Faith Matters

This week, Tim and Aubrey Chaves of Faith Matters welcomed back Charles Inouye. When they first spoke with Charles a couple months ago, he mentioned that he had prepared some thoughts on living a life free of racism. Given President Nelson’s recent call for members of the Church to “lead out in abandoning attitudes and actions of prejudice,” we wanted to get him back on as soon as we could so he could share his impressive insights.We knew that Charles would have a unique perspective to share on this topic. As the son of Japanese parents who were held in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming internment camp during World War II, he grew up as part of the only Japanese family in the small town of Sigurd, Utah. Charles spent much of his youth working on his family’s farm in Sigurd, but eventually served a mission in Japan. He later went on to earn degrees from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, including a BA from Stanford and a PhD from Harvard. He’s now a Professor of Japanese Literature and Visual Culture at Tufts University.

For this conversation, we spoke with Greg McKeown, the New York Times-bestselling author of the books Essentialism and Effortless, the latter of which was just released earlier this year. When we read both Essentialism and Effortless, we knew we wanted to have Greg on the podcast. Everything he wrote in these books seemed immediately applicable; not just in our lives or careers, but even towards our membership in the Church.Greg is also a Latter-day Saint, and he was able to talk with us about how the concepts of his books apply to issues that are often on the minds of fellow church members—things like callings, raising families, and managing work/life balance.Greg’s writing has appeared or been covered by The New York Times, Fast Company, Fortune, HuffPost, Politico, Inc. Magazine, and the Harvard Business Review. He’s also appeared on many television and radio programs, including NPR, NBC, and Fox. Greg is originally from London, England, and now lives in Calabasas, California with his wife, Anna, and their four children. He did his graduate work at Stanford University.

For this episode, we were excited to talk with John Hilton III. John is the author of the new book Considering the Cross, which was published by Deseret Book earlier this year. We loved this book and John’s really thoughtful approach to this topic, which helped us see how bringing Christ’s crucifixion, and even the symbol of the cross, more prominently into our discourse and culture could really enhance and broaden our faith.To give you a little bit more on John’s background, he’s an associate professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University. Prior to BYU, John worked with the LDS Seminary and Institute program for eleven years in a variety of capacities. John has a Masters degree from Harvard and a Ph.D from BYU, both in Education. John and his wife Lani have six children.

It can be delicious sometimes to just sit and listen to two great minds musing on some of the great questions of life. Even when their conversations feel a bit beyond our grasp, they point to deeper realms and invite us to journey with them into a richer intellectual life.That’s exactly what we have for you today. Two of the great intellectuals in the Latter-day Saint world, Terryl Givens and John Durham Peters, invite us to drop in on a conversation between good friends—a conversation that ranges across a variety of fascinating topics.John Durham Peters (born 1958) is Professor of English and Professor of Film & Media Studies at Yale University. A media historian and social theorist, he authored the acclaimed book Speaking into the Air: A History of the Idea of Communication. His other books include Courting the Abyss, and The Marvelous Clouds.

This is part 2 of our discussion with Michael Wilcox that we’re calling God’s Many Voices. If you haven’t heard part 1 yet, we’d encourage you to go back and listen to that episode, which was released last week as episode #85. In it, Brother Wilcox shared with us why he’s spent so much time with the ideas and in the holy books of other religions.In this part, we actually got to dive into a few of these books, and he shared several of his favorite passages with us. Some of the books we got to spend a little bit of time in were the Analects of Confucius, the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur'an, the Dhammapada, and the Tao Te Ching.It was so fun to get to spend this time with Brother Wilcox and to hear some specifics of what he’s learned from various faith and wisdom traditions around the world. We were reminded of Joseph Smith’s words: “one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may.” 

