Maxwell Institute Podcast

In the late nineteenth century, a newspaper written and published by women and for women sprung up in what most Americans thought was the unlikeliest of locations: Utah, the home of the Mormons. Along the top of the newspaper the masthead proudly declared its concern: “The Rights of the Women of Zion, and the Rights of the Women of All Nations.” It was called the Women’s Exponent. This declaration...

There’s a famous passage from First Corinthians: “Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted into them to speak. But they are commanded to be under obedience, as also say the law. And if they will learn anything, let them ask their husband at home. For it is a shame for women to speak in the church” ( 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 ). Many scholars believe this passage made its w...

When the Lotus Sutra arrived in Boston in 1844 the few people who could read it were intrigued by its parables that reminded them of the Bible. For these westerners, the Lotus was like a gateway into a mysterious and profound culture from across the world. But it took a long time to get there, from India to China, Japan, and beyond, and the most exciting history occurred before it ever reached Eur...

Are you familiar with the New Atheists? The late Christopher Hitchens wrote biting books about religion as “poison,” Richard Dawkins champions a sort of scientism as a replacement for faith, and people like Bill Maher spend time each evening poking fun at the pious. Despite their unofficial “New Atheist” title, they’re perhaps not actually all that new. Award-winning historian Leigh Eric Schmidt s...

People are usually more comfortable talking about their strengths rather than their weaknesses. It’s human nature. The same can be said about religious studies. When scholars talk about it, you can expect them to emphasize the positive. But like many academic fields, religious studies also faces challenges. Some come from the outside—say, when schools and governments and religious traditions want...

One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly is the latest book in the Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith series . In this episode, author Ashley Mae Hoiland joins Blair Hodges, co-editor of the series, to talk about the revelatory nature of writing. The book is for restless souls who desire to know God more deeply. Hoiland bids the reader to follow her down the hallowed and well-trodden path between the hear...

The deep red state of Utah is surprising pundits as the 2016 presidential election approaches. For the first time in over fifty years, the state is poised to vote for someone other than the Republican nominee. Mormons within the Republican party have been singled out as a significant reason Utah is looking elsewhere. It’s useful to ask, how did things get to this point? Throughout its existence, m...

As the twentieth century dawned, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints remained at odds with the United States, a country that had provided fertile soil for the growth of their faith, but also a country they felt alienated from. Some of the things Mormons did to keep themselves separate from the outside world ended up helping them reconcile with it. In their efforts to build a self-susta...

Perhaps you’ve experienced moments of doubt about your religious faith. Or maybe you’re one of the people who find doubt to be a more frequent companion in your spiritual life. Either way, doubt can be unsettling and uncomfortable. Biblical scholar Peter Enns suggests that part of the problem is that many Christians have come to prize certainty as a hallmark of true faith in God. His new book is c...

James L. Kugel is one of the foremost scholars of the Hebrew Bible of our time. Kugel recently visited BYU’s Neal A. Maxwell Institute to talk about his work and about the relationship between religious faith and scholarship about scripture. Kugel is an orthodox Jew and biblical scholar who became somewhat legendary for revisiting ancient paradigms. When he taught at Harvard, one of Kugel’s studen...

“Be fruitful and multiply.” According to the book of Genesis, these are the first words God speaks to humanity. People have understood these words over the centuries as a commandment to procreate, and the ability to bear and raise children has been understood as a divine blessing. But what about people who can’t bear children due to biology or circumstance? Biblical scholars Candida Moss and Joel...

What good is a dead body? How have humans cared for dead bodies through the ages and why do we do it? What do dead bodies tell us about the things we value most and about the things we’re afraid of? All of us will be dead bodies someday, so these questions are relevant for everyone. The answers constitute what cultural historian Thomas Laqueur calls “the work of the dead.” Laqueur dug into records...

In some ways it’s been a lonelier than usual summer at the Maxwell Institute. Since it was founded in 2006 we’ve had the privilege of hosting the Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture, a remarkable research opportunity that is somewhat legendary for the people that have passed through it, like Reid Neilson of the Church History Library, Patrick Mason and Kathleen Flake who hold chairs in Mormon Studies...

When the Protestant Reformer John Calvin published his book Institutes of the Christian Religion in the 1500s, he couldn’t have anticipated the incredibly different purposes his book would come to serve long after he died and was buried somewhere in an unmarked grave by his own request. The Institutes was a blockbuster in Calvin’s day, but why, hundreds of years later, did it wind up playing a par...

What do you know about African American religious history? Julius H. Bailey joins us in this episode to talk about his new overview, Down in the Valley: An Introduction to African American History . Bailey’s book operates on a few different levels. The ground floor contains a general story beginning with African traditional religions. It moves through slavery and religion, the rise of Christian bl...

If you surveyed Americans, asking them to identify themselves as: A) Catholic B) Muslim C) Evangelical D) Mormon …and so on, an increasing number will select the very last option—none of the above. Study after study has shown a steady decline in religious affiliation, with one in five Americans identifying as “None.” Traditional religious believers watch these numbers with a bit of uneasiness, won...

The New York Times Review of Books says Marilynne Robinson “is not like any other writer. She has created a small, rich, and fearless body of work in which religion exists unashamedly, as does doubt, unashamedly.” Robinson is perhaps best known for her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead (2004). This year she received the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Her latest book is a non-fic...

Why was it virtually impossible not to believe in God in, say, 1500 in our Western society, while in 2016 many people find it more difficult to believe than not? This is the question that Charles Taylor tackles in his massive book A Secular Age. In this episode, James K. A. Smith joins us to talk about Taylor’s work. What was it like to believe in God in the past and what is it like for many belie...

Even if you’ve never heard of a Christian movement scholars call “the prosperity gospel,” chances are you know some of its most famous proponents, like Joel Osteen or Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. “The prosperity gospel” is not officially associated with any particular denomination. It’s more a style of Christianity, one that emphasizes God’s desire to bless people—particularly and literally when it...

C. S. Lewis died in 1963 on the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Before the decade was over, few expected his works to last. “We think Lewis’s star has risen and is about to set,” said one Catholic publisher. “His day is over. No one will be reading C. S. Lewis twenty years from now.” Even Lewis believed his apologetic works would soon go out of style. He’d be surprised to learn that ove...

In the land of Israel, rain falls during a single, crucial, season of the year beginning in October or November and continuing through the spring. Lives depended on successful harvests which depended on healthy rainfall. According to the Hebrew scriptures, weather proved God’s blessing or cursing the people of Israel: From the rain of the heavens, you will drink water— a land that the Lord your Go...

In the last episode we heard from three editors of a new book of Relief Society documents published by the LDS Church. Jill Mulvay Derr, Kate Holbrook, and Matt Grow talked about the origins of the Relief Society and why its activities were suspended in 1844. Today is the Relief Society’s 174th anniversary. In this episode we pick up where we left off as the Latter-day Saints begin to reestablish...