Faith Matters

Latest Episodes:

Unpacking Polygamy: Wrestling with 132, with Bethany Brady Spalding, Patrick Mason, and Bill Turnbull Nov 08, 2025

Show notes

Today we’re wrapping up our week of Unpacking Polygamy with a very honest, illuminating and challenging conversation among three faithful friends: Bethany Brady Spaulding, Patrick Mason and Bill Turnbull. Together, they tackle the profound theological problems that polygamy presents, particularly as it is laid out in what is perhaps the most challenging scripture in our canon—Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants.

They compare and contrast Section 132 with what God has revealed elsewhere in scripture and with what the church actually teaches today. And they consider the question of whether it is possible for the church to actually move on from polygamy if section 132 continues to be taught as inspired scripture.

Along the way, they celebrate the restored gospel’s teaching of a higher and holier order of celestial union—couples sealed together for eternity as intimate, equal partners.

This conversation was originally inspired by an essay written by Bill and Susan Turnbull, two of Faith Matters founders, titled “One Couple’s Wrestle with Polygamy.” It’s a fascinating and compelling piece and we encourage you to check it out. You can also find Bill’s essay on the Abrahamic Test on our website, faithmatters.org.

Faithfulness in any relationship, including our relationship with God and with the Church, requires not just generosity but also a willingness to acknowledge and honestly address problems. This is a conversation full of both generosity and honesty. We hope you are challenged and inspired by it.

This episode is part of a five-part series on polygamy. We invite you to listen to all five episodes for a range of perspectives and voices on this important topic. You can find even more resources on our website, faithmatters.org.

The Christmas issue of Wayfare is now available to preorder! Order your copies (bulk discounts are available—it's the perfect gift!) or become a paid Wayfare subscriber by October 31 to receive them by the first Sunday of Advent, and get a look inside the issue here!

Unpacking Polygamy: The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy, with Carol Lynn Pearson Nov 07, 2025

Show notes

Today we’re joined by Carol Lynn Pearson—poet, playwright, and author of The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy.

With extraordinary honesty, clarity, and compassion, Carol Lynn shares her deeply personal perspective on this chapter of our history and why she believes polygamy was a great mistake—one that continues to “haunt the hearts and heaven” of many Latter-day Saints today.

In this episode, we learn how she holds this belief alongside a deep devotion to her faith. She shares how it’s shaped her understanding of prophetic authority, and why she feels we can honor our past without being bound by it.

Carol Lynn believes it’s time we stop letting polygamy burden our spirits, our relationships, or our view of God. With both tenderness and conviction, she calls us to help the human family “cross the plains of patriarchy into the land of partnership.”

Her faith, strength, and spiritual integrity continue to inspire us, and we’re so grateful for the wisdom she brings to this conversation.

Quick note—during the conversation, we mention some Come, Follow Me curriculum for children originally included in this week’s lesson. Since recording, the Church has made important revisions to that material, which we would’ve highlighted had they been available at the time.

You can find Carol Lynn’s book The Ghost of Eternal Polygamyon Bookshop.org or on Amazon.

Unpacking Polygamy: Polygamy from Nauvoo to Utah, with Brittany Chapman Nash & Patrick Mason Nov 06, 2025

Show notes

Today we’re welcoming back Patrick Mason for a conversation with author and historian Brittany Chapman Nash.

In this episode, Patrick and Brittany explore what plural marriage looked like in the early Utah period—how it was lived, how it was taught, and why so many Latter-day Saints practiced it with such deep conviction. Brittany shares stories from women whose voices often go unheard, and helps us understand not just the spiritual and theological motivations behind polygamy, but the complexity, nuance, and sometimes heartbreak that came with it.

She offers a window into the hopes, sacrifices, and faith of those who lived this principle—and reflects on what that legacy means for us today.

You can learn more in Brittany’s book Let’s Talk about Polygamy, which was published by Deseret Book.

Unpacking Polygamy: Our Evolving Sealing Practices, with Nate Oman Nov 05, 2025

Show notes

Today, we’re honored to welcome Nate Oman—law professor, scholar, and co-founder of the pioneering Latter-day Saint blog, Times and Seasons.

Our conversation begins with a bold idea: that experiencing a stupor of thought, or being troubled, is very often a prelude to revelation. For Nate, facing discomfort head-on—naming it and wrestling with it—has become a sacred part of his discipleship and a path to deeper faith.

And so in that spirit, today we’re taking a hard and honest look at the doctrine of sealing—where it came from, the ways it’s evolved, and how it became intertwined with plural marriage. Nate helps us trace its roots and earliest iterations in Latter-Day Saint theology, and he wrestles openly with what it all means for us now.

