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James E. Faulconer is a professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University and a senior research fellow at the Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. Faulconer’s area of expertise is twentieth-century and contemporary European philosophy, especially the philosophy of religion. In addition to writing scholarly books and articles, he is the author of the Made Harder series of scripture study questions and Scripture Study: Tools and Suggestions.
Ravi M. Gupta is the Charles Redd Professor of Religious Studies at Utah State University. He is the author or editor of four books, including an abridged translation (with Kenneth Valpey) of the Bhagavata Purana, one of India’s most beloved sacred texts in the Sanskrit language. Ravi holds a doctorate in Hindu Studies from Oxford University and has taught at the University of Florida, Centre College, and the College of William and Mary. His current interests have drawn him to religion and ecology.
David Holland is the John Bartlett Professor of New England Church History at Harvard Divinity School and the Director of Graduate Studies in Religion at Harvard University. He is the author of Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America, published by Oxford University Press.
Rosalynde Frandsen Welch is an independent scholar of Latter-day Saint literature and theology. She earned a PhD in early modern English literature from the University of California at San Diego. She is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on Latter-day Saint scripture, culture, and theology. She has served as a codirector of the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminary and as associate editor at the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.
Christopher James Blythe is a Research Associate at the Maxwell Institute’s Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies. In 2019 he was named co-editor of the Journal of Mormon History. He also is co-president of the Folklore Society of Utah. His new book is 
Daniel Becerra is an assistant professor of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University and a scholar of early Christianity.
Author Kimberly Matheson Berkey says book of Helaman is one of the best-kept secrets in the Book of Mormon. It marks a dramatic reversal in the history of Book of Mormon peoples. The spiritual tables turn. While the Lamanites righteously cast their eyes toward heaven, the Nephites take their first steps toward a surprising precipice where final destruction awaits.
Kimberly Matheson Berkey is a doctoral student in theology at Loyola University Chicago, where she studies the philosophy of religion. She serves on the boards of the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar and the Book of Mormon Studies Association and has contributed several articles to the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Robert Alter is Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature at the University of California at Berkeley, where he has taught since 1967. He has written widely on the European novel from the eighteenth century to the present, on contemporary American fiction, and on modern Hebrew literature. He is especially well-known for his work on the literary aspects of the Bible. His twenty-two published books include two prize-winning volumes on biblical narrative and poetry, and award-winning translations of the Five Books of Moses. In 2019 he published The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, and The Art of Biblical Translation.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye is author of the new book, China and the True Jesus: Charisma and Organization in a Chinese Christian Church, from Oxford University Press. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2011 and served as a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Auckland. She now works for the Church History Department with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The Book of Mormon prophet Alma was on the wrong path. But much like the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, Alma experienced a shocking vision that changed everything. His sermons are the product of a person who understood what it meant to receive the grace of Christ and have a mighty change of heart.
Mark Wrathall is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Corpus Christi College. He works on the phenomenology of agency and religious life, and is interested in the temporality of human existence. He is the author of Phenomenology and Human Existence (forthcoming with Oxford University Press), Heidegger and Unconcealment (Cambridge University Press), and How to Read Heidegger (W. W. Norton). He has edited numerous volumes, including The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon and Religion After Metaphysics.
Margaret Bendroth is executive director of the Congregational Library in Boston, Massachusetts, and a historian of American religion. Her books include The Spiritual Practice of Remembering, The Last Puritans: Mainline Protestants and the Power of the Past, and Growing Up Protestant: Parents, Children and Mainline Churches.
Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2011 and served as a Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Auckland. She previously served as an associate editor of the Mormon Studies Review and now works for the Church History Department with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She is author of two books: China and the True Jesus: Charisma and Organization in a Chinese Christian Church (Oxford University Press) and the imposibly-titled Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar’s Ventures through Life, Death, Cancer & Motherhood (Not Necessarily in that Order).
Kylie Nielson Turley has taught writing, rhetoric, and literature classes since 1997 at Brigham Young University, where she emphasizes a literary approach to the Book of Mormon in her Literature of the LDS People course. She has published articles on Alma, LDS “home literature” fiction and poetry, and Utah and LDS women’s history. She is also the author of numerous personal essays.
