Latter-day Faith

This episode features a conversation between Mat Schmalz and LDF host Dan Wotherspoon about images, rituals, and meditations surrounding the Christmas season. Mat, who teaches religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts, is a cradle Catholic and has for the past twenty years or so also engaged with Latter-day Saints, and here shares openly, and in a very approac...

This encore presentation of a show first released in December 2019 continues a conversation between Phil McLemore , a yogi in the lineage of Paramahansa Yogananda and also a Latter-day Saint, and LDF host Dan Wotherspoon. This time, its focus is on Christmas and its various symbols and the opportunities the season provides for better understanding Jesus and, more widely, Christ, the divine conscio...

So often we read scripture through lenses that don't allow them to affect us all that much. We read for the stories depicted, perhaps the history. We will notice teachings and perhaps other things about the writers. But none of these ways place the emphasis on us and our transformation, or on insights that these suggest when we approach them spiritually. In this episode, Mark Crego, and LDF host D...

Terri Peterson is a recovering perfectionist. She says she came to it naturally as the oldest child in her family, but it moved into full throttle following a family tragedy about which church teachings offered comfort but, at least the way she began to understand them, also stressed the importance of doing and being obedient, and causing her to choose the most extreme ways of demonstrating her de...

This episode provides a chance for listeners to bask in the presence of two powerful wise women elders, Lyndsay Pulsipher and Theresa Roth . Brought on the show by LDF host Dan Wotherspoon , a huge admirer of the way each of them meet the world, including life among the Mormons, Lindsay and Theresa share about their lives and spiritual paths, as well as the practices that allow them to center in l...

In this episode, the wonderful mentor, coach, and educator, Melanee Evans , joins host Dan Wotherspoon for a deep dive into our spiritual core (our "home"), the creative nature of thought, "living from inside-out," and other profound concepts and their connections to our real, lived-lives, and especially how they offer us a way to true joy and peace. The conversation begins with Melanee sharing ab...

LDS community dynamics in the U.S. (and also in certain other places in the world) have shifted greatly in the past two decades, as someone's politics have largely overshadowed their religious identity. As our guest this episode, Stephen Carter , argues, we now likely know more about someone who identifies themselves as a political conservative (or a liberal or a progressive) than from their being...

"Authority" takes many forms. According to the gospel writer Mark, people responded to Jesus's teaching in the following way: "And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes. (Mark 1:22). What does that mean? What is going on between the speaker and the hearer that would cause the latter to react like this? And how does this sort of a...

Activation Warning: This episode contains discussions of suicidal ideation. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, there is always professional help available to assist you, both in the short and long term. If you've reached a crisis point, please reach out to a trusted person or call a suicide hotline. Do not be alone with these thoughts running through your mind! The title of this episode me...

Dr. Julie de Azevedo Hanks is the guest for this podcast discussion that focuses on moving our homes and families, and in doing so wider communities, toward genuine gender equality. In it, she introduces us to a model she created as part of her doctoral dissertation, which she calls the "Partnership Model of Family Organization." She shares fascinating ideas about families and linking with others...

This episode releases two weeks after LDS Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland addressed BYU faculty, administrators, and staff, during which he reiterated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' position on marriage as being only between a man and a woman. He also addressed the activism on the BYU campus supportive of LGBTQ+ students, especially the participation of those who work for the church-s...

In this episode, Latter-day Faith host Dan Wotherspoon reflects on the life of his wonderful friend, mentor, sounding board, and wise soul Curt Bench who passed away recently. In sharing about Curt and the pivotal role he played in Dan's life, his hope is that we each will take time to consider the people who have made a genuine difference in our lives, especially those who found joy in who we are...

No two life paths are the same, and this is also true with spiritual ones. Here at Latter-day Faith we talk a lot about "inner work" and practices that are often associated with Christian mysticism. Yet, as Marty Erickson , this week's guest, points out, not everyone wrestling with Mormonism or struggling to discover their own spiritual way relates to the mystic path. Where are they to go? How mig...

