and is currently partnering with BYU to establish a center for faith and reconciliation at Oxford.

In this episode, Zach Davis spoke with Andrew about his ongoing journey of friendship with the Latter-day Saint community, how we can build truly meaningful relationships with those who are different than us, and why, for Andrew, God’s infinite love for us remains inconceivable. 

Andrew Teal is a chaplain, fellow and lecturer in theology at Pembroke College, Oxford University. He writes and teaches in many areas, including Historical & Systematic Theology, Early Christianity, and the arts. He is the author of many publications, including the 2013 book, The God-Man: Athanasius in Early Christianity.

For this week’s episode, we’re bringing you a story that we really think will uplift and inspire you. Our guest was Liz Shropshire, the founder of Peace Through Music.

In our interview with her, Liz tells the story of how she got started teaching music to children in Kosovo who had been affected by the war and ethnic cleansing that took place there in the 1990s. She knew just two things: she could teach music, and she wanted to help: so she got on a plane and made her way to a refugee camp where she began teaching her first group of kids. There was no way Liz could foresee the broad and deep impact that this inspired work would eventually have — and she’ll share some of that with you today.

Liz had tons of great insights to share, but one of the most memorable was that the environments in which children grow up can give them dramatically different worldviews. Liz has found that when a child grows up in war and without meaningful work or learning, the message they learn implicitly is that nothing matters. But by giving children ways to volunteer and serve, they can become leaders in their communities and begin to see that they can make a real difference for people.

Liz also shared insights on how each of us can find our own unique ways to lift and serve in the world, and her advice boils down to something simple: just get to work, and trust that God will step in if we’re heading in the wrong direction.

We want to send Liz a special thank you for coming on and sharing her inspiring story. If you’d like to contribute or help in some other way, check out Liz’s organization's website at https://www.peacethroughmusicinternational.org

This week we’re sharing with you one of the most popular presentations from our Restore gathering that happened last October  — a talk by Joseph Grenny called “The Other Side.”

As a young father, Joseph was determined to have the perfect family. All of kids would be active, go on missions, go to BYU and be stalwart. But that dream was shattered when two of his sons got involved in drugs and crime. Eventually, one son overdosed and almost lost his life. 

As a result of that grief and helplessness, Joseph began a spiritual journey that transformed his understanding of God, the atonement and the path to peace. 

He eventually felt called to put these principles into action by creating a school for former felons seeking to transform their lives. Called The Other Side Academy, it is a remarkable organization and community located in downtown Salt Lake City that provides miraculous and life-changing hope and healing. 

This was an absolute highlight for us at Restore and we’re so happy to share it with you. If you’d like to see Joseph’s presentation visually which is probably what we’d recommend since his slides are so compelling, you can head to the Faith Matters website or YouTube channel. 

Joseph Grenny is a New York Times bestselling author of eight books, including the leadership and communication classic Crucial Conversations. He is a co-founder of Unitus Labs, an international nonprofit that has helped over 15 million of the world’s poorest to move toward self-reliance. And in 2015 he and his colleagues started The Other Side Academy, a 2 and a half year school for those with long histories of crime, addiction and homelessness.

When BYU professor Eric Huntsman was growing up, he spent time among Catholics in Pittsburgh and Baptists in Alabama and came to love the different ways other Christian denominations worshiped Jesus. And one of his favorite ways that other Christians worshiped was during Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter Sunday. Over the years, Eric began incorporating many Holy Week traditions into his spiritual practice and found it helped him connect more deeply with the Savior and his atoning sacrifice. 

To help other Latter-day Saints who may be interested in learning more about Holy Week and developing ways of celebrating it, Eric, along with co-author Trevan Hatch, has recently published a book called Greater Love Hath No Man: A Latter-day Saint Guide to Celebrating the Easter Season. 

In today’s conversation, Zach Davis spoke with Eric about his journey as a disciple and scholar of Jesus, what traditional Holy Week commemoration looks like, and how Easter is a time when we can connect with our fellow Christian brothers and sisters.

Eric Huntsman is a professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU. In April of 2023, Eric began a two and a half year appointment of the BYU Jerusalem Studies Program, from where he joined us for this conversation. After initially researching Roman history, Eric’s scholarly efforts have focused on the life and ministry of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels, especially the Gospel of John.

This week we’re bringing you a conversation with Rachel Rueckert, a really amazing young writer who recently published a memoir called East Winds: A Global Quest to Reckon with Marriage.

Rachel’s story is a fascinating one. Perhaps due to a highly tumultuous home life as a child, she inherited her suspicions about marriage early. Growing up in the Church, there was a constant drumbeat about marriage and eternal families, but those lessons always seemed to raise more questions for her than they did answers.

Eventually, Rachel met her husband-to-be, Austin, and soon found herself on the adventure of a lifetime — a year-long backpacking trip on a shoestring budget that would serve as a honeymoon and bring her face to face with marriage in its stark reality. In between an escape from rabid dogs in the Amazon, accidentally stumbling upon democracy protests in Hong Kong, and a 500-mile trek through Spain in sandals, Rachel found a way to finally confront her deepest questions. This book is the incredibly insightful and beautifully written result, and we feel lucky to have, in a sense, gone in this journey with her.

In our conversation with Rachel, we were able to explore her “quest to reckon with marriage” as well as some other fascinating themes in the book: how does one learn to trust their intuition, or recognize the Spirit? How should life’s biggest decisions get made? And at Church in any community, how can we truly practice being brothers and sisters when we all have such different perspectives?

We’re so excited to share this conversation with you, and are confident in saying that you really need to pick up Rachel’s book. It was published by BCC Press, and is available online at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

For today’s episode, we thought we’d bring you a really special story that we think we can all learn from, especially during this Easter season as we ponder concepts like redemption and new life.

Our guest was Dave Durocher, the Executive Director of The Other Side Academy in Salt Lake City. If you’re an especially up-to-date listener, or you went to Restore last year, you’ve heard a little bit about The Other Side’s story from Joseph Grenny, Dave’s partner and the Academy’s Chairman.

But with Dave, you’ll get to hear about “the other side” of The Other Side. By the time he was 38, Dave had been to prison four times for a total of 15 years. Not long after his release, Dave was arrested again and facing a 29-year prison sentence — but there was one last chance to turn his life around.

We’ll let Dave tell the rest of the story, but we can tell you that it’s just as wild and inspiring as you are imagining.

Dave’s story seems to teach us that while we like to tell dramatic stories of conversion and change, the reality is that there are many lives in which God seems to be doing slow, patient, redemptive work. The manner in which it happens and the timeline it’s on can be as surprising as Jesus’s resurrection was to his disciples; the journey can be excruciating, but as Terryl and Fiona Givens are so quick to point out — God never seems to give up on anyone.

It’s clear that Dave is now doing exactly what he was meant to do all along — and there may have been no other way to get there. Also, quick note about this episode- there's actually a little bit of swearing. So if you are sensitive to that or have little ears who may be listening with you, we just want to make sure you have a heads up. 

In June 2015, a white supremacist entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and murdered 9 members of the church during a Bible study. During the first court hearing, a number of family members of victims said that they forgave the murderer, Dylann Roof. This act of forgiveness shocked many people. Some people were shocked by witnessing such an act of Christian charity. Others were shocked because they thought expressing forgiveness for such an act, especially so quickly, was wrong, and was only perpetuating the violence on the community under attack. 