David Charles Gore (PhD, Texas A&M University) is associate professor and department head in the Department of Communication at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. Gore regularly teaches courses on the history and theory of rhetoric, including its application to globalization and Stoic philosophy. His work has appeared in Philosophy & Rhetoric, Argumentation & Advocacy, Dialogue: a Journal of Mormon Thought, and a variety of other venues.
David Walker is associate professor of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His work focuses on intersections of religion, settlement policy, technology, and popular culture in the long nineteenth century (c. 1780-1920). His latest book is Railroading Religion: Mormons, Tourists, and the Corporate Spirit of the West.
George B. Handley teaches interdisciplinary humanities at Brigham Young University, where he also serves as the associate director of the Faculty Center. He received his BA from Stanford University and his MA and PhD in comparative literature at UC-Berkeley. His scholarly publications and creative writing focus on the intersection between religion, literature, and the environment. His books include the memoir Home Waters: A Year of Recompenses on the Provo River, the novel American Fork, and two collections of essays in the Living Faith series entitled If Truth Were a Child and The Hope of Nature.
Sharon J. Harris is an assistant professor of English at Brigham Young University. She studies early modern literature, focusing on how it intersects with music. In addition to literary studies, Dr. Harris has published on theology, the Book of Mormon, and the history of Latter-day Saint singles wards. She holds degrees from Brigham Young University, the University of Chicago, and Fordham University and has worked in public education, nonprofit arts administration, and academic publishing.
Katherine Kitterman is a PhD candidate in American History at American University in Washington, D.C., and the Historical Director for Better Days 2020 in Utah.
Catherine Gines Taylor is the Hugh W. Nibley Postdoctoral Fellow. She is author of 
Terryl L. Givens is a Neal A. Maxwell Senior Research Fellow. 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 Wrestling the Angel: The Foundations of Mormon Thought, Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Practice, and By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture That Launched a New World Religion, each with Oxford University Press. He is also co-author, with Fiona Givens, of The God Who Weeps, The Crucible of Doubt, and The Christ Who Heals.
“I, Nephi, having been born of goodly parents...”
Joseph M. Spencer is an assistant professor in the department of ancient scripture at Brigham Young University and editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies. He’s written a number of books on the Book of Mormon such as An Other Testament: On Typology, For Zion: A Mormon Theology of Hope, and his latest book, First Nephi: A Brief Theological Introduction.
ROSALYNDE FRANDSEN WELCH is an independent scholar in St. Louis, Missouri and a member of the Maxwell Institute’s advisory board. She is working on a book about Ether for the Institute’s Brief Theological Introductions series on the Book of Mormon.
When Latter-day Saint apostle Elder Jeffrey R. Holland visited Oxford University in England last year, he became fast friends with Reverend Dr. Andrew Teal of Pembroke College. The two of them hit it off so well that Elder Holland invited Dr. Teal to Utah to attend General Conference for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to visit Brigham Young University. Rev. Teal spent some time at the Maxwell Institute where he sat down with Blair Hodges to talk about his life as a chaplain, about inter-religious dialogue, about faith, hope, and charity, and all sorts of other things.
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Teal is Chaplain and Fellow at Pembroke College and Lecturer in Theology and Religion within Oxford University. He is Warden of the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God, and a trustee of All Saints’ Sisters of the Poor, Helen and Douglas House Children’s Hospices, St John’s Home for Vulnerable people, and The Porch for homeless people, all in Oxford. He has published in the UK, Europe and in Russian, on Patristic and Modern Theology.
XI LIAN
Almost fifty million people in the United States live with some type of physical or intellectual disability. That’s one in five. In this special episode, twelve distinguished guests—scholars, organizers, religious leaders, writers—join us to talk about how we can create communities of belonging where people with disabilities and everyone else can feel welcome.
