Faith Matters

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

For this week’s episode, we were honored to bring on Alice Faulkner Burch, General Editor of Deseret Book’s new collection of essays by Black American Latter-day Saints: My Lord, He Calls Me. The title of the book comes from an early Black American spiritual called “Steal Away to Jesus.” The book shares contemporary experiences of Black Americans in the Church, and stories from every era of the Restoration.The essays found in the book are extremely personal — the type of stories you’d only hear as a trusted friend. Alice says that these stories are offered “as a gift for Black Americans and an invitation to white Americans.” In the interview, she shared really important perspectives on not just the experience of Black Americans in the Church, but what it means for each of us to be part of the body of Christ, and how we can more fully embrace the gifts of the Spirit, even “charismatic” ones like those shared in some of the remarkable stories in this book.Alice was baptized into the Church in July 1984. She served as the first African American in the Chile Santiago South Mission from 1987 to 1988, and in 1989 she was called as the first African American ordinance worker in the Salt Lake Temple. She has served the community as secretary of the Utah Chapter of Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society, secretary for the Utah Black Roundtable, and a member of the annual Utah Juneteenth Committee.

In September of 1857, one of the greatest atrocities in the history of Mormonism was carried out. Now known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a group of Latter-day Saints led a siege in Southern Utah against a wagon train of emigrants on their way from Arkansas to California. After the siege had dragged on for several days, and under the guise of a truce, leaders of the Mormon party lured the emigrants out of their protective circle of wagons and marched them a short distance across the valley before turning on them in surprise and slaughtering at least 120 unarmed men, women, and children.The details of this evil are difficult to talk about at all — much less dive deep on — but at the same time, historians Richard E. Turley and Barbara Jones Brown believe that it’s important that we confront history, even its most difficult episodes, with as much honesty and depth as we can.Rick has served in many roles at the Church over many years, including as managing director of the Family and Church History Department, and managing director of the Public Affairs Department. Barbara is the director of Signature Books Publishing and former executive director of the Mormon History Association.Together they are the authors of a new book called Vengeance is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and its Aftermath, which is the second in a two-volume series of exhaustively researched masterworks on the subject. The first book, Massacre at Mountain Meadows, on which Rick was one of the authors and Barbara was a content editor, was published in 2008, and this second volume is the culmination of over 18 years of research, writing, and editing by countless contributors. Though brilliant historians have written about the Massacre before, these books include new research from documents and records that have never before been available.As we spoke with Barbara and Rick, we were struck by not just their comprehensive knowledge of these tragic events, but by the depth of their empathy for the victims, and insights about how knowledge of difficult history can be part of a larger story of healing and reconciliation. They and many others have been important in spearheading efforts in recent years to allow for that healing, including working with the Church itself and organizations of victims’ descendants.In fact, Henry B. Eyring credited the work done on the first book in 2007 in an official statement given at the site of the massacre on its sesquicentennial. As part of that statement, he said, “What was done here long ago by members of our Church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct. We cannot change what happened, but we can remember and honor those who were killed here…We express profound regret for the massacre carried out in this valley 150 years ago… and for the undue and untold suffering experienced by the victims then and by their relatives to the present time."What we hope for this episode is what we think Barbara and Rick hope for their book: that it can promote the same work of at-one-ment that is at the core of the Gospel by fully acknowledging the sins of the past, actively listening and working toward healing in the present, and looking forward to a future of deep relationship and connection.

It isn’t easy to be born into a famous family with big expectations. And there’s few families more famous or with bigger expectations than the Kennedys. Tim Shriver’s immediate family includes not only a former US president, a US Attorney General, and a US Senator, but his parents, Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, founded global humanitarian organizations like the Special Olympics, The Peace Corp, and more. But Tim has risen to the challenge in every respect and is adding a new aspect to the legacy.In this week’s conversation with Zach Davis, Tim shares what it was like to grow up in his remarkable family, the motivation behind the important initiatives he is currently leading, and how his deeply-held Christian faith shapes all aspects of his life.Tim serves today as the CEO of  Special Olympics and is also the founder of Unite, a national grass-roots organization dedicated to transcending seemingly intractable difference. He is also a leading researcher focusing on the social and emotional factors in learning and has also produced six films, including Amistad and The Loretta Claiborne Story. He is the author of Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most, and co-editor of The Call to Unite: Voices of Hope and Awakening. Tim and his wife, Linda Potter, reside in the Washington, D.C area and have five adult children.