This week, we were honored to bring back Michael Wilcox for one of the most interesting discussions we’ve ever had. We’ve discovered, as we’ve gotten to know him, just how well-versed he is in all world religions, not just in Latter-day Saint theology.We’re breaking this episode into two parts — in this first part, Brother Wilcox explains why it is that he’s spent so much time with the ideas and in the holy books of other religions. To give you a little preview, in his words: “God has been speaking to his children all the time. Every way he can, everywhere…I can hear (his voice in) the voice of a sage, or a philosopher or a poet or playwright. God's voice is like an orchestra. We believe in a God that is speaking all the time, everywhere, every way he can.” And in the second part, which we’ll air next week, we actually get into some of his favorite ideas and passages from books like the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, and several others  — it’s remarkable to see how some of the most beautiful ideas really echo so strongly in some of our own cherished beliefs.Many of you are already familiar with Brother Wilcox, but to just give a little background — he received his PhD from the University of Colorado and taught for many years at the LDS Institute of Religion adjacent to the University of Utah. He has spoken to packed crowds at BYU Education Week and has hosted tours to the Holy Land, China, Church history sites, and many others. He’s written several books and he and his late wife, Laurie, are the parents of five children.

Faith Matters has teamed up with Leading Saints to produce a new "virtual summit" focused on the experience of single adult members of the Church. Though we would love for any single adult to attend, this isn't what you might think of as a "single adult conference" — the intended audience is anyone who loves someone in their life who is a single adult!Kurt Francom joins us briefly to explain what this summit is, and why you'll want to tune in.Register here:  https://leadingsaints.org/singleadults

Today’s episode was a tough one, to be honest. In the aftermath of a speech that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave recently to faculty and administration at BYU, we try to explore and understand why the message created such a firestorm. Among other things, the speech raised anew the Church's longstanding challenge in speaking to LGBTQ issues. If you aren’t familiar with the speech that we’re talking about, don’t worry — we give a little more context once the discussion starts. The full transcript and video of the speech are available on the Church Newsroom website.Most of the work we do in this podcast and at Faith Matters, generally, is to provide a forum where difficult issues can be explored in expansive ways through real dialogue and understanding, in a spirit of generosity. Doing that can be tricky on topics which feel particularly polarizing and raw. Faith Matters is really trying to “broaden the circles” of our culture and community to help them become as expansive and inclusive as they can be—both for those who already feel super comfortable at Church, and for those that are trying to find a place to fit in. We definitely don’t always do this perfectly, and we’re sure we didn’t in this episode — so we really appreciate the grace we hope you’ll extend as we navigate this tricky territory.As conversation partners, we brought on Patrick Mason and Tom Christofferson, both of whom have been close friends and advisors to Faith Matters for a long time. We felt like their perspectives would really help to round out both the theological and personal aspects of this issue, and we weren’t disappointed. We found their insights both realistic and reassuring, and as always, they modeled a Gospel and a Church that we’re proud to be a part of.

For today’s episode, we speak with Charles Inouye. Charles is a truly remarkable person—the son of Japanese parents who were held in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming camp during World War II. He grew up in the small town of Sigurd, Utah. He spent much of his youth working on his family’s farm in Sigurd, but eventually served a mission in Japan. He then went on to earn degrees from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, including a BA from Stanford and a PhD from Harvard. He’s now a Professor of Japanese Literature and Visual Culture at Tufts University.In our discussion, we talked with Charles about his most recent book: Zion Earth Zen Sky—which is a really remarkable and unique work among Latter-day Saint literature. For one thing, its prose is interspersed with haiku which for us brought a totally new and welcome feel to the book. We’ve really never read anything quite like it, and Charles’ deep understanding of and appreciation for Zen Buddhism brings insights to life as a Latter-day Saint that we’d never considered.Charles was kind enough to make time for us in-studio on a recent trip from Boston to Utah, and we were so glad we got a chance to talk to him—we hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.

Neylan McBaine’s book "Women at Church" started a lot of conversations and challenged many of our assumptions around how women can participate and lead in their wards and stakes. Seven years later, we thought it might be interesting to explore with Neylan how far we have come and where that future might lead.Neylan founded Better Days 2020, and has become a leader in speaking and writing about women's leadership and the U.S. suffrage movement, with a specific focus on Utah and the West's early role in that movement. Neylan previously founded the Mormon Women Project, a wonderful digital library in which hundreds of Latter-day Saint women from around the world share their experiences of life in the Church.In 2020, Neylan was named “Extraordinary Woman” of the year by the YWCA of Utah. Her book "Pioneering the Vote: The Untold Story of Suffragists in Utah and the West" won the Freedoms Foundation National Award. Neylan grew up in New York, is a graduate of Yale University, mother to three daughters, and lives in Salt Lake City. She shared much of her personal story in a previous Faith Matters conversation with Terryl Givens in 2019.