Devan Stahl
Neil Cudney
Katie Steed
Reverend Christopher Rajkumar
Andy Calder
John Swinton
Topher Endress
Jill Harshaw
Shelly Christensen
Barbara J. Newman
Bill Gaventa
CAROLYN OSIEK, RSCJ is Charles Fischer Professor of New Testament emerita with the Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. She is co-author of A Woman’s Place: House Churches in Earliest Christianity. Sister Osiek spent decades teaching scripture at the graduate level to students at Catholic Theological Union at Chicago. She holds a doctorate in New Testament and Christian Origins from Harvard University and is a past president of the Catholic Biblical Association and the Society of Biblical Literature. In March 2019 Osiek delivered the keynote address at the BYU symposium “Material Culture and Women’s Religious Experience in Antiquity.” You can watch the address here: “
SAMUEL M. BROWN is a medical researcher, intensive care unit physician, and historian of religion and culture. He is author of First Principles and Ordinances, part of the Maxwell Institute’s Living Faith book series, and a number of other titles including In Heaven as it is On Earth and Through the Valley of Shadows: Living Wills, Intensive Care, and Making Medicine Human, both from Oxford University Press.
Tisa Wenger is Associate Professor of American Religious History in the Divinity School, American Studies, and Religious Studies at Yale University, where she has been teaching for almost ten years. Wenger’s work explores the cultural politics of religious freedom, the religious histories of the American West, and the intersections of race, empire, and religion in U.S. history. Her books are We Have a Religion: The 1920s Pueblo Indian Dance Controversy and American Religious Freedom (University of North Carolina Press, 2009) and Religious Freedom: The Contested History of an American Ideal (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). She lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with her husband Rod Groff and their three children, along with a dog, two cats, a rabbit, five chickens, ten fish, and a sizable vegetable garden.
Thomas Wirthlin McConkie is author of Navigating Mormon Faith Crisis: A Simple Developmental Map and the founder of Lower Lights School of Wisdom. He has been practicing mindfulness and other meditative techniques for twenty years and studying their effects on human potential. He lives in Salt Lake City, Utah with his partner Gloria and their dog Luna.
Grant Hardy is a professor of history and religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. He is the editor of The Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Edition (University of Illinois Press) and author of Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide (Oxford University Press), in addition to several other books and articles on Chinese history, ancient historiography, and studies of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Colleen McDannell is Professor of History and Sterling M. McMurrin Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Utah. One of the nation’s foremost experts on American religious history, she is the author of several books including Material Christianity, Heaven: A History, and her latest book, Sister Saints: Mormon Women since the End of Polygamy.
Catherine Cornille is the author of The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue. She earned her PhD in Religious Studies from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). She recently presented the 2018 Truman G. Madsen Lecture on the Eternal Man at Brigham Young University. Cornille is also founding and managing editor of the book series “Christian Commentaries on Non-Christian Sacred Texts,” and the editor of The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Inter-Religious Dialogue.
Thomas A. Wayment is a professor of Classical studies at Brigham Young University, where he previously worked as publications director of the Religious Studies Center and as a professor of ancient scripture. He received his BA in Classics from the University of California at Riverside and his MA and PhD in New Testament studies from the Claremont Graduate School. Dr. Wayment’s research interests include the historical life of Jesus, New Testament manuscript traditions, the life of Paul, and the Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible.
William Bickerton was a coal miner from England who emigrated to the United States and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1845. Without ever having met the church’s founding prophet, he soon came to see himself as Joseph Smith’s true heir, leading what came to be called simply The Church of Jesus Christ, but more commonly referred to as the Bickertonites.
Daniel P. Stone holds BA and MA degrees in history from the University of Florida and Florida Atlantic University. He has taught classes at Broward College, Schoolcraft College, University of Detroit Mercy, and Wayne County Community College. Currently he is a researcher at a private library-archive in Detroit, where he and his wife Laura, and daughter, Lily, live. He is a deacon in the Church of Jesus Christ established by William Bickerton.
Margaret Blair Young is an American author, filmmaker, and writing instructor who taught for 30 years at Brigham Young University. She’s written with Darius Grey about early black Latter-day Saints and her latest project is a film about more recent black converts in Africa. The film is called Heart of Africa.
Julie K. Allen is a professor of comparative literature at Brigham Young University and author of Danish, But Not Lutheran: The Impact of Mormonism on Danish Cultural Identity, 1850-1920. Before coming to BYU she held the position of Paul and Renate Madsen Professor of Danish in the Scandinavian Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This year marks forty years since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began, once again, to ordain black members of African descent to its priesthood. Forty years since the church began administering it sacred temple ordinances to black women and men. Over the past forty years the body of scholarship on race and the Church has expanded, with the biggest advances happening over the past ten years.