While this episode doesn’t offer easy answers, it reveals how our efforts to connect the human family throughout our history have been both human and divine. And that if we’re willing to look closely—even at the messiness—we might find ourselves stretched toward greater light, deeper understanding, and a more generous, expansive faith.

You can find Nate’s books Law and the Restoration: Law and Latter-day Saint Historyand Law and the Restoration: Law and Latter-day Saint Thought and Scriptureon Bookshop.org or on Amazon.

Unpacking Polygamy: Joseph Smith's Polygamy, with Laurel Thatcher Ulrich & Patrick Mason Nov 04, 2025

Show notes

Today’s episode kicks off our five-part series Unpacking Polygamy—a deep dive into one of the most complex and sensitive topics in our church’s history. We hope you’ll listen to the full series, where you’ll hear from a variety of voices and perspectives that help illuminate this part of our shared story.

To start us off, we’re honored to bring together two remarkable thinkers. Patrick Mason is a historian, author, and Leonard J. Arrington Chair of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University and co-host of Proclaim Peace, another Faith Matters network podcast. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian, and professor emerita at Harvard University.

In this episode, Patrick and Laurel explore what we actually know—and how we know what we know—about Joseph Smith’s involvement in plural marriage, how the practice evolved in early Utah, and the theological, social, and gender dynamics that shaped it. Laurel also shares reflections from teaching a comparative polygamy course at Harvard, and considers how the echoes of plural marriage still reverberate today in our doctrine, culture, and hearts.

We’re so grateful to both Patrick and Laurel for their honesty, curiosity, and compassion.

You can find even more resources on this important topic on our website, faithmatters.org.

Find Laurel's groundbreaking book A House Full of Femaleson Bookshop.org or Amazon.

Beyond Thoughts and Prayers: A Conversation with Sharon Eubank Oct 29, 2025

Show notes

Today, we’re sharing a conversation that feels especially urgent. In fact, we’d planned to release this episode later in the month—but this week, as a major hurricane moves through the Caribbean and the U.S. government shutdown is causing massively disruptive ripples in the daily life of countless families, we know so many are asking, What can I do?

We hope this conversation offers real practical guidance and clarity for getting to work today.

We’re joined by Sharon Eubank, author of the new book Doing Small Things with Great Love: How Everyday Humanitarians Are Changing the World.

Sharon has spent decades in humanitarian work around the globe, and now works as the director of Latter-day Saint Charities. In this conversation, she shares what her experience has taught her about ethical, lasting, and impactful relief.

We were struck by this term, “the second disaster." Sharon explains how, all too often, well-meaning aid can actually become a second disaster—doing more harm, complicating and even obstructing urgent relief efforts. But she offers some surprisingly simple and practical ways to ensure that what we give and how we serve is genuinely helpful.

As our hearts turn to the Caribbean, this feels especially important—but the principles Sharon shares are just as vital at home. She explains why she believes we’re most effective where we live, how relationships and trusted networks form the foundation of lasting change, and why honoring agency and dignity is essential to any effort—whether local or global.

Sharon shared so many incredible insights—things that energized us to be helpers, and that empowered us to get started. We hope that in this time of deep need, fear, and urgency, that this episode will help you to recognize where you feel called, and help you know what to do first.
Resources to use to find reputable organizations to support:

https://www.charitynavigator.org
https://www.charitywatch.org/our-charity-rating-process
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission

Faith on the Frontier of AI: A Conversation with Medlir Mema Oct 26, 2025

Show notes

Today, we’re bringing you what we think is one of the most important conversations we could be having right now. We’re talking with our friend and scholar Medlir Mema about artificial intelligence—and what it means for people of faith.

Now whether you’re already fascinated by AI, cautious, or ready to turn this episode off, this episode is for everyone. Medlir makes the case that AI is a human issue. A spiritual issue. And that it’s urgent for people of faith to be asking how we can create an AI future that reflects the best of humanity.

Medlir is the Head of the AI Governance Programme at the Global Governance Institute in Brussels, a Professor of International Relations at Brigham Young University Idaho, and is leading Organized Intelligence, a new initiative supported by the Future of Life Institute and Faith Matters.

In this episode, he explains why he sees AI as an era-defining shift—less like the next tech milestone and more like the discovery of fire. It’s a moment, he believes, that could fundamentally reshape how we live. We talk today about the ways AI is already changing jobs, relationships, trust, and even our sense of identity.

And while Medlir is clear-eyed about the risks, this conversation is about clarity and opportunity. He believes that we have a real chance right now, to join the conversation with our deep values and even perhaps our theological frameworks, to ensure that AI actually helps us re-center on what truly matters and stay grounded in what it means to be human.

We hope this episode is a call to pull up a seat to the table, and help shape what comes next.