In his new book, Forgiveness: An Alternative Account, Harvard minister Matthew Potts draws upon this event and others to explore the deep complexity and transformative power of forgiveness. As he shares in today’s conversation with Zach Davis, forgiveness is less about settling debts of harm and more about learning to move forward in new life, even if our wounds never fully heal.

Matthew Potts is the lead minister at Harvard University’s Memorial Church and the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School. His research and teaching focuses on sacramental and moral theology, religion and literature, and preaching. He is the author of two books, Cormac McCarthy and the Signs of Sacrament and Forgiveness: An Alternative Account. He is also co-host of the podcast "Harry Potter and the Sacred Text".

We’re super excited to share this week’s episode with you. Our interview was with Dan McClellan, a Bible scholar who began sharing his insights and scholarship on TikTok in 2021, and immediately began racking up millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers.

One of the reasons people seem to resonate with Dan’s content is that he makes traditionally difficult and obscure topics extremely accessible — if you watch any of his videos, you’ll see what we mean, but even those who are pretty unfamiliar with the worlds of the Old or New Testaments will be able to immediately gain helpful and fascinating new understanding from Dan’s videos.

In our interview, Dan shares a bit of story about how he got started, including that one of the reasons he began sharing content on social media was that he saw that people would use outdated or incorrect assumptions about the Bible, or the interpretation of scripture generally, to justify power dynamics that placed themselves at the top. Dan believes that scripture should never be weaponized — and that good scholarship can help us understand how to use scripture in a healthier way.

For those that wonder why we might want to learn the details of the Bible if we primarily want to engage it devotionally, Dan gives an intriguing answer — the more we learn, the more foreign we’ll realize the Bible is, and the more uncomfortable we’ll become. And the more uncomfortable we are, the more we’re forced to grapple with problems and contradictions — something we’ve found can be a truly meaningful struggle that takes one “further up and further in” to a life of deep faith.

Dan received his bachelor’s degree from BYU in ancient Near Eastern studies, then received a masters in Jewish studies at the University of Oxford, a masters in biblical studies in 2013, and a PhD in religion and religious studies from the University of Exeter. From 2013 to 2023, Dan worked as a scripture translation supervisor for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, before leaving to focus on creating more original audio and video content.

You can find Dan’s TikTok channel at @maklelan, or check out his brand new podcast, Data over Dogma, on all the major podcast platforms.

We’ve been really excited to share this week's interview with you. Our guest was Astrid Tuminez, President of Utah Valley University. Astrid is an absolute delight to talk with and listen to. She’s full of stories, humor, and deep insights that made our time with her pass way too quickly.

This interview actually came about because Astrid wrote an essay in Melissa Inouye and Kate Holbrook’s new book Every Needful Thing. We loved Astrid’s essay and knew we wanted to get to know her better.

Astrid has an absolutely fascinating and unique story. She grew up in the slums of the Philippines, but along with her siblings, was discovered to have an exceedingly bright intellect and was offered a free place at one of the most prestigious and expensive Catholic schools in the area. As a child, she was, religiously, a Catholic, but felt that she was always brimming with questions that were being hushed. When she eventually met the Latter-day Saint missionaries, it was a different experience — they gave her a new framework to think about the world, and weren’t afraid to at least try to answer her questions.

Astrid’s pursuit of education eventually took her to the United States, where she graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in international relations and Russian literature from Brigham Young University. She later earned a master's degree from Harvard University in Soviet Studies and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in political science. Before becoming President of UVU, Astrid spent many years in leadership in the corporate, non-profit, and academic worlds.

What we maybe loved most about Astrid was that her unique perspectives make the world of faith and intellect seem expansive, exciting, and adventurous — even full of mystery. She’s found spiritual insight and even practice well outside of Mormonism while simultaneously keeping that “fixed foot” in the Restored Gospel. In a real way, she’s living Joseph Smith’s injunction to “receive truth, let it come from whence it may.”

For this week’s episode, we’re bringing you a conversation with Jason Whiting, a Professor and Program Director in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Brigham Young University. ​Jason received his PhD from Michigan State University, and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. He’s also the author of Love Me True: Overcoming the Surprising Ways We Deceive in Relationships.

Jason’s primary research centers around the love lives of couples, and it was fascinating, as a married couple ourselves, to have a marriage and family therapist on the podcast. We found Jason to be extremely personable, insightful, and fun to talk with. 

We were able to ask him several questions that have come up in our marriage, as well as some that we’ve heard from others. Some of our favorite topics of discussion included the Gottman Ratio (the famous research that has been done showing that healthy and lasting relationships often have at least 5 positive interactions for every one negative one), some of his favorite marriage advice, how to have conflict in a healthy way, and what are some signs that he sees commonly in marriages that last.

This week’s episode is with an incredible Latter-day Saint poet, Darlene Young. Darlene has just released a new book of poetry, called Here, and published by BCC Press. It’s an honest, vulnerable, relatable, and incredibly approachable book that we laughed and cried our way through.

In our conversation with Darlene, she talked about the value of poetry itself  — how it can be a “dance” to prose’s “walk,” and help us to see life as “more abundant,” and show the moments we might see as mundane in a more poignant and meaningful light.

Darlene also reminded us that in order for art to really affect us, it has to tell the truth — telling the truth is the beginning of healing, and we’ve rarely encountered Latter-day Saint poetry that does this as well as Darlene’s.

And, knowing that we’re releasing this episode Mother’s Day weekend, we also talked with Darlene about her poetry that speaks to the struggles and beauties of motherhood, parenting and the bittersweetness of it all.

Her poetry really does have a way of giving life to feelings that for many of us, may have previously been somewhat indescribable.

In the end, it seemed like “bittersweet” is the word that we kept coming back to when we talked with Darlene and encountered her work. It doesn’t shy away from the difficult, the annoying, or the tedious aspects of our lives — but in a really beautiful way, as faith at its best does, it paints them as part of a fuller picture of beauty and purpose.

Darlene received her BA and MFA from BYU, and has taught English and Writing as adjunct faculty there. If you want to pick up Darlene’s book, again, it’s called Here and published by BCC Press and you can pick it up on Amazon.

For today’s episode, we were honored as always to bring back one of our favorite people and conversation partners, and likely one of yours: Terryl Givens.

We spoke with Terryl about a book he released in 2021, a biography called Stretching the Heavens: The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern Mormonism.

Terryl’s work on this biography led to a fascinating portrait of a man many of us look up to, and someone we truly wish we could have met (England died in 2001 at the age of 68). His legacy has proven to be both broad and enduring — in addition to a long and storied career in academia, he was a founder of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and of the Association for Mormon Letters. His writing continues to move and inspire Latter-day Saints today, including through essays that have become classics like Why the Church is as True as the Gospel.

In our interview with Terryl, we talked not just about the arc of Eugene England’s life, but about the principles that arose from the insights he shared and some of the struggles he faced. In particular, we talked through some of the issues that came up for him as a man striving to be both true to his own conscience and to the authority of an institution he fully believed in and loved, when the two didn’t fully align. 

In many ways, this seems to be the conflict at the heart of discipleship and even of Christianity’s creation story. Regardless, we felt like exploring it through the lens of Eugene England’s life was both relevant and poignant.

This book, Stretching the Heavens, was published by UNC Press and is available on Amazon and Audible.

For this week's episode, we spoke with Brooke Romney, a guest that had been recommended to us over and over — and we were so happy we were able to connect with her.

