Faith Matters

Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Tish Harrison Warren on her beautiful brand new book, What Grows in Weary Lands . From the very first pages of this book, Tish gives us language for something so familiar. She writes about aridity —those seasons of spiritual drought, exhaustion, or distance from God, when prayer feels flat, faith feels heavy, and the life we once found nourishing s...

Today, as we celebrate our mothers and motherhood, we’re exploring the symbols of our Divine Mother hidden throughout ancient Christianity, and what it might mean for each of us—men and women—to cultivate and integrate divine femininity into our own souls. Our guests are Kathryn and Bob Sonntag, who joined us at Restore last year for a powerful session on ritual, wisdom, and our Divine Mother. Tod...

Today, we’re really excited to share a special episode with Jeff Strong on his new book, Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn From Them . Research suggests that roughly 40% of formerly active, faithful members have stepped away from the Church in the last twenty-five years—and the pace is accelerating. Jeff Strong is asking why. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, h...

Hey everyone, this is Aubrey from Faith Matters. Today’s episode is a personal one for me—and probably for many of you—especially if you’ve ever found yourself deferring to someone else’s inspiration, or noticing a tendency to believe that someone else’s knowing is more trustworthy than your own. Our guest, Deidre Nicole Green, is a professor at Graduate Theological Union and a theologian and scho...

Today, we’re honored to share a conversation with Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, a New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of Outreach, a ministry for LGBTQ Catholics. His new memoir is called Work in Progress: Confessions of a Busboy, Dishwasher, Caddy, Usher, Factory Worker, Bank Teller, Corporate Tool, and Priest . And yes, he held every one of those jobs before he found his c...

Today we’re exploring a tender question so many parents are carrying: how do we help our kids grow in faith when we’re still figuring it out for ourselves? And underneath that—what if we get it wrong? What if we hand them something they’ll spend years trying to untangle? Today, we’re joined by pastor, author, and researcher Meredith Miller , who has spent her career thoughtfully engaging these que...

Today we’re asking: what do you do when someone you love tells you they’re leaving the Church? What do you say? How do you stay grounded and connected when the stakes feel high or you’re caught off guard? We sat down with two longtime friends of the podcast—authors and researchers Joseph Grenny and Jeff Strong—to explore these high-stakes moments when someone is ready to talk about their shifting...

We live in a world that prizes activity: being productive, staying in control, always doing something. So when life brings seasons of waiting—through illness, loss, or circumstances we didn’t choose—it can feel unsettling, even threatening to our sense of self. But what if those seasons are actually inviting us into a deeper understanding of God? Today, we’re joined by Terryl Givens to explore an...

This version has the correct audio--thanks to those who let us know the last one wasn't right!  From time to time we like to share episodes from other shows in the Faith Matters network that we think you’ll really love, and today we’re highlighting one of our new favorites from Article 13 , the podcast hosted by Zach Davis. If you haven’t discovered it yet, Article 13 is one of the most beaut...

One of the real challenges of studying the Hebrew Bible is figuring out how to make sense of stories of divine violence—where a God of love seems hard to find. These passages raise real questions about the nature of God and what it means for us as we try to live faithfully. Our guest today is Riley Risto, director of Latter-day Peace Studies , who joined the Church after a powerful mystical experi...

In today’s conversation, we explore creativity as a spiritual practice—not something reserved for artists, but a way of living. Our guests are Lisa Valentine Clark, a comedian, actor, and host of The Lisa Show , and James Rees —artist, educator, researcher, and passionate advocate for the arts. Both Lisa and James have spent their lives creating—in front of audiences on stages, in studios, in clas...

Today we’re grateful to share a conversation with our friend Tucker Boyle—a longtime seminary and institute teacher and the founder of Harmony Road Retreats , a nonprofit creating safe, supportive spaces for people in faith crisis. As a young missionary, Tucker fell in love with teaching the gospel and knew he wanted to become a full-time seminary teacher. He stepped into that role with his whole...

We’re so excited to share a conversation that our friend and Executive Director, Zach Davis, had with Teresa Morgan, Professor at Yale Divinity School and a leading scholar of early Christian history. Teresa invites us to reconsider one of the most central words in Christianity: faith. She explains that for the first generations of Christians, “faith” didn’t mean signing on to a list of beliefs. I...