Max Perry Mueller is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska. He is author of 
Chantelle Squires is producer and director of Jane and Emma. Among other things she also produced and directed “Reserved To Fight,” a feature length documentary that aired nationally on PBS. She won an Emmy for her work on the third season of “The Generations Project” with BYUtv.
Melissa Leilani Larson wrote the screenplay for Jane and Emma. She’s written and produced a number of plays including “Little Happy Secrets” and “Pilot Program,” some of which appear in the book 
Thomas F. Rogers is a noted playwright, essayist, and scholar who taught Russian at Brigham Young University from 1969 to 2000. He also served as director of the BYU Honors Program in the 1970s. From 1993 to 1996, he was president of the LDS Church’s Russia St. Petersburg Mission, the subject of his memoir A Call to Russia: Glimpses of Missionary Life (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 1999). Subsequently, he and his wife, Merriam, served in the Stockholm Sweden Temple. From 2007 until his release in 2014, Rogers was a traveling LDS patriarch assigned to the LDS Church’s Europe East Area. He is author of 
What comes to mind when you hear the term “American Christians”? Most people today think of the so-called Religious Right, a loosely knit group of conservative Christians who oppose legal abortion, favor gun rights, and hail Ronald Reagan as one like unto Moses. Matthew Bowman’s latest book is a wake-up call, reminding us that there’s no such thing as American Christianity. There are Christianities, ranging from conservative to liberal, all over the political spectrum.
Matthew Bowman is Associate Professor of History at Henderson State University. He is the author of The Mormon People, and a new book called Christian: The Politics of a Word in America from Harvard University Press.
Kate Holbrook is Managing Historian of Women’s History at the LDS Church History Department and co-editor of At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women and the award-winning The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History. She also co-edited Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives and Global Values 101: A Short Course. For her dissertation work on religion and food, she received the first Eccles Fellowship in Mormon Studies at the University of Utah. Her current projects include a history of the LDS young women organization and a monograph on LDS foodways.
On the surface, forgiveness seems like such a simple concept but it can be one of the most difficult things we ever do. Maybe someone in your life has hurt you and you’ve never been able to forgive them. Maybe you’ve hurt someone else and they haven’t forgiven you. Maybe it’s time to see if that can change.
Mpho Tutu van Furth served as executive director at The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation from 2011 to 2016. With her father, Desmond Tutu (former archbishop of South Africa, chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, and Nobel Peace Prize Recipient), she co-authored The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World (HarperCollins, 2015). In 2014, the father and daughter pair started the 
Steven L. Peck is an evolutionary biologist, poet, and novelist. He is a professor of biology at Brigham Young University. Peck grew up in Moab, Utah and lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah.
How can scholars of religion explain religious faith without explaining it away? Over the centuries many scholars have come to discuss religion as a purely human phenomenon, leaving no room for “special beings” like God, Jesus Christ, angels, or departed loved ones. Robert Orsi confronts such scholarship in his new book 
Robert Orsi is the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. He has also taught at Fordham University, Indiana University, and Harvard Divinity School. He is former president of the American Academy of Religion. He studies American Catholicism and also writes on theory and method for the study of religion. His latest book History and Presence is an ambitious intervention into the field of religious studies.
George Handley is the associate dean in Brigham Young University’s College of Humanities. He is the author of several books, including 
A professor of English at Yale University, John Rogers is the author of Matter of Revolution: Science, Poetry, and Politics in the Age of Milton, a book awarded prizes by the Milton Society of America and the Modern Language Association. He is also author of several articles on Renaissance (mainly seventeenth-century) English literature and religious culture. His current projects include a book on the reading of the seventeenth-century poem Paradise Lost in the spiritual hothouse of nineteenth-century America, tentatively titled Latter-day Milton: Paradise Lost and the Creation of America’s God. 