Brooke is a writer who began her career on Capitol Hill and whose work has appeared in many publications, including in the Washington Post. She now spends much of her time writing and speaking, particularly on the subject of parenting, but also on social media, connection, and faith. 

In 2021, she published 52 Modern Manners for Today’s Teens, which reached #1 on Amazon’s bestselling Parenting books list, and climbed as high as #29 in its entire catalog of 38 million books. She’s also published I Like Me Anyway: Embracing Imperfection, Connection & Christ.

In our conversation with Brooke, we did talk a lot about parenting, but so many of the principles were broadly applicable. Specifically, we spent time on creating connection with all the people around us, including our children — we talked about some of the habits that are so easy to slip into that can be disconnecting and simple things we may not have thought of that can create moments of connection.

We also talked about “living from our values,” and being willing to be misunderstood and receive feedback when we’re doing so — as Brooke says, listening to other perspectives, even if it’s difficult, is how we get better.

We were so grateful Brooke took the time to come on the podcast, and we really think you’re going to enjoy hearing from her. To follow Brooke and her work, you can head to her website at brookeromney.com and find her books on Amazon. She’s also on Instagram at @brookeromneywrites 

It isn’t easy to be born into a famous family with big expectations. And there’s few families more famous or with bigger expectations than the Kennedys. Tim Shriver’s immediate family includes not only a former US president, a US Attorney General, and a US Senator, but his parents, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, founded global humanitarian organizations like the Special Olympics, The Peace Corp, and more. But Tim has risen to the challenge in every respect and is adding a new aspect to the legacy.

In this week’s conversation with Zach Davis, Tim shares what it was like to grow up in his remarkable family, the motivation behind the important initiatives he is currently leading, and how his deeply-held Christian faith shapes all aspects of his life.

Tim serves today as the CEO of  Special Olympics and is also the founder of Unite, a national grass-roots organization dedicated to transcending seemingly intractable difference. He is also a leading researcher focusing on the social and emotional factors in learning and has also produced six films, including Amistad and The Loretta Claiborne Story. He is the author of Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, and co-editor of The Call to Unite: Voices of Hope and Awakening. Tim and his wife, Linda Potter, reside in the Washington, D.C area and have five adult children.

In September of 1857, one of the greatest atrocities in the history of Mormonism was carried out. Now known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a group of Latter-day Saints led a siege in Southern Utah against a wagon train of emigrants on their way from Arkansas to California. After the siege had dragged on for several days, and under the guise of a truce, leaders of the Mormon party lured the emigrants out of their protective circle of wagons and marched them a short distance across the valley before turning on them in surprise and slaughtering at least 120 unarmed men, women, and children.

The details of this evil are difficult to talk about at all — much less dive deep on — but at the same time, historians Richard E. Turley and Barbara Jones Brown believe that it’s important that we confront history, even its most difficult episodes, with as much honesty and depth as we can.

Rick has served in many roles at the Church over many years, including as managing director of the Family and Church History Department, and managing director of the Public Affairs Department. Barbara is the director of Signature Books Publishing and former executive director of the Mormon History Association.

Together they are the authors of a new book called Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and its Aftermath, which is the second in a two-volume series of exhaustively researched masterworks on the subject. The first book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, on which Rick was one of the authors and Barbara was a content editor, was published in 2008, and this second volume is the culmination of over 18 years of research, writing, and editing by countless contributors. Though brilliant historians have written about the Massacre before, these books include new research from documents and records that have never before been available.

As we spoke with Barbara and Rick, we were struck by not just their comprehensive knowledge of these tragic events, but by the depth of their empathy for the victims, and insights about how knowledge of difficult history can be part of a larger story of healing and reconciliation. They and many others have been important in spearheading efforts in recent years to allow for that healing, including working with the Church itself and organizations of victims’ descendants.

In fact, Henry B. Eyring credited the work done on the first book in 2007 in an official statement given at the site of the massacre on its sesquicentennial. As part of that statement, he said, “What was done here long ago by members of our Church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct. We cannot change what happened, but we can remember and honor those who were killed here…We express profound regret for the massacre carried out in this valley 150 years ago… and for the undue and untold suffering experienced by the victims then and by their relatives to the present time."

What we hope for this episode is what we think Barbara and Rick hope for their book: that it can promote the same work of at-one-ment that is at the core of the Gospel by fully acknowledging the sins of the past, actively listening and working toward healing in the present, and looking forward to a future of deep relationship and connection.

For this week’s episode, we were honored to bring on Alice Faulkner Burch, General Editor of Deseret Book’s new collection of essays by Black American Latter-day Saints: My Lord, He Calls Me. The title of the book comes from an early Black American spiritual called “Steal Away to Jesus.” The book shares contemporary experiences of Black Americans in the Church, and stories from every era of the Restoration.

The essays found in the book are extremely personal — the type of stories you’d only hear as a trusted friend. Alice says that these stories are offered “as a gift for Black Americans and an invitation to white Americans.” In the interview, she shared really important perspectives on not just the experience of Black Americans in the Church, but what it means for each of us to be part of the body of Christ, and how we can more fully embrace the gifts of the Spirit, even “charismatic” ones like those shared in some of the remarkable stories in this book.

Alice was baptized into the Church in July 1984. She served as the first African American in the Chile Santiago South Mission from 1987 to 1988, and in 1989 she was called as the first African American ordinance worker in the Salt Lake Temple. She has served the community as secretary of the Utah Chapter of Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society, secretary for the Utah Black Roundtable, and a member of the annual Utah Juneteenth Committee.

A few weeks ago, we released a conversation with Terryl Givens about the life of Eugene England. England’s work on atonement theology had felt like it necessitated another conversation, but it was too big to fit into the first one. So this week, we brought Terryl back to talk not just about England’s views, but about atonement generally.

The conversation starts with the fascinating premise that our faith doesn’t actually have an official theology of Atonement. What is clear, doctrinally, is that Christ brought about something of universal importance: as the Book of Mormon says, "we talk of Christ, rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, (and) we prophesy of Christ." (2nd Nephi 25:26) We accept Christ as both savior and healer — but that doesn’t mean that we’ve achieved a consensus understanding of how Christ’s atonement actually accomplished those goals of “saving” and “healing.”

So in this conversation with Terryl, we discussed various atonement theories — what some of the greatest Christian and Latter-day Saint thinkers have posited over the years about how the atonement works; why it’s necessary, and how it can apply in real life. It seemed to us that there was something to value in nearly all of these explorations, and it was fascinating to see how those views have evolved over time.

And, as it always does, conversation with Terryl brought us back to what’s really important: how Christ’s atonement can bring less retribution and more healing to society, and how we can participate in that work. Terryl reminded us that Atonement is about reintegration into loving relationship — not just vertically with God, but horizontally with those around us.

In May of this year, the news program 60 Minutes aired a segment exploring the finances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. David Nielsen, a former portfolio manager at Ensign Peak, the investment arm of the Church, alleged that the Church had been operating improperly as a tax-exempt organization and called for that tax-exempt status to be revoked. 60 Minutes also interviewed W. Christopher Waddell, first counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, who denied Nielsen’s claims. Near the end of June, the Wall Street Journal published an article of its own, again emphasizing the size of the Church’s assets and the opulence of its temples.

