Maxwell Institute Podcast #159: Why Do We Pray? Featuring Kimberly Matheson

Maxwell Institute Podcast

Christianity, Education, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2023

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to The Questions We Should Be Asking, a new season of the podcast from the Maxwell Institute that explores faith-building questions. In this episode, Rosalynde interviews Kimberly Matheson, a scholar at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religion. She asks the question: why do we pray? And what does prayer look like in our lives?

Kimberly Matheson is a Research Fellow at the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, with current projects focusing on gender in the Book of Mormon, a materialist theology of prayer, and Moroni 7 as a theological response to modernity. Her research centers more broadly on the Book of Mormon, Christian contemplative practice, and the continental philosophy of religion. Kimberly holds a Ph.D. in theology from Loyola University Chicago, an MTS in philosophy of religion from Harvard Divinity School, and a BA in ancient near east studies from Brigham Young University. She is the author most recently of Helaman: A Brief Theological Introduction (Maxwell, 2020) and sits on the boards of the Book of Mormon Studies Association and the Latter-day Saint Theology Seminar.

The post Maxwell Institute Podcast #159: Why Do We Pray? Featuring Kimberly Matheson appeared first on Neal A. Maxwell Institute | BYU.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, podcast listeners. This is Rosalind Welch, popping in here with a brief request before my interview with Kim Matheson.
0:09.4	Our podcast listeners are an incredibly important part of the Maxwell Institute audience, and we want to make sure that we're connected with you so that we know what you need and how to best serve you.
0:23.2	Would you sign up for our monthly newsletter? All you have to do is go to the Maxwell Institute website at m.I.b.b.u.edu. That's m.i.byu.org.
0:36.8	And scroll all the way down to the bottom.
0:41.1	There you'll see a box labeled monthly newsletter where you can put in your email address.
0:46.8	And that's it. You'll get an email newsletter with updates about our happenings and we'll better know who's listening to us and how to serve you,
0:56.1	all for about 10 seconds of your time. I'd really appreciate it. And now to the episode.
1:05.2	Hello, and welcome to the Maxwell Institute podcast, where we seek out faith illuminating
1:17.4	scholarship.
1:18.9	I'm Rosalind Welch, associate director at the Institute.
1:22.7	This season, we're exploring the questions we should be asking.
1:27.3	Thanks for joining us. What is prayer?
1:31.4	In 2020, President Nelson asked us to unite as a church in thanking God through daily prayer,
1:37.1	and he promised that prayer brings forth miracles. But what are we doing when we pray? Breathing, speaking, kneeling? Today on the podcast I talk
1:50.3	with Kimberly Matheson, a research fellow and my colleague here at the Maxwell Institute.
1:56.3	Kim studies and writes about the theology of prayer, and she spent years thinking through the
2:01.7	fundamentals of our ongoing conversation with God. We talked about why prayer is necessary in a
2:09.1	world of therapy and self-help. Why prayer can be so hard? What's powerful about getting on our
2:16.6	knees in personal prayer, and what's beautiful about prayers
2:20.3	in our homes, meeting houses, and temples. Kim helped me take a breath, take a step back,
2:26.5	and ask a better, more fundamental question about prayer. What am I doing when I pray? And why?
2:36.1	I hope you enjoy the conversation.
	...

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