Faith Matters

Religion in America is undergoing a revolution. In 1972, 90% of Americans were self-professed Christians. Now, that number is about 64%. There are now large and growing populations of non-Christians, as well as many who have no particular religious beliefs. Such a time of change has made it an exciting time to be a scholar of religion, charged with making sense of the shifting landscape of America...

Before we get started, we just wanted to give you a quick note that this episode does contain frank discussion about sexuality, so you can determine if it’s appropriate for anyone listening in. For this conversation, we were really happy to bring on our good friend and one of our favorite people, Jennifer Finlayson-Fife, and we know many of you are fans of her of her work, too. For a long time, we...

In recent months, Governor Spencer J. Cox  of Utah has been in the news for the passage of two new state laws: one that puts strict limits on access to social media for teens, and another that would prohibit social media companies from using designs that are addictive to teens.  Governor Cox believes that social media and smartphones really are the culprit behind a teen mental health crisis that h...

The Gospel Topics essay titled “Mother in Heaven,” on churchofjesuschrist.org states “The doctrine of a Heavenly Mother is a cherished and distinctive belief among Latter-day Saints.” It’s with this in mind that three Latter-day Saint women — McArthur Krishna, Ashli Carnicelli, and Trina Caudle, have curated a new collection of writing, poetry, and art called Cherish: The Joy of Our Mother in Heav...

This week we are covering the Enneagram, a fascinating topic and a tool that we’ve found to be very helpful and deeply meaningful over the past few years. For this conversation, we were lucky enough to bring on one of the world’s foremost proponents and teachers of the Enneagram  — Ian Morgan Cron. Ian is a bestselling author, psychotherapist, Enneagram teacher, Episcopal priest, and the host of t...

Over the years, much of the work that we’ve done at Faith Matters has tried to take into account much of the wisdom and research that’s been done in the field of faith and adult development. It’s also been important to us to share and discuss some of the existing models, including Brian McLaren’s four-stage framework, and the “creation, fall, atonement” framework that our amazing friend Jared Halv...

In May of this year, the news program 60 Minutes aired a segment exploring the finances of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. David Nielsen, a former portfolio manager at Ensign Peak, the investment arm of the Church, alleged that the Church had been operating improperly as a tax-exempt organization and called for that tax-exempt status to be revoked. 60 Minutes also interviewed W. C...

A few weeks ago, we released a conversation with Terryl Givens about the life of Eugene England. England’s work on atonement theology had felt like it necessitated another conversation, but it was too big to fit into the first one. So this week, we brought Terryl back to talk not just about England’s views, but about atonement generally. The conversation starts with the fascinating premise that ou...

For this week’s episode, we were honored to bring on Alice Faulkner Burch, General Editor of Deseret Book’s new collection of essays by Black American Latter-day Saints: My Lord, He Calls Me. The title of the book comes from an early Black American spiritual called “Steal Away to Jesus.” The book shares contemporary experiences of Black Americans in the Church, and stories from every era of the Re...

In September of 1857, one of the greatest atrocities in the history of Mormonism was carried out. Now known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a group of Latter-day Saints led a siege in Southern Utah against a wagon train of emigrants on their way from Arkansas to California. After the siege had dragged on for several days, and under the guise of a truce, leaders of the Mormon party lured the emig...

It isn’t easy to be born into a famous family with big expectations. And there’s few families more famous or with bigger expectations than the Kennedys. Tim Shriver’s immediate family includes not only a former US president, a US Attorney General, and a US Senator, but his parents, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, founded global humanitarian organizations like the Special Olympics, The...

For this week's episode, we spoke with Brooke Romney, a guest that had been recommended to us over and over — and we were so happy we were able to connect with her. Brooke is a writer who began her career on Capitol Hill and whose work has appeared in many publications, including in the Washington Post. She now spends much of her time writing and speaking, particularly on the subject of paren...

For today’s episode, we were honored as always to bring back one of our favorite people and conversation partners, and likely one of yours: Terryl Givens. We spoke with Terryl about a book he released in 2021, a biography called Stretching the Heavens: The Life of Eugene England and the Crisis of Modern Mormonism . Terryl’s work on this biography led to a fascinating portrait of a man many of us l...