Levi Peterson is one of Mormondom's most celebrated authors and writing teachers who, in this episode chats with LDF host Dan Wotherspoon shortly after the release of his latest collection of short stories, Losing a Bit of Eden . His most famous novel is The Backslider , and he has written, among many other things, a celebrated biography of LDS historian Juanita Brooks (who was the first to docume...

In this departure from our usual type of show, this episode takes a short look at the evolution of from the founding of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought to the beginnings of Sunstone and its symposiums. Featuring Sunstone's director of publishing, Stephen Carter , he and LDF host Dan Wotherspoon (a former editor and executive director of Sunstone) then talk about the 2021 Salt Lake Sunstone S...

For our 100th Latter-day Faith episode, my good and wise friend, Mark Crego , who is also my partner in making this show and our many events and gatherings possible, get together to reflect on what we started a bit over two years ago. How well does it match with what we started out to do? How have things shifted, and what has brought these on? And, ultimately, how do we see LDF and the Faith Journ...

For many, the way the sacrament is practiced within Mormonism can feel stale and perfunctory rather than spiritually fulfilling. The LDS practice is very simple, beginning with a hymn, followed by the reading of set prayers (but very rarely feeling like prayer and supplication, an attempt to unite us in common purpose), then being followed by boys and men (only) passing the emblems--plain bread an...

Mormonism's theology is "queer" in the sense of peculiar, different, and unique in its connections between ideas and the particularity of spirit and matter, along with various practices. Blaire Ostler , in her new book Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction (By Common Consent Press, 2021) plays on that meaning, while also laying out how in many ways that queer theology has a lot of room for "queer...

In this special Father's Day episode, LDF host Dan Wotherspoon interviews his dad, Jim. James Richard Wotherspoon has lived a remarkable life. Born blind (as was his brother, Robert), Jim has  achieved quite a lot in his 87-plus years. He became one of the first (if not the first) blind person to earn the rank of Eagle scout. He and his brother both mainstreamed at Berkeley High School, where he e...

Samuel Brown lives the life of a physician-scientist whose life journey has brought him step by step and new experience by new experience from rebellion, rationalism, and atheism to a place where, as he says, "[that] we might make sense of our thinking within a world charged by the presence of God." He is not naturally social or comfortable with others but through the decades has come to appreciat...

There is no question that we are living during a time in the world that is unlike any other. Brought on by the dawning of the information age, and especially the rise of the Internet and ever-increasing access to it and all the social media and other technologies it has hatched, it is no wonder that societies, cultures, religions, and we ourselves have been thrust into major growing pains--some of...

1 Corinthians 13 is one of the best known and most powerful chapters in the Bible. At the end of the chapter before it, Paul says he is going to talk to the people of Corinth about a "more excellent way," and he then launches into his famous discourse on love (translated as "charity" by the King James authors) and its transcendence above all other gifts and qualities. The chapter also contains a g...

Sean McKee is a wonderful member of the Latter-day Faith community, and is someone with a wonderfully diverse spiritual background. In this episode, LDF host Dan Wotherspoon draws Sean out on his life and religious journey. In his telling, we learn a lot about other traditions he's been part of, gain insights on the development of religion more generally, and come to understand what elements of Mo...

There are aspects of Mormon culture and emphases among Latter-day Saint teachings that make it very difficult to for many to understand, let alone, experience true Grace. Katie Langston was one of these people, constantly worrying if she was "doing enough," if she was "worthy" in the eyes of God, if she were innately evil. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with "scrupulosity," a form of obsessive-comp...

This past week, the wonderful Mormon mental, spiritual, and sex therapist Natasha Helfer Parker was scheduled to defend herself in a membership council called by the stake presidency in her former stake in Kansas (even though she had moved to Salt Lake City sixteen months earlier). Six friends, including Jana Spangler and Jody England Hansen , two of the women in this podcast episode, were also sc...