Faith Matters

Latest Episodes:

181. Creative Stewardship — A Conversation with Stake President Ben Behunin Aug 27, 2023

Show notes

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 with Ben, he talked about his mission experience and conversion to the Church — his story is incredibly moving and illustrates in a powerful way that God seems to be working through good people in every tradition and culture.
Ben also shared a lot about how his creativity plays into his role as a leader in the Church, and it was inspiring to hear how innovative he is in his stewardship and work to serve and bless others. Ben also shared what he believes are the gifts that Latter-day Saints, in particular, have to share with the world.
All in all — this is a special one that we really think you’re going to want to hear. We can’t wait to introduce you to Ben. You can find out more about his pottery, writing, and other work at potterboy.com.
Links:
https://www.potterboy.com/
https://www.instagram.com/protopiansunited/
https://www.amazon.com/stores/Ben-Behunin/author/B00J428YU8

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180. Renewing Our Religious Language — Terryl Givens at Restore Aug 20, 2023

Show notes

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 career. In one of our favorite moments, he says "I have come to know the love of God as it is manifest in a community of people working to keep one another from drowning."

We imagine that almost all of you know Terryl by now, but as a reminder, he’s a Neal A. Maxwell Senior Research Fellow at BYU’s Maxwell Institute. He formerly held the Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English and was Professor of Literature and Religion at the University of Richmond. He is the author of many books about Latter-day Saint history and culture, including, along with his wife Fiona, All Things New, which was published by Faith Matters in 2020.

179. The Path of a Seeker — A Conversation with Charles Stang Aug 12, 2023

Show notes

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 American religious experience.
For today’s conversation, Zach Davis sat down with one of those scholars, Charles Stang, the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Zach went to grad school at HDS and Charlie was one of his very favorite professors.
In the conversation, Charlie discusses his life as a scholar of religion, the path his own spiritual life has taken and shares details about the exciting new research initiative he is leading at Harvard called Transcendence and Transformation.
Charles M. Stang is Professor of Early Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School and the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions. His research and teaching focus on the history and theology of Christianity, in particular asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism in Eastern Christianity. His most recent book, Our Divine Double, was published in 2016 by Harvard University Press.

178. Modesty from the Inside Out — A Conversation with Jennifer Finlayson-Fife Aug 06, 2023

Show notes

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’ve wanted to have a discussion with Jennifer about the concept of modesty—something that anyone who’s grown up in our tradition is intimately familiar with, and which has certainly driven lots of opinions over many years. And we were really glad to be able to talk through several aspects of this topic with her, including the different experiences for men and women, how our cultural definition for modesty can often be too small, and the principles behind the practices.
But once the conversation got going, as it always does with Jennifer, it led back to something bigger — about how all of this, including our sexuality, points toward the ability to have deeper embodied joy, and how there is a real wholeness waiting behind a developmental process that each of us need to go through, including with our own sexuality.
Jennifer is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor with a Ph.D in Counseling Psychology from Boston College, where she wrote her dissertation on LDS women and sexuality. She leads both in-person and online courses, workshops, and retreats helping people increase their capacity for deeper emotional and sexual intimacy. You can find her podcast “Conversations with Dr. Jennifer,” on major podcast platforms, and find out more about her work at finlayson-fife.com.

We should also mention that Jennifer will be presenting at this year’s Restore gathering in October.

We’re super grateful to Jennifer for coming on, and really think you’re going to enjoy this episode.

177. Tackling the Teen Mental Health Crisis — A Conversation with Gov. Spencer J. Cox Jul 29, 2023

Show notes

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 has manifested, for example, in a skyrocketing rate of depression among teen girls. That rate has doubled since 2010, when the smartphone began mass adoption. With this in mind, Governor Cox has made Utah the first state to act in such a direct way.
In this conversation, we asked Governor Cox about the rationale behind these laws, the pushback he expects, and what he thinks the long-term legislative vision should be when it comes to teens and social media. Governor Cox argues that In any other context, if we saw the statistics we're seeing about social media, we would drop everything to fix it. Given these drastic and unprecedented changes in mental health, it seems this is a crucial issue for our young people and that all people of faith should be engaging with this issue that is so important for kids and for the connective tissue of society.

We also want to mention that Governor Cox will be appearing at our upcoming Restore Gathering in October; in that presentation, he’ll be talking about his new initiative as incoming chairman of the National Governors Association: to help Americans “disagree better.”
We hope that regardless of the side of the political aisle you find yourself on, you can help us engage with the important ideas and issues Governor Cox is bringing to the forefront. As he might say, though we certainly won’t all agree, we can all benefit from learning to do it better.

176. The Cherished Doctrine of Heavenly Mother — A Conversation with McArthur Krishna and Michal Thomas Jul 22, 2023

Show notes

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 Heaven.

We were lucky enough to bring McArthur on, along with another one of the book’s contributors, Michal Thomas. We thought that those two women were the perfect pair to come on and speak with us.

Among the subjects we discussed was Elder Dale G. Renlund’s April 2022 General Conference address on the subject of Heavenly Mother — McArthur described the joy she felt when she heard Elder Renlund address the topic in General Conference, in her mind, effectively ending the speculative taboo that Church members shouldn’t even talk about Heavenly Mother. Of course, Elder Renlund did call for an end to “speculation” about Heavenly Mother, and McArthur and Michal fully endorse that idea. As McArthur explains in the episode, it appears that it was unfounded “speculation” by a seminary teacher that led to the half-century-plus “sacred silence” around Heavenly Mother.