This week’s episode is with an incredible Latter-day Saint poet, Darlene Young. Darlene has just released a new book of poetry, called Here , and published by BCC Press. It’s an honest, vulnerable, relatable, and incredibly approachable book that we laughed and cried our way through. In our conversation with Darlene, she talked about the value of poetry itself  — how it can be a “dance” to prose’s...

For this week’s episode, we’re bringing you a conversation with Jason Whiting, a Professor and Program Director in the Marriage and Family Therapy program at Brigham Young University. ​Jason received his PhD from Michigan State University, and is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. He’s also the author of Love Me True: Overcoming the Surprising Ways We Deceive in Relationships . Jason’s prim...

We’ve been really excited to share this week's interview with you. Our guest was Astrid Tuminez, President of Utah Valley University. Astrid is an absolute delight to talk with and listen to. She’s full of stories, humor, and deep insights that made our time with her pass way too quickly. This interview actually came about because Astrid wrote an essay in Melissa Inouye and Kate Holbrook’s ne...

We’re super excited to share this week’s episode with you. Our interview was with Dan McClellan, a Bible scholar who began sharing his insights and scholarship on TikTok in 2021, and immediately began racking up millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers. One of the reasons people seem to resonate with Dan’s content is that he makes traditionally difficult and obscure topics extremel...

In June 2015, a white supremacist entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and murdered 9 members of the church during a Bible study. During the first court hearing, a number of family members of victims said that they forgave the murderer, Dylann Roof. This act of forgiveness shocked many people. Some people were shocked by witnessing such an act of Christian charity. Others were sh...

For today’s episode, we thought we’d bring you a really special story that we think we can all learn from, especially during this Easter season as we ponder concepts like redemption and new life. Our guest was Dave Durocher, the Executive Director of The Other Side Academy in Salt Lake City. If you’re an especially up-to-date listener, or you went to Restore last year, you’ve heard a little bit ab...

This week we’re bringing you a conversation with Rachel Rueckert, a really amazing young writer who recently published a memoir called East Winds: A Global Quest to Reckon with Marriage . Rachel’s story is a fascinating one. Perhaps due to a highly tumultuous home life as a child, she inherited her suspicions about marriage early. Growing up in the Church, there was a constant drumbeat about marri...

When BYU professor Eric Huntsman was growing up, he spent time among Catholics in Pittsburgh and Baptists in Alabama and came to love the different ways other Christian denominations worshiped Jesus. And one of his favorite ways that other Christians worshiped was during Holy Week, the week leading up to Easter Sunday. Over the years, Eric began incorporating many Holy Week traditions into his spi...

This week we’re sharing with you one of the most popular presentations from our Restore gathering that happened last October  — a talk by Joseph Grenny called “The Other Side.” As a young father, Joseph was determined to have the perfect family. All of kids would be active, go on missions, go to BYU and be stalwart. But that dream was shattered when two of his sons got involved in drugs and crime....

For this week’s episode, we’re bringing you a story that we really think will uplift and inspire you. Our guest was Liz Shropshire, the founder of Peace Through Music . In our interview with her, Liz tells the story of how she got started teaching music to children in Kosovo who had been affected by the war and ethnic cleansing that took place there in the 1990s. She knew just two things: she coul...

Several years ago, Matthew Holland, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s son, was on a sabbatical at Oxford University. One day, he passed by a door that said “Chaplain.” Intrigued, he decided to knock. Thus began a remarkable relationship with Andrew Teal, an Anglican priest and lecturer in theology at Pembroke College, Oxford. Since then, Andrew has developed a close friendship with Elder Holland, attende...

** To help, head to https://www.toukrainewithlove.org ** It’s been exactly a year since the world received the shocking news that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, and exactly a year since the lives of millions of Ukrainian people changed forever. As news of troop movements, cities under siege, refugee crises and all kinds of geopolitical saber-rattling has come to those of us outside Ukraine, m...