This is an issue with an extraordinary amount of complexity, and significant moral weight. Though the Church hasn’t publicly disclosed the value of its assets, estimates place it at over $100 billion — put in context, that’s about double the size of Harvard’s endowment, making the Church one of the wealthiest religious institutions, or non-governmental organizations of any kind, in the world.

The questions this raises are clear: how did the Church acquire this much wealth? Is it reasonable to see assets of this size as a “rainy-day fund,” even for a religion with a name attesting that we live in the last days? Is tithing simply “God’s money” and a matter of faith alone, or should members have insight and transparency into Church finances, and how their donations are used? And of course  — what good could be done in the world with $100B or more?

We felt like it was the right time to explore these questions on Faith Matters, and we brought on Aaron Miller to help us sort through some of them. Aaron is a Teaching Professor in BYU’s George Romney Institute for Public Service and Ethics, where he teaches classes on business ethics and nonprofit structure and finance. Though he’s quick to point out that he doesn’t have privileged insight into Church finances, he was able to walk through these issues in a really detailed but understandable way, and to us, he represented extraordinarily clear, objective, and open-hearted thinking on this subject. Aaron also hosts a really cool podcast called “How to Help” that presents conversations and ideas about living a life of positive impact on the world and the people around us. You can check it out wherever you listen to podcasts.

We’re really grateful that Aaron would come on and discuss this tough but important issue. As is the case with all sensitive topics, we’re sure we got something wrong here. Our goal is always to explore tough issues with as expansive a lens as possible, and explore arguments on both sides charitably. No doubt we did that imperfectly, but we hope you know that is our intention.

Over the years, much of the work that we’ve done at Faith Matters has tried to take into account much of the wisdom and research that’s been done in the field of faith and adult development. It’s also been important to us to share and discuss some of the existing models, including Brian McLaren’s four-stage framework, and the “creation, fall, atonement” framework that our amazing friend Jared Halverson has spoken about at Restore and on this podcast.

All that said, we’ve never done a deep dive into the model that deserves as much or more credit than any other for helping people think along these lines in the first place, and that’s James Fowler’s Stages of Faith. Fowler published a book by that title in 1981 that laid a real foundation for understanding faith development systematically. So we’re delighted that in this episode, we finally got a chance to talk about Fowler’s work specifically and in a Latter-day Saint context, and to do that, we brought on our good friend Jana Spangler.

And to be super clear upfront, and this comes out in the episode — it would be a misuse of any stages model to paint a given stage as “better” or “worse,” than others — what matters is not so much the stage we’re in, but how we approach the world around us as we see through the lens of that stage. As Jana says, each stage has its gifts and shortcomings. What these frameworks can do is help give each of us the humility to recognize that there is another way to see things, and to give ourselves enough grace to accept the stage we’re in and confidently live through it thoroughly, and without fear.

Jana Spangler is a Certified Integral Professional Coach at Symmetry Solutions, and member of the International Coaching Federation. She is an alumnus of The Living School where she studied contemplative spiritual traditions and the work of transformation under the direction of Fr. Richard Rohr. Jana’s professional and personal experience combined with her training makes her an expert in the field of faith transitions. She is a sought-after podcast guest, speaker, presenter, and retreat leader. 

This week we are covering the Enneagram, a fascinating topic and a tool that we’ve found to be very helpful and deeply meaningful over the past few years. For this conversation, we were lucky enough to bring on one of the world’s foremost proponents and teachers of the Enneagram  — Ian Morgan Cron.

Ian is a bestselling author, psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, Episcopal priest, and the host of the podcast "Typology," which has over 20 million downloads. His books include the Enneagram primer The Road Back to You, which has sold over 1,000,000 copies, and the book we based today’s conversation on: The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self (December 2021).

For those unfamiliar with the Enneagram, at its most essential it is a personality typing system identifying nine types of people and how they relate to one another and the world. But it’s intended to be much more than that  — not just a typing system, but in Ian’s words, “a prescription for deep change.”

In this conversation, Ian does an overview of the nine basic Enneagram types, and you’ll probably see yourself in at least one of them. But he also goes deeper  — Ian says that we all have stories we tell ourselves, and the Enneagram can help us see them, recognize when they’re unhealthy, and start to rewrite them. As we continue on that path, Ian says, we’ll begin to “wake up,” as the mystics have said — and find that everything is brimming with God’s presence.

The Gospel Topics essay titled “Mother in Heaven,” on churchofjesuschrist.org states “The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints.”

It’s with this in mind that three Latter-day Saint women — McArthur Krishna, Ashli Carnicelli, and Trina Caudle, have curated a new collection of writing, poetry, and art called Cherish: The Joy of Our Mother in Heaven.

We were lucky enough to bring McArthur on, along with another one of the book’s contributors, Michal Thomas. We thought that those two women were the perfect pair to come on and speak with us.

Among the subjects we discussed was Elder Dale G. Renlund’s April 2022 General Conference address on the subject of Heavenly Mother — McArthur described the joy she felt when she heard Elder Renlund address the topic in General Conference, in her mind, effectively ending the speculative taboo that Church members shouldn’t even talk about Heavenly Mother. Of course, Elder Renlund did call for an end to “speculation” about Heavenly Mother, and McArthur and Michal fully endorse that idea. As McArthur explains in the episode, it appears that it was unfounded “speculation” by a seminary teacher that led to the half-century-plus “sacred silence” around Heavenly Mother.

These two emphasize that there is so much we can do with our existing beautiful doctrine; everyone should be able to see deity in their own image, and women, in particular, can better understand their own nature by understanding the nature of a Mother in Heaven. And because Heavenly Mother is infinite, there are infinite ways to connect with Her. McArthur and Michal explore that in this conversation, and of course, this new book is a great example of how many are doing it.

We’re really grateful to McArthur and Michal for coming on and having this discussion with us. You can find this new book, Cherish, on Amazon.

In recent months, Governor Spencer J. Cox  of Utah has been in the news for the passage of two new state laws: one that puts strict limits on access to social media for teens, and another that would prohibit social media companies from using designs that are addictive to teens. 

Governor Cox believes that social media and smartphones really are the culprit behind a teen mental health crisis that has manifested, for example, in a skyrocketing rate of depression among teen girls. That rate has doubled since 2010, when the smartphone began mass adoption. With this in mind, Governor Cox has made Utah the first state to act in such a direct way.

In this conversation, we asked Governor Cox about the rationale behind these laws, the pushback he expects, and what he thinks the long-term legislative vision should be when it comes to teens and social media. Governor Cox argues that In any other context, if we saw the statistics we're seeing about social media, we would drop everything to fix it. Given these drastic and unprecedented changes in mental health, it seems this is a crucial issue for our young people and that all people of faith should be engaging with this issue that is so important for kids and for the connective tissue of society.

We also want to mention that Governor Cox will be appearing at our upcoming Restore Gathering in October; in that presentation, he’ll be talking about his new initiative as incoming chairman of the National Governors Association: to help Americans “disagree better.” 

We hope that regardless of the side of the political aisle you find yourself on, you can help us engage with the important ideas and issues Governor Cox is bringing to the forefront. As he might say, though we certainly won’t all agree, we can all benefit from learning to do it better.

Before we get started, we just wanted to give you a quick note that this episode does contain frank discussion about sexuality, so you can determine if it’s appropriate for anyone listening in.

For this conversation, we were really happy to bring on our good friend and one of our favorite people, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, and we know many of you are fans of her of her work, too.