Learn more and follow Organized Intelligence at organizedintelligence.ai

The Spiritual Practice of Speaking Up: A Conversation with Cynthia Winward & Susan M. Hinckley Oct 19, 2025

Show notes

We sometimes reduce “faith-promoting” stories to those tidy endings—where miracles show up just in time, doubts vanish, and testimony replaces tension. But sometimes growth begins when the script falls apart. For Susan Meredith Hinckley and Cynthia Winward, these stories are nourishing a faith that looks like trust and transformation.

Susan and Cynthia are co-hosts of the At Last She Said It podcast and authors of a new book with the same title. They came to this work from different paths. For Cynthia, the Church just worked. She thrived—until her life took a turn at 40 and her certainty unraveled. For Susan, the discomfort was quieter. She says the Church always fit like an “itchy sweater”—a subtle, persistent misfit that kept her silent. But over time, what had become a “crisis of silence” became a call to speak up.

For the past six years, Susan and Cynthia have been inviting women into conversations that began as honest exchanges between friends about big ideas and the real tensions of belonging to a church they both love and feel challenged by. What they’ve learned is that talking about hard things can be its own kind of faith practice—a way to bring your whole heart to your faith and your community, a way of being known.

In this episode, they share practical wisdom for navigating Sundays when belief feels messy, offer a compass for making decisions when clarity is out of reach, and explore how using our voice can help transform hard things into a source connection with each other and a more intimate relationship with a God who loves us without conditions.

We hope this conversation expands your imagination for what spiritual strength can look like—and invites you into a faith that’s honest, evolving, and a true seedbed for growth.

Get their book from Bookshop.org here, or from Amazon here.

We’re so excited to tell you about a new Faith Matters initiative called Organized Intelligence, supported by the Future of Life Institute.

Our first gathering will take place November 4-5 in Salt Lake City, where you'll hear from scholars, creatives, technologists, and religious leaders.

This gathering is for curious minds, and we would love to see you there! Go to organizedintelligence.ai to RSVP.

The Last Book Written By a Human — a conversation with Jeff Burningham Oct 12, 2025

Show notes

Today, we’re sharing a conversation with Jeff Burningham—entrepreneur, former candidate for governor, and now author of a new book called The Last Book Written by a Human.
This conversation begins with an unforgettable scene Jeff witnessed in India on the banks of the Ganges—a place where death, life, and the mundane all unfolded side by side. That image becomes a frame for everything we discussed: the reality of constant transformation and the deep human need for presence in the middle of it all.
Jeff describes what he calls “the old game”—a life built around achievement, hustle, and doing more to be more. And then he shares what happened when that game stopped working for him, and how it led him to something new: a life of deeper being, awareness, and love.
We also talked about AI—not just as a technological shift, but as what he calls a “cosmic mirror.” Jeff believes that AI is here not to replace us, but to reveal us—to help us see what’s essential and ask who we want to become. The path forward, he says, will require us to do something radical: give up ego, lean into love, and return to the wisdom of the body, nature, and family.
In the face of rapid change and uncertainty, Jeff invites us to return to what’s most human. We’re so grateful to Jeff for this book and this conversation.
You can order the book from Bookshop here or from Amazon here!

How to Love Your Enemy: Arthur Brooks at Restore 2025 Oct 05, 2025

Show notes

Today we’re sharing Arthur Brooks’ keynote from Restore this last weekend. This message was so powerful—it will stop you in your tracks, and feels so essential for this exact moment. We believe it needs to be heard everywhere—in our homes, our communities, and across the country—so we’re sharing it with you now.

This year we gathered at Utah Valley University for Restore, where just two weeks earlier Charlie Kirk was assassinated while addressing a large crowd. So soon after such horrific violence, the campus itself carried a real weight of grief and uncertainty. Arthur walked straight into that heaviness with so much clarity and conviction—and called us toward a powerful vision of moral courage and discipleship.

His message was bold. He confronted unflinchingly what’s really breaking us apart—not political division, but the deeper poison of contempt. And then he challenged us with this:

Moral courage isn’t standing up to the people you disagree with—moral courage is standing up to your own side on behalf of those you disagree with.

Arthur says tolerance and civility are too low a bar. The real standard is much higher. It's the Sermon on the Mount. It’s loving our enemies—not as a feeling, but as radical, concrete, countercultural action.

Arthur wove together science, story, faith, and humor into something deeply personal and urgently needed. His challenge was clear: if we want a different kind of country, we have to become a different kind of people.

This felt like a spark. Now the work of discipleship begins.

We also want to mention that you can watch this presentation on our youtube channel. Arthur is a super engaging presenter and we strongly recommend that you watch this one.

If you bought a ticket for Restore this year, we will email you the recordings as soon we they're edited! If you didn't get a ticket this year, you can order the Restore 2025 recordings at faithmatters.org/restore.

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