Faith Matters

*** 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 , an...

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...

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...

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...

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 b...

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 ho...

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 becom...

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 con...

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 W...

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...

In this episode, we’re diving into one of the questions from our Big Questions series: Terryl Givens invited Joseph Spencer, a philosopher and professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University, to talk about the question of Book of Mormon historicity.  The claim that the Book of Mormon is a translation from ancient plates written by Hebrew people who immigrated to the American continent h...

For this week's episode, we brought on Carl Youngblood for a truly enlightening conversation we’ve been wanting to have for a long time.  Carl has spent most of his life helping to build and operate technology companies and has done a lot of deep thinking and writing about how technology is shaping our reality and our future—including how it will affect what it means to be human. Digital tech...

This week, we were lucky enough to spend some time with Melinda Wheelwright Brown, to talk about her book Eve and Adam: Discovering the Beautiful Balance , which was published by Deseret Book. We thought it would be great to start the year diving right into the first pages of the Old Testament — the chapters that we usually refer to as the story of “Adam and Eve.” Of course, as you’ve probably alr...

For this week’s episode, we’re releasing a classic conversation between George Handley and Terryl Givens — one that was released very early in the life of this podcast, and that many of you may not have yet heard. The first chapter of Genesis says: “In the beginning, God said let there be light, and there was light.” God created this extraordinary world, the scriptures tell us, through the power o...

For this conversation, we were lucky enough to bring back Richard Eyre for a second episode, this one focusing on his book, The Happiness Paradox . We loved the book and thought this discussion would be really timely for the new year, since many of us are hoping to find new paradigms that might help us live in a healthier, happier way. We believe that Richard’s book does just that.  For those unfa...

Many of you are familiar with Thomas Wirthlin McConkie. For those of you who are not, here’s a very cursory thumbnail sketch of his story: Coming from a very prominent Latter-day Saint family (with apostles on both sides of the family), Thomas left the Latter-day Saint faith as a teenager, eventually moved to China and for two decades deeply immersed himself in Buddhism. Eventually, he found his w...

As we approach the portion of the Come Follow Me curriculum that addresses Official Declaration 2, we thought we’d re-release a classic episode of the podcast that many of our newer listeners may not have heard — a conversation between Terryl Givens and Paul Reeve that explores the history of the Church’s priesthood-temple ban that concluded in 1978. In this episode, Paul and Terryl go both wide a...

This week, Faith Matters was delighted to welcome Dan Vallone, the US Director for More in Common , a nonprofit foundation whose mission is to build a more united and inclusive America that is resilient to the profound threats posed by our country’s polarization. Dan has a super impressive background, including serving six years active duty as a US Army infantry officer, with one tour in Afghanist...

For this episode, we spoke with Patrick Mason and David Pulsipher about their new book, "Proclaim Peace: The Restoration’s Answer to an Age of Conflict". The book was recently published by BYU’s Maxwell Institute. "Proclaim Peace" begins with the premise that even though we live in a world that is plagued by violence, that peace really is possible. For Patrick and David, the Go...

For this episode, we got to speak with Richard Eyre, a man whose career has spanned a number of roles, including that of an author, consultant, entrepreneur, and speaker. We got to speak with him about a variety of topics,  focusing on how we can contribute to society as a faith with a lot to offer even while our members are relatively few in number. We also discussed how we can make difficult dec...

For this episode, we’re doing a follow-up to our interview with Jody Moore about her new book published by Faith Matters, Better Than Happy . If you haven’t heard that episode yet, we’d recommend going back and listening first to that episode, which was released as #92. This episode is not in our standard interview style  — instead, it’s a live coaching experience, where Jody works with Lindsay Br...

For today’s episode, we’re announcing the next book published by Faith Matters Publishing called Better Than Happy  by Jody Moore. Jody has become something of a phenomenon in recent years—especially among Latter-day Saint women—due to her fantastic insights about how we can better deal with difficult relationships, create and meet goals, and live more fulfilling and happy lives. She has a BA in C...

To give a little background on today’s episode, we recently read the book A Short Stay in Hell by Steven Peck, who is a professor of biology and bioethics at BYU and an award-winning fiction author. The book is a remarkable and frankly terrifying exploration of a concept of “hell” that calls into question the very natures of eternity, meaning, and relationship.  As we talked with each other about...

This week, Tim and Aubrey Chaves of Faith Matters welcomed back Charles Inouye. When they first spoke with Charles a couple months ago, he mentioned that he had prepared some thoughts on living a life free of racism. Given President Nelson’s recent call for members of the Church to “lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice,” we wanted to get him back on as soon as we could so he c...

For this conversation, we spoke with Greg McKeown, the New York Times-bestselling author of the books Essentialism and Effortless, the latter of which was just released earlier this year. When we read both Essentialism and Effortless, we knew we wanted to have Greg on the podcast. Everything he wrote in these books seemed immediately applicable; not just in our lives or careers, but even towards o...