Latter Day Bridge Builders

What happens when you study Mormon history without an agenda? Dr. Benjamin Park — historian, author of American Zion and Kingdom of Nauvoo, and former Mormon History Association president — joins Mitch, Juliet, and Ashton to talk about what it means to approach faith history honestly. We get into why history is rarely the reason people leave the church (but often the permission), whether the churc...

"Doubt Your Doubts." Is It Actually Good Advice? In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders, Mitch, Juliet, and Ashton dig into one of the most well-known phrases in LDS faith crisis conversations: "Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith." A line from Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf's October 2013 General Conference talk, Come, Join With Us . Is the advice itself bad? Or...

What does it look like to stop believing in the Church but still show up every Sunday? In this episode, we sit down with Colton Scott. A born-and-raised Utah Mormon, returned missionary (Scotland & Ireland), and BYU grad who describes himself as a product of "the Utah factory." Colton shares the story of how his sister's faith transition in 2023 sent him down a rabbit hole of inv...

It's Pride Month, and we're getting personal about our own histories with LGBTQ+ issues and the LDS Church. Juliet opens up about a chapter in her early Mormon years; actively campaigning for California's Prop 8 in 2008. Knocking on doors and holding signs, despite personally believing gay marriage wasn't wrong. She reflects on outsourcing her moral compass to God, the cognitive di...

Ashton and Juliet welcome Crystal, a gay woman raised in the LDS Church in Iowa, to share her journey of secrecy, shame, and eventually stepping away from church activity. Crystal describes growing up with strong church expectations (her dad served in leadership), not feeling safe discussing emotions at home, and living a double life after a secret high school relationship with a girl. She recount...

Ashton and Juliet host author Jeff Strong to discuss his Latter-day Saint-focused book Torn and what drove him to write about faith struggle, deconstruction, and belonging. Jeff shares how his son came home early from the MTC 13 years ago, the “fog of war” that followed, and how family and community reactions created misunderstanding, rejection, and years of pain before finding a healthier way for...

Skyler Sorenson joins us share his story as a covenant-keeping Latter-day Saint who experiences same-sex attraction, is temple married to his wife Amanda, and is a father. He discusses his book Exclude Not Thyself and why he uses the word “thriving” to challenge assumptions that faithful gay Latter-day Saints can’t find joy in the Church. The conversation covers navigating labels and assumptions f...

On Latter Day Bridge Builders, Ashton shares his mission story serving in Salt Lake City in the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission full-time and only about 35 minutes from his childhood home. Instead of proselytizing, Ashton worked service assignments at Temple Square, including the Family History Library (helping patrons, dealing with printers, shelving), the Church History Library, a...

Juliet served her mission in the Independence Missouri Mission — but spent most of it in rural Kansas, an hour from the nearest missionaries, 500 square miles of farmland between her and anything familiar. Five months in, she came home early. In this episode, Juliet opens up about the mental health struggles she carried into her mission, what it felt like when her coping tools were stripped away,...

Is the LDS Church a Cult? Who knows! But either way, people do call it a cult, and that doesn't seem like that will be changing any time soon. Join us as we talk about WHY people call it a cult. Is it just an inflammatory pejorative? Or does the term serve an important purpose? What does our choice of whether or not to refer to it as a cult say about our experience, and is it possible that som...

Patrick Mason, historian, Fulbright Scholar, and holder of the Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, joins Latter Day Bridge Builders for a wide-ranging conversation on faith, doubt, and what it means to stay curious inside a religious community. We talk about how to create space for hard questions without feeling dismissed, what both faithful members a...

Tiana Chambers is a community organizer and event planner who ISN'T a matchmaker (even though she matches people?). She sat down with us to talk about some of the trickier parts of dating across the wide LDS spectrum, including standards vs values, spirituality vs. religiosity, and curiosity vs. judgement. We even try to answer the age-old question: Why are LDS guys always asking for "noo...

