Faith Matters

Today we’re joined by Ryan Burge, one of the country’s leading data analysts on religion and politics, to talk about his new book, The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us . For decades, we’ve measured the decline of American religion by empty pews and shrinking membership rolls. Ryan invites us to see another, deeper loss. As modera...

As we approach America's 250th birthday, we're reminded that every generation inherits the responsibility of shaping the nation's future. At a moment marked by fear, division, and distrust, the invitation to become peacemakers has never felt more urgent. Today, we're sharing a powerful message from Patrick Mason, that he shared at our Restore Gathering at Utah Valley University...

Today we're delighted to share a conversation with Robin Ritch about her new book, Using Friction to Grow: Stories of Strength and Resilience . Many of us spend our lives trying to avoid friction. We want our faith to feel clear, our communities to feel supportive, and our spiritual lives to move forward without too much tension or uncertainty. But today Robin's asking, "What if our...

Today we’re sharing a special conversation courtesy of our friends at Lift+Love . This is a conversation recorded at their first ever Gather Conference in 2023, the world’s largest Christ-centered gathering of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and those who love them. In this session, two men sat down together: Tom Christofferson and Darius Gray. Both are devoted Latter-day Saints who know what it is to lov...

Today we’re honored to share a special session from Restore 2025 featuring Steven Kapp Perry , Alisha Anderson , and Ben Schilaty —three gay Latter-day Saints who have each taken different paths, and who share a deep commitment to following God with honesty, courage, and faith. In this on-stage conversation, Steve, Alisha, and Ben share personal and vulnerable reflections on what it means to seek...

This week, wards across the United States will be having a really unique 5th Sunday discussion centered on the Constitution, moral agency, and peace-building. So today, we wanted to reshare a conversation that originally aired in 2021. In this episode, Faith Matters co-founder Bill Turnbull joins Judge Thomas Griffith, an expert in constitutional law, to explore the Constitution and the rapid eros...

They call him the Mr. Rogers of farming, and I think you’ll understand why.  Karl Ebeling spent 33 years as a chemical engineer before feeling an undeniable pull back to the land and to a childhood love of farming that had never really left him. He combined his love of the earth with desire to help and heal and founded Eden Streets in 2020, a community farming initiative that helps individuals rel...

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...