Faith Matters

Fiona and Terryl Givens challenge traditional religious concepts in their book 'All Things New'. They discuss the hidden depths of restoration doctrines, sin versus remorse, the concept of surprising God, redefining religious vocabulary, and the potential for a game-changing event.

Historian and scholar Kate Holbrook's writings are compiled into a new book called 'Both Things Are True.' The podcast explores the process of working on the manuscript with Kate and delving into various topics such as the complexities of revelation, the importance of authenticity in relationships, and the dual nature of housework as both a burden and joy.

Brian McLaren, faith development expert, shares a simple framework for faith development, emphasizing inclusivity. Topics include faith journey, transitioning to complexity, the beauty and danger of God, accepting reality, stage-sensitive leadership, and the influence of Pope Francis.

Dacher Keltner is a scientist who has been studying happiness and well-being for decades. He writes that he’s taught happiness to hundreds of thousands of people around the world and that twenty years into teaching happiness, he’s actually found an answer to how to live the good life: find awe.To that end, he’s written a new book called Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How it Can Transform Your Life.The book was not only moving, fascinating and thoroughly researched, it also raised lots of really important questions for us. Among the most important was what implications his research on awe has for religious people. It seems like what Latter-day Saints call “feeling the Spirit” has a strong connection to what Dacher refers to as awe, and we were able to ask Dacher about that. While he’s not a traditionally religious person himself, his exploration of awe has led him to believe that there is a realm of understanding and human experience that is beyond scientific explanation.On a really practical level, Dacher’s book, and the conversation with him, helped us understand how we can integrate awe into our everyday lives, and illustrated the astounding benefits that an “awe” practice can have for each of us.Dacher received his PhD from Stanford University in 1989 before joining Berkeley’s psychology department in 1996, where he’s been ever since. Over 500,000 people have enrolled in Dacher’s EdX course, The Science of Happiness, and he’s the host of the podcast also called The Science of Happiness.

When therapist Bonnie Young was a teen, the subject of sexuality was for her, “drenched in fear.” And many of us can probably relate. For many Latter-day Saints growing up in a sexually conservative culture and with a strict law of chastity — for all of the goods those things can bring — feelings of anxiety, fear, and shame around sexuality may be more the rule rather than the exception.Bonnie’s on a mission to change that, and we think she’s done really important work to do so with her new book, Sex Educated: Letters from a Latter-day Saint Therapist to Her Younger Self. As the title implies, the book is structured as a series of letters, from Bonnie, to herself at various ages, starting as young as ten. It serves as a really useful retrospective, to get into our own minds at various stages of development, and helped remind us that there are really good, constructive, healthy ways to talk about sexuality to kids of any age.That “talk” — the one that can produce so much anxiety among both kids and parents — is one of the main subjects of our conversation with Bonnie. She also had amazing insights around the difference between lust and arousal, about healthy sexual relationships between committed partners, and how this all fits beautifully into the theology of the Restoration.Bonnie Young is a licensed marriage and family therapist, frequent presenter and podcast guest, and published author of several academic articles and essays on religion and mental health. She is the founder of Azure Counseling, an online mental health clinic focused on treating clients with anxiety, religious OCD / scrupulosity, and sexual disorders. Bonnie holds a bachelor’s degree in history with an emphasis in Mormon women’s history and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy, both from Brigham Young University. She’s currently completing her doctoral studies at Utah State University in marriage and family therapy. Her dissertation work explores questions about women’s experience with power dynamics in Latter-day Saint marriages.

This week, we’re excited to share with you another gem from our Restore gathering last year. This is a presentation by Jeff Strong.  Now his name may sound familiar to you because Jeff also came on for an incredible episode called “Getting Real About Missionary Work” last year- episode #124, which we highly recommend. That episode is one of Faith Matters’ most listened to of all time.But in today’s episode, you’re going to hear about Jeff’s experience as a mission president of the Bentonville, Arkansas Mission where he and his wife led a phenomenally successful pilot program with his missionaries. I’ll let Jeff fill in the details — but for us, the story of the Bentonville, Arkansas mission has totally revolutionized the way we imagine missionary work and we can’t wait for you to hear about it.There are some really interesting visuals in this presentation you may want to see so you can also go to our YouTube channel to watch the video there.To tell you a little bit about Jeff, in addition to serving as a mission leader with his wife Sara from 2018- 2021 in the Bentonville, Arkansas Mission, Jeff has been a senior level executive at several multinational companies, and has spent almost 3 decades in management. He’s also worked as a consultant and private equity advisor and has served as a special project director at BYU’s Marriott School of Business, where he led the startup of the Marketing Lab. 

Ben Behunin, a full-time artist and stake president, talks about his mission experience, creativity in leadership, and the gifts that Latter-day Saints have to offer. Highlights include his conversion story, fostering creativity, embracing fresh ideas, inclusive leadership, creating a welcoming church community, and exploring faith and hope through funerals.

Terryl Givens, a speaker with a fascinating background, shares personal stories about near-drowning experiences, investigating infant mortality rates, the power of human connection, understanding God's love, and the provisional nature of structures within the Church.

Religion in America is undergoing a revolution. In 1972, 90% of Americans were self-professed Christians. Now, that number is about 64%. There are now large and growing populations of non-Christians, as well as many who have no particular religious beliefs. Such a time of change has made it an exciting time to be a scholar of religion, charged with making sense of the shifting landscape of American religious experience. For today’s conversation, Zach Davis sat down with one of those scholars, Charles Stang, the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School. Zach went to grad school at HDS and Charlie was one of his very favorite professors. In the conversation, Charlie discusses his life as a scholar of religion, the path his own spiritual life has taken and shares details about the exciting new research initiative he is leading at Harvard called Transcendence and Transformation. Charles M. Stang is Professor of Early Christian Thought at Harvard Divinity School and the Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions. His research and teaching focus on the history and theology of Christianity, in particular asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism in Eastern Christianity. His most recent book, Our Divine Double, was published in 2016 by Harvard University Press.

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.