For a long time, we’ve wanted to have a discussion with Jennifer about the concept of modesty—something that anyone who’s grown up in our tradition is intimately familiar with, and which has certainly driven lots of opinions over many years. And we were really glad to be able to talk through several aspects of this topic with her, including the different experiences for men and women, how our cultural definition for modesty can often be too small, and the principles behind the practices.

But once the conversation got going, as it always does with Jennifer, it led back to something bigger — about how all of this, including our sexuality, points toward the ability to have deeper embodied joy, and how there is a real wholeness waiting behind a developmental process that each of us need to go through, including with our own sexuality.

Jennifer is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with a Ph.D in Counseling Psychology from Boston College, where she wrote her dissertation on LDS women and sexuality. She leads both in-person and online courses, workshops, and retreats helping people increase their capacity for deeper emotional and sexual intimacy. You can find her podcast “Conversations with Dr. Jennifer,” on major podcast platforms, and find out more about her work at finlayson-fife.com.

We should also mention that Jennifer will be presenting at this year’s Restore gathering in October.

We’re super grateful to Jennifer for coming on, and really think you’re going to enjoy this episode. 

Religion in America is undergoing a revolution. In 1972, 90% of Americans were self-professed Christians. Now, that number is about 64%. There are now large and growing populations of non-Christians, as well as many who have no particular religious beliefs. Such a time of change has made it an exciting time to be a scholar of religion, charged with making sense of the shifting landscape of American religious experience.

For today’s conversation, Zach Davis sat down with one of those scholars, Charles Stang, the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Zach went to grad school at HDS and Charlie was one of his very favorite professors.

In the conversation, Charlie discusses his life as a scholar of religion, the path his own spiritual life has taken and shares details about the exciting new research initiative he is leading at Harvard called Transcendence and Transformation.

Charles M. Stang is Professor of Early Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School and the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions. His research and teaching focus on the history and theology of Christianity, in particular asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism in Eastern Christianity. His most recent book, Our Divine Double, was published in 2016 by Harvard University Press.

This week we’re sharing something really special  — it’s Terryl Givens’ talk that opened last year’s Restore gathering. In it, Terryl gets more personal than we’ve ever heard him, telling a dramatic story about nearly drowning off the West coast of Africa and how the experience has helped him frame key aspects of his faith.

Terryl also shares some other really meaningful moments from his life and career. In one of our favorite moments, he says "I have come to know the love of God as it is manifest in a community of people working to keep one another from drowning."

We imagine that almost all of you know Terryl by now, but as a reminder, he’s a Neal A. Maxwell Senior Research Fellow at BYU’s Maxwell Institute. He formerly held the Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English and was Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond. He is the author of many books about Latter-day Saint history and culture, including, along with his wife Fiona, All Things New, which was published by Faith Matters in 2020.

Today we talked with Ben Behunin, and we think when you hear him, you’ll feel immediately what we felt: this is someone who is absolutely full of pure, good energy who has been able to fully align his own gifts to serve in the world.

Ben is a full-time artist, potter, and writer who makes his living through creativity. He’s also a stake president in downtown Salt Lake City. 

In our conversation with Ben, he talked about his mission experience and conversion to the Church  — his story is incredibly moving and illustrates in a powerful way that God seems to be working through good people in every tradition and culture.

Ben also shared a lot about how his creativity plays into his role as a leader in the Church, and it was inspiring to hear how innovative he is in his stewardship and work to serve and bless others. Ben also shared what he believes are the gifts that Latter-day Saints, in particular, have to share with the world. 

All in all  — this is a special one that we really think you’re going to want to hear. We can’t wait to introduce you to Ben. You can find out more about his pottery, writing, and other work at potterboy.com.

Links:
https://www.potterboy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/protopiansunited/
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ben-Behunin/author/B00J428YU8

This week, we’re excited to share with you another gem from our Restore gathering last year. This is a presentation by Jeff Strong.  Now his name may sound familiar to you because Jeff also came on for an incredible episode called “Getting Real About Missionary Work” last year- episode #124, which we highly recommend. That episode is one of Faith Matters’ most listened to of all time.

But in today’s episode, you’re going to hear about Jeff’s experience as a mission president of the Bentonville, Arkansas Mission where he and his wife led a phenomenally successful pilot program with his missionaries. I’ll let Jeff fill in the details — but for us, the story of the Bentonville, Arkansas mission has totally revolutionized the way we imagine missionary work and we can’t wait for you to hear about it.

There are some really interesting visuals in this presentation you may want to see so you can also go to our YouTube channel to watch the video there.

To tell you a little bit about Jeff, in addition to serving as a mission leader with his wife Sara from 2018- 2021 in the Bentonville, Arkansas Mission, Jeff has been a senior level executive at several multinational companies, and has spent almost 3 decades in management. He’s also worked as a consultant and private equity advisor and has served as a special project director at BYU’s Marriott School of Business, where he led the startup of the Marketing Lab. 

When therapist Bonnie Young was a teen, the subject of sexuality was for her, “drenched in fear.” And many of us can probably relate. For many Latter-day Saints growing up in a sexually conservative culture and with a strict law of chastity — for all of the goods those things can bring — feelings of anxiety, fear, and shame around sexuality may be more the rule rather than the exception.

Bonnie’s on a mission to change that, and we think she’s done really important work to do so with her new book, Sex Educated: Letters from a Latter-day Saint Therapist to Her Younger Self. As the title implies, the book is structured as a series of letters, from Bonnie, to herself at various ages, starting as young as ten. It serves as a really useful retrospective, to get into our own minds at various stages of development, and helped remind us that there are really good, constructive, healthy ways to talk about sexuality to kids of any age.

That “talk” — the one that can produce so much anxiety among both kids and parents — is one of the main subjects of our conversation with Bonnie. She also had amazing insights around the difference between lust and arousal, about healthy sexual relationships between committed partners, and how this all fits beautifully into the theology of the Restoration.

Bonnie Young is a licensed marriage and family therapist, frequent presenter and podcast guest, and published author of several academic articles and essays on religion and mental health. She is the founder of Azure Counseling, an online mental health clinic focused on treating clients with anxiety, religious OCD / scrupulosity, and sexual disorders. Bonnie holds a bachelor’s degree in history with an emphasis in Mormon women’s history and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, both from Brigham Young University. She’s currently completing her doctoral studies at Utah State University in marriage and family therapy. Her dissertation work explores questions about women’s experience with power dynamics in Latter-day Saint marriages.

Dacher Keltner is a scientist who has been studying happiness and well-being for decades. He writes that he’s taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world and that twenty years into teaching happiness, he’s actually found an answer to how to live the good life: find awe.

To that end, he’s written a new book called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life.

The book was not only moving, fascinating and thoroughly researched, it also raised lots of really important questions for us. Among the most important was what implications his research on awe has for religious people. It seems like what Latter-day Saints call “feeling the Spirit” has a strong connection to what Dacher refers to as awe, and we were able to ask Dacher about that. While he’s not a traditionally religious person himself, his exploration of awe has led him to believe that there is a realm of understanding and human experience that is beyond scientific explanation.

On a really practical level, Dacher’s book, and the conversation with him, helped us understand how we can integrate awe into our everyday lives, and illustrated the astounding benefits that an “awe” practice can have for each of us.

Dacher received his PhD from Stanford University in 1989 before joining Berkeley’s psychology department in 1996, where he’s been ever since. Over 500,000 people have enrolled in Dacher’s EdX course, The Science of Happiness, and he’s the host of the podcast also called The Science of Happiness.

