Faith Matters

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...

For this episode, we were excited to talk with John Hilton III. John is the author of the new book Considering the Cross , which was published by Deseret Book earlier this year. We loved this book and John’s really thoughtful approach to this topic, which helped us see how bringing Christ’s crucifixion, and even the symbol of the cross, more prominently into our discourse and culture could really...

It can be delicious sometimes to just sit and listen to two great minds musing on some of the great questions of life. Even when their conversations feel a bit beyond our grasp, they point to deeper realms and invite us to journey with them into a richer intellectual life. That’s exactly what we have for you today. Two of the great intellectuals in the Latter-day Saint world, Terryl Givens and Joh...

This is part 2 of our discussion with Michael Wilcox that we’re calling God’s Many Voices. If you haven’t heard part 1 yet, we’d encourage you to go back and listen to that episode, which was released last week as episode #85. In it, Brother Wilcox shared with us why he’s spent so much time with the ideas and in the holy books of other religions. In this part, we actually got to dive into a few of...

This week, we were honored to bring back Michael Wilcox for one of the most interesting discussions we’ve ever had. We’ve discovered, as we’ve gotten to know him, just how well-versed he is in all world religions, not just in Latter-day Saint theology. We’re breaking this episode into two parts — in this first part, Brother Wilcox explains why it is that he’s spent so much time with the ideas and...

Faith Matters has teamed up with Leading Saints to produce a new "virtual summit" focused on the experience of single adult members of the Church. Though we would love for any single adult to attend, this isn't what you might think of as a "single adult conference" — the intended audience is anyone who loves someone in their life who is a single adult! Kurt Francom joins u...

Today’s episode was a tough one, to be honest. In the aftermath of a speech that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave recently to faculty and administration at BYU, we try to explore and understand why the message created such a firestorm. Among other things, the speech raised anew the Church's longstanding challenge in speaking to LGBTQ issues.  If you aren’t familiar with the speech that we’re tal...

For today’s episode, we speak with Charles Inouye.  Charles is a truly remarkable person—the son of Japanese parents who were held in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming camp during World War II. He grew up in the small town of Sigurd, Utah.  He spent much of his youth working on his family’s farm in Sigurd, but eventually served a mission in Japan. He then went on to earn degrees from some of the world’s...