These two emphasize that there is so much we can do with our existing beautiful doctrine; everyone should be able to see deity in their own image, and women, in particular, can better understand their own nature by understanding the nature of a Mother in Heaven. And because Heavenly Mother is infinite, there are infinite ways to connect with Her. McArthur and Michal explore that in this conversation, and of course, this new book is a great example of how many are doing it.

We’re really grateful to McArthur and Michal for coming on and having this discussion with us. You can find this new book, Cherish, on Amazon.

175. The Story of You — A Conversation with Ian Morgan Cron Jul 15, 2023

Show notes

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 the podcast "Typology," which has over 20 million downloads. His books include the Enneagram primer The Road Back to You, which has sold over 1,000,000 copies, and the book we based today’s conversation on: The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self (December 2021).

For those unfamiliar with the Enneagram, at its most essential it is a personality typing system identifying nine types of people and how they relate to one another and the world. But it’s intended to be much more than that — not just a typing system, but in Ian’s words, “a prescription for deep change.”

In this conversation, Ian does an overview of the nine basic Enneagram types, and you’ll probably see yourself in at least one of them. But he also goes deeper — Ian says that we all have stories we tell ourselves, and the Enneagram can help us see them, recognize when they’re unhealthy, and start to rewrite them. As we continue on that path, Ian says, we’ll begin to “wake up,” as the mystics have said — and find that everything is brimming with God’s presence.

174. Faith Journey 101 — A Conversation with Jana Spangler Jul 08, 2023

Show notes

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 Halverson has spoken about at Restore and on this podcast.

All that said, we’ve never done a deep dive into the model that deserves as much or more credit than any other for helping people think along these lines in the first place, and that’s James Fowler’s Stages of Faith. Fowler published a book by that title in 1981 that laid a real foundation for understanding faith development systematically. So we’re delighted that in this episode, we finally got a chance to talk about Fowler’s work specifically and in a Latter-day Saint context, and to do that, we brought on our good friend Jana Spangler.

And to be super clear upfront, and this comes out in the episode — it would be a misuse of any stages model to paint a given stage as “better” or “worse,” than others — what matters is not so much the stage we’re in, but how we approach the world around us as we see through the lens of that stage. As Jana says, each stage has its gifts and shortcomings. What these frameworks can do is help give each of us the humility to recognize that there is another way to see things, and to give ourselves enough grace to accept the stage we’re in and confidently live through it thoroughly, and without fear.

Jana Spangler is a Certified Integral Professional Coach at Symmetry Solutions, and member of the International Coaching Federation. She is an alumnus of The Living School where she studied contemplative spiritual traditions and the work of transformation under the direction of Fr. Richard Rohr. Jana’s professional and personal experience combined with her training makes her an expert in the field of faith transitions. She is a sought-after podcast guest, speaker, presenter, and retreat leader.

173. The $100 Billion Question — A Conversation with Aaron Miller Jul 02, 2023

Show notes

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. Christopher Waddell, first counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, who denied Nielsen’s claims. Near the end of June, the Wall Street Journal published an article of its own, again emphasizing the size of the Church’s assets and the opulence of its temples.
This is an issue with an extraordinary amount of complexity, and significant moral weight. Though the Church hasn’t publicly disclosed the value of its assets, estimates place it at over $100 billion — put in context, that’s about double the size of Harvard’s endowment, making the Church one of the wealthiest religious institutions, or non-governmental organizations of any kind, in the world.
The questions this raises are clear: how did the Church acquire this much wealth? Is it reasonable to see assets of this size as a “rainy-day fund,” even for a religion with a name attesting that we live in the last days? Is tithing simply “God’s money” and a matter of faith alone, or should members have insight and transparency into Church finances, and how their donations are used? And of course — what good could be done in the world with $100B or more?
We felt like it was the right time to explore these questions on Faith Matters, and we brought on Aaron Miller to help us sort through some of them. Aaron is a Teaching Professor in BYU’s George Romney Institute for Public Service and Ethics, where he teaches classes on business ethics and nonprofit structure and finance. Though he’s quick to point out that he doesn’t have privileged insight into Church finances, he was able to walk through these issues in a really detailed but understandable way, and to us, he represented extraordinarily clear, objective, and open-hearted thinking on this subject. Aaron also hosts a really cool podcast called “How to Help” that presents conversations and ideas about living a life of positive impact on the world and the people around us. You can check it out wherever you listen to podcasts.
We’re really grateful that Aaron would come on and discuss this tough but important issue. As is the case with all sensitive topics, we’re sure we got something wrong here. Our goal is always to explore tough issues with as expansive a lens as possible, and explore arguments on both sides charitably. No doubt we did that imperfectly, but we hope you know that is our intention.

172. Exploring Atonement — A Conversation with Terryl Givens Jun 24, 2023

Show notes

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 our faith doesn’t actually have an official theology of Atonement. What is clear, doctrinally, is that Christ brought about something of universal importance: as the Book of Mormon says, "we talk of Christ, rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, (and) we prophesy of Christ." (2nd Nephi 25:26) We accept Christ as both savior and healer — but that doesn’t mean that we’ve achieved a consensus understanding of how Christ’s atonement actually accomplished those goals of “saving” and “healing.”
So in this conversation with Terryl, we discussed various atonement theories — what some of the greatest Christian and Latter-day Saint thinkers have posited over the years about how the atonement works; why it’s necessary, and how it can apply in real life. It seemed to us that there was something to value in nearly all of these explorations, and it was fascinating to see how those views have evolved over time.
And, as it always does, conversation with Terryl brought us back to what’s really important: how Christ’s atonement can bring less retribution and more healing to society, and how we can participate in that work. Terryl reminded us that Atonement is about reintegration into loving relationship — not just vertically with God, but horizontally with those around us.

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