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing one more talk with you from our Restore gathering in 2022. This was one of our absolute favorite sessions, and it was the final presentation, right at the end on Saturday afternoon. We were privileged to hear from Brian McLaren, who shared his simple and incredibly resonant framework for faith development. It’s one that we’ve referenced before on this podcast, and we think you’ll love hearing Brian teach it. Brian does a beautiful job emphasizing that the point isn’t to get everyone to a particular “stage” of faith — rather, it’s creating a Church and a community where each stage is welcome and included.

First, you’ll hear Brian give his presentation, and afterward, Tim and Aubrey sit down for a live Q&A with him. We think Brian brought really key insights to both parts of this session. When we listened back, there was so much there that we hadn’t fully absorbed, and even if you were with us at Restore last year, we think this one’s really worth a listen.

For those of you who haven’t heard Brian from before, he’s a bestselling author, speaker, and public theologian. A former college English teacher and pastor, he is a passionate advocate for a Christianity that is just, generous, and works with people of all faiths for the common good. He is a core faculty member of  The Living School and podcaster with Learning How to See, which are part of the Center for Action and Contemplation. His newest books are  Faith After Doubt, released in 2021, and Do I Stay Christian?,  which was released in 2022.

In July of 2022, Rosalynde Welch had a distinct impression while cleaning her house — that she should reach out to Kate Holbrook and ask how she could help share more of Kate’s own writing and thinking with the world.

As many of you know, Kate was a historian, scholar, and a light in so many lives. Kate had been previously diagnosed with a rare eye cancer, which had just entered a terminal phase. As she cleaned, it struck Rosalynde that Kate had spent so much time promoting others’ voices, particularly the voices of women, that the insights Kate herself needed to share were preserved. She reached out immediately, and Kate responded gratefully. Rosalynde, and a few others who she mentions in the episode, began an urgent work of gathering, compiling, and filling in gaps to complete what is now a brand new book of Kate’s writing: Both Things Are True, which is part of the BYU Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith series. Kate, tragically, would pass away only a few weeks after this work began, in August of 2022.

And we want to be really clear about this  — this is a really special book. What comes shining through so clearly is Kate’s gentle nature alongside her “backbone of steel” (as Rosalynde puts it), and perhaps more than anything, her authentic discipleship. As the book’s title indicates, it wrestles with what Joseph Smith called contraries: how the church can be both true, and open to further truth; how revelation can be, how what Kate calls “the crucible of housework” can bring about a sense of both inadequacy and divinity. And, true to Kate’s hope that she’d be remembered for her recipes, the book ends with Kate’s own recipe for what she calls “the perfect chocolate bundt cake.”

Our guest, Rosalynde, is an incredibly insightful scholar who currently works as a Senior Research Fellow at the Maxwell Institute. She has also hosted the Maxwell Institute podcast since March of this year, a resource which we can’t recommend strongly enough, especially with Rosalynde at the helm.

For this week’s episode, we’re sharing a conversation we had originally released almost three years ago — before many of you had started listening to the podcast! It’s the discussion we had with Fiona and Terryl Givens about the ground-shifting book they published in 2020 through Faith Matters Publishing, called All Things New: Rethinking Sin, Salvation, and Everything in Between.

When this book was first published, we knew it had the potential to truly change lives, and change how Latter-day Saints see the world. It certainly did for us. The book starts by tracing the roots of our religious vocabulary and shows how many fundamental gospel concepts and words have become  unmoored from their original foundations and in many cases, can get us stuck in a gospel of fear that places limits on God’s love and grace.

Fiona and Terryl show us how we can renovate that vocabulary to embrace a gospel of hope where there is no final buzzer or sad heaven, because in their words, "Salvation and heaven are not rewards that God can dispense, or that we can earn. Relationships are forged. Life is the school of love, and our growing capacity for love constitutes the bricks out of which the heavenly Zion will be constructed."

In the book, and in our conversation, Terryl and Fiona address everything from our concepts of heaven, sin, salvation, exaltation, and family togetherness in the eternities. We found the work they do in this important book to be immensely healing and hopeful.

This week, we’re sharing with you one of sessions we had to kick off our Restore conference, which featured Utah Governor Spencer Cox along with Judge Thomas Griffith.

Before we get going, we’re very excited to announce that we’ve decided to give free digital access to all of our Restore recordings! Although we were joined by 3500 of our closest friends, we know there were so many who wanted to join us but couldn’t for a variety of reasons, so we decided to make all of the sessions available, free of charge. Please head to our YouTube channel and subscribe in order to make sure you see them when they drop in the next week or two.

Gov. Spencer J. Cox is is Utah’s 18th governor and is serving as the  2023-2024 chairman of the National Governors Association. He is developing a national reputation as both a bridge-builder and as a tenacious fighter against social media companies and their effects on teen mental health. That bridge-building is also the foundation of his NGA Chair’s Initiative called “Disagree Better.”

After Governor Cox’s initial remarks, you’ll hear him be joined on stage by Thomas Griffith, who was a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D. C. Circuit from 2004-2020. Currently, he is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, a Fellow at the Wheatley Institution at Brigham Young University, and Senior Policy Advisor to the National Institute for Civil Discourse. Judge Griffith is also a trusted advisor and friend of Faith Matters. 

These two were passionate in their advocacy for disagreement with civility and kindness, and we thought did an amazing job pointing a path forward in all areas of society where we find ourselves opposite someone else on an important issue. We really think this one’s memorable. Thanks as always for listening, and with that, we’ll jump right into the session.

Organized religious communities have seen steep declines in participation in recent decades and the rise of the “nones,” those who have no particular religious affiliation, is a well-rehearsed story. But that story isn’t just about loss and lack. New forms of spiritual life and meaning-making are emerging that seek to fill the universal longings of the human heart: belonging, transformation, and love. Casper ter Kuile has studied this horizon of spiritual frontier for many years. 10 years ago, he and fellow Harvard Divinity School classmate Angie Thurston wrote a report called "How We Gather", which looked at how millennials were seeking spirituality in seemingly secular communities like crossfit, soul-cycle or social justice movements.

Since that report, Casper has continued to explore the changing spiritual practices of young people. He started a very beloved podcast called Harry Potter and the Sacred Text, wrote a book called "The Power of Ritual" and has recently launched a new project called The Nearness, which is an online space to explore life’s big questions in small communities.

In this conversation, Zach Davis talks with Casper about what he’s learned in his years studying and working on the edge of America’s evolving spiritual landscape.

We’re very excited about this week's episode. In early 2021, in the wake of January 6th, McKay Coppins contacted Mitt Romney with a bold request: he wanted to write a biography about him. But McKay had stipulations: not only would he have full access to the Senator  — he’d also retain full editorial control. To his surprise, Romney agreed, and shortly had given him stacks of journal entries, emails, and texts. They met over 45 times over the coming years for lengthy interviews, and McKay also interviewed many of Romney’s closest friends, family, and colleagues.

That unprecedented access has now turned into a book called Romney: A Reckoning, which just debuted at #3 overall on the New York Times Bestsellers list. 

We hoped that this interview would offer a unique take on this subject, and we spent some real time on questions of integrity, culpability, and faith. McKay brought not only deep insight into the psyche of one of the most fascinating—and in some cases polarizing—political figures of our time, but he also brought really clear-eyed discernment of his own. He helped us work through some other fascinating questions: what does it take to live on the edge of inside, and what does it cost? Is it possible to stave off cynicism while remaining pragmatic about having impact for good?

