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Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John DeLin. And I'm super happyly extra excited to announce not only who I'm currently about to interview but also a bit of a series that I hope to embark upon in Mormon Stories that I think many of you are going to enjoy.

So, so today I'm interviewing Brad Kramer.

Brad may be known to some of you. He's married. He has five kids. He was raised LDS in Utah. He has a bachelor's degree in Russian from BYU and a bachelor's degree in history from the U of U.

And then he has a master's in American history from the U. And then finally, he just submitted his dissertation revisions for the completion of his PhD in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Michigan.

So, he's sort of a Mormon. Would you say sociologist or anthropologist, Brad?

Yeah, probably something like an anthropologist and I don't know, aspiring polymath.

A sparring what?

Polymath just I've got a number of kind of disciplinary backgrounds that I flirt with and you know, at one point I was on the trajectory to become fully fleshed Mormon historian and then I veered more into the social science.

So, you've got a lot of interest.

Well, excellent. Well, I'm particularly excited to have Brad on one because in this morning, focusing on in our interview today,

Brad, I think represents kind of a new generation of, I'll just say believing thoughtful believing Mormon, who doesn't take the traditional apologetic view,

but is still very much interested in willing to stand up for belief, but from an exceptionally well informed and thoughtful, I would say, perspective.

And so, we know we've had tarot givens and Richard Bushman on and of course, I have respect for those, those men and others.

But I think Brad represents something different and, and I think you'll get a sense for that.

So, we're going to be talking today with Brad about his, his sort of experiences with the church and where he's come to as far as his sort of fully informed.

Testimony, LDS testimony, but then we're going to talk about a framework that Brad has been developing for what I'm going to call maybe a more mature relationship with the church.

And he's going to make the argument that maybe, you know, those who, those who have become disaffected with the church or have left, you know, might be, you know, might benefit from considering sort of a broader, longer view.

That involves kind of viewing the church in a different light and I'm not going to give too much away on that, but, but this is only going to be the beginning of what I hope to be as a series.

So, some of you will remember that, that in the first year of Mormon stories life, we interviewed a couple by, who went by a roasted tomatoes and serenity valley, they were prominent Mormon bloggers at the time who didn't want to use their real names.

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