Today we’re so excited to share our conversation with Bruce Tift, author, psychotherapist and longtime practitioner of Vajrayana Buddhism. This summer, our friends at Uplift Kids introduced us to Bruce’s fascinating book Already Free , and we’ve been thinking about it ever since. In this conversation, Bruce dives into some of the ideas in the book. He explores how to make peace with being human. H...

As we explore the Old Testament this year, we’ve found ourselves returning to a past conversation with our friend Terryl Givens. It felt grounding and expansive and we're really excited to share it with you again. The Old Testament can be incredibly rich—full of beauty, poetry, and profound spiritual insights. But it can also sometimes feel bewildering or even faith-shaking. We get glimpses o...

Hey everyone, this is Aubrey Chaves from Faith Matters. Today I’m excited to share my conversation with Katie Ludlow Rich and Heather Sundahl about 50 Years of Exponent II , their new book tracing the history of a space where Latter-day Saint women have engaged the most urgent questions of their time—while also honoring the dailiness of life. The roots of this effort go back to 1872, when women be...

We’ve all heard it called a sifting—the language that sometimes surfaces when someone is struggling or steps away from the Church. Wheat from tares, sheep from goats, a sorting in the last days that reveals truly elect. But today, our good friend and contributor Jeff Strong is back to invite us into a deeper reflection on that idea—and what he sees as the more essential question: Who is the Church...

Today we’re joined by our friend Patrick Mason and filmmaker Robert Reynolds. Rob is the director and producer of the new docu-series An Inconvenient Faith —a project that’s already opening hearts and starting some long-overdue conversations. This series is raw and honest. It takes on some of the most difficult and tender topics in our faith tradition—things like women and authority , LGBTQ belong...

Today, we want to introduce you to another podcast in the Faith Matters Podcast Network called Sanctuary: Discovering the Temple , hosted by Larkin Swain. Larkin brings a candid, curious, and thoughtful approach to conversations about the temple, and this episode felt especially fascinating and timely as we begin a new year studying the Old Testament. In this episode, Larkin speaks with historical...

Today we’re sharing a conversation with writers and filmmakers Sarah and Josh Sabey about their new project, The Bible Storybook , a two volume collection of 50 stories from the Old Testament. You might remember their Book of Mormon Storybook . Like those earlier volumes, this new project is guided by a simple and beautiful idea: “These are stories about a real God who loves real people”—people wh...

Today we’re bringing you a conversation with Carl Richards, and we think this one might just change the way you think—and feel—about money. You might know Carl as The Sketch Guy from his decade-long New York Times column, where he offered disarmingly relatable insights about money using just cardstock and a Sharpie. For Carl, money isn’t about spreadsheets and savings accounts—it’s a mirror, refle...

As we move into Christmas week, we wanted to offer something a little different.  Today’s episode is a reading of “ In the Bleak Midwinter ,” written and read by Peter Conti‑Brown, and originally published in the Faith Matters magazine, Wayfare . It tells the true story of a Christmas that unfolded in unexpected ways—marked by absence, uncertainty, and pain. And yet, it’s also a story about how gr...

Today, we’re thrilled to share a conversation with New York Times bestselling author and happiness expert Gretchen Rubin , where we explored one of her most practical and game-changing frameworks: the Four Tendencies . Gretchen explains that we all face two types of expectations—outer expectations, like a church calling or a request from a boss or family member, and inner expectations, like a pers...

Today, in light of the upcoming Come Follow Me lesson which covers Official Declaration 2 , we’re honored to share a conversation with W. Paul Reeve and Ramesus Stewart-Johnson about race, the priesthood and temple restriction, and what it really means to root out racism in our church community today. Since lifting the priesthood and temple ban in 1978, we have witnessed a great flourishing of the...

Today, we’re so excited to share a conversation with our good friend and teammate at Faith Matters, Cece Proffit. If you’ve followed Faith Matters for a while, you’ve felt Cece’s influence—her energy, creativity, and care shape so much of what we do behind the scenes. And so today, we’re thrilled she’s stepping in front of the mic to talk about one of her very favorite subjects—Advent. In this con...