Latter-day Saint historians have long demonstrated that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not established all at once, but that it has unfolded—line upon line, precept upon precept, to borrow a biblical phrase. Ideas about priesthood in Mormonism, for example, have developed in fascinating ways. In a new book from Oxford University Press, called 
Jonathan Stapley is an award-winning historian and scientist. An active participant in the field of Mormon studies, he is also the Chief Technology Officer for a bio-renewables company. His new book is called The Power of Godliness: Mormon Liturgy and Ritual (Oxford University Press).
The Reverend Billy Graham rose to international prominence in the 1940s preaching an evangelical Christian gospel. Hailing from North Carolina, the charismatic preacher filled stadiums, counseled American presidents, and encouraged millions of people around the world to seek personal transformation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
Grant Wacker is the Gilbert T. Rowe Professor emeritus of Christian History at Duke University. He is author of the book America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation. In 2017 Wacker presented at the Maxwell Institute’s Reformation conference, “
Adam Miller wrote Letters to a Young Mormon for thoughtful people yearning for a more thoughtful faith. It’s a little book, but it packs a powerful punch. In this episode, Miller is talks about the new second expanded edition, which the Maxwell Institute recently published in partnership with Deseret Book. We also talk about the perils of Mormon quasi-celebrity, bad book reviews, apologetics, his future projects, and other things.
Adam S. Miller is a professor of philosophy at Collin College in McKinney, Texas. He and his wife, Gwen, have three children. He is the author of many books, including 
The Book of Mormon warns against mistaking intelligence for wisdom, but adds a crucial caveat: “to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God” (
Richard Lyman Bushman is Gouverneur Morris Professor of History Emeritus at Columbia University and author of Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling. He occupied the Howard W. Hunter Chair of Mormon Studies at Claremont Graduate University in California from 2008 to 2011. Before joining the faculty at Columbia University, Bushman received his BA and PhD degrees from Harvard University and taught at Brigham Young University, Brown University, Boston University, Harvard University (as a visiting professor), and the University of Delaware.
Latter-day Saint scholar Terryl L. Givens is back with us again. Dr. Givens spent the summer here at the Institute as a Neal A. Maxwell fellow. It was a real treat to have Terryl here in the building, and he sat down with MIPodcast host Blair Hodges to talk about the second and final book in his “Foundations of Mormon Thought” series from Oxford University Press. The book is called 
Terryl L. Givens holds the Jabez A. Bostwick Chair of English at the University of Richmond. He was a 2017 Neal A. Maxwell Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship where he co-directed the Summer Seminar on Mormon Culture. Terryl is one of the most prolific authors of books on Mormonism, including People of Paradox, By the Hand of Mormon, Wrestling the Angel, and Feeding the Flock: The Foundations of Mormon Thought: Church and Praxis. Together with his wife Fiona he’s also written a number of books for LDS audiences including The God Who Weeps, The Crucible of Doubt, and their latest, The Christ Who Heals. He’s currently working on a biography of Mormon intellectual Eugene England.
If you’re familiar with African American religious history, you know that black women outnumber black men in the church. There are a lot of theories about why, too. Author Zora Neale Hurston, for example, said that black women were “the mules of the world,” and that the church gave them a place to lay their burdens down. But what if there’s something more to it than that? What if women go to church for empowerment? To wield power in sometimes subversive but spiritual ways? Subversive, because in many black denominations only men can be ordained to the clergy, but women have found ways to lead nevertheless.
Anthea Butler is graduate chair and associate professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Butler’s research and writing spans religion and politics, religion and gender, African American religion, sexuality, media, religion, and popular culture. She has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other media outlets. She is the author of 
When the Qur’an was revealed to the prophet Muhammad, it arrived in the language of his place and time—Arabic. To this day, for virtually all Muslims whether Arab or not, the Qur’an only truly exists in Arabic. You can read an English translation, there are many to choose from, but the Qur’an is said to defy translation.
In this episode, Bruce B. Lawrence of Duke University joins us to talk about his latest book, 
Bruce B. Lawrence is the Nancy and Jeffrey Marcus Humanities Professor Emeritus of Religion at Duke University. His many books include Who Is Allah?; and Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence. He is the author of The Koran in English: A Biography, part of Princeton University Press’s Lives of Great Religious Books series.