Baylie Clark (@bayliebelieves) is a Latter-day Saint content creator from Alberta, Canada who built a faith-focused platform almost overnight; and she's not afraid to ask hard questions, including ones aimed at people who've left the church. In this episode, we talk about why she uses the #ExMormon hashtag, what happened when a viral response video misread her intent, and how she thinks ab...

Mitch is out, so Juliet and Ashton are flying solo and diving straight into one of the deepest fault lines in Mormon culture: gender and power. Juliet, a feminist who has left the church, and Ashton, an active Elders Quorum President, ask each other honest, uncomfortable questions about priesthood ordination, spiritual worth, what "wife material" really meant growing up, and whether incr...

Do people leave the church because they want to sin? The answer may not be so simple after all. In this episode, we talk about tattoos, piercings, the word of wisdom, and sex, to name a few things, and how they interact with peoples' journey's out of the church. Is it simply a matter of abandoning the anchoring principles they once held to, or is it a way to re-establish connection and ide...

A new apostle has been called: Clark Gilbert . What does that mean? And more importantly—what does it reveal about how we think about priesthood authority? In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders , Mitch, Ashton, and Juliet talk candidly about: The appointment of Clark Gilbert and the reactions surrounding it Authority vs. humanity in church leadership The difference between “letter of the l...

In this episode, we wrap up our discussion of why we even need a podcast like this in the first place. Juliet pushes back on Ashton's elephant metaphor, we talk about whether or not we should even care what the people around us believe, and Mitch shares a "pain point" from the last time he attended church. We talk about the vulnerability that comes when we "exit the cave" a...

In this episode, we officially introduce the new co hosts of Latter Day Bridge Builders. Juliet, Ashton, and I talk openly about why this space exists and why building bridges in the LDS world can feel so hard. We get into what it is like to sit in the middle. Feeling too Mormon for some spaces and too ex Mormon for others. We talk about faith transitions, loneliness, nuance, and why dignity often...

In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders , Mitch sits down with Ashton Smith to talk about what it really means to build bridges across belief. Ashton shares his experience growing up in an orthodox LDS environment, serving as an Elders Quorum president, and learning how curiosity, humility, and respect matter more than winning arguments. Together, they explore why “us vs. them” thinking show...

In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders, Mitch sits down with returning guest Stevie for a raw, unfiltered conversation about faith, doubt, and what it actually feels like to live in the tension between the two. Stevie shares her experience moving from spiritual certainty into a full-blown faith crisis; one that collided with postpartum depression, suicidal ideation, temple service, and deep...

In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders, Mitch sits down with James Linton, an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to talk about the uncomfortable space between belief and disbelief; and why so many relationships get stuck there. Instead of debating doctrine, this conversation digs into how members and ex-members see each other, why fear and silence creep into f...

Serving a Mormon mission in Cape Verde, Africa completely changed my life. It made me more serious, more committed, and opened my eyes to a culture totally different from the white Utah bubble I grew up in. It also pushed me to my limits, exposed me to the church’s messy racial history, and left me with questions I couldn’t ignore. In this episode, I reminisce about my mission: - What it was like...

This week, I sit down with Jules Miller. Former seminary teacher, lifelong feminist, and someone who knows purity culture from the inside and the outside. We get into the object lessons, the bishop interviews, the shame cycles, the “worthiness” obsession, and how all of it shaped the way so many of us grew up. We pull apart the mixed messages, the contradictions, the fear, and the mental gymnastic...

In this episode of Latter Day Bridge Builders, Mitch reflects on four real life conversations that reshaped how he sees faith, empathy, and connection. Each of these moments with friends, mentors, and fellow Latter-day Saints revealed something deeper about what it truly means to listen instead of trying to be right. It’s an honest, thoughtful look at how bridge building works in the real world—no...

Aftershocks in Zion | Latter Day Bridge Builders PodcastUtah has been through a lot lately — tragedy, transition, and questions about who we are as a community. In this episode, we reflect on three recent events that shook the Latter-day Saint world:• The shooting of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk in Utah Valley• The passing of President Russell M. Nelson and the rise of President Dallin H....