Often when we speak about matters of religion as Latter-day Saints, we discuss belief.

I know the church is true. I have received a witness for myself that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.

I have had these experiences and share them in Sunday school and in other venues.

For me though, faith also takes place in the fleshy here and now. It engages the senses.

My religion is taking the sacrament on Sunday and seeing the ties poking

out a shirt collars. Special trays for those who can't have gluten. The carpet on the wall. The

baby's crying. The silent knot of a bishop signaling that the sacramental prayer has been offered

correctly. It's also laying grass for a service project or the smell of a campfire from

youth conferences past. I suspect that as you've been listening to this that you too have been able to think of the physical,

earthy, sensed engagement stuff of Latter-day Saint Belief practice and culture.

Today we are going to explore the stuff of religion, what scholars call material culture.

Through an exploration of the mundane, what some

might call the ordinary, we discover God's presence and the faith of ancient Israel. I suspect that we

might also learn something about our modern faith as well. My name is Joseph Stewart. I'm the

public communication specialist of the Neely Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at Brigham

Young University. Christian Hill is a research fellow here at the Maxwell Institute, and each week we'll be

discussing the week's block of reading from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

come follow me curriculum.

We aren't here to present a lesson.

Or rather, to hit on a few key themes from the scripture block so as to help fulfill

the Maxwell Institute's mission to inspire and fortify Latter-day Saints and their testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ and engage the world of religious ideas.

Today we are once again joined by one of our research assistants, Carolyn Lohman, an ancient

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