David D. Peck is a professor of history at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He specializes in the history of the Middle East and Islamic Civilization. His current research focuses on comparative theology, particularly shared concepts of pre-mortal existence and ontological progression found in Mormonism and Sufism. Dr. Peck was a visiting scholar at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship during the summer of 2017.
No one has done more research on dispossession in Mormonism than religious studies scholar Stephen C. Taysom, associate professor in the department of philosophy and comparative religion at Cleveland State University. He is author of Shakers, Mormons, and Religious Worlds: Conflicting Visions, Contested Boundaries. He edited Dimensions of Faith: Mormon Studies Reader. His article on Mormonism and exorcism was recently published in the journal Religion and American Culture. It’s called “
Ravi M. Gupta is the Charles Redd Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Religious Studies Program at Utah State University. He is the author or editor of four books, including an abridged translation of the Bhagavata Purana (with Kenneth Valpey), published in 2016 by Columbia University Press. Ravi completed his doctorate in Hindu Studies at Oxford University. He lectures around the world on topics related to Vaishnava philosophy and Hindu devotional traditions.
An estimated twelve million Africans were forced into slavery from the seventeenth century until Emancipation. Torn from their land, separated from family and kin, their bodies were stolen and their very identities were at risk of annihilation. So Africans became African Americans. Years before Reconstruction, they began reconstructing their own past. Many of them combined patriotism, racial lineage, and Christian scripture to tell their stories, to remember who they were. To save themselves.
Laurie Maffly-Kipp joins us in this episode to talk about this history from her acclaimed book, 
Laurie Maffly-Kipp is the Archer Alexander Distinguished Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics. She taught religious studies and American studies for twenty-four years at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and is a prior president of the Mormon History Association. She’s written and edited many books about topics including African American religions, Mormonism, and Protestantism.
Martin Luther believed the Bible proved that the Catholic Church had gone astray. His efforts to bring reform to the church wound up leading to his excommunication and the Reformation was off and running. In the previous two episodes we heard from Craig Harline and Brad Gregory, talking about Martin Luther’s life and the Reformation more broadly. In this episode, Jennifer Powell McNutt talks about the Bible during the Reformation.
If Protestants believed the Bible was the supreme source of doctrinal truth, they, like Catholics, were still left with the problem of how to interpret it. The “people’s book” was revered by different people with different ways of interpreting. McNutt has written about how Christians grappled with the Bible’s words about Christian sacraments like baptism, marriage, and ordination. She lays out some of that back-and-forth history here, and also talks about her experiences teaching Christian students at Wheaton College.
Jennifer Powell McNuttis associate professor of theology and history of Christianity at Wheaton College. She is the author of Calvin Meets Voltaire: The Clergy of Geneva in the Age of Enlightenment, and the co-editor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of the Bible and the Reformation. Her most recent book is called 
Brad S. Gregory is a professor of European history at the University of Notre Dame and an award-winning author of books like Salvation at Stake and The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society. His latest book is called 
What was Martin Luther trying to accomplish when he nailed his ninety-five theses to the Wittenburg church door? Would you believe he didn’t intend to start a new religious movement at all? Down the centuries Martin Luther has been lauded by some, lambasted by others. Was he an amazing hero or an arch heretic, or perhaps something different altogether?
Craig Harline’s latest book peels back the layers of this history, taking us directly into the friar’s musty study to learn the truth about a contested historical figure. The book is called 
Craig Harline is a professor of history at Brigham Young University and an award-winning author of books including Sunday: A History of the First Day from Babylonia to the Super Bowl and Way Below the Angels, a memoir of his service as a Mormon missionary in Belgium. He specializes in Reformation-era Christianity. His latest book is called A World Ablaze: The Rise of Martin Luther and the Birth of the Reformation.
Janan Graham-Russell is a writer and graduate of the Howard University School of Divinity. Her research focuses on womanist theology in Mormonism, and identity formation in racial communities. Her work has been featured in two books: Mormon Feminism: Essential Writings, and A Book of Mormons, as well as The Atlantic. She will continue her research this fall within the PhD program in The Study of Religion department at Harvard University. This week Janan joined us here at the Maxwell Institute for a discussion on race, identity, and theology.
Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, died at the hands of an angry mob in June of 1844. Shortly before his death he is reported to have made this bold declaration: “I should be like a fish out of water, if I were out of persecutions…the Lord has constituted me so curiously that I glory in persecution.”
