Maxwell Institute Podcast

Kate Holbrook, PhD (1972–2022) was a leading voice in the study of Latter-day Saintwomen and Latter-day Saint foodways. As managing historian of women’s history atthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints history department, she wrote, studied,and interpreted history full-time. Her major research interests were religion, gender,and food. Her primary professional activity was to discover, encourage, and celebratewomen’s flourishing in the scholarly and spiritual realms. A popular public speaker, Kate was voted Harvard College’s Teaching Fellow of theYear for her work as head teaching fellow in a course that enrolled nearly six hundredstudents, and she co-edited Global Values 101: A Short Course (Beacon Press, 2006),based on that class. In 2012, Kate co-organized a conference entitled “Women and theLDS Church: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.” She and her co-organizer,Matthew Bowman, edited a collection of essays that sprang from this conferenceentitled Women and Mormonism: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. Kate hasalso published essays and book chapters about Latter-day Saint women andhousework, Nation of Islam Muslims, Latter-day Saints and food, religion andsexuality, and religious hunting rituals. Kate grew up at the feet of the Rocky Mountains and returned there in 2006, to liveamong the historic sites, cultural currents, and food environments where herscholarship had its roots. She earned a BA in English and Russian literature fromBrigham Young University, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and a PhD inReligious Studies from Boston University. For her dissertation work on Latter-day Saintand Nation of Islam foodways, she was the first recipient of the Eccles Fellowship inMormon Studies at the University of Utah. She was proud wife (to Samuel Brown) andmother (to Amelia, Lucia, and Persephone Holbrook-Brown). Kate and her family developed this endowment together. It was Kate’s wish as shedeparted mortality that these funds serve to help the women of the Church to flourish in their scholarly and spiritual lives. Kate herself benefited from a similar gift (fromRuth Silver of Denver, Colorado) early in her scholarly career, when she and Sam hadminimal financial resources, and she needed time and money to devote to the study ofwomen and religion. She hoped that such giving would become more and morecommon over time. The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #148: The Weight of Legacy, with Kate Holbrook appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

A book has many lives. It’s thought, it’s edited, it’s printed, it’s reprinted, it’s commentated on, and this repeats, if the book merits it, ad infinitum. This is certainly true for the Bible as a whole, but, I suggest, for the Psalms in particular. How do we think about Psalms as an ancient text conveyed for a modern people? The post Abide: Psalms Part Three appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation’s sacred religious and legal texts – the Bible and the Constitution – to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters’ emphasis on historical readings of the sacred texts, and in turn, these readings began to highlight the unbridgeable historical distances that separated nineteenth-century Americans from biblical and founding pasts. While many Americans continued to adhere to a belief in the Bible’s timeless teachings and the Constitution’s enduring principles, some antislavery readers, including Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, used historical distance to reinterpret and use the sacred texts as antislavery documents. By using the debate over American slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins traces the development of American historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how a growing emphasis on historical readings of the Bible and the Constitution gave rise to a sense of historical distance. The post (Reuploaded) Maxwell Institute Podcast #147: Slavery, Sacred Texts, and Historical Consciousness, with Jordan Watkins appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

In the decades before the Civil War, Americans appealed to the nation’s sacred religious and legal texts – the Bible and the Constitution – to address the slavery crisis. The ensuing political debates over slavery deepened interpreters’ emphasis on historical readings of the sacred texts, and in turn, these readings began to highlight the unbridgeable historical distances that separated nineteenth-century Americans from biblical and founding pasts. While many Americans continued to adhere to a belief in the Bible’s timeless teachings and the Constitution’s enduring principles, some antislavery readers, including Theodore Parker, Frederick Douglass, and Abraham Lincoln, used historical distance to reinterpret and use the sacred texts as antislavery documents. By using the debate over American slavery as a case study, Jordan T. Watkins traces the development of American historical consciousness in antebellum America, showing how a growing emphasis on historical readings of the Bible and the Constitution gave rise to a sense of historical distance. The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #147: Slavery, Sacred Texts, and Historical Consciousness, with Jordan Watkins appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

One of the first things I tell my students, and that I repeat throughout a semester, is that texts do not interpret themselves. Every time a person reads scripture they see it with new eyes and with shifting perspectives. The words on the page may be the same, though, of course, with the Bible, those words may vary, but it is up to us to seek learning by knowledge and through the Spirit. We’ll discuss that, and much more, on today’s episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast. The post Abide: Psalms Part Two appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

Psalms! There’s over 150 of them marked in the book by the same name in the Old Testament. How can we read them? Are they more useful as a narrative thread, or as a spice to season our spiritual diet? We’ll discuss that and much more on today’s episode of “Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast.” The post Abide: Psalms Part One appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

Job, as a literary and biblical figure, gives us a lot to think about. He goes from riches to rags to riches again. He loses his family but begins another. He’s at the center of a contest between god and a devilish character. He relies on his friends but those same friends accuse him of doing evil works. What can Latter-day Saints think about when considering Job the book, Job the figure, and the implications of both man and book? We’ll discuss that, and much more, in today’s episode of Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast. The post Abide: Job appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

In Original Grace, Adam S. Miller proposes an experiment in Restoration thinking: What if instead of implicitly affirming the traditional logic of original sin, we, as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, emphasized the deeper reality of God’s original grace? What if we broke entirely with the belief that suffering can sometimes be deserved and claimed that suffering can never be deserved? In exploring these questions, Miller draws on scriptures and the truths of the Restoration to reframe Christianity’s traditional thinking about grace, justice, and sin. He outlines the logic of original sin versus that of original grace and generates fresh insights into how the doctrine of grace relates to justice, creation, forgiveness, and more. The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #146: God’s Original Grace, with Adam Miller appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

Can one be directed by God when one doesn’t know that one is being directed? The answer, of course, is yes. We learn about how God directed Esther in ways that may not have been recognizable to her, to ancient Israelites, and in ways that still surprise us today. We’ll discuss that, and more, in today’s episode of “Abide: A Maxwell Institute Podcast.” The post Abide: Esther appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

If an eighteenth-century cleric told you that the difference between “civilization and heathenism is sky-high and star-far,” the words would hardly come as a shock. But that statement was written by an American missionary in 1971. In a sweeping historical narrative, Kathryn Gin Lum shows how the idea of the heathen has been maintained from the colonial era to the present in religious and secular discourses―discourses, specifically, of race. Kathryn Gin Lum is Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department, in collaboration with the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford. She is also Associate Professor, by courtesy, of History in affiliation with American Studies and Asian American Studies. The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #145: The Idea of the “Heathen” with Kathryn Gin Lum appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.