Faith Matters

Today we’re sharing with you an episode from a brand new podcast that Faith Matters is co-sponsoring in collaboration with Mormon Women for Ethical Government, called Proclaim Peace. This podcast is hosted by Jennifer Thomas, Co-Executive Director of MWEG, and Patrick Mason, Leonard Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, and longtime friend and advisor of Faith Mat...

We’re back sharing a favorite session from last year’s Restore Conference. In this session, Adam Miller retells the parable of the prodigal son and a highlight from the Children’s book series, 'Frog and Toad", to re-examine our relationship to love. It is our nature to think we have to work hard to earn love, and we constantly tell ourselves stories about what we have to do to earn it. B...

A little less than two decades ago, you might walk past a bookstore and see The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins featured among the bestsellers. The mid to late 2000’s were the heyday for the New Atheists, a small cohort of scientists and philosophers who were convinced religion was both untrue and a bad influence in the world. At the time, it was easy to see the rise of the New Atheists as the lat...

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...

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 sp...

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...

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 oth...

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 t...

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 uncertain...

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 b...

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,...

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...

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...

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,...

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,...

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 l...

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 jo...

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...

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....

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...

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 Tran...

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...

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...

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 wi...

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...