Dr. Adam J. Powell of Durham University has written a book on opposition faced by Joseph Smith and early Latter-day Saints. He argues that, like early Christians of the second century, the opposition faced by nineteenth-century Mormons played a major role in shaping their theology. The idea that humans can become gods appeared in a setting of extreme opposition both for early Mormons like Joseph Smith, and early Christian leaders like Iranaeus.
In this episode, Powell joins us to talk about his book, 
Adam J. Powell is a Junior Research Fellow in the Department of Theology & Religion at Durham University (UK). Prior to Durham, Dr. Powell was Assistant Professor and Director of the MA in Religious Studies at Lenoir-Rhyne University in North Carolina. He has published on topics ranging from patristic theology to the history of sociology and from Mormonism to identity theory. He is the author of 
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—and the paper’s articles on suffrage and women’s rights—puzzled onlookers who thought about the religion mostly as a strange polygamous sect.
“How could women simultaneously support a national campaign for political and economic rights while defending a marital practice that to most people seemed relentlessly patriarchal?” That’s the question addressed by historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in her latest book, 
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, of Sugar City, Idaho, is a professor of history at Harvard University. She has served as president of the American Historical Association and the Mormon History Association. Her book A Midwife’s Tale received the Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize. Her latest book is 
Jennifer Reeder (left) is the nineteenth century woman’s history specialist at the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Kate Holbrook (right) is the department’s managing historian for women’s history.
Together they edited At the Pulpit: 185 Years of Discourses by Latter-day Saint Women. They are also members of 
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 Europe.
The Lotus is a book that explains how you can be a Buddha, too. But its explanation challenged earlier Buddhist texts and led to disagreements that have lasted for centuries.
Donald S. Lopez, Jr. joins us to talk about his new book, 
Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies at the University of Michigan. His many books include The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, and a biography of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. His latest book is 
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 sees them as ancestors of village atheists of days gone by.
Atheists in American history have often been at the forefront of debates about the necessity of religion for healthy social life. They’ve fought legal battles over free speech and minority rights. In this episode, you’ll hear Schmidt tell the stories of four controversial folks who called themselves freethinkers—stories of integrity and courage, humor and hypocrisy.
We’re talking about Leigh Eric Schmidt’s new book 
Leigh Eric Schmidt is the Edward C. Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. He is author of the highly acclaimed book Hearing Things: Religion, Illusion, and the American Enlightenment, among other titles. His latest is called Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way In a Godly Nation (Princeton University Press).
Thomas Tweed is the Welch Professor of American Studies and a professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. He served as president of the American Academy of Religion in 2015.
One Hundred Birds Taught Me to Fly
Ashley Mae Hoiland received a bachelor of fine arts degree in studio arts and a master of fine arts degree in poetry from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. She teaches art in low-income elementary schools in California and has written and illustrated several children’s books. She is founder of We Brave Women—an initiative to educate youth about important historic and contemporary women. Her website is 
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, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have seen themselves as a “peculiar people.” At the same time, they’ve worked hard to fit in with their broader American culture. These goals require a lot of balancing. Political scientists J. Quin Monson and David E. Campbell write that being people set apart while also becoming socially accepted is like a “promised land” that Mormons have been seeking from the 1800s to the present. They join us in this episode to talk about their book, Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics.
Look for Molly Worthen’s book review of Seeking the Promised Land and other books on Mormons and politics in volume 4 of the Mormon Studies Review, out this November.
David E. Campbell (pictured left) is a professor of political science at the university of Notre Dame and co-author of the award-winning book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us.
J. Quin Monson (right) is associate professor of political science at Brigham Young University whose research has appeared in places like the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Political Research Quarterly.
Together with John C. Green they wrote Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics.
Thomas W. Simpson is a specialist in modern U.S. religious history. He received a PhD from the University of Virginia and a Master of Theological Studies from Emory University. He’s an instructor in religion and philosophy at Phillips Exeter Academy. His is the author of American Universities and the Birth of Modern Mormonism, 1867–1940.