McKay Coppins is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers politics, religion, and national affairs. He’s a former visiting fellow at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and has won the Aldo Beckman Award from the White House Correspondents Association for his coverage of the Trump presidency and the Wilbur Award for religion journalism. 

Our guest today is a long-time friend and collaborator, and an incredibly unique voice in the Latter-day Saint tradition: Thomas McConkie. Thomas is an author, developmental researcher and meditation teacher who has been practicing under masters in the traditions of Sufism, Buddhism and Christian contemplation, among others for over 25 years. Thomas is the founder of Lower Lights School of Wisdom, and is is currently researching and writing on transformative spiritual practice at Harvard Divinity School.

He’s also the author of a brand new book published by Faith Matters Publishing called At-One-Ment: Embodying the Fullness of Human-Divinity. This is, in our opinion, a monumentally important work, and one that has the capacity to powerfully change the way we see the world.

The book reminds us that much of Christianity has spent centuries focusing on what to believe. Thomas redirects this conversation to the simple but potent practices we can engage in body, heart, mind and spirit to awaken us to a greater measure of the Sacred right here and now. “At-one-ment” becomes a spiritual reality in which we can all participate, not just a historical event in which a select few believe.

In our conversation, we covered some important themes of the book, including how we can all at once seek transformation and already feel whole; how we are both individuals and yet deeply connected to everything and everyone around us, and how the mind, while indispensable and so prominent in our modern society, is far from the only way of knowing.

We really encourage you to pick up this book — it’s available now on Amazon and we think it makes a great gift as well.

And, as a note for those interested: Thomas will also be leading a 3-day retreat in Salt Lake City in May 2024, diving deeper into the concepts of At-one-ment. Additional details can be found here:

https://lowerlightswisdom.org/classes/the-art-and-practice-of-becoming-one-retreat-may-2024

A few weeks ago, Faith Matters released a video we called “Why Church?” It features several of our favorite people, who gave really thoughtful answers to that question that is present for so many. 

Today, we’re sharing Tom Christofferson’s Restore talk, which addresses the next question: “How Church?” Tom describes in poignant and sometimes hilarious detail his experiences joining a new ward where so many people are so unlike him, and, in the end, found that that was kind of the point. 

For us, this was one of the very most memorable sessions at this year’s Restore. We love Tom deeply and know he has so much to teach us. When he talks, we always stop to listen.

For those of you who don’t know, we’ve decided to release all of this year’s Restore sessions on YouTube totally free of charge. If you’d like to watch them, just head to YouTube and search “Faith Matters”  — you’ll see our channel pop up and you can subscribe there.

Professor Eric Huntsman has an infectious enthusiasm when he talks about Christmas. He’s up for the fun, the decorating, the shopping, the lights, and the gift-giving. He also has a deep intellectual curiosity and many years’ academic research into the historical development of this holy day. And of course, most importantly, he has a profound devotional attachment to the holiday’s namesake, Jesus Christ. 

So it’s only natural that he would spend years developing ways to help his family, students and community find more meaning throughout the Christmas season. One way that he’s done that is through the observance of Advent. Much more than just the calendar many of us think of checking off the days in December leading up to Christmas, Advent is a traditional Christian season that’s been observed for at least 1500 years and is marked by the four Sundays prior to Christmas, each of which celebrates a theme of Christ’s birth: hope, love, joy, and peace. 

In today’s conversation, Eric shared with us the background and purpose behind Advent and some of its symbolism, how he celebrates it, and what he recommends for anyone looking to observe Advent as part of creating their own traditions or rituals.

Resources:
Good Tidings of Great Joy: An Advent Celebration of the Savior's Birth (Eric's book): https://www.amazon.com/Good-Tidings-Great-Joy-Celebration/dp/1606416596/r

Come, Lord Jesus: An Advent Invitation (Wayfare Magazine): https://www.wayfaremagazine.org/p/come-lord-jesus

Celebrating Advent: https://huntsmanseasonal.blogspot.com/2013/11/celebrating-advent.html

First Advent: https://huntsmanseasonal.blogspot.com/2013/12/first-advent-hope.html

Christmas Resource Guide (Daily December devotionals): https://huntsmanseasonal.blogspot.com/p/christmas-resource-guide.html

Advent Carols: https://www.amazon.com/Advent-Carols-Countdown-Stories-Christmas/dp/1639930477

Buy Melissa’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Struggle-Seeking-Christ-Resistance/dp/1639931872/

As we’ve gotten to know her over the past few years, we’ve noticed that Melissa Inouye, in any group, has a remarkable way of reorienting a conversation. She tends to be the one with the eyes to see “the least of these.” She has a profound and sincere empathy for those who are in deep struggle, those on the edges, the marginalized, the looked-over, the passed-by. When these people and their difficulties are invisible to others, she gently call others’ attention to them as well. 

That uniquely empathetic perspective she brings has found a beautiful expression in her new book Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance. It’s a “treatise on trials” — one in which Melissa asks the deepest, most difficult questions without shying away from them, including those around her own experience with cancer.

The book, and the conversation we had with Melissa, deal with struggle itself, but also with its second-order effects: how can struggle be alchemized into connectedness — into Zion — instead of driving us apart? Who gets to assign meaning to struggle? Is there a way to avoid pain in a community, or is it built into the experience?

Melissa received her Ph.D. from Harvard in 2011 and became a Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. She’s now working as a historian for the Church History department.

We were grateful, as we always are, to benefit from her deep wisdom born of lived experience.

Nearly everything we do in the Church — from missionary work and ministering efforts to baptisms and temple work — hinges on an underlying question: who is the Church for? Is the project of the Restoration to find and shepherd the elect of God to exaltation in the next life, or is it to create a Zion community here that strives to include those on the margins, the way Jesus ministered? Should it be one or the other?

It’s seemed to us that there’s an implicit discourse around this question playing out on social media, in Church meetings, in books and articles, on podcasts — and even in forums like General Conference.

And it has significant implications — the answer holds real weight as for we participate in the work of the Restoration, but not just that — what does it say about the nature of God?

This past conference, Pres. Dallin H. Oaks declared “the purpose of this restored Church is to prepare God’s children for salvation in the celestial glory and, more particularly, for exaltation in its highest degree.” In theory, that destiny is available to all God’s children. But what about the multitudes of God’s children who may seem to be left behind-–those for whom any quest for exaltation seems buried under conditions like grinding poverty, mental illness, abuse, or other serious obstacles to thriving. Is the restored church for them too?

We thought it could be important and helpful to have an explicit conversation around this question that’s often felt more than heard. And, we think we ended up with the perfect conversation partner, and someone we know many of you love and admire as much as we do — Patrick Mason.

Patrick helped us walk through some of this tricky territory with his signature blend of love for the Church, enthusiasm about the restoration, and clear-eyed realism about where we are as a community and tradition — and where we could hope to go. 

Patrick Mason is the Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, has been a frequent guest on this show and is long-time friend and advisor to Faith Matters.

This week, we’re sharing another session from our Restore conference, this time featuring a scholar most of you will be familiar with: our long time friend and advisor Terryl Givens.