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 called 
Peter Enns is the Abram S. Clemens Professor of Biblical Studies at Eastern University, St. Davids, Pennsylvania. His books include Inspiration and Incarnation, The Bible Tells Me So, and The Evolution of Adam. His most recent book is called 
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 students said the professor began a course by offering a disclaimer to the class: “If you come from a religious tradition upholding the literal truth of the Bible, you could find this course disturbing.” Kugel tells the MIPodcast that isn’t exactly the case—there’s much more to the story.
A specialist in the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls, James L. Kugel is the author of more than eighty research articles and fifteen books, including The Idea of Biblical Poetry and the best-selling book 
“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 Baden teamed up to write a book about the different views on infertility and families found in the Bible. From the apparently barren matriarchs of the Old Testament like Sarah and Rachel to Paul’s efforts to forge a new family in Christ, biblical views are more diverse than you might expect. Moss and Baden tell the story in their book 
Candida R. Moss is professor of New Testament and early Christianity at the University of Notre Dame. Joel S. Baden is professor of Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School. Together they wrote the book 
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 both ancient and contemporary to craft his fascinating new book 
Thomas W. Laqueur is the Helen Fawcett Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. He’s written histories about the human body and gender. His latest book is 
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 part in debates about apartheid in South Africa? How did the exact same book manage to help some people justify racial discrimination, but also help others powerfully oppose it?
Bruce Gordon answers that and other questions in this episode about his 
Bruce Gordon is the Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School. His books include Calvin, a biography of the reformer, and The Swiss Reformation. His latest book is a biography of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. It is part of Princeton University Press’s Lives of Great Religious Books series.
What do you know about African American religious history? Julius H. Bailey joins us in this episode to talk about his new overview, 
Julius H. Bailey is professor of religious studies at the University of Redlands in California. His books include Around the Family Alter: Domesticity in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and Down In the Valley: An Introduction to African American Religious History.
If you surveyed Americans, asking them to identify themselves as:
Elizabeth Drescher is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Santa Clara University in California. Her work on American spirituality has been published in periodicals like America, Salon, and The Washington Post. Her books include 
Jesus: Practicing Church in the Digital Reformation
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-fiction collection of essays on topics like science and religion, grace, and Christology. It’s called The Givenness of Things. In this episode we talk about writing, reading, faith, science, and theology.
A complete transcript of this interview is available 
Marilynne Robinson is a critically acclaimed American novelist and essayist. She is currently completing her final year as Professor of English and Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her four novels are Housekeeping, Home, Lila, and Gilead, for which she received the Pulitzer Prize. She has published multiple collections of essays including When I Was a Child I Read Books and her latest, The Givenness of Things.
(Photo courtesy of The Nation.)
James K. A. Smith is professor of philosophy at Calvin College and author of 
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 comes to wealth and health. Through your faith, you can become healthy and rich.
When historian Kate Bowler set out to write the book 
Kate Bowler is assistant professor of American Religion at Duke Divinity School. She is the author of 
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 over 3.5 million copies of Mere Christianity have sold since 2001. It’s one of the most beloved Christian books of the twentieth century, and it wasn’t originally intended to be a book at all.
In this episode, award-winning Christian historian George M. Marsden tells the story of Mere Christianity‘s birth and explains its tenacious popularity since its publication in 1952. Marsden recently wrote the 
George M. Marsden is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History Emeritus at The University of Notre Dame. He specializes in American religion and culture, evangelicalism, and the role of Christianity in higher education. His critically-acclaimed books include The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (Oxford University Press, 1997), The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (OUP, 1994), and the Bancroft award-winning biography of Jonathan Edwards. His new book is called 
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:
Julia Watts Belser is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology at Georgetown University. She is also an ordained rabbi. Her articles have appeared in places like the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and the Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics. Her new book is called 
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 relief society in the Utah territory. You’ll hear about issues like polygamy and women’s suffrage. We also discuss the kind of impact the editors hope the book can have on how Mormons understand their history. We’re talking about 
Jill Mulvay Derr is a retired senior research historian for the Church History Department.
Kate Holbrook is a specialist in women’s history at the Church History Department.
Matthew J. Grow is director of publications at the Church History Department.
Together with Carol Cornwall Madsen they edited The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in LDS Women’s History. (Photos courtesy of Steve Griffin, 