Terryl’s heartfelt session explores what he finds to be the “peaceable things” of Christ, referred to in scripture. An unsettling experience at the age of sixteen led Terryl to confront the inherent risk and uncertainty of our choices in life. And while life may not always be “peaceful,” Terryl says, we can always access “peaceable things”, which he anchors in the Restoration’s understanding of God.

If you know Terryl’s work, you know of his gift for illuminating gospel truths gleaming quietly throughout Christian history. Terryl guides us through three names of Christ–Creator, Emmanuel, and Paraclete–that show God to be relational, loving, and open-hearted. This God doesn’t seek to judge or condemn, but to invite us at their table as peers and mutual witnesses of each other’s inherent goodness.

We hope you enjoy this hopeful message that cuts straight to the heart of the fear and uncertainty that so many of us feel, day to day. 

Today we’re sharing a conversation that we had a lot of fun with, along with an exciting announcement about the work we’re doing at Faith Matters.

Our guest was our friend Jared Halverson. Few people we know exude as much enthusiasm for scripture—the Latter-day Saint canon in particular—as Jared does. He’s someone who clearly loves and cherishes these holy texts, and has taken the best they have to offer to heart. He’s as genuine, loving, and big-hearted as they come.

So we felt Jared would be the perfect person to talk to to kick off this year’s study of The Book of Mormon, the book Joseph Smith called “the keystone of our religion.” In our discussion with Jared, we talked about how we might be able to gain something from engaging with the Book, regardless of where our faith is at; how scriptures are the means, not the end, and how they’re not frozen in time—they’re part of an ongoing conversation that we’re a part of.

With all that said, we could not be more excited to tell you that Faith Matters is formally teaming up with Jared to bring his podcast, Unshaken, one of the most widely engaged scripture study podcasts out there, into the Faith Matters network of podcast and YouTube shows. We’ll have more to share about that in the future as that network expands and grows. For now, it means that Jared will continue to bring his signature blend of scholarly rigor and devotional reflection to his discussions of scripture that move with the Come Follow Me curriculum. But whereas in the past, Jared’s podcast episodes have been deep dives of 3-5 hours per episode, the new Unshaken format will shoot for an hour or so to make them a bit more digestible.

Unshaken will continue to operate on its own Youtube and Podcast channels, while the Faith Matters podcast will continue to operate on this one. If you’re interested in Jared and his work based on what you hear today, we’d highly recommend you head over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube to subscribe.

For those unfamiliar with Jared, he’s an associate professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, and has taught religion courses at the high school and college level since 1998. He studied history and religious education at BYU and earned a PhD in American religious history at Vanderbilt University.

To kick off the new year, we recently had the privilege to speak to academic duo and long-time friends, Adam Miller and Rosalynde Welch about the new book they co-authored together, titled Seven Gospels: The Many Lives of Christ in the Book of Mormon. 

Their book examines the many ways that Christ shows up in the lives of individuals in the Book of Mormon, including Nephi, Abinadi, Abish, and others. Like the New Testament gospels, these distinct witnesses both affirm and challenge each other, showing how Christ’s message for each of us intimately reflects our personal questions and circumstances.

This episode not only guides us through these distinct witnesses but also describes the close reading process that allowed Adam and Rosalynde to observe such differentiation in the first place. By slowing down with the scriptures and zooming in on details—even supposedly mundane ones like punctuation and phrasing—scripture can teach us things we don’t expect to learn. Just as there are a multiplicity of witnesses of Christ in the Book of Mormon, Adam and Rosalynde make a case that our scriptural canon is a springboard to endless interpretations that speak to us according to our spiritual needs.

For those who don’t yet know these two, Adam is a professor of philosophy at Collin College, and Rosalynde is the Associate Director and Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute. Adam and Rosalynde are two of the brightest minds in Latter-day Saint studies, so to have them team up on a book is a special privilege, and we loved talking with them, as we always do.

We’re excited to share with you this interview with George Handley, a professor of humanities at BYU. George recently published a fascinating and moving intellectual biography of Lowell Bennion. As we’ve learned more about Bennion, he’s begun to loom large for us as a truly inspiring figure who models some of the best of what our faith tradition has to offer. He was an educator, humanitarian, and practical philosopher who had an outsized impact on the Church in the 20th century, even if few might recognize his name today. 

Lowell Bennion was both committed to intellectual integrity and to prioritizing people over ideas. In the interview, George walked us through how this dual commitment led Lowell to a heart-led vocation that refused to compartmentalize the gospel—to separate it from either intellectual inquiry or from the practical, everyday needs of society. It also allowed Bennion to navigate the tricky, bumpy moments in relationship with other thinkers and educators in the Church with love and integrity.

His list of projects is truly extensive, but among the most memorable are his founding of the Institute of Religion next to the University of Utah, and of a boys ranch in Idaho—the Bennion Teton Boys  Ranch—where George spent time as a boy. As an educator, Bennion took an expansive view of the gospel that sought to blend itself with secular learning and embrace all truth. Even on the occasions when those who disagreed with his approach made decisions that cost him professionally, Bennion was committed to seeing these events as part of the adventure of life.

The topics that came up in this episode really struck home with us. Lowell Bennion’s life invites us to consider not just what the right ideas are, but what ideas are for, and how they can be turned to the service of humanity. We’re thankful to George for taking the time to bring this impactful, if understated, thinker to our attention through this book. 

Today we’re sharing another fantastic session from our Restore Conference last October, this time from Lisa Miller. Lisa is a clinical psychologist and professor at Columbia University who specializes in the science of spirituality. She’s also the author of the popular 2021 book The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and Our Quest for an Inspired Life.

We often think of science and spirituality as separate ways of knowing that don’t really speak to each other, where science focuses on what we can see and empirically observe, while spirituality focuses on the unseen. Lisa’s research bridges these worlds, building an empirical case for the reality of spirituality and its benefits across the lifespan, and showing how science can be a “witness” to spirituality. She believes we all have an innate, in-born capacity for spirituality, or “relational, transcendent awareness”. Individuals who cultivate a strong spiritual core are less likely to experience despair, addiction, and depression throughout the life course, and a spiritual core is correlated with growth and resilience after facing challenges.

We really loved Lisa’s session as well as her beautiful spirit. As we got to know her in person at Restore, we realized what a special person she is and felt the love she has for our community. We think you’ll be able to feel that as you listen to her talk. 

In 2018, Pete Davis was graduating from Harvard Law School and was chosen to give a commencement address that ended up going unexpectedly viral, having now been viewed over 30 million times.

The thesis of Pete’s speech was that our culture has entered what he calls “infinite browsing mode”—with so many options to choose from, and devices that present those options to us literally endlessly—we can become paralyzed by choice and inadvertently live out our lives without ever dedicating ourselves to something. And this lack of choosing and committing over the long haul has real consequences, Pete argues — it prevents us from finding the meaning and impact that we’re longing for.

Pete’s ideas eventually crystallized into a really incredible book—Dedicated—which explores these ideas in depth. We loved this book and found it to be so relevant to conversations we seem to always be having. In this conversation, we were able to talk with Pete about many of the reasons we might fear committing to something, including the fear of missing out, the fear of regret, and the fear of association with something with which our values aren’t totally aligned. But, Pete argues, commitment in the face of those fears is what leads us to long-term purpose and impact, real community, and connection with something truly transcendent.

We can’t emphasize enough how important and relevant we found this book, and how infectious we found Pete’s enthusiasm for these deeply resonant ideas. We are so excited to share this episode with you, and we really hope you enjoy the conversation with Pete Davis.